There are rare times when school isn't such a bad place to be, and chief among these are the times when you're sitting on a couch with a girl's butt pressed into each of your arms.

Granted, this isn't the sort of thing that happens every day, but it was known to happen to me on Fridays during the gifted-pool meetings. At the first meeting of the second semester of my eighth-grade year, all twelve of us were piled onto the old green couch in the room above the gym, as was our usual fashion, while Mr. Streich, our fearless leader, took attendance.

I was trying to pay attention to what was going on. Or, anyway, I was trying to look like I was--but I had Anna Brandenburg's butt pressing into the lower part of my right arm and Jenny Kurosawa's butt near my left shoulder, which was somewhat distracting. It's hard to imagine a situation more preferable to math class, where I spent sixth period the other four days of the week.

Mr. Streich was at the front of the room, running his fingers across his mustache--he did that quite a lot, as though he was trying to make sure it was still there or something--and pointing his pen at odd spots on the couch, trying to figure out if we were all present. It was no small task, considering that a couple of people were buried so deep that all he could see of them was their shoes. But he took it in stride.

"Well then," he said, when he had decided we were all there, "are you guys ready to hear what the first gifted-pool project of the semester is going to be?"

The noise that came out of the couch probably just sounded like a low rumble, but most of us were saying "Sure," "Yeah," or something like that.

"You...