Thank you for the reviews "Recessssss", NatalieJ-101, and Ishvallan.

Ishvallan; I have a blast reading reviews with predictions! Also reader's predictions help me to see whether or not I am being too predictable.


When one thinks back to their middle school dances they are often reminded of the annoying repetitive pop songs from that decade. Well here we are just ten months into the new millennium and the jams of the '90s are still fresh in our minds. Fortunately though the DJ blessed the dancers with some '90s rock; a handful of Metallica songs, a couple of Aerosmith songs, and finally a little Red Hot Chilli Peppers, but like all good things it had to come to an end. Besides what would a middle school dance be without some cliche mushy love songs do dance to. The DJ slowed things back down with a slow song from one of those annoying boy bands that Tj and Spinelli couldn't stand. The Backstreet Men or Men to Boys... something like that.

At that moment it was like the students had ceased being kids and grew into full blown teenagers. They embraced the slow music, and their partners in a really awkwardly spaced dance. The boys placed a hand on each side of their partner while the girls wrapped their arms loosely around the boys necks. The distance they kept between them made the whole thing awkward and embarrassing. It seemed like you could fit Mrs. Finster between them or even an entire car, but in reality they were just arms length apart. Every couple seemed to be guilty of this act.

Tj and Spinelli called it quits when the 'mushy love junk' started playing, and stood around watching their peers grow up right in front of them. It was entertaining to Tj to watch them in this state but Spinelli was just downright disgusted by it all. "That's not dancing."

"Do you want to show them how to do it right?" Tj offered her his hand.

She was secretly happy to have been asked, but she hesitated to accept his offer. "I don't know how to slow dance either, I just know that what they're doing is not it."

He put his hands in his pockets and bit his lip. "Umm... so... I may or may not have a little slow dancing experience."

Assuming that he was kidding, she laughed at his remark.

His cheeks became flushed but he continued, reminding her of the time in fourth grade when he got a black eye from square dancing in his youth group. "First we did a few slow dances, then we moved on to some more folksy stuff like square dancing. My mom finally let me quit when I got that black eye."

She knew he was being honest that time because he looked at her in the eye the entire time he spoke. She still found it kinda funny though. Tj Detweiler the fearless leader, the class clown, the coolest kid in school... could waltz? She forced her lips together and tried her hardest not to smile, but Tj caught on to her.

"Errr forget it, just please don't tell anyone." He turned away from her and walked back to their table. Just as he was about to sit he felt a hand on his shoulder.

He was expecting his tiny companion with open arms and an apologetic mug, but when he turned around he found someone towering over him with a mischievous grin accompanied by an equally mischievous crew.

"What do you want Mundy?"

"Word on the street is that you and that chick of yours stole the dissection frogs today. I just wanted to say kudos man."

"YOU HEARD WHAT?!" If pinching yourself wakes you up from a dream, how do you wake yourself up from a nightmare? "Why would we steal the frogs when we were protesting to keep them alive!"

"Oh come one don't be modest." Skeens gave him one big forceful pat on the back, knocking the air out of him and nearly knocking him over.

Mundy grabbed his arm and kept him from falling. He dusted him off and grinned at him like he was about to pitch him a sale. "Now what exactly do you plan on doing with the specimen? I know you're a crafty prankster but I just thought I'd weigh in on..."

Tj was starting to get angry and found it best to just back off and walk away before he ends up punching Mundy, Skeens or one of their cronies. Again.

"Hmm I wonder where Spinelli went?"

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"Ohhhh we are such rotten friends." Mikey sobbed dramatically into Gretchen's shoulder.

"We are not." She patted his back to try to console him. "We couldn't possibly have known that they were set up."

Vince stood up from the steps and started to walk back inside. "All I know is Randall is a snitch and he's ganna get it!"

"Wait Vince where are you going?" Gretchen stopped him by tugging on his shirt.

"I'm ganna get Spinelli, I'm sure she's ganna want a piece of him."

"It'd probably be in her best interest not to get her all fired up, especially with the current state of her permanent record."

"Well now that we know the truth they can get their records cleared." Gus pointed out cheerfully.

Vince looked over at Mikey and whispered so the others couldn't hear. "You know once we get your name cleared those schools that rejected you are going to begging on their knees for you to attend."

Mikey wiped a tear from his eye and mouthed 'thank you'.

Gretchen hated being the logical one in the group but somebody had to do the job. "Well Not necessarily Gus."

"What are you talking about? They didn't steal the answers we just heard Randall confess!"

"Yes but what proof do we have? I'm almost certain that he won't confess to Mr. Flynn or the administration."

"We could threaten him." Vince suggested.

"Please friends can't we solve this without violence!?" Mikey cried.

"Mikey's right." Gretchen pointed out. "We must go about this without threats and physical altercations, or else we run the risk of tarnishing our own names."

"What are we going to do then?" Vince was grateful to have someone as logical and rational as Gretchen on his side, especially now he was starting to feel his inner Spinelli coming out. He wanted nothing more than to show Randall that he messed with the wrong group. Gretchen may not be able to physically hold him back but she can always convince him to stop before he steps out of line. "We can't let the little snitch get away with it."

"This might be a shot in the dark but we can take a look around Mr. Flynn's office to see if we can find any evidence, the administration could have overlooked something when they did their investigation of the stolen tests."

"Do you actually think we'll find anything?" Gus asked with uncertainty.

"Randall's not exactly the brightest kid, I'd say our chances are pretty good." Vince reassured.

"We should get started now, we need to get back by the time they announce the winners of the costume contest!"

"Oh did you enter the costume contest Gretchen?"

"No Gus I'm not. The costume contest is when the entire school meets on the dance floor. I imagine that's when Randall is going to release the frogs so he can have a greater number of victims."

"When do they announce the winners?"

Gretchen adjusted her glasses and looked at her watch."We have precisely one hour, twenty-two minutes and... seventeen seconds. Come on let's get moving!"

Gus glanced at his own watch and gasped. "Uh I gotta go do something first, I'll meet you guys in a few."

Gus began to walk away but Vince took hold of his arm and pulled him back to the group.

"Sorry Houdini, you can't pull one of your escape acts now we need you."

Gus thought for a second on how he could excuse himself. He could feel Mikey glaring at him, he turned to face him and met a look of disappointment. He sighed and looked down at his feet. "Oh boy it's going to be a long night."

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"It's locked." Gus tried jiggling the door knob."

Vince shook his head. "No kidding Gus, if teachers left their offices unlocked someone might do something crazy like... I don't know steal some test answers."

Mikey laughed while Gretchen tried to unlock the door with a bobby pin. After breaking four of them she ran out. "This isn't going to work."

"What now?" Gus slammed his back against the lockers and slid to the floor. He looked up and a light bulb went off above his head. "Hey there's a vent above his office, you guys thinking what I'm thinking?"

Mikey bent down so his friends could use him like a ladder to climb into the ventilation system. "Just like the good old days at 3rd street."

Despite still being new to the school and not knowing the buildings blue prints as they did with their elementary school. The four friends were successful in crawling through the vent system, they climbed out and spread out to search for clues.

Mr. Flynn's office was very small so it wouldn't take the gang to long to search.

Gretchen began by studying Randall's class work, and making observations about his penmen ship in case they found any hand written clues.

Mikey dusted all surfaces for finger prints, while Vince checked the floor for foot prints.

And Gus went through Mr. Flynn's files to try to find anything else that might be of use.

"Even if I find a foot print how are we going to know who it belongs to?" Vince turned off his u.v flash light that he used to search for prints.

"It's simple, different shoes leave behind different impressions. Tj almost always wears converse sneakers which have markings unlike any other shoe, so it should be easy to distinguish whether or not a print belongs to him. And we all know that Spinelli has been wearing her brother's old boots since the third grade. Those combat boots are a hundred percent Italian leather and have very unique impressions."

"So if we find a foot print that doesn't match their shoes..."

"That's where things get difficult... We'd have to match the prints to Randall's shoes some how."

"Well let's not worry about that now, we should really focus on one thing at a time."

"Uh hold up if we found a foot print wouldn't it be likely that it would belong to Mr. Flynn."

"I took that into consideration, I've already lifted a footprint of his that I found under his desk."

"Wow Gretch you really thought of everything."

"Hey guys you gotta check out this drawing that Spinelli did of Mrs. Finster it's really good!" Gus laughed, he handed the drawing over to Gretchen.

Vince peaked over her shoulder and chuckled. "This is spot on! She even got the liver spots right!"

Gretchen was less interested in the markings on the paper than the physical state of the paper. She silently inspected the paper and looked at the several creases, trying to mimic the many folds. After the last fold she held the paper up and admired her work. In her hand she held a paper football.

"It looks great Gretchen, but is now really the time to play?"

"Don't you get it Mikey? This is how Spinelli and Tj got accused of stealing the answers! Spinelli wrote this note with a liking of Mrs. Finster and addressed it to Tj, then she signed it. On the morning of the test it was found in the filing cabinet where the test answers should have been."

"Everyone knows that's how they got caught, how is the paper football going to help us now?" Vince asked skeptical as usual.

Gretchen held the paper football under Vince's nose. "Does this smell familiar?"

"UGH!" Vince batted her hand away and pinched his nostrils together to stop the stench from penetrating his nose.

Mikey then took a turn at sniffing it. "That is familiar...Is that..."

"Pickles and anchovies." Gus almost lost his lunch after getting a whiff of the paper.

"That's Randall's favorite sandwich..."

"That my friends, is just the evidence we need to clear our friends' names." Gretchen smiled at the gang. "Come on let's go tell them the good news."

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Spinelli felt horrible for laughing at Tj. When she managed to calm down and make a strait face again she went to apologize to him.

She walked around the perimeter of the gym to avoid bumping into any dancers along the way.

"Ooof!"

"Hey watch it!" Of course there were still plenty of people to bump into on the sidelines.

"Sorry Spinelli."

She looked up at the kid that knocked her over and felt heat rise to her face.

"Oh hi baby-too... uh I mean Jhonny V."

The blonde boy extended a hand to her, she accepted his offer and he pulled her back onto her feet.

"Are you okay?" Instead of releasing her when she was upright he changed the position of their hands and gave hers a squeeze.

"Heh yeah, I'm fine. Are you?"

"Well yeah, but I'm not the one that fell flat on my butt."

Her cheeks were still bright red, but this time with anger. She pulled her hand back and slapped his away. "I didn't fall! Some clumsy ole goon knocked me over. Watch where you're going next time will yah?" Spinelli shoved Jhonny V. and walked away before he hit the floor.

"I hope Tj isn't mad at me for laughing at him."

As she got closer to the table she saw that Tj wasn't alone. Someone had been keeping him pretty occupied in her absence. Someone she had never had ill feelings for until earlier that day. Someone named Judy.

Before she could be seen she doubled back to the perimeter of the gym. Jhonny V. was still dusting himself off from his tumble when she returned.

"Hey you wanna dance?" She asked not beating around the bush.

"But you just shoved me!"

"So is that a no or what?"

Jhonny V. just shrugged and motioned for Spinelli to follow him to the dance floor.