text: But if Vikram is a rat caught in a maze, his twitching whiskers lead me to believe he has just found his cheese. I'm hoping, at the very least, we rate a good triple-crème brie.
  
  Hey, it's important to me. I am French. Well, half French. But my palate is defiantly French when it comes to cheese.
  
  And with one last twitch, Vik announces, "Okay, I've got it."
  
  Vikram's pronouncement startles Imani, who has maintained blissful unawareness of his rather haphazard arrival by being intently focused on her unsolvable, unknowable arithmetic mess— which if you say it with third syllable emphasis, as in a-rith-MAT-tic, like aromatic, it gives it a nice flair.
  
  "One word." Vikram plunks his tray down and lifts up his index finger, an apparent visual accompaniment for effect. "Robotics!"
  
  Wow. Color me underwhelmed.
  
  "No." Vikram slides onto the bench next to Imani and across from me. "I am telling you, this is a good thing. Trust me. Smitty's class."
  
  Pause to explain. Smitty is Mr. Smithers, and he teaches an AP Physics C class. Everything one needs to know can be summed up in five words: there are only five students. Vikram is one.
  
  And before we can actually get into his obviously weighty and purposeful logic regarding robotics, we must first take a moment to notice a flouncing Ari and her tossing head, in which we might espy a new dark purple dye-block in her hair. We respond, on cue, with an appropriate ooh and ahh.
  
  Entrance achieved, Ari nudges the crowded side of the bench over, so she can sit next to, or more accurately all over, Vikram. So even though I know Imani obviously has nothing to do with this, I'm suddenly feeling played in a game of three on one.
  
  "Okay. Look. I have to take on the robotics challenge. It's part of Smitty's class every year. And to do it properly requires a team. And this year it's the twentieth anniversary for our school. So it's a really big deal. And I am thinking," his voice suddenly raises half an octave, moving into plea mode, "we should all be a part of the team."
  
  I'm pretty sure my quirking eyebrow screams my un-spoken rapid-fire questions, We? What we? And why would we ever want to do that? because Vikram quickly looks away from me, presumably in search of a less hostile eyebrow, and his speech gets even more rushed than usual.
  
  "This way we all will be contributing on behalf of our school, which will make our teachers and our parents happy. And, they will need to let us get together to work on this, which will make me happy. And, it will be very helpful for college applications," Vikram moves to seal the deal, now glancing to me and then over to Imani, "and not just mine."
  
  As much as I want to just go along and agree, something about this is bothering me. As the expression expresses, it's right there on the tip of my tongue.
  
  Now if someone would just read it for me.
  
  However, Ari is too busy congratulating her boyfriend on his pleading presentation, by reading his tongue with her tongue, to be available to read mine. Wow. Tongue and then some.
  
  "Ewwww." This is way more than I need to see. "Get your tongues out of each other's mouths."
  
  "Don't be ewwwing me, Missy."
  
  While I am not wishing to be the target of Ari's attack, she thankfully must retract her tongue to turn toward me in order to tell me off. "If you hadn't needed all of us for your LARPing exhibition, I would be outside somewhere, not stuck in here, and I would be seeing my boyfriend, all of my boyfriend to be specific, and you would not be suffering seeing my tongue ..." pause for liberal use of said tongue to make lascivious motions at me. "...in action."
  
  Which in turn, causes me to blush and also rules out any ability I might have had to protest about how I don't remember twisting anyone's arm here. I really need to work on this whole blush thing.
  
  "Hey!" Apparently my reading Ari's tongue is as good as getting someone to read what was on the tip of mine. Go figure. Because now I know exactly what was flitting about just out of reach.
  
  "You said," my eyeballs turning to stare at Vikram, my finger pointing like a sideways loser sign, "you said part, part of a team." My suspicious mind is flying. "Who exactly is your team?"
  
  Aha! Dead silence. Followed by suspiciously shifty eye movement. It would seem that as Ari released Vikram's tongue, the cat got it.
  
  And the cat is hanging on really tight as Vikram and I now sit frozen in a silent stare-off.
  
  But I will warn you, this cat is no freaking match for Sid the Huntress.
  
  And thus, almost as though he knows he is being stalked by my fierceness, Vikram blinks. And then folds. And a confession whimpers out, "Mae Ann and Mae Lee."
  
  "The Twincesses? You have the freaking Twincesses?!" I am horrified.
  
  "Look." Having the lie of omission ripped from his lips has now caused his voice to rise a full octave and quaver slightly. "It doesn't really work that way. I mean for the beginning stages we kind of have two teams, but then we all have to work together and you know, I don't have a huge choice. Smitty made Marcus the other captain. So either I go for the Lau twins or I have to pick Hand Jive." Vikram raises his eyes back to me. "What would you do?"
  
  Moi? What would I do? I would move to the Island of Themyscira. I would go directly to Queen Hippolyta and her sister, Antiope. I would throw myself at their mercy, pleading with them not to make me do this.
  
  I would also— if I could somehow figure out an, ahem, lawful way to download the first twenty minutes of Wonder Woman, screenshot it and then tape it frame by frame on the wall of my bedroom so when I turn out the lights my night sky would glow down and transport me away— do that too.
  
  But that's off topic, and sadly there is no Themyscira here.
  
  I wonder if I were to reach out to my personal patron saint of comics, Gail Simone, with some kind of emergency beacon or secret-coded SOS, would she write me my own superhero way out of this? I mean I wouldn't need her to make me incredibly cool or anything, just a simple superpower to make really annoying classmates go away to a distant planet, in another galaxy, far, far from Earth, where they can happily live out their days, terrorizing themselves to their hearts' content.
  
  Because I will give Vikram this much, his choices do suck. He is correct about that. Hand Jive Olney is Scott Olney. He got this last nickname in the fourth grade. It was a kind of a step up from his previous nickname, Jack-Off Olney.
  
  As you can rightly assume, my friends, he was blessed with such lasting descriptors because he couldn't stop playing with himself in class, which I do have to say caused the school— and our parents— to invest in a much earlier sex education moment than was probably comfortable.
  
  And in fairness, Scott goes to therapy two or three days a week, still. And while he hasn't had any, let's just say, obvious flare-ups in at least five or six years, some nicknames never die. There's always at least one kid who can't resist. And in Hand Jive's case, with or without his compulsion, he's still the creepiest kid in the school, so it's probably never going to leave him.
  
  So teaming him with Marcus is a good idea. Marcus Johnston is a really cool, super-chill dude. Much like Jimmy, he's the kind of guy everyone wants to say hi to. A huge, easy smile and an outsized, loose-curl afro that every girl— yes, people, including me— just wants to play with. He is almost enough to make even me rethink my lesbionic classification and declare myself ...Pause for just a second. He is almost enough to make me think, exception to rule. No. That's not it either. You know what, I'm just going to say, Marcus is almost enough. But still, not quite.
  
  But to Vikram's point, in spite of having Hand Jive in tow, Marcus will have no issue finding willing minions to join his team.
  
  Which brings us back to Vikram and the Twincesses. I believe we're supposed to feel sorry for the Twincesses. The story is their dad moved here from China for some big job when their mom was pregnant. Their mom died in some accident or something when they were babies. So their grandmother, their mother's mother, moved from China to New York to take care of them. And if you think Tiger Moms— you know, the kind of mothers whose kids only get to participate if there's some kind of award to be won— are scary people, they are nothing next to a Tiger Grandma of motherless twin baby girls.
  
  And all that might be okay, except now they're seventeen and they still dress in identical, albeit incredibly expensive, designer outfits, which is really bizarre because they are fraternal twins who look nothing alike, other than they both look ridiculous. And they do everything together. Just the two of them.
  
  They even have their own "secret language." And when they deign to actually speak to any of us, they have this affected Chinese accent thing they do— even though they have never lived in China. It's "lah" this and "lah" that. And as I said, they were born here. It's this whole weird twisted Twincess thing. And their number one rule, as if you couldn't guess, is they are always perfect and you are always not perfect.
  
  So to state the obvious, I really, really can't stand them.
  
  Which means I know I should absquatulate. Vamoose. Make like a banana and split.
  
  But before thought can turn to motion, Imani, yes, my bestie (!) turns back to Vikram and states, "Ignore her."
  
  Which she follows by motioning Vik to come close. She proceeds to then drop her voice into one of those dramatic "asides" she learned. You know, where she's "whispering" but you can still hear her all the way in the back of the theater, effectively making her target, Vikram, her confidant, all while ensuring everyone, especially me, can still hear her loud and clear. "She's still suffering from the PAPEs." And as Imani pronounces this, her head whips back at me and does that tilt-y kind of peer-me-down thing.
  
  I respond by bugging my eyes at her and swinging my left hand, open palm, forward. A silent tableau of gesture, screaming, What?
  
  "PAPE. As in Post Adrenaline-Post Emma syndrome." Her pause is apparently for added smugness. "I made it up. Even gave it a catchy acronym 'cause I know how much you like that kind of thing."
  
  This time Imani's pause is long enough to let the words sink in and toss me a fake smile and change the pitch of her voice. "It's been going on for weeks. And you know what, Sid, it's gotten pretty damn tiresome."
  
  Wow. Shade thrown straight to the bull's-eye.
  
  And before I can work up to personal indignation, Ari leans into the table, pushing Vik back, coming nearly across, and then turning to Imani, "I guess that's to be expected when before your crush can break your heart," pause for a calculated shrug, "you just break your crush."
  
  And with that, Ari turns her self-satisfied smirk to me, and holds up her right hand, so Imani can high-five it, right on cue.
  
  I sit up, lean forward and then slink back. I want to defend my honor and dispute this besmirchment, but I can't. I think Imani's PAPE diagnosis is pretty low-blow, but it is arguably accurate. Meeting Detective Emma Macdonald, the live-action version of my entire teenage fantasy crush, and having her be definitively, unquestionably unavailable was a cataclysmic blow. Even if a person could argue the fantasy might have been a bit ridiculous to begin with. It was still my fantasy. And nowhere in that fantasy did leaping from a balcony and landing on her pelvis and shattering it play out.
  
  Not to mention catching a serial killer while having my friends shot at while throwing myself off said ledge, culminating in being gulaged by my parents, I will admit, maybe has resulted in a bit of post-something petulance. But I think I'm entitled.
  
  And I don't think she needed to acronym it.
  
  That's kind of harsh.
  
  I am wounded.
  
  But even my newly crafted boo-boo face is for naught. I get nothing. Not an inch, not a flinch. It seems her mercy meter has overloaded and now, done with me, Imani turns back to Vik, who at least has the decency to look shocked, as opposed to, I don't know, let's say his girlfriend, Ari, who is laughing hysterically and actually putting her hand up for a high-five. And as Imani makes contact, Ari asks, "So how exactly does this robot thing work?"
  
  *PALM. FOREHEAD. KABOOM!*
  
  And just like that, we are all in.