She was staring directly at the Big Office, wrapped in a black winter parka. Despite the cold, she wasn't wearing a hat or scarf, allowing me a clear view of her ice-blue eyes, her sculpted cheekbones, and her raven hair.

My glimpse of her was so quick, however, that her presence didn't even register until I was a few steps up the next staircase. I froze in mid-stride, wondering if it would be okay for me to retrace my path and take another look.

As if answering my question, Oranda deftly took my arm and led me onward. "The marble on this staircase was originally selected by the fourth Little O. . . ."

It occurred to me that Oranda's litany of interior decorating facts was probably designed to distract me from what was really going on at the Big Office, although I didn't read anything sinister into it; it was most likely standard Big Office tour procedure. Guests were led through the building all the time, and it made sense that they would be told things about paint color and floral arrangements rather than "In the room behind us, the Little O is currently meeting with Odd Squad aquatics department about disarming a nuclear bomb that will awaken hundreds of sea monsters that can destroy civilization as we know it. . . ."

Oranda had no idea what I was really here for. She thought I was there for a playdate. So she was probably under orders to shepherd me through the official areas as quickly as possible and get me to the private quarters. Not wanting to make waves, I let her lead me up to the top floor.

"You are really quite lucky, AJ," she told me. "Very few members of the public ever get to see this portion of the Big Office. Only those whose presence is requested by the Little O . . ."

What was Orica doing there? I wondered. Had it even really been her? I'd seen her for half a second, if that, and she'd been quite far away. Furthermore, Orica usually excelled at not being seen. The only reason I could imagine that she'd have posted herself right out in the open, without a hat or sunglasses, was that she wanted to be seen.

Though I had to wonder, was she hoping I would see her—or hoping someone else would?

We arrived at the second floor of The Big Office. The residential area. Compared to the rigidly formal first floor, it was surprisingly homey. It was cleaner than any of my friends' homes—there was doubtlessly a large domestic staff at the Big Office—and the décor was over-the-top, with lots of historic prints and carved jackalopes, but there was a lived-in feeling to it. The carpet was worn, the walls all looked as though they'd been beaned with a baseball now and then. Close by, the door to the guest's bathroom hung open, revealing toothbrushes and acne medication lined up on the sink, towels embroidered with an official Odd Squad logo, and a surprisingly cheap-looking plastic shower curtain.

"Well, here we are!"Oranda announced, stopping outside the door to the guest's room. I could tell it was Jason's because there was a handmade sign taped to it proclaiming JASON'S ROOM. KEEP OUT!

From behind the door came the sounds of gunfire and ominous action music, the telltale soundtrack of a first-person shooter video game.

Oranda knocked. "Jason!" she called out. "AJ's here!"

"Cool!" came the reply. "Send him in!"

"Looks like my work here is done!"Oranda said. Ignoring the homemade warning sign, she opened the door and ushered me inside.

Despite the fact Jason was only visiting for a week it looked like he had lived in the room his whole life. The walls were plastered with posters of professional athletes and rock bands (all autographed) and the floor was covered with sports equipment and dirty laundry. The shelves were stacked high with books, games, and model airplanes. There was a small air hockey table, a keyboard, two electric guitars, and a large television, currently displaying the video game I'd heard. I recognized it as Target: Annihilation, a game in which you were supposed to be a spy. Jason was running through a rail yard filled with heavily armed enemy agents, mowing them down with a gun the size of a small cannon. Jason himself was slumped in a tatty beanbag chair, his back to me, the game controller clenched in his hands.

"Have fun!"Oranda exclaimed, then closed the door to give us privacy.

Jason was so engrossed in his game, he didn't turn around. All I could see of him was a mop of unkempt black hair.

"Uh . . . hi," I said.

Jason didn't respond. He kept blowing away enemy agents.

I tried again. "What are you playing?"

There was still no answer.

"Mind if I play too?"

"Yes, I mind!" Jason snapped angrily. "My cousin might be able to force me to hang out with some loser I've never met, but she can't make me like it. So sit down, shut up—and don't touch any of my stuff."

"Hey now . . . ," I began.

"What part of 'shut up' did you not understand?" Jason yelled. "I don't want you here, okay? The sooner you leave, the better, get it?"

I sighed, realizing that Jason wasn't as nice as his cousin. Instead, he was a raging jerk—and now I was stuck with him.

I gave Jason a minute to calm down before I tried speaking to him again. "You know why I'm here, right?" I asked. "It's for your cousin's safety. We think her life is in danger."

Jason snorted, annoyed. "People always think she's in danger. She can't even go to the bathroom without having sixteen Security agents follow her."

"This time is different," I said.

"Yeah, this time I have to suffer as well." Jason blasted a few enemy agents indiscriminately. "I was supposed to have a real friend come by today. But now that's been canceled and I have you instead."

I looked around for a place to sit but couldn't find one. The bed and the only chair were buried under Jason's things. A pair of rancid socks was slung over the back of the chair; they reeked so badly, they could have killed a canary.

So I remained standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. "Look, I'm not thrilled I have to be here either. . . ."

"Yeah, right. I'll bet they really had to twist your arm to get you to hang out with me at the Big Office."

"If you don't want me here, the fastest way to get rid of me is to help me find whoever is after your cousin."

Jason blew a few pixelated birds out of the sky just to watch them explode into clouds of red mist. "If there really was someone smart enough to get an assassin into the Big Office, how is some lame dork in secondhand clothes supposed to find him when the entire Security force can't?"

I looked over my clothes, which were indeed mostly secondhand. I was dying to tell Jason exactly what I'd done before, so he'd understand what I was capable of: I had saved his own cousin's life from a missile attack and I had engineered the destruction of THE ORGANIZATION's headquarters. Only, I couldn't tell him any of that, because all that information would make the Odd Squad seem so incompetent that a student had to save the world.

Instead, all I could offer was, "They wouldn't have sent me if they didn't think I could help."

Jason gave another snort of disgust, then returned his full attention to his game, done speaking to me. He was now moving through an abandoned warehouse, trading potshots with bad guys.

I was starting to get quite warm. The heat was cranked up to subtropical temperatures and I was still wearing my winter jacket. I shrugged it off and set it gingerly on the doorknob. "I SAID DON'T TOUCH MY STUFF!" Jason roared. He threw his controller aside and whirled around, allowing me to see his face for the first time since I'd arrived. He was at an awkward spot in puberty where his nose had ballooned, his hair was getting greasy, and his skin was blotchy with pimples. "Are you too stupid to understand English?"

A few months ago, I probably would have turned tail and fled the room. But I'd learned a few things at the Odd Squad. First and foremost: When in an uncomfortable situation, imagine what Orica would do.

So I stayed rooted to my spot and fixed Jason with as hard a stare as I could muster. "I know you're very busy pretending to fight evildoers, but I actually have had to do it. And it isn't anything like that game you're playing. In the first place, no evil syndicate worth its salt would set up shop in an abandoned warehouse. And they're not going to sic three hundred minions on you without teaching them to shoot straight. Meanwhile, any agent idiotic enough to run blindly into a place like that without backup would last thirty seconds tops before he got blown to pieces, no matter how lousy his opponents' aim is. A real enemy group is clever, elusive, and always trying to be three steps ahead of you, so if you want to beat them, you have to be smarter than they are. Which is why I've been sent in. I might not be the best shooter or the best fighter, but I am not stupid. I have level-sixteen math skills, I can speak three languages fluently, and frankly, compared to me, you have the IQ of a hamster."

Jason's jaw dropped open. "Urk" was all he could manage. I couldn't tell if he was cowed by my response, or stunned because people usually didn't talk to him like this. Either way, I appreciated the effect.

"So," I went on, "I'd really appreciate it if you'd can the pathetic 'woe is me' attitude and help me out. I could give a hoot about a stuck-up brat like you, but I'd really like to prevent these guys from killing your cousin."

In response to this, Jason appeared to think about his behavior. He took a moment to consider how he'd treated me—and then went right back to being a jerk again. "That makes one of us," he spat. "If anyone whacked my cousin, they'd be doing me a favor."

With that, he picked up his controller again and resumed the game.

I walked out of the room. I wasn't turning tail, though. I was just so annoyed at Jason that I didn't feel like being anywhere near him. Plus, I had to use the bathroom. It had been nearly two hours since I'd gone back at school.

The bathroom was more nicely decorated than my entire house. Every fixture was gold-plated. The toilet was fully automated. The lid rose automatically for me as I entered, which I found kind of disturbing.

To my surprise, the toilet began to play music. It was probably supposed to be comforting, some sort of melody to soothe you while you pooped, but the whole idea of a musical toilet just weirded me out.

It wasn't until I finished my business that I realized there was no toilet paper.

There was a wall of buttons next to the toilet and I started pressing them in hopes one of them was an automatic toilet paper dispenser. I pressed a red one marked APR. A robotic voice announced, "Automatic Pad Remover Activated". There was a tugging in my nether regions and I quickly turned it off. The next button I pressed was marked BM which I hoped was for the bidet mode. "Blackhole Mode Activated," said the robotic voice.

I heard the water in the bowl start rapidly spinning until it was replaced by a swirling void of increased gravity. My survival instincts kicked in and I attempted to leap away from the toilet before I was sucked into oblivion. I wasn't able to reach the door before the blackhole reached maximum suckage. I clung to the bathroom sink for dear life as various medications and bath toys were pulled into the blackhole. "HELP!" I yelled at the top of my lungs as the wet sink caused me to start slipping off.

Every security agent within earshot promptly came running. The closest one, a thickly built fireplug of a girl who'd been posted outside the Little O bedroom, charged around the corner and, before I could even try to explain what had happened, nailed me with a flying tackle. Another security agent whipped out a gadget and blasted the blackhole.

The agents now shifted their attention to me, yanking me off the floor and shoving me up against the wall. Several pairs of hands roughly frisked me at once. I tried to explain what had happened, but the first security agent had knocked the wind out of me when she'd tackled me. All that came out was a wheeze of air.

"Dang, What the heck are they teaching at Villain University these days" the biggest of the agents called through the bathroom door. "shouldn't you be outside the Big Office before trying to destroy the Big Office?"

"It was an accident," I gasped. "I thought BM was for bidet mode. Why the heck is there even a blackhole mode on a toilet?"

The security agents all ignored my question and looked at me accusingly.

"I'm not a villain," I said quickly. "I'm a friend of Jason's, here to hang out."

This didn't seem to convince the agents of anything. "I wasn't informed of any playdate today," the big agent said.

"It's not a playdate," I said quickly. "And it was kind of last-minute. Maybe they forgot to tell you."

"Or maybe you're a villain attempting to suck several important Odd Squad leaders into oblivion," the agent replied suspiciously.

The agent pounded on Jason's door and said, "Jason, could you please come out here?"

"I'm busy!" Jason shouted back. I figured he had certainly heard all the commotion in the hall but was willfully ignoring it.

"The fate of the world is at stake," the agent said.

Jason groaned, and then the sound of his video game paused. His footsteps slowly thumped across the floor.

Jason yanked open his door dramatically, as though we'd been asking a great deal of him to walk all the way across his room. "What?" he demanded.

The big security agent pointed at me. "We just caught this young man attempting to destroy the Big Office . . . ."

"I wasn't!" I protested. "There was no toilet paper!"

The agent ignored me and spoke to Jason. "He claims he's a friend of yours, rather than an intruder. Can you confirm that?"

Jason looked at me, then turned to the agents and shook his head. "Never seen him before," the little creep said. "Looks like a villain to me." Then he gave me a quick, smug smile and shut the door.