"What'll I do? What'll I tell her?" The pajama-clad Arthur paced back and forth in the Read living room, frantically seeking a solution to his dilemma. "'I'm sorry, Sue Ellen, but I only kissed you because my brain was scrambled from falling out of a tree.'"

"I think the wisest thing to do is tell her the truth," suggested Mr. Read, who was seated on the couch next to Mrs. Read and D.W.

"I can't do that," said Arthur. "I might break her heart. Or she might break my nose. You've never seen her angry, Dad."

"Then you'll have to pretend you still love her," said Mrs. Read.

"For how long?" asked Arthur, exasperated. "Until I get back from Africa? Until I graduate from high school? For the rest of my life? She'll figure it out eventually."

"I know," said D.W. "Tell her you're allergic to cats."

"She doesn't have a cat," Arthur pointed out.

"I don't understand," Mr. Read interjected. "Why don't you want to kiss her? What's so bad about kissing?"

"It's gross," Arthur responded. "Her lips are fuzzy."

"Some day you may feel differently," said Mr. Read.

After a few more seconds of pacing, Arthur suddenly stopped in his tracks. "Wait...a...minute. Why did Carla break up with Mr. Ratburn?"

"Because he was mean to his sister," D.W. answered.

"Hmm..." Arthur looked at D.W. wickedly.

"Oh, come on, Arthur," said D.W., folding her arms. "You're mean to me all the time, and Sue Ellen doesn't care."

"That's a good point," said Arthur. "But what if I was mean to somebody else?"

He looked around the room. Pal sat in one corner, gazing at him with loyal, soulful eyes. Kate waddled clumsily across the floor, an expression of cherubic innocence on her face.

"Wait, I've got it," said Arthur, pounding his fist into his palm. "I'll be mean to...to...to Francine's cat."

Pal suddenly leaped to his feet, panting excitedly.

"Why not just be mean to Sue Ellen?" D.W. suggested.

Arthur swallowed. "Are you kidding? She'd kill me. You'd be an orphan."

"I think you're exaggerating," said Mrs. Read. "She's a sweet little girl. Just because she can split bricks in half doesn't mean she'll do the same to you."

"You don't know her, Mom," said Arthur, who had started pacing again. "If only you'd seen her face when she thought I had read her diary..."

"Hey, that's a good idea," said D.W. "Read her diary, then she'll get mad at you and break up with you."

"She'd break up with me, all right," Arthur retorted. "She'd break up a table and several chairs with me."

"Well, how about this?" D.W. continued. "Just ask her if you can read her diary. That would make her mad, but not as mad as if you actually read it."

Arthur stopped pacing again. "Hmm...you may have something there, D.W."

----

Later that day, Arthur and Sue Ellen sat together on their usual bench by the playground, holding hands and enjoying the sunshine.

"Can I ask you something, Sue Ellen?" said Arthur hesitantly.

"Of course you can," Sue Ellen replied.

"Now that I'm your boyfriend..."

Arthur became nervous and couldn't continue.

"What?" Sue Ellen looked at him quizzically.

Arthur gathered up his courage. "Sue Ellen, can I read your diary?"

As he expected, Sue Ellen's expression turned into one of surprise and shock.

Several seconds later, the girl reached into her backpack. Uh-oh, thought Arthur. She's gonna pull out some kind of ninja weapon and hurt me with it.

But instead, Sue Ellen pulled out her diary and handed it to Arthur.

"I thought you'd never ask," she said kindly. "Knock yourself out."

As Arthur looked at the diary that he clutched in his hands, his brain overloaded with terror and completely shut down. He became irrational and started to hit himself repeatedly and forcefully on the forehead with the diary.

Sue Ellen giggled. "Silly boy. I didn't mean that literally."

----

It was a typical Saturday morning at the Cooper residence. In the kitchen, Mrs. Cooper was feeding the baby, Megan, while Dallin wolfed down a second bowl of cold cereal. In the room shared by Van and Logan, Van watched as Logan pinned a new rock star poster to the wall on his side of the room. When he was finished, Van handed him another poster.

Logan unrolled it. "Who's this dude?" he asked.

"Nigel Kennedy," Van replied. "He's a violinistand a rock star, so I guess he goes in the middle."

As Logan held the poster against the middle wall, Van checked his watch. "It's about that time," he said to himself.

He rolled into the study, where his father Mel and his sisters Quinn and Odette were engrossed in their studies. Mr. Cooper was reviewing the latest briefs from the Crosswire lawsuit, Odette was scanning the newest issue of Cosmo Swan, and Quinn was reading Chekhov's The Wild Duck.

"Hey, Dad," said Van to his father, "is it all right if I take ?"

Mr. Cooper looked up from his paperwork. "Still pining for your friend Buster?"

"No, it's not that," Van responded. "It's just that the things I thought about last week when I went out...I'd like to think about them some more."

Odette glanced at Van, her eyes narrowed.

"If it's all right with your mother, it's all right with me," said Mr. Cooper.

As Van sped toward the kitchen to ask his mother's permission, Odette put down her magazine. "I don't know about you, Dad," she said quietly to Mr. Cooper, "but I'm getting a little suspicious."

"I trust Van," said her father, without looking up from his papers.

"I don't." Odette watched as Van rolled out the front door, which was held open by Logan. "First Mr. Crosswire tells his daughter that she can't see Van, and now Van's suddenly going out by himself for a spin every Saturday morning. Call me paranoid, but I think that's more than a coincidence."

Mr. Cooper eyed her emotionlessly. "If you want to spy on him, go ahead. It's your time you're wasting."

A short while later, Muffy's limousine came to a stop at the side of the street near the point where the asphalt gave way to gravel.

"I'll walk the rest of the way," Muffy informed the chauffeur. Pulling a fifty-dollar note from her wallet, she handed it to him. "Were we ever here, Bailey?"

"No, Miss Muffy," said Bailey in a demure English accent.

Clutching a small black leather pouch, Muffy climbed out of the limo, closed the door after her, and started down the unpaved street toward the forest.

Moments later and two blocks away, Odette rounded a corner and spotted the limo in the distance. Once again she narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

"If I'm not mistaken, that's Muffy's limo," she muttered to herself. "Methinks monkey business is afoot."

The swan girl picked up her pace. A minute or two later she arrived at the driver's side of the limousine, and tapped slightly on the window with her beak.

Bailey pushed a switch to roll down the window. "Yes, miss?"

"Excuse me, sir. You are Muffy Crosswire's chauffeur, are you not?" asked Odette with all the courtesy that she felt a man of his station didn't deserve.

"We were never here," said Bailey. Rolling up the window, he resumed his reading of Hugo's "Les Miserables".

Undeterred, Odette started to follow the gravel road, hoping that her hunch was correct.

Roughtly a half mile from her position, Muffy entered the clearing where she had met with Van the previous week, and found to her delight that Van was again waiting for her there.

"Hi, Van," she said, smiling. "What's new?"

"Oh, this and that," said the duck boy. "Quinn finally decided on a law school. She's going to Stanford."

"Good choice," said Muffy as she sat on the grass next to Van's wheelchair. "I'd like to go to Stanford on a fashion scholarship some day."

"What do you have in that pouch?" Van asked.

Muffy opened the black leather pouch that was strapped over her shoulder, and removed a pair of binoculars.

"Those are really nice," said Van. "Thinking of doing some bird watching?"

Muffy giggled. "You're the only bird I want to watch. No, these are to make sure that nobody followed us here."

"Nobody followed us here last week," Van remarked.

Muffy used the wheel of Van's chair to lift herself to her feet, then put the binoculars in front of her eyes. "Getting away with something once is easy," she said sagely. "Twice is harder."

"See anything?" Van asked glibly.

Then Muffy gasped. "It's Odette!"

"My sister?" Van sighed bitterly. "I should've known she'd suspect something."

"She looks lost," Muffy noted. Indeed, Odette's meanderings through the forest seemed to lack a precise direction.

"We can't let her find us," said Van. "If she gets closer, we'd better split."

Muffy watched carefully, breathlessly, as Odette craned her long neck in one direction after another, trying to get her bearings.

After a few seconds of indecision, Odette started to walk in a straight line directly toward Muffy and Van's location...

...when a bearded aardvark man leaped from behind a nearby bush and grabbed the swan girl, holding a knife to her neck.

Muffy screamed.

(To be continued...)