With my next phase of planning in the works, I spend a couple of days pondering exactly how to make being a card-trick expert look cool. Unfortunately, my partner in crime does not seem to realize that when you enter into a pact with someone, you are expected to be at their beck and call at all times for brainstorm sessions, which is how I end up banging on Salem’s door on Tuesday evening.

I’d let myself in, but I have already twice learned my lesson in Rumson about barging into a room of boys without first alerting them. Then again, Salem’s already plenty alert to my presence, which I know because, well, the sound of a shoe hitting the door is pretty distinct.

“I’m studying, Skeeveball!” His voice is just loud enough over his omnipresent blasting music to penetrate through the door that he still has yet to open. “You know, like you reminded me to do fifteen times today? I’m being good. You should be proud.”

“I’d be prouder if you opened your damn door like a gentleman.” Finally, I decide it’s time to drop my ticket in. “Plus, I come bearing baked goods.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then finally, “You may enter.”

Inside, the music is twice as loud but every bit as incomprehensible as it was on the other side of the door. “What is this,” I ask, gesturing to where his phone is hooked up to a speaker, “and how the hell are you studying with it on?”

“It’s Rage Against the Machine, and it is extremely on topic for studying revolutions, thank you very much.” Still, he turns it down a little. “Anyway, I was promised baked goods?”

“Actually, all I said was that I had baked goods,” I correct, just to be annoying. Still, I hand over a couple of chocolate chip cookies I made in my first meeting of Baking Club the day before, keeping one for myself. “Now, I am very proud of you for studying, but we also need to work on these music choices. There is no way this does not make your parents cringe themselves into the ground, and there’s also no way any girl in her right mind would wanna come back here and make out to this.”

He takes a bite of his cookie and silently says “I have made out to this song a million times” with his arched eyebrow.