“Ricky Roberts wants a paper swan–coded message like everyone else in the—”

“How does Ricky Roberts receive information?” I ask him.

“On a need-to-know basis. Yes.”

“You only have five minutes to get to homeroom,” I say, and then Ricky is off.

Back inside of his lair, I hand Franks the Marketing Club ad and say, “Read that over the loudspeaker—if you dare.”

“Cool,” Franks says with a smile.

“Hug?”

“Homeroom,” Franks says, raising his chubby hand.

I slap his red palm, and then I’m on my way to homeroom.

“Rub-a-dub-dub, it’s Marketing Club! What’s the rub, bub? Nada. MC for real, with plenty of zeal—and that’s the appeal! Do you have what it takes—to slake—the growing desire for marketing and advertising fo’ hire? We meet in the basement every day, hey, so what do you say? Drop on down, give Franks a pound. Become a Marketing Club man or woman today. Peace out, homies! And keep hope alive!”

Sitting in homeroom, I smile to myself. Franks read my announcement verbatim, just like he promised. He’s an honorable man, a man of his word, which is rare in this world, or at least that’s what I’ve observed after seventeen trips around the flaming ball in the sky. (That’s the sun, sucka!) Everyone around me is talking and totally not paying any attention to the announcements; not even my homeroom teacher, Mrs. Lindsay, listens or gives a crap, but I know that there are at least four teenage boys sitting in homerooms hysterically laughing at my advertisement and Franks’ awesome delivery—and I know that it might be the only laugh they get today. Franks Freak Force Federation will get a little fuel from this, and maybe that will be enough for them to make it through the school day. “Keep hope alive.” I’m pretty sure Jesse Jackson said that when he was running for president back in the 80s. Yeah, we learned that hip catchphrase in my U.S. History II class a few months ago.

The day passes uneventfully—boring Spanish III, lame-ass gym, boring pre-calc, boring chemistry—and since Mondays and Tuesdays are Ricky’s socialization days, we don’t eat our lunch in Franks’ room, but in the cafeteria, because the special education department thinks that Ricky should interact with the student body more. Great idea, special education people who have no idea how evil the student body can be to special people like Ricky Roberts.

When I’m in the lunch line, watching over Ricky, protecting my boy, Lex Pinkston elbows me in the back and coughs out a disgusting single syllable word for a woman, which I’m not even going to repeat. He pretends to cover his mouth and cough, because he is a moron, but it is clear that he is calling me this worst of all words, so I say, “Like you’d even know what one was.”

“I’ve seen your mom’s,” Lex says, five moronic football players standing behind him. “Everyone in this town has.”

I slap his face hard enough to turn his head—SLAP!—and it makes me smile, even though I’m a Catholic and JC is not down with violence.

And then Lex’s hand is on his face. He cannot believe that I frickin’ slapped him.

The football morons are shocked as hooey—their pieholes wide open, like their eyes.

Ricky is screaming, “Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!”

The lunchroom monitors show up, get between us, and the next thing I know I’m in Prince Tony’s office, waiting for him to finish some stupid phone conversation. When he finishes, he looks at me from across his battleship-size desk and says, “What now?”

“Your quarterback called me a disgusting single-syllable word for a woman—which I’m not even going to repeat—and then implied that he had sex with my mother, so I slapped his kisser,” I say, and then add, “Prince Tony.”

“It’s Principal Fiorilli to you, young lady.”

“Come on, Prince, we’re behind closed doors. Just us here,” I say to the tiny man, because he is weak and can be swayed if you flirt with him the right way—not in a sexy way, but in a father-daughter sorta way.

He turns red, and I know I have him.

“I heard you kicked him in the shin yesterday. His father called to complain and—”

“Lex Pinkston is an evil boy who—”

“I know exactly who Lex Pinkston is and his father—”

“I prayed for you last night, Prince Tony.”

“You did?” He doesn’t know how to react to this one. Church and state and all. This is a public school. “Why did you pray for me?”

“I pray for you every night. True.”

“Thank you,” he says, blushing again.

“When are you going to start protecting the good people of Childress Public High School?”

“What would you have me do?”

“Expel Lex Pinkston.”

“For what?”

“For being evil.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“So you are admitting Lex Pinkston is evil?”

“I said it’s not that easy.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“First, Mr. Pinkston is a school board member and we have to be delicate when—why am I explaining myself to a seventeen-year-old girl?”

“I’m going to say one thing to you, Prince Tony, and then I’m going to walk out that door.”

I stare into his eyes, and I see him swallow once. He digs me, and he knows that Lex Pinkston needs to be kicked in the shin and slapped every so often, if only to maintain the balance of power within the student body so that evil doesn’t get out of control; the boss man sees this because deep down, Prince Tony is a good man—even if he is a wimp who plays both sides of the political fence—and like Billy Budd, Prince Tony needs a Captain Vere to protect him from the evil people in the world. I fancy myself a more adroit and less dreamy, less starry Captain Vere. Captainess Appleton, at your service. Word, all you lime-suckers.

“You’re a good man, Prince Tony,” I say, “and I believe that you will eventually clean up this school and protect the common students from the selfish interests of school board members like Mr. Pinkston. My money’s on you, Prince Tony. My money is on you.”

I get up and start walking out of his office.

“You simply cannot assault students in my building, Ms. Appleton. I will not endure your vigilante approach to—”

“Search your heart, Prince Tony. You know what’s the right thing to do. I believe in you. And I’m praying for you. Every night.”

I walk out of his office, and his ancient wrinkly secretary Mrs. Baxter—who wears the reddest lipstick I have ever seen on any woman, and looks like a patriot with blue hair and white skin—asks me, “How’d it go in there?”

Mrs. Baxter is pretty nice, and I think it’s safe to say she’s an Amber Appleton fan.

“I’m praying for your boss,” I tell her. “He has the ability to turn this school around.”

“If he only had the chutzpah,” she whispers, with her hand shielding her ancient lips so that only I can see.

“Viva la revolution, Mrs. Baxter,” I say as she writes me a pass, and then I jog up two flights of stairs so I can check out Doolin’s Accelerated American Lit class, where I learn all about civil disobedience and that cool cat Henry David Thoreau, whom I admire a whole bunch, because he represented hard-core and even went to jail for his beliefs, which is saying something. True? True.

CHAPTER 5

Practical Life Skills class, where I work on my prom dress.

Semi-boring history, and then I’m at Ricky’s locker.

“Amber Appleton slapped Lex Pinkston in THE FACE. Bad girl! Bad girl! Bad girl!”

“If you don’t stop saying bad girl, I’m going to tickle you.”

“No! Ricky Roberts does NOT like to be tickled. No tickle-tickle.”

This is as close as Ricky gets to making a joke, because tickling is his favorite. I get him good under his armpits, and he doubles over and yells “Hi! Hi! Hi!” until some bearded teacher I don’t know comes out of his classroom and asks if everything is okay.

“Beautiful,” I say to the beard.

“Amber Appleton is my best friend. She makes omelets with tequila and takes me on missions and I am taking her to prom in a limousine! Yes,” Ricky says.

The beard nods once, real serious—as if Ricky told the beard that he needed to donate a kidney to the president because it was the beard’s civic duty or something—and then the beard walks back into his classroom.

Truth be told, there are a lot of teachers who are scared of Ricky, because he flips out sometimes and punches himself in the head, which can get a little intense.

As we walk to Donna’s house together, Ricky counts aloud, and I enjoy the afternoon winter sun on my face.

Bobby Big Boy always pisses himself whenever we are reunited, so I pull a few paper towels from the roll, and then let him out of his room. In the tiled hallway, he circles me seven times, like he has been snorting cocaine all day, and then he pees on the floor, so I wipe up the yellow puddle and give Thrice B a kiss. He tries to slip me the tongue, but he doesn’t make it into my mouth or anything.

I give Ricky a sleeve of Fig Newtons and a blue Gatorade.

He’s already doing his math homework, because he frickin’ loves math.

“I have to go see The KDFCs,” I tell him, but he doesn’t look up from his math. “I’ll be back to cook dinner. Okay?”

“Ricky Roberts is doing math. Do not talk to Ricky Roberts when Ricky Roberts is doing math!”

“Cool,” I say, and then lock the door behind BBB and me. Ricky will do math problems forever if you let him, so no worries leaving him alone.

I take Donna’s ten-speed bike from the garage and put B3 in the little basket Donna bought for him that is attached to the handlebars. He fits perfect so that just his head sticks out. It’s pretty frickin’ adorable.

We are flying through the cold January air, out of town, across the tracks, and into the ghetto. There are a lot of down-and-out people in this town, and they usually stare at me when I ride my bike through.

The first time this happened, it scared me a lot, because it sorta looked like these people wanted to kill me, but I have since learned a trick.

Whenever someone looks at me like they want to stomp my face in, I now look the person in the eyes, smile really huge, wave, and say, “Hope you’re havin’ a great day!” It’s pretty wild, because doing this really works. If you don’t believe me, try it yourself. Even the meanest-looking people will get this really stunned look on their faces, but then the smile blooms, and they usually wave back and say something nice like “God bless you!” or “Same to you!” It’s a pretty cool trick, and maybe even a pretty killer way of life, if you are a crazy spiritual ho like me. True? True.

Today I yell, “Hope you’re havin’ a great day!” eight times, and I get two “Thanks!” one “Jesus loves you!” two “You go girl!”s two “Same to you!”s and one “You a sexy bike girl! Ride on, girl, ride on,” which made me laugh, because the man who yelled this had to be at least ninety-seven.