The weekend passed quickly, and the week itself seemed to pass even quicker; soon there were only two weeks left until the dance . . .

"So as you can see," the teacher droned, "Rolle's Theorem is applicable not only in problem number 30, but also in problems 31 and 32."

T.K. stared down at his desk. He wasn't really paying attention to the lesson, even though he knew he should: his Calculus grades had been going down lately, ever since about a week ago . . .

What's wrong with me? he wondered. That phone call must have shaken me up worse than I thought. He sighed and ran his fingers tiredly through his hair.

Kari glanced over at T.K. worriedly. He doesn't look like he slept much last night. Today's Friday; the dance is in exactly two weeks. What should we do?

T.K. caught Kari looking at him out of the corner of his eye. She's watching me. She's worried. She knows I didn't sleep well last night. I—I'll talk to her later. Right now I need to pay attention!

"Everything I just said will be on your test next week, which will be over chapters 20-35," the teacher stated in his regular monotone.

T.K. sighed to himself as he looked at all the meaningless squiggles on the board; he didn't even half understand most of it. Guess I'll have to get the notes from Kari, too.

"T.K., are you all right?"

It was the lunch hour, and T.K. and Kari were once again sitting together under their tree.

T.K. looked up and met Kari's worried gaze with what he hoped was a comforting smile. "Yeah," he said tiredly, "I just didn't sleep too well last night. I was just wondering who would want to intimidate me with that phone call, and more importantly why? What good could someone else get out of scaring me off?"

"Did you come up with anything?"

T.K. started to shake his head, but before he could reply further a voice from behind them broke in: "We have a guess."

Turning, both T.K. and Kari were surprised to see Matt and Tai making their way towards them.

"Matt? Tai? What are you doing here?"

"We decided that we needed to meet," Tai said, domineering as always. "Just the four of us, so we can discuss our plan of action."

T.K. blinked. "Oh."

"Well, we thought about all the people who might have a reason to be angry with T.K., and we found one person who stood out above all the rest."

"Who?" T.K. and Kari asked together.

"Davis."

"What?!" T.K. and Kari exclaimed, once again simultaneously.

Kari looked over at Tai. "Why would Davis want to do something like that?"

T.K. turned to Matt. "Davis may be stubborn, but I don't think he'd be that downright mean!"

"Are you sure it's Davis, Tai?" Kari asked. She never liked to think badly of anyone, not even someone as annoying and overbearing as Davis.

"No," Tai admitted. "We're not sure at all. So far we have no proof."

"But he's still number one on our list!" Matt cut in.

"Number one on what list?" came an annoying voice from the school door behind them. They whirled to see Davis standing there. He gave them his normal, clueless grin and a thumbs-up. "I bet it's the 'coolest guys' list, right?"

"Guess again," Tai said, not bothering to lower his voice.

"Hey," Davis continued, ignoring Tai's comment and turning to Kari. "Did you get my phone message? I—"

Everyone was surprised by Matt's instantaneous reaction, not least of all Davis; those words were barely out of his mouth when Matt reached him. Grabbing him by his shirt front, Matt hoisted the unfortunate highschooler up into the air, slammed him back against the school building, and held him there. "Phone message?" Matt gritted from between clenched teeth. "You wouldn't have happened to call T.K. too, now, would you?"

"Hey, easy on the jacket! It's—huh?" Davis blinked, ceasing his protest and just looking down at Matt in obvious confusion. "I just called Kari to see if she'd changed her mind about—" he looked quickly away "—something."

Matt slammed him against the wall again, a little harder this time. "What sort of something?" he growled.

As much as he liked seeing Davis 'roughed up a little' ("It's good for him to realize he's not the toughest guy out there," he was often heard to say), Tai decided that it was time to intercede.

"Hey Matt, he's telling the truth. He did call Kari the other day, but he wasn't threatening at all. Remember, I told you about it-he asked if Kari'd changed her mind about going to the dance with T.K." He gave a sudden little snicker. "She hadn't, of course—"

"But Tai's right," Kari cut in, giving Tai a warning look. She turned back to Matt. "Davis was just being himself—persistent."

"Yeah, that's me!" Davis agreed, eager to assuage any trouble he'd caused, or that people thought he'd caused. "I'm persistently persistent!" Something suddenly seemed to dawn on him. "Hey, what happened to make you so uptight, Matt?"

Tai opened his mouth, about to say 'nothing' and end it there, when T.K. blurted, "I got a threatening phone call about a week ago—"

"Huh?!"

"—And we were trying to figure out who did it," Tai picked up. He shrugged. "Since you wanted to go to the dance with Kari, and the phone call was trying to scare T.K. away from going to that dance, you fell under suspicion. You were a suspect with a motive."

"You're starting to sound like Izzy," Davis muttered, trying to work through what the older boy had said. "So you're saying," he said at last, "That you think I did it?!"

"No, we're just saying that we considered it a possibility—"

"Hey, I may pull some dumb stunts, but I don't try to hurt anybody!"

"Hmmph," Matt said, obviously not convinced.

"Oh . . . and, ah, Matt?"

"Yeah?"

"Could you put me down now?"

All five kids heard the school bell ringing out the hour. Without relaxing his grip on the younger boy's shirt, Matt slowly let Davis slide down the wall.

"Ahem, well, we have to go," T.K. said, breaking the awkward moment.

"Bye!" Kari said, and they hurried off together.

After receiving a last hard look from Matt, Davis quickly followed, rubbing his neck and still looking rather bewildered.

Tai silently watched them go, then turned to Matt. "You shouldn't have done that, you know," he said quietly.

"Yeah, I know." Matt didn't look at him. "But . . . it's just that my Mom and Dad are counting on me to take care of T.K. while they're both out of the country, and I want them to know they can trust me. If anything happened to T.K., I don't know what I'd do . . ."

"Nothing's gonna happen to him, Matt!"

Matt didn't reply for a moment, then muttered, "I still think it could be Davis . . ."

"But we don't have any proof, Matt," Tai said patiently. "We're just gonna have to give Davis the benefit of the doubt."

The blonde musician sighed. "I guess you're right." He gave Tai a small, wry smile. "I'm just not thinking completely straight."

"You're under at lot of pressure right now. I understand. Now c'mon! We gotta go or we'll be late for class!"

"Right, let's go."

"You know, I don't think you've ever really forgiven Davis for June."

"What?"

"Remember? She made you go on that date with her years ago, and you couldn't object—if you did, Davis' parents would have found out about the Digiport." Tai smiled, lacing his fingers together behind his head. "I don't think you've ever forgiven Davis for making you do that."

"You're right," Matt said, blue eyes narrowing into icy slits. "I haven't."