My foot hadn’t hit the sidewalk before a group of girls accosted the both of us. This being a highly suspicious event, we started searching for the bucket of pig’s blood about to be dropped on our heads. But instead there were flyers in neon colors being thrust in our faces. Three of the girls were classic drama dorks decked out in the most calculatedly uncoordinated of outfits. But the fourth wore the colors of army fatigues. It was Claire Fontaine.

“Play tryouts tomorrow.” She bit off the end of a licorice whip and downed it with a swig of cola held in the same hand. “Either of you gentlemen interested?”

Gentlemen—it sounded so musical that I wished I was wearing a tuxedo with a carnation on the lapel. I looked at the hot pink flyer that Claire was holding. No surprise that the play was Romeo and Juliet. The drama coach, Mrs. Leach, had learned her lessons when it came to Shakespeare on the Fifty-Yard Line. Tradition held that the short, half-hour play was cast and rehearsed in a single week, so to keep things simple she cycled through the same four abridgments: Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet. The last had been performed so many times that it had its own nickname: RoJu.

“Free donuts?” Tub investigated the fine print. “It says here free donuts. How can that be true in this economy?”

Claire let out a chuckle. Her cheeks were red and the fall breeze whipped her hair out from under her beret. She hitched up her immaculate pink backpack and took another chomp of licorice. It was well known that she was a junk-food fiend; it was probably what kept her from the waif physique of the most popular girls. Personally I didn’t care what kind of saturated fats and granulated sugars were to blame for that excellent figure.

She had a laugh like the pounding of random piano keys.

“See!” Tub pointed at her and gave me a victorious look. “It’s a trap!”

“I’m laughing at the word, Mr. Dershowitz,” Claire said. “They call them ‘doughrings’ where I’m from. I don’t understand the ‘nuts.’ There are no nuts involved.”

“Oh,” Tub said. “In that case, let’s reconsider this. I’ve got a dentist appointment tomorrow. They’re putting on new braces. You probably noticed I have braces. I’m hoping the new set will be a little more dashing. But maybe I can make it afterward. I’m always up for doughrings. Nuts get stuck in my braces anyway. I guess that’s not need-to-know information. I don’t know why I’m still talking, to be honest. But here I am. Talking. Still.”

Claire offered up the same funny lip twist she gave me in math class, the one that made me feel like we were sharing a secret. She began saying something about how there were never enough “blokes” at tryouts, and how the drama club needed “new blood,” as her “da” would say. I nodded along but my attention wavered. Not many things could distract me from a direct encounter with Claire Fontaine. In fact, I could only think of one.