I want to bang my head against a locker. Why did I bring up the dance? I can’t believe Dad suggested it. Worst of all, I can’t believe I’m actually disappointed. Doing something tonight is a bad idea. I’m tired of dwelling in the Friend Zone. I’m tired of pretending I don’t want more with Logan. I gotta figure out a way to cancel. Inn emergency? But then Logan might show up to help. Fake fever? Maybe…

Logan regains my attention with her mumbling. “…why…absurd…Mr. Bartley…fake…challenge…test, assignment, debate.” None of it makes much sense to me.

She comes to an abrupt halt. The happiness radiating off her is nuclear. Her backpack slips from her shoulder and thunks onto the floor. “I got it!” At first I think she means our plans for tonight, but then she says, “I have a theory about why Mr. Bartley gave us the assignment.” She gives me a playful shove. “There isn’t one. There can’t be an assignment because there is no legitimate debate. He’s waiting for someone to prove it. It’s a test on making moral decisions and how they impact humanity.”

“A test.”

Some of her conviction slips when she registers my skepticism. She unzips her backpack and pulls out the assignment. “You know those elaborate riddles that go on and on, twisting you up with too many details that you don’t see the simple solution?”

I nod. Logan loves riddles, like the one about the plane crashing halfway into Canada and halfway into the United States with 283 passengers on board. The twisty tale ends with If there were 283 passengers and 5 crew and they all died, how many survivors died in Canada?

The answer is zero. Survivors live.

Logan waves the paper. “That’s what I believe Mr. Bartley did with the assignment. I bet he wanted to make it look legitimate, creating detailed instructions to get us to think. I bet he’s waiting for someone to say it’s morally wrong.

“Let’s look at the facts.” She ticks them off on her fingers. “One. We’ve never had an assignment even remotely like this, so that sets it apart. Two. He’s a brilliant teacher, and he’s fair. Three. Giving a fake assignment is totally something he’d do. His lessons are sometimes unconventional. Four. It’s top-secret so that he can teach this lesson again next year.”

Logan’s theory sounds thought-out, but improbable, at least to me. If she’s right, Mr. Bartley sure went through a lot of trouble to teach a moral lesson. Sterilizing an entire people is evil. Ghettos are evil. Genocide is evil. How hard is that to figure out? But I get it. I get Logan. She needs an answer.