“I duh-duh-don’t have a ruh-recorder.”

“You do now,” Ms. Jinkle says, handing over an orange sheet of paper with my name filled onto it. It’s a library loan request for a digital recorder. “Go get it now so you can start tonight, no excuses. They’ll show you how to use it. Now, make sure you come up with a good soothing place,” she says. “Okay, see you same time next week.”

The meeting with Ms. Jinkle ends halfway through fourth period, so I’m walking empty halls toward the library and trying to come up with a good soothing place when my mind wanders back to the quarry.

I remember waking up in Fisher’s van and staring out at a forest wrapped in leaves the color of cherry, banana, and apricots. And then walking up to the lip of the pit with all that blue sky, pink rock, and black water dizzying my head; trusting that itty-bitty rope and harness to hold me. Whole thing felt crazy at first, letting Bruce and Danny talk me into rappelling down that cliff. But once I took that first backward step over the edge—one of the scariest steps ever, just backing up over nothing, praying everything would hold—well, then, the world changed. All of a sudden, in one step, I’m kind of floating, like one of those hawks that sits on a draft, never even flapping its wings, but just hanging out, searching for mice or whatever. Eighty feet of air between me and the water and only my old sneaks touching the side of that massive stone slab. These monkeys poking their heads over the top edge, staring down at me, eyes big, grins bigger, chattering at my progress. Danny’s grin the biggest of them all.

Tippy-toeing along the rock turns into steps and then hops and then I really start shoving off the wall. I swing out from the cliff face and swing back in while the rope sings through my hands. My legs dance over the granite in slow motion. I’m graceful in a way that’s impossible in football pads and helmet. It’s like being in a dream where you figure out the secret to breaking gravity. Everyone else is stuck on the ground, stuck in the gears, but you get to float above it, float wherever you want.

And then Danny, leaping without the ropes! I feel the corners of my mouth turn up, now, remembering Danny stepping off the cliff like it’s nothing. Never seen anything like that. Couldn’t believe how far he fell, just kept going until his tiny speck smacked the water and plunged beneath, trailing a stream of white bubbles. Felt like a whole minute before he surfaced. When his head did finally pop out, his high whoop bounced off the quarry walls, climbing the sky back up to us. Then the other guys racing to see who’s next over the cliff. Shwiff, shwiff, shwiff. They go over the edge like teenage superheroes, laughing at something that would kill a normal person. Daredevil Danny jogs the trail up top, hugging himself and shivering, lips purple, teeth chattering, and water drops coating his lashes. He’s wrapped in goose pimples, hopping foot-to-foot around the bonfire, and I half expect him to just step into the flames to get warm, since, if he can survive that jump, why not a little fire?

Sun was setting over the far edge of the quarry before we finish gobbling up the last of the hot dogs and burgers, then get the ropes, harnesses, and coolers packed back into the van. The whole time I’m thinking I’m on the wrong team, that I should’ve let the hooting tribe of superhero monkeys adopt me instead.

“Can I help you?” the librarian asks, shaking me from the daydream. I nod slowly, trying to remember why I’m standing in front of her. The tip of the librarian’s nose points down at my hands while she peers at me over her reading glasses. When I pass her the orange sheet, her lips move like she’s sucking lunch out of her teeth. She squints at Ms. Jinkle’s handwriting and, after a minute, she hands the note back to me and points at a door along the wall.

“That’s the AVT room,” she says. “Tina’s in there now. She can help you.”

I go where I’ve been pointed. On the door of the AVT room hangs a printed poster, a mushroom cloud in psychedelic rainbow colors with the words AUDIO VISUAL TECHNOLOGY CLUB IS A BLAST! A sheet of paper Scotch-taped to the bottom of the poster welcomes students to sign up for the AVT club. The sheet is empty. As I walk into the room, I discover that the Tina the librarian mentions is the little goth Tina from Meadow’s House.

“Oh,” she says, seeing me before I can turn around to leave and come back another time. “Hi,” she says, pulling off headphones big as earmuffs and dropping them around her neck. Her white face reflects electric blue from whatever’s playing on her laptop screen.

I take a slow breath and step forward, handing her the orange sheet.

“Oooohhh . . . you must be special,” she teases. “We only have three of these babies and you get one on permanent loan for the whole year. Lucky you!”

I scratch at my chin whiskers and nod, wondering if I can get the recorder and leave without actually talking.

“Actually this is a requisition for one of our old, dumpy models. But luckily you’ve got the inside connection. Me. I’m gonna hook you up with our deluxe model. It’s smaller. You can clip it on your belt or even hang it around your neck. Best part is you can use it for your music. I’ll give you a flash disk, too, so you’ll have enough memory to hold a buttload of songs. You control playback and file searching with this button here,” she says, and her pinky flicks over the little gizmo without actually pointing to a button.

“Wuh-wuh-where?”

“Wow!” Tina says. “He speaks.” She reaches behind her and digs out a wire cable from a box full of flash disks and then plugs the recorder into her laptop while still talking. “Might as well give you all the goodies. I can hook you up with some of my music playlists—try and expand that jock brain of yours. Now that I’m thinking about it, I should send you the redubbed videos I’ve got. Not that you need more ego-stroking about your Friday night highlights but I’ve got some great edits—especially the one’s I’ve synched up to . . .” And she starts listing a dozen bands, most I’ve never heard of.

“Wuh-what?” I hold my hand up, trying to halt her mouth. “Video?”

“Of your games, duuude.” She drags this word out with a smirk and she might as well be saying “retard” or “shitbrain.” “Which reminds me, I thought the point of the game was that the ball carrier avoids the tacklers? Not rams into the nearest guy with that box of rocks under your helmet. Last game, you may have given yourself early-onset Alzheimer’s. I saw it—we all saw it—way too up close and personal thanks to that helmet cam. I have to admit those hits are acoustical magic when I pipe them through the new SuperPulse sound system. Fans love it, too. And we always give the unwashed cretins what they want, right?” She stops long enough to take a breath of air and then starts up again. “It would be nice if you’d work on your verbal skills—I’m not asking for a twenty-four hundred SAT score or anything but I mean, come on, throw me a bone. I don’t need a Shakespearean sonnet, but give me something to work with beyond the occasional grunt. Think about it.”

“You like fuh-fuh-football?” I ask.

“About as much as getting my period,” she answers.

“Huh?”

“I don’t like football,” she clarifies before sliding a spoonful of yogurt into her mouth. “What I do like is single-handedly running the control board for our school’s newly acquired Xenbro XB 5000 Stadium Big Screen with SuperPulse sound system. You want bigger and better, you’ll have to buy NFL tickets.”

“That’s yuh-yuh—” I start before she cuts me off.

“Yeah, that’s me,” she says. “I’m the DJ up in the booth ... beeyatch!”

“Why?” I ask, meaning why does she do it if she hates football?

“Why? Are you serious?” she asks back, ready to laugh at how stupid the question is to her. “While Buffy and Chrissy are bragging that they led the cheerleading squad, I get to tell Harvard and Yale I ran the sound and light board equivalent of an outdoor rock concert on a biweekly basis. In fact, I may just skip college and set up my own production shop. Chrissy and Buffy will marry one of you no-necked, atavistic, knuckle-draggers and pop out pretty but dim-witted rug rats while I’m touring the world with the stars, being paid in euros and yen, and having people shudder in ecstacy every time my fingers tickle a sound-board. You and your buddies go on and break your heads open. I’ll broadcast it and make millions. That’s why.”

She suddenly stops like she’s trying either to catch her breath or get hold of her mouth before it runs off without her. She turns her attention back to her laptop. I hear soft clicking as her fingers massage the keys. She starts talking again but this time she keeps her eyes on her laptop screen.

“It’s only me and Walt Hasting, our play-by-play announcer and the man that time forgot, up in the booth. Walt’s about as useful and nimble around electronics as a mummy and he’s got no idea what the hell I do. He nips from a whiskey flask the whole game, tells me how much tougher the players were in his day—which to look at him, I’m guessing was back before fire—and refers to me as ‘devil girl.’ But as long as I get in the ‘Big Munch Crunch’ plug from our sponsor and turn on the feed from your helmet mic-cam, they let me do whatever I want.”

She stops typing and unplugs the recorder from the laptop wire. She also unplugs a flash drive sticking out from her laptop.

“Here,” she says, handing the drive and recorder to me. “You’ll like this stuff, and if you don’t, you should. It might expand your brain—what’s left after the concussions. It’ll definitely expand your music horizons.”

I take the recorder and flash drive from her and notice how warm her hands are when we touch. “The flash drive can plug directly in the recorder for extra music storage or to swap out songs,” she says, and then reaches under her desk and passes me a nice set of earphones, similar to what she’s wearing. “These have noise reduction with bass-boost. When you listen to track three, make sure you crank up the bass. It’ll blow you away.”

I nod.

“Also, the microphone is built into the recorder. The sheet you gave me said ‘speech therapy,’ not that I was snooping, so if you need to record your voice, all you have to do is hit this button here and you’re good to go.”

I nod again and heft the little device in my hand. It feels small enough I might lose it faster than my phone.

“If you need help using it, you can come back here and I’ll show you. And I can give you more cool downloads once I refine your tastes.”

“Duh-duh-do you hear everything in muh-muh-my helmet?” I ask, feeling suddenly exposed.

“That’s right, my friend.” She smiles in a way that makes me bring a hand in front of my crotch. “Everything.”

I gather up the dangling headphone cords and turn to leave with my new goodies.

“Wait, you’ve got to sign the sheet or I’ll get in trouble,” Tina says. “I get class credit for running the AVT club. If you don’t sign for this stuff, Ms. Jinkle’s gonna get mad.”

She thrusts a sheet at me and I reach for a short golf pencil on her desk and start to sign.

“Seriously, track three will blow your balls off. It’s that good. I’ll slip another flash drive in your locker with more music.”

“Okay,” I say. “Thuh-thuh-thanks.”

She rolls her eyes at me. “Don’t mention it.”