One

Although Sean Delancey had not yet met Raymond Jardine, Raymond had been scouting him for some weeks now. Raymond, new to the school, was in Sean’s English class, but their first official meeting didn’t come until Mr. Kerr designated them partners for the semester’s major project.

“Modern poetry is the true reflection of twentieth-century society,” Mr. Kerr announced to the students, who were certain it was not. “When we study modern poetry, we are really, in a way, studying ourselves.”

Raymond looked Sean squarely in the eye. “Delancey, S., student number 5112, junior, height: 5′ 11″, weight: 160 pounds, hair: blond, eyes: blue, grade point average: 3.2. Extracurricular activities: varsity basketball.”

Sean looked from Raymond to Mr. Kerr and back to Raymond again. “Huh?”

Raymond produced a sheet of paper from his English book. “On September nineteenth, you signed up for the Nassau County high school program in Greece next summer. Eight weeks on Theamelpos, the most beautiful island in the Aegean.”

“So?”

“So, that’s my trip — Jardine’s only alternative to another summer working in my uncle’s fish gutting plant in Secaucus. Think about it. A paradise in the Aegean versus fish guts in New Jersey. Now do you understand?”

“This project will make up sixty percent of your final grade,” proclaimed Mr. Kerr genially.

Sean’s head was spinning. “Wait a minute! What’s with you? You think they’re taking only one guy to Theamelpos?”

“Maximum six per school,” Raymond retorted. “Listen, I was the first guy to sign up for this trip. I destroyed all the notices telling about the program. They put up new notices, and I tore them down every time. I even stole the poster of Theamelpos from the travel agent in the mall. I don’t know how you found out about it.”

“My mother teaches in Massapequa,” Sean admitted almost apologetically.

Raymond looked up to the ceiling. “His mother teaches in Massapequa,” he repeated. “Nice. So that’s why, on September nineteenth, Jardine came to school in a perfectly good mood to find that Delancey, S., had signed up for my trip. And you obviously have a big mouth, because by the end of the day, there were three more names on that list. Now there are seven of us, and maybe more on the way, going for those six spots, thanks to Delancey, S., and his mother in Massapequa. Those aren’t good odds when you’ve got an uncle in the fish business.”

Sean wasn’t sure if he should chew Raymond out or say, “I’m sorry.” “Listen. We’re missing the assignment! Did he just say something about footnotes?”

“The bottom line is competition,” Raymond went on, as though Sean had not spoken. “I didn’t ask for it, but I’ve got it. That’s why I keep complete files on every name on that sign-up sheet. I want to know exactly what I’m up against.” He glanced at the paper in front of him. “This is a really bad picture of you. Did you have the mumps or something?”

Sean could bear it no longer. “What’s your problem, huh? How can you take a summer trip that’s supposed to be fun and turn it into a life-and-death strategy war?”

“Because I have to try twice as hard as everyone else,” Raymond said readily. “You see, I have no luck — none at all, zero, zip, zilch — and as soon as I saw that seventh name go up on the list, I knew my back was against the wall because, given half a chance, the heavens will open up and dump crud all over Jardine.”

“What good are those files going to do you? If they don’t pick you for the trip, all the spying in the world won’t help.”

“Ah, yes. But these records are the equivalent of what the staff will look at when they’re making the selection.” He began to riffle through the sheets. “For example, grades. The only one of us running a D average in one of his courses is — let’s see — Jardine in — uh — English.” He looked disgusted. “And I just got for a partner the guy who started the run on Theamelpos in the first place. He gets great grades across the board, except for — get this — English, which won’t hurt him, but will probably be enough to bury Jardine.”

Mr. Kerr was finishing up his list of instructions. “The due date will be the end of the semester. No late papers accepted. Any questions?”

“How long should the finished project be?” asked a girl in the front row.

“At least twenty-five to thirty pages,” the teacher replied. “Typed, of course.”

“Do you at least type?” Raymond asked Sean.

“Three-and-a-half words a minute,” Sean replied defiantly.

Once again, Raymond looked at the ceiling. “He doesn’t type.”

***

Q. David Hyatt was looking at the school. This was nothing unusual. Each day he would stop his new Cadillac at the edge of the school property and spend a pleasant ten or fifteen minutes just looking.

Actually, DeWitt High was a not-very-new, squalid-looking red brick building. The only thing that made it different from any school anywhere was that the Department of Energy had selected DeWitt as the field-test site for the Solar/Air Current Generating System, or SACGEN.

Hyatt’s eyes traveled to the apparatus on the roof, a large and complicated affair that looked like nothing more than a battered hat surrounded by cylinders, squares, oblongs, and half circles, all of dull metal and glass. True, it was ugly, but to Hyatt it was the ninth wonder of the world, the eighth being the fact that he was principal of the school selected to be host to such a masterpiece. His chest swelled with pride.

An anonymous letter, probably from one of the students, had arrived at his house the day before, saying that SACGEN looked as if a giant garbage truck had parked in the sky over DeWitt High and dumped its load on the roof of the school. What appalling ignorance! SACGEN, with its solar energy panels and wind collectors, was powering the entire building from nothing more than the sun and air currents of southern Long Island. No wonder he had rushed right out to the Cadillac dealer as soon as they had begun construction. No wonder he had spent the hundred dollars to have his licence plates changed to SACGEN. The principal of the school entrusted with the only working SACGEN in the world had an image to maintain.

Parking the car, Mr. Hyatt walked along the driveway to the school’s front entrance. Once again, he paused. He felt a certain warm tingle every time he saw the light on in the foyer. This was coming from the sun and the wind, not from any electric company.

Suddenly the foyer lights went out, along with every other light in the building. The loving smile on the principal’s face disappeared as quickly as if he, too, had been hooked up to SACGEN.

Oh, well. Revolutionary new inventions always had a few bugs to iron out at the last minute. No problem.

***

“The SACGEN system is working perfectly. This is only a test,” the public address system had announced just before the entire school was plunged into darkness.

There was a loud chorus of boos, hisses, and jeers in English class and every other room in the school. It had taken the students at DeWitt only three or four days to figure out what the entire Department of Energy and Q. David Hyatt refused to accept — SACGEN didn’t work. Oh, yes, the solar panels collected, and the wind rotors turned, and it did power the school. But it broke down constantly, wreaking havoc on the building’s electrical system. SACGEN itself, apparently, had never been shown the schematic diagrams that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that it worked perfectly. It insisted on being a thirty-three-million-dollar lemon.

“We’re in the dark again,” observed Mr. Kerr’s voice from the front of the room. “I don’t suppose anyone would be interested in continuing by flashlight.”

His response was a sympathetic murmur.

A strange sound drew Sean’s attention back to Raymond. He squinted in amazement. His new partner was drumming out ancient tribal rhythms on his desk. As if this weren’t enough, he was intoning a low ritual chant in a made-up nonsense language, the only recognizable word of which was “Theamelpos.” It kept coming up every second sentence or so, whined out in a strange accent.

The sound of a textbook slamming shut signified that Mr. Kerr had had enough. “Forget it,” the teacher announced. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”

The halls were brighter, because of the large school windows, and Sean mingled with students from other classes, which were gradually being let out as teacher after teacher threw in the towel to the “test.” His plan was to put as much distance as humanly possible between himself and Raymond Jardine.

“There he is!” Randy Fowler jogged up, Chris McDermott in tow. “The man, the myth, the legend, the star!”

Chris began running in circles, moving his hand as though dribbling a basketball. “Five seconds left, they get the ball to Delancey, four — three, he puts it up, two — one, it’s in! Sean Delancey has won the game on a beautiful twenty-foot shot!”

Sean smiled modestly. “It was only eighteen feet.”

“In that case,” said Chris, “I take back my congratulations.”

The halls were buzzing with the news of last night’s basketball game with Freeport High. Sean had played his usual strong game, capping the performance with a game-winning basket just as the last second died.

Playing the hero was greatly improving Sean’s spirits. This was what high school was all about — not getting forced into stupid English projects with Raymond Jardine! Pausing to shake a few more hands, he idly hoped that Mindy O’Toole, his ex-girlfriend, knew about the game. Three days earlier, Mindy had dumped him because their relationship was fading, whatever that meant.

“Hi.”

Sean wheeled to find his younger sister, Nikki, hurrying to join him.

“What’s going on, Sean? You didn’t tell me there was going to be a SACGEN test today.” Nikki was a freshman, and seemed to think upperclassmen were informed about such issues as SACGEN tests. “I killed Mom’s quilted pot holder. The sewing machines all went apewire.”

Sean didn’t feel like talking to her. There were still a lot of people around who hadn’t congratulated him yet. “I’m a junior, Nik. When they need permission for a SACGEN test, they go to the seniors. We’re only consulted on public executions and acid rain. Besides, that wasn’t any test. The windmill died like it always does.”

“Aw, come on, Sean. I’m serious. That was going to be Mom’s Christmas present. Now it won’t be ready until Mother’s Day.”

“Well, if you really step up production, and the windmill behaves itself, you might be able to give it to her for Groundhog Day.”

“It’s not funny, you know, Sean! Sean?”

Her brother was not paying attention. In the rapidly filling hallway, he had caught sight of Raymond in a sheltered alcove, lying flat on his back, staring up into his files, shuffling pages and studying intently.

“Probably plotting who has to die so he can go to Theamelpos,” Sean muttered through clenched teeth.

His sister looked at him quizzically. “What?”

“Nothing. Let’s go grab a soda or something.”

Nikki nudged his arm. “Hey, Sean, there’s someone waving at you.”

Sean turned and followed her gaze until his eyes fell on Raymond, who had put down his notes and was beckoning and grinning.

“Who’s that?” she asked.

Sean turned away quickly. “Nobody.”

“But why is he waving at you?”

“He must be looking for somebody else.” His brow knit. Why was Raymond smiling at him? At Sean, whom he had just accused of putting Theamelpos in jeopardy? Weird!

As they headed for the cafeteria, Nikki was still looking back at where Raymond lay, once again absorbed in his notes. “Are you sure you don’t know him? I’m almost positive he was waving at you.”

“Give me a break, Nik!”

***

Sean left school on the run that day, darting for the bus stop at top speed. He had come back from computer class to find a note taped to the door of his locker: Catch you later. Jardine. The mere thought of spending more time with Raymond than absolutely necessary had given his feet wings. But even this was not enough to put him on the early bus, which pulled out, leaving him standing there fuming. His computer teacher, Mr. Lai, waved at him from his seat at the back window.

Frowning, he began to saunter back toward the school building, intent on buying a Coke to pass the twenty-minute wait between buses. The local transit stank, but it was better than waiting for the school bus for two reasons: first, he’d have to hang out with Nikki and her obnoxious friends as they talked their brains out, trying to get in those last few opinions before they could get home and phone each other; second, he’d stand an increased chance of running into Raymond Jardine, a meeting much to be avoided. As he walked, he came across a battered ancient Honda motor scooter leaning against the school’s chain-link fence. The red paint was so badly pockmarked with rust that Sean had to squint to make out the name scratched into the mudguard — JARDINE. Sean wheeled in his tracks and headed back to the bus stop. From nine o’clock to ten minutes of ten every day until Christmas, he was going to be faced with Raymond. The rest of his life was going to be Jardine-free time.

***

Dinner at the Delancey house was an event unmatched anywhere else in the world, Sean reflected as he toyed with his veal cutlet. It had been this way ever since Gramp had come to live with them two months before. Gramp was Mr. Delancey’s father, a spry eighty-eight, and had been dragged under protest from his beloved old apartment in Brooklyn because he was “too old” to live by himself. Sean knew that if liveliness was any indication, Gramp was the youngest person in the household.

“So, Pop,” said Mr. Delancey conversationally, “what did you do with yourself today?”

Gramp chewed thoughtfully. “Well, let me see. The President needed some advice on foreign policy, so I was on the phone most of the morning. And Marilyn Monroe dropped over for lunch. Then Babe Ruth and I took a little batting in the backyard. After that, I climbed Mount Everest, swam the English Channel, and came back by pogo stick through the Adirondacks just in time to whip up a cure for the common cold right here in your kitchen.” He paused. “On second thought, that must have been somebody else. I sat around all day and listened to the grass grow.”

Sean’s mother tried to chuckle. “Aw, come on, Pop. Where would you be if not with us?”

“In Brooklyn,” the old man said stoutly, “where I belong. I don’t like grass. You never know where you stand with grass. I’ll take a good sidewalk any day.”

“A broken-down old building in a neighborhood teeming with street gangs and hoods,” said Mrs. Delancey derisively.

“Lovely boys,” her father-in-law corrected her. “They were like my own children.” He glared at his son. “Better, even. Who do you think painted my apartment, and shopped for me when I was laid up with gout? And bright, too. If I ever got locked out of the house, or lost my car keys, they could get inside in a snap.”

Mr. Delancey rolled his eyes. “Now, Pop, you know your building was being torn down.”

The old man shook his head. “I guess when you’ve been on Long Island for a few years, you forget little details like the fact that there’s more than one apartment building in Brooklyn.”

Nikki looked into her plate. “Why are the potatoes black?”

“Don’t blame me,” her father said quickly. “Blame Mr. Schnitzenberger next door.”

“Why?”

“He illegally gained access to the house, snuck into the kitchen, and set fire to our potatoes,” said Gramp seriously.

“Come on, Pop,” said Mr. Delancey. “It was the wireless remote radio-activated oven control we bought last week, Nik. You know — so Mom can set up the oven in the morning and turn it on from anywhere within forty-six miles of the house.”

“What happened?” Sean asked.

“Mr. Schnitzenberger’s garage door opener works on the same frequency,” Mrs. Delancey explained. “The potatoes cooked for over seven hours.”

“The nerve of that guy!” Gramp exclaimed, pounding on the table in anger. “Ten years ago, when he bought his garage door opener, he should have predicted this! Some neighbor!”

“Pop, please,” said Mrs. Delancey.

“Mom’s home by four o’clock anyway,” Sean pointed out. “Why do we need remote control?”

“We live in an age where everyday people can be pioneers!” said Mr. Delancey grandly, launching into his usual speech explaining why he and his wife poured their money into every new invention on the market. “Think of the technological advancements that are made every year! In this modem era …”

Mentally, Sean tuned him out. It was a great speech, but it sounded too much like Q. David Hyatt haranguing the students on the wonders of SACGEN. Besides, it was hard for Sean to be inspired when the images of past examples of the “modern era” were still fresh in his mind. It had only been two weeks since his mother’s revolutionary new iron had burned through his pants, the ironing board, the floor, and most of the asbestos casing on the furnace in the basement. Before that had come the robotized light-bulb changer, which had covered the floor with so much broken glass that Mr. Delancey had been forced to call into service the turbo-charged vacuum cleaner to suck up the glass along with half of the house, including fifteen hundred dollars worth of wall-to-wall broadloom. But the pièce de résistance had come last year with the extreme voltage air purification modulator. Sean could still remember the humiliation he’d endured when the device had belched out an enormous toxic blue cloud over the Delancey house.

Some families had a treasured heirloom — a piece of furniture or jewelry handed down through the generations. At the Delancey house, the most prized possession was an argon-neon laser, which sat on a pedestal in the living room, projecting a tiny red dot on the bookcase. It was the current flagship of the household.

“Take the SACGEN unit in your school, for example,” said Mrs. Delancey. “Where would we be without projects like SACGEN?” She was a dyed-in-the-wool SACGEN supporter, reading voraciously on the subject, and collecting pamphlets, posters, and Department of Energy bulletins. It was a source of great pride to her that her children attended DeWitt.

Sean thought otherwise. If it got around that his mother was a windmill fan, all the jump shots in the world couldn’t save him. “I know where we wouldn’t be,” he said. “In the dark. Mom, I’ve told you to million times, SACGEN doesn’t work. Ask Nik.”

“I certainly don’t think the Department of Energy would say how successful it is if it weren’t so,” said Mrs. Delancey sternly.

Gramp was up at the refrigerator. “The kids are at that school every day, Tina. Why would they lie?” Suddenly, he clutched at his heart. “We’re out of prune juice!” He staggered back against the dishwasher.

“Pop, that’s not funny,” Mrs. Delancey admonished. “A man of your age shouldn’t joke about things like that.”

“Who’s joking?” he returned bad-naturedly. He walked over to his daughter-in-law’s shopping list, pulled a thick marker out of the pen holder, and wrote PRUNE JUICE in three-inch letters, filling up the rest of the sheet.

Grandfather Delancey said the words “prune juice” with a reverence and respect matched only by his pronunciation of the name “Brooklyn.” For him it was the elixir of life, and a glass a day gave him the right to eat all the foods his doctor, “that medical robot,” said were bad for him. He wasn’t one of those grandparents who lived in the past, or couldn’t seem to adjust to the modern world. But he refused to wear anything polyester, and insisted on smoking cheap cigars, called Scrulnick’s. These were made only in Brooklyn, and gave off an odor halfway between smoldering hemp and sewer gas. He tolerated modern hairstyles, but firmly believed that people who wore them were robots. And he held firm to his conviction that a robot was the worst thing anybody could be. The nearest definition Sean could think of for Gramp’s use of robot was “normal.” Gramp got along with Sean best of any of the family members, but that didn’t mean much. Gramp called Sean “the all-American robot.”

“Look at you!” Sean could remember Gramp once saying. “Varsity basketball, good grades, but not too good — oh, no. Then you’d be an egghead. And Mr. Popularity. You’re perfect. How do you stand it?”

Sean had smiled painfully. “I get by.”

It was a typical evening at the Delancey house. Mrs. Delancey finished marking ninth-grade papers and sat down with her husband to leaf through Techno-Living magazine. Nikki took possession of the phone. Gramp lit up a Scrulnick’s, settled into the TV room, and turned on his favorite station, the Weather Channel. Sean joined him because, with his sister tying up the line, there would be no late messages of congratulations for his game-winning jump shot coming through.

Sean looked at the screen with distaste. “How can you stand to watch this stuff?”

Gramp’s eyes never left the set. “I like it.”

Sean snorted. “Des Moines — partly cloudy. Why would anybody care whether or not it’s partly cloudy in Des Moines unless they were in Des Moines, in which case they could see it?” Resignedly, he stretched out on the sofa and shifted his mind into neutral. His relaxation lasted five seconds.

From outside there was the sound of a very feeble outboard motor revving and shutting itself off. Outboard? But they were five miles from the water. The only other thing that could sound like that would be an old — motor scooter? Before Sean could react, he heard the doorbell ring, and soon his mother’s voice calling, “Sean, your friend Raymond is here.”

Sean froze as he had a sudden vision of the note taped to his locker: Catch you later. Jardine. Apparently, this was later, and he was caught. For an instant, he actually considered hiding under the sofa until his new partner went away. But then the door of the TV room opened, and Raymond was upon him.

Gramp jumped up in sudden recognition. “Hey! You’re the kid with the motor scooter who always runs out of gas in front of the deli!”

Raymond snapped his fingers. “You’re the old guy who’s always getting thrown out of the deli because of those smelly cigars! What are you doing here?”

“He lives here,” said Sean coldly. “He’s my grandfather.”

“Yeah? No kidding! I’ve always wanted to meet you. I love the way you throw your bagel right through the ring salami into the Little League team portrait just before you stomp out.” He grabbed Gramp’s outstretched hand and shook it vigorously. “Jardine. It’s an honor.”

Gramp beamed. “You always kick the gas tank, and then you look up and talk to the sky. I kept wondering what you were saying.”

Raymond shrugged modestly. “Oh, I just talk to them — you know, up there, telling them thanks for the leaky gas tank. I appreciate it. I needed the exercise anyway. That kind of thing.” He took in his surroundings. “Hey, wow. The Weather Channel. And my favorite program, the Evening Forecast.”

Then, before Sean’s shocked gaze, Raymond and Gramp sat down in front of the TV and launched into a long, involved, knowledgeable conversation all about weather. Finally, Sean could bear it no longer.

“Could I just interrupt for a second?” He looked Raymond straight in the eye. “Why are you here?”

Raymond leaned back. “Well, we have to discuss what we’re going to do for our poetry assignment.”

Sean stared at him. “Tonight?”

“Yeah, tonight. This project is going to be the key grade to get us to Theamelpos this summer. We’ve got to pull off something big.”

“We? Us?” said Sean sarcastically. “I thought all you cared about was getting yourself to Theamelpos.”

“Well, yeah,” said Raymond. “But with you doing better than me in every subject across the board, it looks like if I go, you go. Now, I figure if we get an A on this project, I can pull a B for the course, and if my other grades don’t go toilet on me, and everyone else has a weak semester, Jardine just might squeak by in the number six spot. And like I said, you’ll be up there ahead of me. So you see, we’re in this together.”

Gramp shook his head. “I can’t believe that my grandson is in the same class with the guy who always runs out of gas in front of the deli!” He stood up. “Well, I’ve got to go fill out my monthly mail order to Scrulnick’s. Nice meeting you, Jardine.”

“Good-night, Gramp,” said Sean.

“Yeah, nice meeting you, Gramp,” Raymond added.

Sean looked daggers at Raymond. What was so big about running out of gas in front of a deli? How did that make Raymond an honorary grandson? He breathed deeply. “Now, listen. I’m not sure I go for this ‘you and me in this together’ thing. You gave me a pretty hard time in class today.”

Raymond was mystified. “How?”

“You were talking like I’d jammed a knife in your back by signing up for the Greece trip — like I did something terrible.”

“It was terrible; terrible for Jardine. Don’t take it personally. You get this way when you have no luck.”

Sean was unforgiving. “I still think you came on pretty strong.”

Raymond looked at the ceiling. “That’s right. Give Jardine a personality conflict with his partner. Thank you.”

Sean relented. “We don’t have a personality conflict,” he mumbled. “We’ll work on the project. I want to go to Theamelpos just as much as you do.”

“Until you’ve spent a couple of days in a fish gutting plant, you can’t know how much Jardine wants to go to Theamelpos. Now, here’s my plan. Since neither of us knows beans about English, we have to do something unusual. If we pick some big-time poet, Kerr will be able to compare our paper with other ones on the same guy and, let’s face it, ours is going to be lousier. So we have to dig up some Joe Blow poet nobody’s ever heard of. We do a halfway decent job, and Kerr gives us an A for effort and originality. Simple.”

Sean sat forward on the couch. “Why don’t we pick a nice, safe, respected poet, do our best, and take whatever Kerr gives us instead of figuring the angles?”

Raymond shook his head. “If we’re going to get to Theamelpos, we’re going to have to scratch and claw. Trust me. You don’t get any breaks when you’re partners with Jardine.”

“Don’t you think you’re overdoing it a little with this luck thing?” Sean asked in annoyance. “Did you ever consider that your luck is no better or worse than anyone else’s and the real problem is your attitude?”

Raymond was patient. “Have you ever seen the commercial for garbage bags where they test the strength of the bag by seeing how many pounds of pressure they can put on it before it breaks?”

“Yeah? So?”

“So that’s Jardine — a garbage bag hooked up to a hydraulic press, doing his best not to fall apart in spite of the guy who keeps turning the knob up.”

While Sean was attempting to digest this, the door of the TV room opened, and Nikki peered in. “Sean, I’m having some ice cream —” She stopped short when she caught sight of Raymond. “Oh, hi. Want some ice cream?”

“No,” said Sean.

“Sure,” said Raymond.

They adjourned to the kitchen. Sean was still trying to figure out Raymond’s garbage bag philosophy while Nikki played social director. Nothing more was said on the subject of school or Theamelpos until Raymond announced that he’d better get going.

“We’ll pick our topic in class tomorrow,” he said, slipping into his leather jacket, which read JARDINE in nail studs across the back. “Remember, think Mr. Nobody. And think of that picture of the beach on Theamelpos, with the entire female population of Sweden frolicking in the sun.”

Sean asked the question that had been on his mind ever since their first meeting in English class. “What’s so big about Theamelpos, huh? I mean, sure, it’s a beautiful beach with great weather and tons of girls. But you don’t have to go all the way to Greece for that. What’s wrong with Cape Cod or the Carolinas or something?”

Raymond’s eyes assumed a far-off, dreamy look, and for a moment Sean was afraid he would start chanting again. “Ah, Theamelpos,” he breathed. “The warm breeze, sand beneath my feet — why, certainly, Jolanda, I’d be delighted to have this dance —”

“Raymond, what are you doing?”

“Shhh. Jardine is in a blissful state.” Suddenly, he was back to normal. “There’s luck on Theamelpos, Delancey. Magical luck. And I can’t think of anyone who could use a little magical luck more than Jardine.”

“Oh, come on, Raymond!” Sean exploded. “Give me a break …”

Raymond was already out the door, heading down the front walk. “Seriously, Delancey,” he called over his shoulder. “I’ve done a lot of research on this.” He disappeared around the corner.

No sooner had the door shut than Nikki opened up with both barrels. “I could just kill you!”

“Why?”

“In the hall today you told me you didn’t know him!”

“It was wishful thinking,” Sean said defensively. “So what?”

“So what? He’s just the coolest guy in the whole school, that’s all! I’ll never forget the first time I saw him way back at the beginning of September. He kicked his locker so hard that the whole hall echoed, and then he looked up at the ceiling and said, ‘That’s right. Give Jardine a locker that won’t open.’ I almost died!”

Sean grew solemn. “Nik, stay away from that guy. He’s crazy.”

“He has so much — you know — charisma. When I tell Marilyn and Carita that I met him, they’ll die!”

“Nik, this is serious stuff here! We’re talking about a guy who thinks he’s a garbage bag!”

“He’s wonderful!” said Nikki without reservation.

“Watch your mouth.” The day had been ruined by Raymond; why not the evening, too? As for the night — the mere prospect of an entire semester of Jardine would take care of the night. Magical luck! Hmmph!

Idly, he picked up a copy of Techno-Living magazine, which was open to the Techno-People section.

Larry Steinberg was an unemployed dockworker from Brooklyn until he traveled to Greece. There he met future Swedish supermodel Inge Dergmyr while both were vacationing on the island of Theamelpos. The two were married there and returned to Stockholm to find Dergmyr’s father had sold his modest farm for a small fortune to a real estate developer. Steinberg and his new father-in-law invested the nest egg in a bankrupt brassiere factory from which they built up the biggest microchip business in Scandinavia. It was around this time that wife Inge’s modeling career began to take off. Comments Steinberg, “Life is totally fantastic …”

Sean threw the magazine onto the floor as though he’d just discovered it was cursed. Was there no safe haven from Raymond Jardine?