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flame. Gee. Edwart was really taking over my brain. I couldn’t concentrate on anything, not even taking the Riemann sum of the approximate distances traveled in each integral of the problem I was working on. Boy, was I all out of sorts.
    That night I had my first dream about Edwart Mullen. Carnival music was playing, and I was sitting in a colorful tent, surrounded by animals. We were all eating popcorn together and joking around. Suddenly, the tent went dark, and Edwart entered the stage, alone. He was wearing stilts and saying, “Whoa! Whoa!” as he walked in a wobbly way.
    I woke up in a cold sweat, terrified.

3. HAND PRICK
    THE MONTH FOLLOWING THE SNOWBALL ACCIDENT was tough. People kept looking at me, especially when teachers read my name on the attendance list and I said “Here.” Somehow my new nickname for Edwart, “Hero,” didn’t catch on. So, I decided to break my unwritten, unspoken, and unthought understanding with Edwart, and start telling our story.
    First, I told Tom and Lucy that Edwart saved me from a snowball. They weren’t impressed. So I started saying Edwart saved me from a rock with snow around it, and, later, I started saying he saved me from an avalanche. One day, I said that Edwart ran with superhuman speed, stopping a car that was about to hit me with his superhuman strength.
    “Wait,” said the freshman girl in the cafeteria lunch line. “Edwart Mullen? You mean the kid whose clothes are too small?”
    We looked over at Edwart, who was sitting alone, doing homework due next month.
    “Yes,” I said gravely, taking a large bite of my pudding to prevent me from saying anything else.
    “You must be new here,” the girl said, picking up her tray.
    “Mumph bleh,” I said, spitting little flecks of chocolate pudding after her. She didn’t answer. I knew no one would understand me in Switchblade.
    Still, Edwart was cold towards me. I knew that he wished it had never happened—that he had never saved me—that I had never started wearing a shirt that said “Thank you, Edwart!” One afternoon in Biology, over a month after the accident, I couldn’t take it much longer. Edwart looked so cute with his red curly hair and freckles, like the “before” picture in an ad for freckle concealer for men. Yet he was so complacent, as if he didn’t need me and my alluring ear-shape to pass on to his offspring. I had to do something.
    I poked the boy in front of me. He turned around, looking surprised.
    “Hey, it’s Peter, right?” I asked. “Yeah,” he answered, seduced.
    “Want to go to prom with me?” I asked, plenty loud so Edwart could hear.
    “Um … sure,” he said. “Would it be okay if we hung out a couple of times before then? I don’t really know you.”
    Did Edwart notice? Was he jealous? I slyly looked athis mood ring to find out. Still purplish-brown! Clearly, I was going to have to do more—
one
date to prom wasn’t enough. I turned to the boy sitting behind me, to the right.
    “Zack,” I said.
    “What is it?” he asked, looking up at the board to take notes.
    “Will you go to prom with me?”
    “But … didn’t you just ask Peter?”
    “Yeah,” I said. “I want to go with you, too.”
    He hesitated. “Well, I don’t have a date yet, so, okay, I guess.”
    “Hey, Adam,” I called across the room.
    “Belle, please. I’m trying to teach,” said Mr. Franklin. But when I called out to Adam he must have understood that this was an important interruption—an interruption for love—because he just sighed and continued diagramming the cell.
    “I already have a date, Belle,” Adam whispered loudly.
    “Tom!” I shouted.
    “Belle!” Mr. Franklin yelled.
    I settled down in my chair, satisfied. Edwart was looking now.
    The rain was so bad by the time school got out I had to float my U-HAUL back home. I stood on the top of the truck and guided it with a long pole, pretending I was in New Orleans, about to save Edwart from the flood.
    “So Belle …” my