That night, when Quigley returned, Andrew, Brownley and I were parked on the couches.

Brownley looked up at him. "So, how was your evening? How'd it go?" "Terrible," Quigley said. "At dinner, Gory spilled meatloaf on me, on purpose. Then I couldn't find you guys anywhere in the cafeteria, so I snuck off campus to a Dairy Queen. Those suckers ripped me off, and on the way back, Nero caught me. He said if I try another stunt like that again, I'll be expelled. How 'bout you guys?"

"Well, I'm taking Michelle to the dance," Brownley said. He pulled out a picture of her and showed it to us. "She's pretty hot," I said. "I'm taking Violet."

Quigley kept looking at the picture, and then his head jerked in my direction. "What…did you…just say…?"

Andrew laughed. "You sound like that Stevie guy off Malcolm in the Middle-he's always panting and ranting!"

"I said I'm taking Violet," I said. Then I looked at him. "That's not a problem, is it?" "No, no," Quigley said quickly. "It's not a problem at all."

"It's nothing personal, Quigley," I said, patting his shoulder. "But I don't like to go to dateless, and think of who you could take?"

Quigley shrugged. Brownley stuck the picture back in his wallet, and said, "You could take…Loretta!" "Who?" Quigley asked. "Loretta," Brownley said. "She's this girl really into cartography. She's in my third period. I'll try and set you up."

"Okay," Quigley said, looking at me.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At the dance, I was dressed in some of my best party clothes, and Violet was there, dressed in a skirt and baby blue blouse. Try saying that four times as fast as you can!

"Hi," I said. "Hi," she said. She walked over, and said, "I wonder where Quigley is?"

I shrugged. Then I pointed over to him. He was standing with Loretta, drinking punch and eating cookies.

I said, "Shall we dance?" 'You bet!" Violet said. We went onto the dance floor, and I started doing the robot. She laughed. "Where'd you learn to dance like that?" she asked. "School," I said. She laughed a second time.

After some snacks, more dancing, and more dancing, we went outside for a walk around the campus.

We stopped at a bench and sat down. "So," I said. "Do you like Quigley or me?" She turned her head and stared at me. "Are you asking me that?"

I nodded. Violet put her hand to her forehead. "Oh Lord, don't put me in this corner, please! I beg you, don't." "But I have to know!" I said. Violet looked back at me. "If you had to know, so would Quigley."

"I'd be more than happy to tell him myself," I said. "I like both of you," Violet said. She looked at her watch and said, "Whoa, it's late. I'd better be heading back."

She walked back to her dorm, leaving me thinking. But I returned back inside and poured myself another cup of punch. I sense someone standing behind me, so I turn around to see Quigley standing there fuming.

I had no idea why he was so mad, so I asked him. "Are you okay?" I asked. "No," he snapped. "How come?" I said. There was a long pause, so I figured it was the end-of-discussion pause, and turned to leave.

Quigley grabbed my shoulder and whirled me around. "Don't walk away when I'm talking to you!" he shouted. Some kids standing near us turned to look, but returned to their own thing.

"What are you trying to say?" I said quickly. "I can't stand here all day, you know." "Where're you taking that drink?" Quigley said sharply. "Into my throat, I'm parched."

"Oh, really?" Quigley's voice was beginning to rise. I was deadly hoping it wouldn't be the Violet fight, but against my fortune, that's what it was. "Or maybe you're going to take it to Violet, my woman, and of whom you stole from me for the dance."

I groaned. "Quigley, she doesn't belong to anyone, and she chose to go with me. If she wanted to go with you, she would have gone when you asked her. Didn't you?"

There was another long pause, so I figured this time it might be okay to leave. But according to Quigley, it apparently wasn't. His fist shot out and whipped across my face with all its might.

It didn't hurt that bad, but I was bleeding from the mouth. People were starting to look on, but even though he was my brother, he'd thrown the first punch; therefore I had to eventually show him whose boss.

I mean, it's kind of mean to hit your brother like that, especially when the mature thing to do was wash the blood off your face and walk away, but people were looking at me and laughing, so I couldn't just walk away; I mean, I'm not that high on the popularity scale, but at least I had social awareness, and I couldn't risk that, even when it wasn't a fair fight.

So you know what I did? Guess. A-walk away and do the mature thing. B-grab the nearest squirt-gun, fill it with punch and drench the nearest person laughing. C-hit Quigley back. D-grab Quigley's head and dunk it in the huge bucket of punch for twenty seconds.

If you guessed C, I'm afraid you're correct. I can't say Quigley's bruise looked as minor as mine. Instead, there was a small gash aside his bottom lip, with blood streaming from it.

Then I noticed everyone had stopped dancing and had stared at me. Everyone; Isadora, Klaus, Sunny, and Violet was standing there with her hand over her mouth. I had no idea why she was back.

VP Nero walked up, as if he was the person I wanted to see most. He looked at me, then Quigley, then patted my shoulder. "It takes a real man to fight back," he said.

I don't know why I did it, but I socked the loser in the stomach as hard as I could, then run from the gym. In fact, I ran from the campus.

When I reached the sidewalk, I pulled off my coat and threw it into the street. A passing truck ran over, leaving it nothing but a pile of black splinters. Then I pulled off my shirt and tossed it into the street as well. I started to unzip my pants as well, but decided against it. Even Nero wouldn't support destruction of fine dress pants.

So I walked shirtless back to my dorm. Andrew and Brownley were playing who-knows-what. Andrew glanced up at me, and a sly grin came to his face. "Wow, way to go, Duncan!" he congratulated. "I didn't think you'd do it, but you did."

"Shut up, I did nothing," I snapped, and headed for my bed to sleep away my madness.