Constanza Grayfoot folded back her notebook to a blank page and placed it primly on her knees. The other girls at the library table waited in silence as she wrote the numbers one to ten in a column down the left side.

“I’ve got one,” Jen said. “Back two winters ago, when they found Sheriff Michaels’s car out in the badlands.” She turned to Jessica with eyebrows raised. “But no Sheriff Michaels.”

“Number one: Disappearance of Sheriff Michaels,” Constanza pronounced carefully as she wrote.

“I heard he was killed by drug dealers,” Liz said. “They’ve got a secret airstrip in the badlands for when they fly stuff in from Mexico. He must have found out where it was.”

“Or they were paying him off and they double-crossed him,” Constanza said.

“No way,” Jen said. “They found his uniform, badge, and gun, I heard.”

“So what?”

“And also his teeth and hair. And his fingernails. Whatever’s in the badlands is a lot worse than drug dealers.”

“That’s what the drug dealers want you to think.”

“Oh, like you know.”

Liz and Jen looked at Jessica, as if she was supposed to resolve the issue.

“Well,” Jessica offered, “the badlands sound…bad.”

“Totally.”

“Girls,” a voice called from the front desk of the library. “This is supposed to be a study period, not a chatting period.”

“I’m just working on my article for the paper, Ms. Thomas,” Constanza explained. “I’m editor this year.”

“Does everyone in the library have to work on it with you?”

“Yes, they do. I’m writing about the ten things that make Bixby…special. Mr. Honorio said I need a wide variety of input. That’s how I’m supposed to write it, so I’m working, not chatting.”

Ms. Thomas raised one eyebrow. “Maybe the others have work of their own to do?”

“It’s the first week of school, Ms. Thomas,” Jen pointed out. “Nobody has any serious studying to do yet.”

The librarian scanned her eyes across the five of them, then turned back to her computer screen. “Okay. Just don’t get into any bad habits,” she relented. “And try to keep it to a dull roar.”

Jessica’s eyes fell to her trig book. She actually did have some serious studying to do. Mr. Sanchez’s class had moved through the first chapter with lightning speed, as if they’d started the book last year. Jessica was pretty sure she understood what Mr. Sanchez had covered in chapter two, but a few concepts kept popping up that were just incomprehensible. Mr. Sanchez seemed convinced that Jessica had been in advanced classes back in Chicago and that she only stayed quiet because she was way ahead of the rest of them. Not exactly.