A/N – Well, after a nasty bout of post-holiday blahs, monster writer's block, and an infuriating couple of days fixing my computer after a Windows (censored) "upgrade", here's the next chapter. Sorry it took a little longer than usual, folks!


Countdown to Mindshatter

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Six – Cupid Has an Off Day


Sheldon weaved his way through a tangle of slow-moving sophomores, clutching the small, gift-wrapped box firmly under his arm. It was finally finished. He'd worked on it through the wee hours of the morning, touching up the last of the soldering while wolfing down a few pieces of cold pizza for breakfast. He'd performed some last-minute adjustments on it with a little tinkering during Social Studies class. And now Jenny's present was finally complete. Sheldon grinned madly as he envisioned what her reaction would be like when he surprised her with the gift. She'd be so overwhelmed by his thoughtfulness, she'd be unable to say anything but "yes" when he asked her to the prom! He was so sure of it, he'd already phoned in a reservation for the best powder-blue tuxedo that the rental store had in stock. It was just a question of the best way to give her the present.

He burst through the cafeteria doors, grabbed a lunch tray, and slipped into the serving line, humming a romantic tune to himself – much to the irritation of the students standing in front of him. A guy couldn't simply stroll up to an amazing girl like Jenny and just ask her out, as if he were asking her for a spare pencil. No, no, no, such a moment called for a little style … or as the Italians called it, savoir-faire. Something like a spontaneous little dinner-for-two would set just the right mood for the moment. Sheldon made his way up to the beefy lunch-lady, ordered a bacon-tomato-and-Spam sandwich for himself, and placed a second order – for two quarts of her finest vegetable oil. The good stuff, not the gunk they drained out of the fryer vats at night.

He paid the cashier for both lunches, reached inside his sweatshirt, and pulled out a single long-stemmed rose, which he stuck in a soda bottle. The piece de resistance! Romance was all in the details. He strolled towards Jenny's usual table with a spring in his step and a swirling giddiness in his head – hmmm, that might have been the sleep deprivation – no, he was pretty sure it was giddiness from daydreaming about Jenny. After all, how could a mere mortal feel otherwise when his thoughts were fixed upon the magnificence of Tremorton High's most beautiful …

Then his shoulders sunk in disappointment. There was a teenage robot sitting at Jenny's usual table, but unfortunately, it wasn't Jenny. It was Drew, crouched over a pile of papers and books … looking as dark, depressed and withdrawn as ever. He had the whole table to himself, just like he usually did – ever since word had spread through the school about what had happened to Allison, the kids had been avoiding him like the plague. The irony was that, just as with Jenny, Drew could actually have been enjoying a bump in his popularity right now, after helping to rescue his classmates from Cluster Prime. But nobody felt comfortable approaching him; even sitting quietly with his textbooks, depression just seemed to flow out of Drew, like radioactivity from a chunk of plutonium.

Sheldon set his lunch tray down, trying to catch the sullen android's attention. It looked like he was writing an essay or something; must have been a homework assignment. "Hey Drew," he stammered. "Umm, I was kind of hoping to catch Jenny … you wouldn't happen to know where she is, would you?"

Drew kept writing without lifting his eyes, and Sheldon wondered if he might not have heard him; then he answered in a gravelly voice. "Haven't seen her all morning, Sheldon," he said brusquely.

"Ah. Okay, then. Mind if I wait for her? It's kind of important."

"It's a free country," mumbled Drew.

Sheldon grabbed a seat across from Drew and set up a dining spot for Jenny, complete with the vegetable oil, linen napkins, a can opener, his single-rose centerpiece … and the gift-wrapped present. Now there was nothing to do but wait for his beloved. But Drew kept scribbling away in stony silence, as if Sheldon didn't even exist. The awkward silence began to make him feel a bit uneasy. "So … getting a little homework out of the way, hmm?"

"It's not homework."

"Oh, really? Whatcha working on, some kind of story or a poem or a …"

"It's personal." Drew morphed one of his hands into a little silver-green privacy wall, and looked up with a single eye that said he didn't feel like talking about it.

"Oooooh-kay then." Well, it looked like Drew wasn't going to be much for conversation today. Sheldon tried to feel some understanding for the guy, but if Drew was going to keep acting like this, then he was going to be one seriously wet blanket when Jenny showed up later and Sheldon tried to set the mood. "Listen, I hate to be a pain here … uh, under normal circumstances, I'd never dream of imposing on you like this, but … is there any chance that you might be able to … you know … move to another table? See, I was kind of hoping that … uhhh … hoping that I might …"

"Hoping that what, dude?" Easy-going as always, Brad strolled up to the table and plopped down next to Drew, carrying an overflowing lunch tray and a heavy silver-and-blue backpack slung over his shoulder. "Hey, what's with all the oil, Sheldon? You gonna deep-fry your sandwich or something? Drew! Haven't seen you all morning! What's the good word, buddy?"

That was a line that begged for a sarcastic comeback, which Drew would normally have supplied – but instead, he just mumbled "Hey, Brad," and casually folded up the paper he'd been writing on. He quickly slid it into an envelope, and tucked it underneath the cover of his Physics textbook.

"D'oh … hey there Brad!" Sheldon groaned under his breath; two was company, three was a crowd, and four was an even bigger crowd. Brad was a great guy and all, and one of the few people at school who treated him decently. But Sheldon was really hoping for a few moments alone with Jenny at lunch, and if both Brad and Drew were around, that was going to be difficult. "Uh, the oil … I just thought … well, I thought it might be a nice surprise to buy lunch for Jenny …"

"You bought her lunch? Hey, that's really nice of you," said Brad, making himself comfortable – apparently clueless as to what Sheldon was hinting at. "She'll really appreciate that, Sheldon. She had to book right in the middle of Spanish class – some kind of emergency on the freeway. I told her I'd hold onto her stuff for her until she gets back." He set the backpack down on the bench seat beside him.

"Oh, phooie kablooie! I hope she gets back before lunch hour is over."

"At the speed she was traveling, I don't think that's gonna be a problem," Brad chuckled. "I mean, I've seen Jenny punch a few holes in the ceiling in my day, but now the Spanish class is missing its whole roof. That new gizmo on her back really packs some serious juice! She'll be back in a minute or two, tops. You mind passing the ketchup?"

Sheldon slid the ketchup bottle over and sunk down in his seat, in a mild sulk. Okay, so his initial plans for an intimate lunch for two had run into a few snags. But he could ask Jenny out, in front of Brad and Drew, without getting embarrassed. In fact, the more he thought about it – when Jenny saw that he could profess his love for her in front of the guys, she'd be impressed with his confidence! Feeling bolder, he came up with yet another brilliant idea … instead just giving Jenny her present, why not let her find it – as an extra special surprise? As Brad attacked his Salisbury Spam, Sheldon reached over, flipped open Jenny's backpack, and snuck the special home-made present inside. It would be the first thing she saw when she opened it up. Sheldon Lee, you're a genius!

Okay, lunch was ready, the present was hidden … all that remained was waiting for the most beautiful, graceful girl in the whole school to show up …

Then the wall next to the cafeteria doors exploded into a cloud of splintered plywood. Dust and debris flew into the salad bar, and a pair of soda machines tumbled over with a spectacular crash. Everyone in the room gasped and turned to see … Jenny, stumbling through a ten-foot wide hole in the wall, blinking in disbelief as she waved the plaster dust away from her face.

She cracked a feeble smile to the crowd. "Eh-heh-heh … my bad," she said nervously, as her cheeks glowed a brilliant blue.

Brad waved to get her attention, and Jenny quickly walked through the middle of the cafeteria, briskly but gingerly, almost as if she were tiptoeing through a minefield. She was eager to escape to the back of the room, away from the stares and the pointing of her bewildered classmates. She was being careful not to touch anything or nudge anyone, while simultaneously attempting to brush off her latest coating of debris with a duster deployed from her wrist. Whatever had happened during her most recent mission, the robot heroine had become covered in grass stains, mud clods, chunks of asphalt … and she had a strange plastic hoop draped over the Z-Pack. It seemed to be a steering wheel – folded in half. Brad, Drew, and Sheldon watched with a growing sense of puzzlement as Jenny gently approached the table with the trepidation of a skater making her way across a patch of thin ice. She wore a weary frown on her face; the school day was only half over, but Jenny already looked ready to go home.

"Hey there guys," she moaned, plucking a piece of stop sign shrapnel from her elbow. "Sorry about the dramatic entrance."

"Jenny! What the heck happened to you?!?" asked Brad. "You look like you got into an underground wrestling match with a giant sewer mutant or something! I thought you just had to save some guy stuck on the freeway?"

"I did," she sighed, as a polishing wheel extended from her chest. "Some guy swerved to avoid hitting a baby duck, and his car crashed right through the guardrail. When I got to the freeway, his car was just dangling over the edge of the overpass, almost ready to tip over and fall. So I swooped down, pulled the guy out of the car, and set him down safe and sound, on the side of the road."

"So you saved him!" smiled Sheldon. "Just another day for Tremorton's greatest hero …"

"I'm not finished," groaned Jenny. "Just as I set the man down to safety, his car tipped over and fell towards the traffic beneath the overpass. I flew down to catch it, and pushed it back towards the freeway … but I must have pushed too hard, because then the car went flying through the air like a rocket, and landed on a railroad track two miles away. Just as the ten-fifteen train from Fresno was coming by. The train hit the car, jumped off the tracks, and almost plummeted into a ravine – until I flew like crazy and caught all the passenger cars."

A low whistle passed through Brad's lips. "Whoa … pretty impressive, Jen! So everyone was okay …"

"I'm still not finished," she groaned again, rolling her eyes. "I caught the passenger cars. But only after I disconnected them from the runaway locomotive, which I kicked out of the way … way too hard, again. I kicked a fifty ton train engine halfway across town. It landed in the parking lot of Tri-County Auto Carnival and took out half of their new convertibles. I think Mom's going to get a call from her lawyer later today." Jenny slapped her hand to her forehead and shook her head. "What is the matter with me?!? I haven't felt this out of control since that time I caught a computer virus downloading those bootleg Back Sync Boys songs!"

"It's not you, Jen," Brad said reassuringly, "it's that new Z-Gizmo on your back! None of this started until your mom installed it this morning. Why not just take it off and get yourself back to normal?"

"Mom says I can't," she pouted, as she retracted her cleaning tools. "Everyone says I need the extra power from the Z-Pack if I'm going to stop the Cluster invasion tomorrow afternoon. They say I'll lose without it. And the Z-Pack's diagnostics say that it's working perfectly, so there's nothing wrong with it. Mom says that my systems just need some time to get used to the increased power levels. But I don't think that's happening, Brad. Every time I touch something, I'm afraid I'm going to break it! This doohickey puts out so much energy that I … I don't think I can handle it!"

"Come on, Jen, I've seen you handle runaway doomsday meteors the size of Ohio. I think you can handle a Z-Pack the size of a turkey fryer!" Brad tapped his chin, trying to think of a helpful suggestion. "Maybe when you head over to the Starship Camp after school today, you can get that Mogg guy to turn the juice down on it, just a little bit … to let you get used it. Maybe it'll help if you take it in stages. You know, just like Space Marines XTreme on my GameStation. You can't just jump from Level One to Level Twenty without working your way up through all the different combat missions! It takes time and practice to build your strength."

While leery of any advice based on video games, there was a certain logic to Brad's idea. "Okay, that kind of makes sense," said Jenny, feeling a bit better. "I'll ask Dr. Mogg to make the adjustments when I see him after school. Oh, right … Drew, don't forget, you're supposed to come to the Starship Camp with me. The general is going to brief us about all the new weapons and fighter ships they found aboard the Cluster mother ship. And they're going over their strategy for defending Earth with us!"

"Don't worry, I haven't forgotten," moped Drew. "Yes, I believe you were going to rocket around with your new infinite energy source, blasting Cluster ships into smithereens with lasers and missiles and particle beams. I, on the other hand, am going to be fed into a giant Salad Shooter, and get turned into silver-green spitballs. Trust me … I can hardly wait."

"Wow, you're going to be defending the Earth, right alongside Jenny! How cool is that?!?" Brad punched him in the shoulder, trying to get some kind of a reaction out of his android friend. But Drew only flinched a sarcastic eyebrow in response. Cheering up Drew was proving to be at least ten times as difficult as cheering up Jen. "C'mon, just think about it! You're going to be a hero!"

"Come on, Drew, everyone's counting on you to help me out tomorrow." Jenny placed a consoling hand on his silvery arm. "I'm counting on you."

Drew finally raised his head, and looked at Jenny with haunted eyes. "You sure that's such a good idea, Jenny? Remember what happened to the last girl who counted on me."

She sighed with frustration as Drew's attention returned to his textbook. She still felt horrible about Allison too, but there was a lot of other important stuff to worry about – and it's not like feeling bad was going to help out Allison in any way. Besides, if Drew didn't snap out of it, he wasn't going to be much help to anyone tomorrow. "Look, maybe after we're done with the general this afternoon, you could come with Brad and me to Mezmer's and we can …"

But then a frantic motion caught Jenny's attention, coming from an unexpected direction – from the popular table. The highest strata of social order, the throne from which Brit and Tiff Krust reigned supreme over all of Tremorton High. And Brit was waving to get her attention. She was pointing to the main cafeteria doors, where a trio of attractive boys in letterman jackets had just walked in …

"Omigosh … it's Justin!" Jenny gasped in horror. "Omigosh, omigosh, and I still look terrible!"

"Justin? Justin Spitzer, from the swim team?" Brad gave Jenny a bewildered look. "Yeah, so? What's the big deal about Justin?"

"What's the big deal?!?" shouted Jenny, tugging at her pigtails. "He's only the gorgeous dreamboat with the dark hair and the full lips and the wide muscular shoulders who's got a super-big secret crush on me, is the big deal! He's the one that wants to ask me to go to the prom with him! Everybody in school knows about it! Drew, you knew about it too, didn't you? The big secret rumor that you didn't want to tell me about? When we were training together in the yard last week?" Jenny was beginning to totally lose it, in record time. "Omigosh, gotta calm down, gotta calm down … oh wow, I'm so nervous I can hear my servos squeaking! I need something to drink!"

Sheldon's eyes shrunk to the size of pencil erasers. He was mortified, watching his dream girl babbling about some stupid jock that she barely knew! "B-b-but Jenny, I got you some oil for lunch …"

"Oil! That's just what I need to wet my crankshaft!" In a blur of motion, Jenny grabbed one of the cans of vegetable oil from the table, ripped off the top … and sprayed oil all over the table, soaking Sheldon from his head to his waist in sticky, viscous liquid. She belted down a few gulps of oil, then deployed a mirror from her wrist, quickly checking her appearance. Justin was paying for his lunch at the cashier's … he was going to be walking to his table any second now. Jenny made a series of comically distorted faces in her hand mirror, checking her eyes and her mouth to make sure everything was in its place. She might be able to spray a quick coating of fast-dry hi-gloss paint on her lips to give them a little extra oomph …

"Oh, no!" she shrieked. "The Z-Pack!" She'd been so worried about how her face looked, she'd forgotten that it didn't even matter – she still had a hideous metal barrel attached to the middle of her back!

"W-w-wait, Jenny!" Sheldon was desperately trying to salvage his romantic lunch. The present! He still had the present that he made for her! "Hey, um … Jenny, instead of worrying about Justin, why don't you check to see what's in your backpack …"

"My backpack! Sheldon, you're a genius!" Her arms ratcheted out and snatched up her backpack, and with a few vigorous shakes, she emptied its contents onto the table – and accidentally crushed the long-stemmed rose. Sheldon's spirit sank as he heard a muffled crunching sound from the gift-wrapped box, as it was buried under a big pile of heavy textbooks and thick binders. Twisting herself like a contortionist, Jenny wiggled her backpack over the gaudy Z-Pack like a cloth cover, and slipped her arms through the straps. Now the Z-Pack was effectively camouflaged … it simply looked like Jenny was wearing a very full blue-and-silver backpack.

"Wish me luck, boys," she grinned, bolting from the table to leave Sheldon in a blue funk, and Drew shrugging his shoulders when Brad asked him just what the heck was going on. None of them had heard anything about this big Justin Spitzer crush rumor.

Okay, okay, if I just stay calm, I can handle this whole Z-Pack business. All I have to do is just … stay … calm. Jenny closed her eyes and lowered her oil pressure a few notches. Justin was just sitting down to eat at the jock table. Wow, he is so cute and so popular! Going to the prom with Justin Spitzer would be the crowning moment of her freshman existence! Jenny could feel the nervousness bubbling in her wires with each step she took towards the jock table, like a simmering volcano that threatened to erupt without notice. Okay, here we go …

She slid up to an empty seat across the table from the swim captain, who was digging enthusiastically into his Spamburger and fries. The other jocks were talking amongst themselves, and for a few seconds, nobody even noticed she was standing there. "Excuse me," said Jenny, with a friendly smile. "Do you mind if I sit down?"

Justin crammed another handful French fries into his mouth. "Uh … you talking to me? Well … uh … sure, I guess." He had look of mild confusion on his face. Of course, that was the way he usually looked, so it was difficult to notice.

She eagerly plopped herself down across from Justin, expecting him to start up a conversation with her. A few moments and half a Spamburger later, she was still waiting. She forced a heavy lump of hydraulic fluid down her throat, but remembered what Brit and Tiff had told her: Justin was shy, and she was going to have to make the first move. "Soooo … Justin … I imagine you must be getting pretty excited about the prom this Saturday night! It's going to be a lot of fun."

The athletic lunk wiped a smear of ketchup from his chin, and glanced up at the weird robot chick sitting across the table, somewhat surprised that she was talking to him. "Uh … yeah, sure, whatever."

Jenny nibbled a few metal shavings from her fingers as Justin returned his attention to his lunch plate. This wasn't going very well. Justin must have been really, really shy, just like Brit had said. She glanced over towards the popular table to see the Krust cousins, along with their entourage of followers, watching her with rapt attention. Tiff flashed her a huge thumbs-up sign, and Brit waved her hands at her, as if to say go on, go on. Well, Brit did say that she might have to be aggressive. With a heave of her shoulders, she bundled up her courage and tried to tap into her supply of … feminine wiles, as Brit called them. Three-inch eyelashes deployed from her metallic eyelids with a soft whirr, and she playfully flipped her pigtails back and forth a few times.

"You know … I'm still looking for a date to the prom, Justin," she pouted, in a smoky, singsong voice. She batted her eyes coquettishly and leaned over the table. "You wouldn't know anyone else who's still looking … would you? Big guy?"

The dumbfounded Justin looked at her, along with the rest of the jocks at the table, and blinked a few times in confusion. "Uh … you got something stuck in your eye?"

"Playing hard to get, huh? Ya big stud? Then I'll make it real easy for you." Jenny bolted to her feet and propped her hand on her hip, thrusting it out seductively. She wiggled her shoulders and arched her back, drawing on every trick she'd ever read about in five years of Teen Yak magazine. Somewhere in the back of the cafeteria, Sheldon clutched at his chest as if he were having a heart seizure. Justin pushed back from the table, wondering if this crazy robot chick had just blown out her circuit boards. Jenny took it to be yet more shyness, and pressed her attack. "I know you want to take me to the Junior Prom this Saturday, Justin," she purred, with a sly smile. "And I'd love to go with you. What do you say to that?"

He gritted his teeth and sank a few inches lower in his chair. "Uhhhhhh …"

Jenny leaned over the table to deliver the final romantic blow. She gave Justin a double-dose of eye-fluttering, and ran her metallic fingers through his hair …

… just as the table snapped in half under her weight, catapulting lunch trays and hot food into a dozen different directions.

"Oh, NO!!! Uh … don't worry, Justin, I've got it!" Jenny lunged to catch Justin's tray before it spilled all over the floor – but suddenly she could feel the blaze of runaway energy roaring through her circuitry, and she knew she was losing control of her power yet again. Instead of simply jumping ten feet for the lunch tray, she rocketed across the room and body-checked a table with a terrific impact. Students scrambled from their seats as the huge wooden table cartwheeled through the air and slammed into the cafeteria wall. Huge cracks began to run up the wall and creep into the ceiling, and one of the big overhead light fixtures started to rock back and forth … then it pulled free of the ceiling, and plummeted towards a helpless group of band nerds who screamed in terror. Jenny picked herself off the floor, clenched her fist, and prepared to deflect the falling light fixture off to the side …

But she punched it with such force that it blasted through the cafeteria roof like a ballistic missile taking off from an underground silo. The heavy rectangular fixture spun into the sky, where, as luck would have it, a KTRM traffic helicopter was flying by on routine patrol. The pilot barely had time to panic before a fantastic collision sent a violent shudder through his copter. The light fixture ripped through the helicopter's tail section, filling the air with rotors, gears, and oily smoke. The chopper was mortally wounded, and began to spiral wildly through the air … spinning faster and faster, out of control, until its two pilots were tossed overboard by the centrifugal force.

"Oh no oh no oh no oh no!" Jenny blasted a giant hole through the cafeteria ceiling, sending an eruption of lumber and plaster flying through the air, and quickly covered the thousand feet of altitude to catch the falling pilots in a pair of giant butterfly nets. But now the burning helicopter wreckage was falling right for the school! Thinking quickly, the super-powered robot girl clutched the rescued pilots in one coiled arm, then deployed a giant tennis racket from the other – and with a mighty swing, knocked the flaming aircraft away as if it were a ping pong ball. But though the school was saved, now the was helicopter was hurtling towards one of the city's major water towers. With a spectacular crash, the copter slammed into the tower's support beams. The giant tower tipped over majestically and slammed to the ground, sending thousands of gallons of water rushing down the street. Cars were tipped over, pedestrians were drenched, and businesses were soaked as the urban flash flood roared through town. A large tanker truck, with the logo of the EV-R-Soft Marshmallow Company painted on its side, saw the water rushing towards it and veered off the street to escape the flood – only to rumble right onto the front lawn of Tremorton High School. The truck hit the school statue and tipped over on its side, puncturing its large tank – and sending a breathtaking geyser of thick, white, marshmallow fluff gushing into the air.

Riding a pair of blue exhaust flames, Jenny landed back inside the cafeteria – which now had no roof – and set the disoriented pilots down, as globs of fluffy marshmallow goo splattered down on her. Everyone and everything was being covered in a thick layer of white dessert topping, like a sugary snowfall. Jenny's head flipped open to deploy a small blue umbrella, shielding her from the marshmallow shower, but nothing could shield her from the death-stares she was getting from her fellow students. She didn't notice Brit and Tiff, who had shielded themselves with lunch trays over their heads, laughing like crazy as they thoroughly enjoyed her humiliation. Instead, she just deployed a mop from her elbow, and cracked a weak smile, chuckling nervously. But she looked like she wanted to die.

Back at the rear of the cafeteria, Brad winced in empathy as he watched Jenny start to clean up the amazing mess. He pulled a handful of thick white slop out of his hair, and flung it to the floor in disgust. "I have to admit, if you told me when I woke up that I was going to be drowned in marshmallow today, I'd have said you were nuts. Well, c'mon guys, we'd better see if she needs any help."

Drew examined a blob of marshmallow on the end of his finger, and rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I might as well do something useful for a change. Let's go." He got up to join Brad, morphing his flexible arms with a gooey schwerrp until they'd turned into a large bulldozer blade.

"Hang on, guys! I'll help out too!" Sheldon began to wipe the creamy fluff from the table, and cleaned off the covers of Jenny's textbooks. Poor Jenny, he thought to himself. My poor, sweet angel. Sure, it had been painful to see her throw herself at another guy – let alone a big dumb jerk who didn't even care about her! – but it had been even more painful to see her embarrassed like this. All because she just wanted a guy to like her and take her to the prom. Why couldn't she see that he wanted to be that guy for her? He'd tried to set up a special dinner for her, he'd brought her a present, and she hadn't even noticed! What did a guy have to do to get her attention …

Then Sheldon noticed that Drew had left his Physics textbook on the table.

And he could see the corner of an envelope sticking out from the front cover. The envelope that held the mysterious note that Drew had been so secretive about.

It wouldn't be right to look, he knew. Drew said it was personal. But curiosity began to gnaw away at his resolve. Sheldon glanced over to see that Brad and Drew had joined Jenny in the marshmallow cleanup. They weren't paying attention to him. One little peek wouldn't hurt. Just at the envelope. He nudged the cover of the Physics text open, and saw that the envelope had handwriting on it …

Which read … To Jenny.

Sheldon's cheeks raged with red fury in the span of a microsecond. I knew it! I knew that no-good bucket of slime was going to make a move on my Jenny! Without another moment's delay, he opened the envelope, unfolded the letter, started to read it … and his jaw nearly fell off of his pimply face.

"Dear Jenny, by the time you read this note … I'll be on my way to Cluster Prime."

Yipes, he thought.

He quickly flew through the rest of the letter, then he read it a second time, and a third, just to make sure he hadn't misunderstood anything. Sheldon stood dumbstruck for a few seconds, too stunned to do anything but stare off into space.

Then a thought came to him. Then that thought grew into an idea. Then that idea grew into a plan. A dangerous plan, but then, the love of a girl like Jenny was worth any risk. Quickly and carefully, he folded the letter back up, placed it in the envelope, and slid it back into Drew's Physics textbook, carefully making sure he returned it just the way he'd found it. Then he started to form a mental checklist of what needed to be done next. First of all, he needed to fake the stomach flu or something, so the nurse would send him home for the afternoon. Because he had work to do back in his laboratory. He had a lot of stuff to get done in the next three hours.


Continued in Chapter Seven / Twenty-seven Hours to Cluster Dawn