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fork and knife tapping the plate as he finishes his French toast in solitude.
    “Well, I’ve got video,” Ramie says. “Want to come over and practice?”
    “First things first,” I say. “What have you learned about our prime target?”
    “He’s not a drug dealer,” she says.
    “Excellent.”
    “Thought you’d like that,” she says. “Additionally, he was never a prostitute on Hollywood Boulevard.”
    “What?” I almost fall off the sofa. “I never heard that one.”
    “Yeah,” she says. “The guy comes with a complete set of false rumors. I’m skimming this data from a sea of gossip and innuendo.”
    “But you’re sure they’re false?”
    “Absolutely,” she says. “I got most of my reliable intel from some kids in his art class who say they don’t talk to him much anymore.”
    “Why not?” I say.
    “Unknown,” she says. “They got all shruggy and evasive when I asked. I have to say, Jill, the guy does have a quasi-mysterious loner-type vibe.”
    “Is that bad?”
    “Could go either way.”
    “You mean, maybe he’s so superior to his fellow students,” I say, “that he has no need of their deeply inferior companionship?”
    “Or,” she says, “he’s on the verge of shooting up the school. Yeah, that’s what I mean.”
    I hear myself swallow. But I deeply do not think Tommy Knutson is
that
type of loner. His eyes are too kind.
    “Oh,” Ramie says, “and apparently, he had some sort of devastating relationship in New York with an older girl named Tinsley.”
    “Tinsley?”
    “It’s a rich girl’s name,” she says, “which is good news, given what we’re about to turn you into.”
    “Good point.”
    I hear Dad screech his chair and take his plate to the dishwasher.
    “So, you want to come over and practice?” Ramie says.
    “There in fifteen.” I hang up and return the phone to its cradle in the kitchen.
    “Gotta run,” I tell Dad.
    I do not look at him when I say it. By now, I’m pretty much committed to never looking at him again.

    Now, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Project X (a.k.a. the Tommy Knutson Project) is the second-greatest achievement of the McTeague household (with Plan B holding steady in the number one spot). Ramie and I fine-tuned Project X before Jack’s phase while holed up in my bedroom for a nacho-fueled all-nighter. Mom thought we were cramming for a Spanish test. At least she pretended to think that. She approves of neither Ramie’s existence nor my obsession with Tommy Knutson but has, for some reason, chosen to back off. Most likely, she has me under twenty-four-hour surveillance and is pretending to butt out because Project X centers around her
Guide
book. You see, we have turned Mom’s book into an action plan. How? By transforming me into a being like no other. According to
The Guide,
this is supposed to trigger the hunter instinct in men, thus compelling them to propose marriage or, in my case, a date to the prom. And since “being like no other” is a euphemism for “aloof, unattainable snob,” Ramie and I have decided to use as our role model Alexis Oswell, a.k.a. Lexie, the Rich Bitch.
    Lexie is, by a wide margin, the aloofest and unattainablest girl at Winterhead High. All her friends go to private school, but her gazillionaire parents make her go to public school because they have political opinions on the subject. Lexie has never voluntarily spoken to anyone at Winterhead High. Nevertheless, she’s made the guys’ Top Five Most Doable list four years running. So has Ramie. I got honorable mention once, along with twenty other girls.
    So, while I was away getting my “blood transfusions,” Ramie got sneaky with her cell phone camera and recorded Lexie strutting through the hallways of Winterhead High. I suppose I should point out that Ramie does not approve of
The Guide.
It’s “archaic” and “objectifying” and “antifeminist” and a whole host of other things she assures me I will care about