Sometimes I get really mad at myself. Like, so mad I just wish I was outside of my body so I could kick myself. I tried slapping my face one time, but it didn't work because my brain knew it was me and I could never actually hurt my own self. But that day when I got home from Sloppy Soldiers, I was totally angry that I had been such a jerk to Adam. I mean, it wasn't his fault those papers had been about me. And who even knew if they were about me? There was no proof. Maybe everything had been some freaky coincidence. Anyway, all that I really knew was that I had been stupid. Adam was my only friend, and he was just trying to figure things out. How could I blame him for that? We went way back, to preschool, when Adam's dad had disappeared on him and his mom. There were things Adam would never tell me about that time and I swore never to bother him about it. He'd been through a lot more than me, so I couldn't stay angry at him.

Corey cringed when I walked in through the front door and passed him in the hall. Scuzz was, for some reason, in the house, and I practically tripped over the stupid cat going up the stairs. Corey screamed like a maniac, afraid that I'd step on his precious furrball. That made me actually want to do it, just to make him mad, but Scuzz was too fast for me and slithered down the stairs and under the sofa like a multi-colored snake.

"He'll get you if you're mean to him!" cried Corey.

"Well I'll just shoot lightning bolts out of my eyes and skewer him to the ceiling if he does," I muttered loud enough for my brother to hear. I'm sure he was too shocked to answer, and actually, I was a little surprised at myself, too. I mean, was I going to start playing along with all that getting-struck-by-lightning junk? Because I didn't believe a word of it. My own parents would've known if something like that had happened, I figured. They had to be right about it.

Then some funny thing rang in my head. It was what Adam had said about my eyes. I'd sort of forgotten he'd said it at all, but it had kind of creeped me out when we were in the woods. I mean, if he'd said my eyes looked like comets with his normal face, I wouldn't have thought anything of it. But seriously, he'd said everything so honestly, with such a straight expression, that it had made me think he was telling the truth. It could've been that the sunlight caught my eyes at a weird angle. That was definitely possible. And Adam had just seen it kind of sideways and thought the whiteness was coming from the inside. I'd been really angry, too, so who knew what sort of things were showing on my face? It hurt my head to think about it too much, so I tried to shake everything loose as I trooped into my room and started to change out of my sweaty clothes.

Everything would make sense, eventually. Next time I talked to Adam, I'd suggest going to look through the rest of the papers in the trunk. That way, we could see what was really going on.

A phone call came the following morning for my mother, but I could tell it dealt with me by the way she looked angrily in my direction the whole time she talked. The Goldenrock School District was quick when it came to doling out torture—they'd seen enough of my grades to believe I was going to need an extra helping of school. Summer school, to be exact. In math and gym, to be precise. Or I wouldn't pass the seventh grade, to be painfully particular. I couldn't believe it when I heard it. Well, all right, I could. I knew I wasn't a genius in school. In fact, I'd been surprised for the past two years that I'd never been stuck in summer school. I'd gotten lucky. The Gods of Education had been merciful, but now, for some insane reason, they had decided to take action.

I wanted to take action, too. Don't tell anyone, but I seriously wanted to break down and cry. Sometimes I cried in my sleep, and sometimes I cried if I hurt myself, but that was it. I hadn't cried over school in a long time. Right then, though, after hearing my mom agree over the phone, I just about burst into tears. Only the burn-outs went to summer school! Only kids who were too busy being punks to have time for school! Them and the nerds who just went for extra credits to get ahead. Oh! I remembered with sudden relief. Adam, too.

Faster than my mom could start giving me some sort of talk, I grabbed the phone from her hand and dialed Adam. He hadn't gotten a phone call yet, but he was pretty certain he was going to end up in summer school again. From what he said, it wasn't so bad. Of course, this was coming from a guy who wore twenty-degree clothes in ninety-degree weather. Still, I knew if he was there with me, I had a shot at surviving the summer. Things looked bad, but I had no idea of how weird they were really going to get.

Even though my mom wanted to ground me again for grades, I convinced her to let me have at least the next few weeks of freedom before summer school started. "Being in school during summer is punishment enough, isn't it?" I pleaded with her. She wasn't a bad mom. She totally agreed. She knew how sticky and sweaty Goldenrock schools were in the summer, because she'd gone to them herself when she was a kid.

So with what felt like an anchor sitting in my chest, I hurried out of the house and biked over to Adam's. When I got there, he was sitting on his front porch in the shade, trying to look cool. For a minute, I studied his T-shirt. I hadn't seen it before. It was black, with this big white skull on the front. Instead of crossbones behind the skull (like they have on pirates' flags) there were skateboards. Adam didn't even go skateboarding. He hated things with wheels, unless they were the cars he dreamed about getting when he turned sixteen.

I didn't comment on the shirt. Instead, I said, "I want to go back to that tree house. I think I need to look at the rest of the stuff in the trunk."

"Yeah, so go," was all he said.

I sighed and leaned up against the porch post. "I said I was sorry about yesterday on the phone."

"I know. There's no problem there."

My skin pricked as my sweat began to evaporate in the shade. "So what is it, then?"

Adam half-shrugged, like he didn't care whether anything was wrong or not. "I don't know."

But he did know, and if I waited, I'd know too. So I didn't say a word.

After a minute or two, he went on, just like I thought he would. "Some guy sent flowers to my mom," he said, actually standing up and stuffing his hands into his pockets. "Delivery guy just dropped them off. I took them inside."

"Oh," I mumbled. His mom was at work, so she wouldn't have known. "Let me see them."

"You can't."

"Why not?"

He shrugged again. Then, all smug, he looked at me straight and said, "I put them down the garbage disposal. Every one of them."

For a minute, I wasn't exactly sure how to react. I mean, they were flowers. What did I care if he destroyed them? It wasn't my business what he did with deliveries. On the other hand, I knew his mom. She wasn't like my mom. Mrs. Nyler got hurt real easy, and who could blame her? Her husband had left her and her son all alone in the world. It would probably do her a ton of good to get some flowers from somebody. "Why'd you do that?" I found myself saying, like it was my business or something. "Who were they from?"

"Some guy."

"What guy?"

"I don't know. I didn't read the whole thing. Just some guy." He turned at me with his dark eyes and I could tell that he was more shaken up than angry. "Who cares. She doesn't need anybody."

"Geez, Adam. They could've just been from a friend, or maybe somebody she works with."

"That's probably exactly right. She doesn't need to be getting stuff from guys at work."

I was about to say, "What, are you her dad?" but then I remembered that Adam got hurt real easy, too. He was a lot like his mom, so just seeing those flowers come had made him ache just like it would make her ache to know he'd destroyed them. Either way, someone got hurt by it. So instead, I said nothing. And it didn't matter, anyway. Those things were gone. Mrs. Nyler would never know the difference. Honestly, I figured that saying anything else would be more stupid than saying nothing at all, so I said nothing. I was like that. The kind of kid who'd rather keep my mouth shut than let somebody get mad at me for dumb words.

Adam was really upset. I mean, he didn't say anything else about the flowers either. He just went inside, letting the screen door snap shut behind him, and came back out half a minute later with his knit hat in his hands. His eyes glistened and his nostrils were flaring. If he'd been a liquid I bet he would've been near the boiling point. Then he pulled the hat on his head and walked around the side of his house. I knew he expected me to follow, so I did.

He kept about ten feet in front of me for the whole walk through the field. The sun pressed against my body like an electric blanket. I felt like the heat was going to smother me. If it was this hot in June, it was going to be disgusting come August. The bugs were all over the place. A big fat grasshopper jumped up and actually smacked into my cheek. It startled me and I almost freaked out, but I realized it was just a bug and kept going. We made it into the trees, then moved on, not talking and hardly thinking because of how hot it was. Deeper and deeper we went. I wondered what Adam was wondering. He was so quiet. I couldn't guess what kind of things were moving around in his head.

Then the tree was there and Adam was climbing the rope, which he'd left hanging the last time he'd been. I realized that if the tree house belonged to someone, they probably would've come by and noticed that a rope had been hung from it. The thing hadn't been ripped down yet; I took that as a good sign.

We were up there real fast. It took about thirty seconds for me to pull myself up that rope. I was surprised at my own strength. Adam was in the room already. Now, this was the first time I'd seen the inside of the place in daylight. The windows were boarded up, so it was still pretty dim, but I could totally see. There was the bookshelf with odd bits of junk on it. There was an old lantern and a cup filled with pens and pencils. Several packets of looseleaf paper were stacked up on the lower shelf, next to a row of candles and a few matchboxes. There was a rug on the floor, like I'd guessed the first night, and it was really worn and raggedy-looking. Also, there was a little desk made out of some planks of upturned wood and a kitchen stool with its legs cut short. The whole room was like a writing center. I could tell that whoever had used it was only there for one purpose: to write. That was weird enough, but then having a little closet just for the trunk full of papers was even more peculiar.

"See? Look at all this stupid junk," Adam was saying. He'd gone into the smaller room and reopened the trunk. I couldn't see him over the heavy lid.

Moving around to the front of the box, I peered inside. Adam hadn't been lying: The thing was full to the brim with papers and papers and more papers. If they were bound into books, at least twenty novels might have been formed. Of course, they were all hand-written. Whoever had done all of the writing hadn't heard of computers or word processors or even an ancient invention called the typewriter.

"The person who wrote this must have some serious arthritis, that's for sure," was what I first muttered.

Adam sighed and fell back against the wall, pulling his knees up to his chest and wrapping his thin arms around them. "Yeah, well who cares? I was hoping there'd be money inside."

I shrugged, chewed my lip, reached into the trunk. He'd seemed pretty interested the day he'd first found them. "Did you look all the way to the bottom?"

"No."

"Maybe there's something down there."

"I doubt it," Adam half-whispered, closing his eyes like he was tired all of a sudden.

The titles on some of the papers caught my attention. "Hey! Listen to these names; they actually sound cool. This one says, 'Attack of the Bullied Bull.' And here's another one . . . 'The Boy with Worms for Hair.' What the . . .? There's some weird stuff in here, Adam. 'The story of the Painting Prodigy.' What the heck is a prodigy? Here's another. It's called, 'Nameless Wanderer.' Interesting, huh? I wonder what they're all about."

"Why don't you read them, then?"

"Maybe I will."

"Fine. When you're done, let me know what they say. I don't have time to go through them all."

Adam was being real crabby, and I knew why. Still, I was kind of annoyed that he was taking out his mood on me just because there was no one else around. I pulled out the first big pile of papers. "I'm going to take them home. Do you want some to read?"

He shook his closed-eye head. "No. I hate reading."

"I know. Hey, is that what you'll be in summer school for?"

Adam didn't answer at first. Then he sighed and said, "That and gym."

"Me too for gym. How come you failed gym?"

"I never changed out. Hated the gym stuff. No way I was going to wear it. Probably won't this summer, either. I don't care what they say; I won't do it."

Whatever, I thought. That was the main thing that drove me crazy about Adam. He could have passed everything; he just didn't care enough to do it. I, on the other hand, was actually stupid. Well, not stupid, just not smart enough to get through every class I needed. For once, though, I was glad that Adam had his have-to-be-cool attitude. It meant I wouldn't have to endure summer school alone.