I knew that Blake had finally gone off the deep end when he bought a pair of shutter shades.

Not long after our final recording session, Blake texted me, "Hey Dani, I'm sorry about everything. Do you want to go shopping with me on Saturday?" I said yes, of course. I didn't want to let our disagreement get in the way of our friendship, so I went to the mall with Blake.

We wandered around for a while, occasionally going into a store to browse or stopping to buy a smoothie. After a few hours, Blake finally found a shop that he liked, and he took every outfit that he could find and carried it into the dressing room. "Dani, aren't you going to try something on?" he asked me.

"I think I'm okay," I said. I sat down on a bench and drank my smoothie while Blake tried on neon hoodies, zebra print pants, gold chains, and whatever else he could get his hands on. Every time he came out of the dressing room, he looked absolutely ridiculous, but I never told him that. Instead, I said, "You look great, Blake."

"Thanks," Blake replied. "I just wish that I had more money so that I could actually buy all of this. I kind of blew most of my savings getting that windshield fixed. Maybe I'll spend the EP money on clothes. We'll be rich once that thing is released, you know."

I wasn't sure if I believed him, but I nodded anyways. Blake ended up buying about half of the outfits he found in the store, and when he was in the checkout line, he spotted a rack of sunglasses. "Oh my God," Blake said as he took a pair of white shutter shades off of the rack. "Dani, I've always wanted one of these, and they're on sale! It's buy one, get one free!" Blake took another pair of shutter shades off of the rack, and when he purchased the rest of his clothes, he bought two pairs of shutter shades, one white and one light blue.

As we left the store, Blake put the white pair on and stuffed the light blue pair in his bag. "Can you even see through those?" I asked him.

"Of course," Blake said, just as he crashed into another shopper. "I'm so sorry!" he shouted to the woman. "Anyways, I can see fine. Plus, I look great right now. The girls at our shows are going to love these."

"What happened to your relationship with Madeline?"

"We were never really a thing."

"I thought that you loved her."

"I do. She's so pretty and sweet, but..."

"But what?" I asked as Blake stared off into the distance.

Blake shrugged and said, "I just don't see why I should bother."

"What are you talking about?"

"What if she breaks my heart next summer?"

I sighed and said, "Blake, I can't believe that I'm the one giving you relationship advice, but you can't give up this quickly. You have to take the time to get to know her."

"I don't know, Dani. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that love hurts."

I didn't know how to respond to that. He knew more about love than I did. Who was I to question him?

We headed down the escalator, and as I searched for someplace to eat, I spotted three girls around Sydney's age staring at Blake and I. They weren't sure what to make of us, which I'm sure was exactly what Blake was going for when he started The Love Martyrs.

Even now, that memory is still fresh in my head. After the last day of my sophomore year, I went to Blake's house, and when he opened the door, I saw that he had dyed his blond hair bright pink. "Hey Blake," I said as I entered the house. "I like your hair."

"Thanks," Blake said. "I just did this yesterday. Do you want to play some video games or something?"

"Sure," I said.

We went down into his basement and played video games for a while, and when we were both getting tired of playing Mario Kart, Blake said, "You know, I've always wanted to be in a band."

"Really?" I said.

"Yeah," Blake said. "I was thinking that maybe you could be in my band. We could call it The Love Martyrs."

"I don't know how to play any instruments," I said.

"I've heard the bass guitar is pretty easy to learn."

"We would still need a drummer."

Blake laughed. "That's what drum machines are for. We could have stage names too. I could be Blayyke Pink, and you could be Dani Blue. It's like a reversal of the whole 'pink is for girls, and blue is for boys' thing. Also, Blake has two Ys."

I didn't tell Blake that his stage names weren't nearly as clever as he thought they were. Instead, I asked, "Why does Blayyke have two Ys?"

"It's cooler that way," Blake said. "Oh, and we could dye your hair blue to match my pink hair! So? What do you think, Dani? Do you want to be in The Love Martyrs with me?"

"Yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun," I said.

"Cool," Blake said. He started walking upstairs, and I followed him as he found a bottle of blue hair dye. I sat down, and he helped me dye my hair, making sure that there wouldn't be a single strand of brown hair left when we were done. Once the dye had set in, he styled my hair, cutting it and spraying it until it was artfully flying in every direction. I, for one, loved the experience. It was like transforming into someone new.

When Blake was done, I looked into a mirror and gasped. I hardly recognized myself with electric blue hair. It was as if I had magically turned into another person with another life, a girl who played the bass in a rock band and wasn't afraid to stand out in a crowd. Mom and Jason would surely have a million questions when I got home, but I didn't care. With my new look, I was wild, powerful, and free.

It only occurred to me later that Blake had never given me much of a choice. He had planned out every detail of our band before he had even asked me if I wanted to join. He knew that I would say yes long before he asked the question.

What if I had said no? Would that have stopped all of this from happening?

I may regret joining the Love Martyrs now, but I didn't regret it then, not when those girls were staring at Blake and I as we headed down the escalator. We found another smoothie shop, and after buying two Pina Colada smoothies, we continued on our way, wandering aimlessly through the mall. "You know, Dani, you might be right," Blake said as we passed by Macy's.

"About what?" I asked.

"Madeline," Blake answered. "I'm going to give her a chance."

I wasn't sure what to say to that. We continued to wander, and when Blake found another shop he liked, he went inside and browsed, despite the fact that we were both running out of spending money. He was still wearing those ridiculous shutter shades, and if he had the choice, he would have never taken them off.

Two days later, I stayed after school for Quiz Bowl again. When I entered the classroom, it was the same scene as always. Madeline and Devon were setting up the desks, while Tanner wrote on the board. This time, it was Madeline's Overuse of the Word Like vs. Everyone Else's Sanity.

"I don't, like, say 'like,' all that, like, much," Madeline said as soon as she saw what was on the board.

"You just said it three times," Devon said. "I'm on Team Everyone Else's Sanity on this one."

"Madeline has the right to say 'like' as much as she wants," I said.

"Thank you, Dani!" Madeline exclaimed. She and I joined Madeline's Overuse of the Word Like, while Tanner and Devon joined Everyone Else's Sanity, and the game began.

The first question was for our team. "Name the following authors who wrote classic coming of age novels," Mrs. Welch read. "The classic American coming of age novel is what author's The Catcher in the Rye?"

"Salinger!" Madeline shouted.

Mrs. Welch marked a point on the board, but the next question was for Devon and Tanner. "What African-American author of Native Son wrote about his years of development in the autobiographical novel Black Boy?"

"Do you know?" Devon asked Tanner.

"No clue," Tanner said.

"Just make up something then."

"Smith!"

"The correct answer was Wright," Mrs. Welch said.

"I knew that," Madeline grumbled, but Mrs. Welch didn't listen and went on to the toss-up question. All of us grabbed our buzzers and waited for her to start reading.

"This author's first novel is a coming of age novel that ends with Monsignor Darcy dying and Rosalind Connage breaking up with Amory Blaine. Another novel by this author, which fictionalizes his relationship with Zelda Sayre, describes the dissolving marriage of actress Nicole Warren and psychologist Dick Diver. This author of This Side of Paradise and Tender is the Night wrote another novel whose characters include the golf cheat Jordan Baker..."

Tanner buzzed in. "The Great Gatsby...wait, no! I meant Fitzgerald!"

"Don't count that," Madeline said.

"He gave the right answer!" Devon argued.

"Because Tanner gave the wrong answer first, I'm not counting that," Mrs. Welch said. "I'll read the rest of the question, and Madeline's Overuse of the Word Like can answer."

Mrs. Welch read the rest of the question, and when she was done, I buzzed in and said, "F. Scott Fitzgerald."

"Thanks for the answer, Tanner," Madeline said as she high-fived me. Tanner, meanwhile, looked like he had discovered a new species in the wilderness and let it get away.

Madeline's Overuse of the Word Like started out well, but Everyone Else's Sanity slowly caught up, and by the last question of the final round, we were tied.

"In a popular Internet meme, Basement Cat represents..."

Tanner buzzed in. "Satan?" he said, trying not to laugh.

"That is correct," Mrs. Welch said.

We lost the scrimmage over a question about Lolcats. You can't make stuff like this up.

"Don't they know any of the more recent memes?" Devon asked as we all put the desks back and put the buzzers away.

"I doubt it," Tanner said. "This is Quiz Bowl we're talking about."

"Hey Dani, do you want to come over to my house again?" Madeline asked.

I wanted to say yes. Playing with Caden's pet snakes and chatting with Madeline sounded like a great way to relax after a long day at school, but my mom had asked me to come home right away after Quiz Bowl. "Not today," I said. "I might be able to hang out on Wednesday though."

"We're not having Quiz Bowl on Wednesday," Madeline said. "There's an orchestra concert."

"Doesn't that only affect you?" I said.

"No, I have to go too," Devon said.

"I'm going to support everyone I know who's in orchestra, so three of us are going to be gone. We have to cancel practice," Tanner said. "Mrs. Welch, is there any way we can do a practice on Thursday or Friday? The first tournament is coming up."

"I'm booked all afternoon and evening on both of those days," Mrs. Welch said.

All of us groaned. Madeline then asked, "Does anyone else need a ride home?"

"I'm okay," Devon said. "Thanks for the offer though."

"I'm staying here for GSA," Tanner said.

"How late does that go?" Madeline asked.

"It starts right after this and then goes until 5:30," Tanner said.

"And then there's Robotics, followed by German Club," Mrs. Welch said. "I don't know why they wanted me to be the sponsor for German Club. I don't even speak German."

"Probably the same reason why we asked you to be the sponsor for Quiz Bowl," Tanner said. "Nobody else was willing to do it."

I glanced toward the door and noticed about a dozen kids standing outside, waiting for someone to let them in. "We should probably go," Madeline said. "I think GSA wants the room. See you all on Monday!"

Madeline, Devon, and I left, and while Madeline and I waited for our parents to arrive, we talked about everything from a book that she had read recently to the orchestra concert to something funny that one of her friends that I didn't know had said. "You have to meet Vivian sometime," Madeline said just before my mom picked me up. "That girl should be a stand-up comedian. The only funnier person I've met in my life is Blake."

Blake had never struck me as a person with a particularly great sense of humor. Every so often, he did say something hilarious, like every time he made a joke about "lots of hidden cars," but he wasn't much funnier than anyone else.

I told this to Madeline, but she said, "You know, I once messed up counting something, and he told me that there were three types of people in the world: people who can count and people who can't! Isn't that hilarious?" She cracked up, and with the way that she laughed, I didn't have the heart to tell her that the joke wasn't nearly as funny as she thought it was.

Mom arrived, and I said goodbye to Madeline as I got into the car. Tuesday was uneventful, and Wednesday was even worse since there was no Quiz Bowl practice. I thought about going to the orchestra concert, but Mom was at Sydney's soccer game, and Jason was at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, so I didn't have any way to get there. I texted Blake and asked him if he wanted to have a band practice. "I thought you had that nerd club meeting on Wednesdays," Blake replied.

"Quiz Bowl got canceled because of the orchestra concert," I texted.

"That says a lot about the people in that club. Anyways, I'm busy. Maybe tomorrow?"

I agreed to meet Blake the next day, and we worked on refining the songs that we had recorded for the EP. Both of us were impatient for it to be released, but we still had a while to wait. Blake spent a good portion of band practice on his phone, presumably texting Madeline. It bothered me that he didn't seem to care about the Love Martyrs, but in the end, neither of us had ever cared about the band itself all that much. For Blake, it was a way to pick up girls, and for me, it was a way to stay connected to my best friend.

Halloween came and went, and my classes all got more difficult. One weekend, there was a physics worksheet that I just couldn't figure out, so I texted Blake again. "You took physics when you were in high school, right?"

"Yeah. I remember it was really hard," Blake replied.

"Can you help me with my worksheet?" I asked.

"Sure," Blake said. "Come to my house later, and we'll work on it."

I arrived at his house later that afternoon, but when I got there, Blake was on his phone again. The shutter shades that he had bought earlier were perched on his nose. "Madeline's in the same class as you are," he said.

"No she's not," I said. "I would know if she was in my class."

"It's a different period, but it's the same class," Blake said. "I asked her if she wants to come over and work on her homework too, but she hasn't responded."

I pulled out my worksheet, and Blake looked it over. "You're right. This is really hard, but I think I remember how to do it." He started drawing on the paper and writing out equations that I was sure that we hadn't learned yet, but he managed to get an answer, which was better than I had done.

After we were done with the first problem, Blake's phone buzzed. "Madeline's coming in a few minutes," he told me.

"Can we keep going in the meantime?" I asked.

"Yeah, that's fine," Blake said. We went on to the second problem, which was even more complicated than the first. It was something that involved tension in a cable, and Blake again whipped up some formula that we hadn't learned yet to solve the problem.

"What does the speed of light have to do with tension?" I asked.

"I don't know. I just remember learning this."

All of a sudden, I heard a knock on the door, and Blake ran to the door to let Madeline in. She was wearing a tight-fitting sweater and skinny jeans, and both Blake and I definitely noticed. "You look so beautiful today," Blake said.

"Thanks," Madeline said, blushing. "Can you please help me with the second problem on the worksheet? I did the first problem myself, but I'm stuck on the one with the cables."

"Of course," Blake said. He walked her through the problem, telling her how smart she was for figuring out the first one on her own. "I took this class two years ago, and it's definitely one of the hardest classes at McKinley."

"Tanner said that AP Physics is the hardest class at McKinley," Madeline said.

"Who's Tanner?"

"He's just a guy that I know."

"Come on, Madeline," Blake said. "You know I don't like it when you're around other guys."

Madeline just stayed quiet and worked on the third problem on the physics worksheet. The Madeline that I knew from Quiz Bowl, the one who cracked nerdy jokes and talked about her cello like it was her husband, wasn't there that night. I don't think Madeline ever showed that side of herself to Blake, but as Blake helped Madeline with her homework, I could see that they cared about each other anyways. Who was I to question their relationship?

I turned in that worksheet the next day, and I ended up getting a C on it. Madeline got a B+, probably because she did quite a bit of the work herself instead of just copying off of Blake. However, she was still devastated. She complained about it in Quiz Bowl, and although Tanner and Devon were sympathetic, it drove me crazy to think that she would care so much about an imperfect grade. I got Bs all the time, and I never got worked up over it. Blake often skated by on Cs and Ds when he was in high school. I wasn't sure what Madeline saw in a guy who never had anything nice to say about McKinley High School when she couldn't stand to get a B+, but I had never seen Blake this happy in my whole life. I didn't want to hurt him.

At the end of November, Madeline, Devon, Tanner, and I had our first Quiz Bowl tournament. We met in Mrs. Welch's classroom one Wednesday, and Mrs. Welch passed out T-shirts that read "Buzz or Buzz Not. There is No Try." The T-shirt definitely wasn't my usual style, but I put in on over my plain green shirt anyways, trying to pretend like I had some team spirit.

Mrs. Welch also handed me a concussion waiver. "Why do I need a concussion waiver for Quiz Bowl?" I asked her.

"I have no idea," Mrs. Welch said. "You need to sign it before you can participate in a competition."

"It's for when you accidentally hit your head on the buzzer," Tanner joked.

I signed the concussion waiver and handed it to Mrs. Welch, and we all left her classroom and climbed on the bus. "We have a bus this year?" Devon said as he took a seat in the front.

"I guess the administration is finally spending money on the four of us," Tanner said. "Maybe next year we'll get new buzzers!"

"Speaking of buzzers, I think we forgot our set in Mrs. Welch's classroom," Devon said.

"I'll go get them," Madeline volunteered. She ran off of the bus and came back a few minutes later with the briefcase that contained our buzzer system. Once everyone was on the bus, we headed toward Westwood High School.

Just as I was about to put my headphones on, Tanner said, "Hey, maybe we should practice on the way to the tournament."

"What should we practice?" Devon asked.

"Art, probably," Madeline suggested.

"Okay," Tanner said as he took out his phone. "I'll name a painting, and you guys will name the artist who painted it. Let's start with Liberty Leading The People."

"Delacroix," Devon answered. "That's the one that was on the cover of a Coldplay album."

"Who's Coldplay?" Madeline asked, while Devon glared at her.

"The Scream," Tanner said.

"Van Gogh?" I guessed.

"Right era, wrong country," Tanner said.

"Can you tell us which country the artist is from?" Madeline asked.

"No." After a few minutes of awkward silence, Tanner finally said, "Fine. He's from Norway."

"Edvard Munch," Madeline said.

"Correct," Tanner said. "The Persistence of Memory."

"Is that the melting clocks painting?" I asked.

"Yes," Tanner said.

"Salvador Dali," I said, and to my surprise, I was right. We went on like that for the forty five minute drive to Westwood, and by the time we got there, I felt a lot more confident in my knowledge of art, despite my nerves.

Mrs. Welch directed us to go to room 442, where the Westwood Quiz Bowl team was waiting for us. They were the sort of mousy looking girls and awkward boys that you'd expect to play Quiz Bowl. Their team had around twenty people on it, most of whom were watching their teammates play and waiting for their turn.. "I like your hair," one girl said.

"Thanks," I said, but her comment only drew attention to the fact that I was the only person in the room with dyed hair.

If my teammates were as intimidated by the Westwood team as I was, they didn't show it. Tanner sat in the middle desk, while Madeline took the closest seat to the moderator. I sat down in the furthest seat, wishing that I could somehow turn invisible.

The moderator asked each team to introduce themselves, so Tanner buzzed in and said, "I'm Tanner Hayes, captain of the William McKinley High School Quiz Bowl team, coached by the parsimonious Mrs. Welch. My teammates will introduce themselves in the order of the number of dragon turtles that they've killed today."

Madeline buzzed in and said, "I'm Madeline, and I've killed one."

"I'm Devon, and I've killed four and a half."

Confused, I buzzed in and said, "I'm Dani, and I don't know what a dragon turtle is."

"It's exactly what it sounds like," Tanner said.

I thought that Tanner was crazy until the Westwood team described their coach as "platitudinous" and introduced themselves in reverse alphabetical order by middle name. Once I realized that the introductions were just one long inside joke, they became a lot more fun, but at that particular match, I was still panicking over not knowing what a dragon turtle was when the moderator started reading the first question.

Nobody managed to answer the first three questions of the category round correctly, but once the math questions began, Devon managed to get our team some points. However, it was a close game. Westwood had the advantage of being able to switch up their players in between rounds, while the four of us were stuck playing for the entire game.

Westwood and McKinley were tied going into the final round. The moderator read, "This scientist correctly predicted the existence of silicon..."

I buzzed in and shouted, "Lavoisier!"

When the moderator said that my answer was correct, my teammates cheered and congratulated me. "That was great, Dani!" Madeline exclaimed as she high-fived me.

"Yeah, way to start the final round!" Tanner added.

I never expected that the best moment of my junior year would happen because I knew the name of a French chemist. I had never expected to join Quiz Bowl in the first place, but it was perhaps the only good thing that happened to me all year. I just wish that my junior year hadn't gone downhill so quickly.

Madeline got a few questions about World War I era poetry, Wuthering Heights, Italian authors, and some ballet that I had never heard of, while Tanner got some questions on Machiavelli, the Indus River Valley Civilization, Germany, and George H.W. Bush. With all of the questions that we had answered correctly in the final round, we won the match, but Tanner warned us not to celebrate too much. "We still have to play two more matches today," he said.

We lost the second match, and we barely won the third, but we still had plenty of reasons to celebrate on the way back to McKinley. "I still can't believe that Devon finished that math problem before the moderator was even done reading," Tanner said.

"I'm impressed that Tanner figured out the name of that Roman god in the alphabet round," Devon said.

"I only knew that because of Percy Jackson," Tanner said.

"My favorite moment in the whole match was when Dani got every single one of the plant hormone questions," Madeline said.

My first thought was that Blake would have never complimented me for knowing about plant hormones. He might have called me a nerd or asked who cared about plants anyways, but Madeline, Tanner, and Devon weren't like him. In retrospect, I think that was what I liked most about Quiz Bowl: the opportunity to be around people who were the exact opposite of everything Blake Pinkerton stood for.

The next day, I went through my daily routine as usual. I went to English, PE, math, and history, and after all of that was over, I stood in line for a slice of pizza that looked more like a piece of plastic than pizza. Once I had my lunch, I headed straight for the empty classroom, ready to spend some time alone, but Madeline stopped me. "Hey, do you want to sit with me today?" she asked.

"Sure," I said. I wasn't about to turn down an offer to sit with Madeline, the nicest girl at McKinley, so I followed her to a huge table at the center of the cafeteria. At first, there didn't seem to be an empty spot, but Madeline stole a chair from another table and put it at the far end of her table. "There's always room for one more at the nerd table," she joked. She then introduced me to everyone at the table. I knew Tanner and Devon from Quiz Bowl, but nearly everyone else was a stranger. It was a motley crew: band geeks and orchestra dorks, gamers and film buffs, Potterheads, Trekkies, and Whovians.

After Madeline finished introducing me to Tanner's boyfriend, a lanky, blond-haired, saxophone-playing kid named Sean, and her friend Vivian, who she claimed was on her way to becoming a great comedian, the whole table started chatting. They complained about their classes, gave book recommendations, debated over whether the violin or the viola was a better instrument, and told stories about their D&D campaigns.

For the first time, I felt at home in the school cafeteria.