"Mia Luccino?" Alec demanded. "The Mia Luccino?"

Max shrugged. "Desperate times call for desperate measures."

"Mia Luccino?" Alec asked again. "You're whoring me out to Mia Luccino?"

"She's willing to pony up ten grand in cash - that's the choreographer, new uniforms, pom-poms, and my prom dress all rolled up into one neat little bag of hundreds," Max said.

"Is this what you've become?" Alec asked. "A pimp for your cause?" Max took a deep breath, then thought about it...

"Yes, Alec," she nodded. "This is what I've become. I'm a pimp." Alec groaned. "Oh, stop being such a baby! All you have to do is go out on one date with Mia! It's not as if it's the end of the world."

"That girl is insane and two years younger than me," Alec said. "She's like... Gogo Yubari, only not Japanese and - two years younger!"

"It won't kill you," Max told him. "Besides, Mia'll get you one way or another. She always gets her way."

"That's comforting," Alec said defeatedly. "One date, and on one condition." Max tilted her head, realizing just how close her fellow senior was to her.

"What's that?" she asked defiantly.

Alec leaned down until his face (his lips!) were only millimeters away from hers. "You gotta... stop throwing alarm clocks at me when I'm in the shower. I nearly got electrocuted this morning."

"I can't help it," Max said. "Five bedrooms, two bathrooms. It's just unnatural."

"Then use the master shower."

"The master shower?" Max asked. "You have a master bathroom?"

"Sure," Alec said, as if it were a well-known fact. "It's in my parents bedroom. I've used it once or twice to wash off after... well," he shrugged, "just after."

"Master bathroom," Max repeated. "I'll check into that, but tomorrow you and Mia go to the movies together, followed by a dinner at the 41 Club. Dress casualfor the occasion."

"Alec McDowell and Mia Luccino?" Kendra asked, wrinkling her nose. "Talk about the odd couple."

"Odd couple that's getting me ten grand," Max corrected.

Kendra, for a change, wasn't in her office rabidly copying down any gossip she'd heard over the past week. Actually, she was in the gym with Max - who was on a day off from her Jam Pony workplace, watching the Reds (a common name for the school's basketball team - the Bloodhounds... they seemed to never feel pain, which was weird and implied the copious use of steroids) practice. Her fingers were kept busy by the laptop on her lap, she was writing an email to one of her new boyfriends.

"But I thought Alec was your business," Kendra said, her eyes glued to the screen. "And Mia - oooh," she grimaced.

"What?" Max asked, ignoring the jab at her.

"Mia's Dougie's business." Kendra looked over at Max, "Dougie's big business."

"So?" Max asked. "The kid's five-foot-three. I don't imagine he'll be beating up Alec any time soon."

"What about his thugs?" Kendra asked.

"He's, like, the bookkeeper of the school mafia," Max said. "Handles transactions from us to them."

"Bookkeepers get thugs," Kendra told her. "Everybody gets thugs when their dads are big time criminals. Thugs and really big houses. You've seen Mia's house, right? Place is a damn mansion!"

"Mia's dad's a criminal?" Max asked, surprised.

"Her step-dad is, anyways." Kendra sighed. "I swear, the divorce rate of the parents in this school is just embarassing."

"Who's her dad?" Max demanded.

"Um... some Brock guy or something," Kendra shrugged. "I heard his got his hands in everything this year. Drug dealing, kidnapping, arson, first-degree murder." Brock? Why did that name sound so familiar? "First-class asshole where kids are concerned, too," Kendra said. "I heard he ships them off to Middle East or something."

"Gerhardt Bronck?" Max nearly had a stroke. "That's Mia's dad?" Kendra nodded. Now she remembered why the name sounded so familiar. Renfro was always complaining to Deck about Bronck-this or Bronck-that; "Bronck wants me to testify that I saw him at the school picking up his daughter on Friday!", "Bronck's being charged of murdering his ex-wife... again. He's putting all of his money into his daughter's school account so that the police won't be able to get it."

"Yeah, he owns the 41 Club, didn't you know that?" Kendra asked. "Good thing Alec and Mia aren't going there. Bronck'd kill Alec, he's really protective of his daughter's virtue and all..."

"I gotta go," Max said quickly, jumping up from the bleachers.

"If you're going to the 41 Club, get me an onion blossom!" Kendra yelled. Her cell phone chirped and she answered it. "Hey, Walter..."

Author's Note: Somehow, Gerhardt Bronck as a loving step-father is just a little to creepy for me to envisualize (is that a word?).

Please review! And as always, if I get three or more reviews within the next two hours then I'll post the next chapter today.

Coming up next: A night at the 41 Club!