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Because I'm sure that will fly with the Eagle!"

"Relax, dude," Takumi said. "First off, we're not gonna get caught. Second off, if we do, I'll take the fall with Alaska. You've got more to lose than any of us." The Colonel just nodded. It was an undeniable fact: The Colonel would have no chance at a scholarship to a good school if he got expelled from the Creek.

Knowing that nothing cheered up the Colonel like acknowledging his brilliance, I asked, "So how'd you hack the network?"

"I climbed in the window of Dr. Hyde's office, booted up his computer, and I typed in his password," he said, smiling.

"You guessed it?"

"No. On Tuesday I went into his office and asked him to print me a copy of the recommended reading list. And then I watched him type the password: J3ckylnhyd3."

"Well, shit," Takumi said. "I could have done that."

"Sure, but then you wouldn't have gotten to wear that sexy hat," the Colonel said, laughing. Takumi took the headband off and put it in his bag.

"Kevin is going to be pissed about his hair," I said.

"Yeah, well, I'm really pissed about my waterlogged library. Kevin is a blowup doll," Alaska said. "Prick us, we bleed. Prick him, he pops."

"It's true," said Takumi. "The guy is a dick. He kind of tried to kill you, after all."

"Yeah, I guess," I acknowledged.

"There are a lot of people here like that," Alaska went on, still fuming. "You know? Fucking blowup-doll rich kids."

But even though Kevin had sort of tried to kill me and all, he really didn't seem worth hating. Hating the cool kids takes an awful lot of energy, and I'd given up on it a long time ago. For me, the prank was just a response to a previous prank, just a golden opportunity to, as the Colonel said, wreak a little havoc. But to Alaska, it seemed to be something else, something more.

I wanted to ask her about it, but she lay back down behind the piles of hay, invisible again. Alaska was done talking, and when she was done talking, that was it. We didn't coax her out for two hours, until the Colonel unscrewed a bottle of wine. We passed around the bottle till I could feel it in my stomach, sour and warm.

I wanted to like booze more than I actually did (which is more or less the precise opposite of how I felt about Alaska). But that night, the booze felt great, as the warmth of the wine in my stomach spread through my body. I didn't like feeling stupid or out of control, but I liked the way it made everything (laughing, crying, peeing in front of your friends) easier. Why did we drink? For me, it was just fun, particularly since we were risking expulsion.

The nice thing about the constant threat of expulsion at Culver Creek is that it lends excitement to every moment of illicit pleasure. The bad thing, of course, is that there is always the possibility of actual expulsion.

I woke up early the next morning, my lips dry and my breath visible in the crisp air. Takumi had brought a camp stove in his backpack, and the Colonel was huddled over it, heating instant coffee. The sun shone bright but could not combat the cold, and I sat with the Colonel and sipped the coffee ("The thing about instant coffee is that it smells pretty good but tastes like stomach bile," the Colonel said), and then one by one, Takumi and Lara and Alaska woke up, and we spent the day hiding out, but loudly. Hiding out loud.

At the barn that afternoon, Takumi decided we needed to have a freestyle contest. "You start, Pudge," Takumi said. "Colonel Catastrophe, you're our beat box." "Dude, I can't rap," I pled.

"That's okay. The Colonel can't drop beats, either. Just try and rhyme a little and then send it over to me."

With his hand cupped over his mouth, the Colonel started to make absurd noises that sounded more like farting than bass beats, and I, uh, rapped.

"Um, we're sittin' in the barn and the sun's goin' down / when I was a kid at Burger King I wore a crown / dude, I can't rhyme for shit / so I'll let my boy Takumi rip it."

Takumi took over without pausing. "Damn, Pudge, I'm not sure I'm quite ready / but like Nightmare on Elm Street'sFreddy / I've always got the goods to rip shit up / last night I drank wine it was like hiccup hiccup / the Colonel's beats are sick like malaria / when I rock the mike the ladies suffer hysteria / I represent Japan as well as Birmingham / when I was a kid they called me yellow man / but I ain't ashamed a' my skin color / and neither are the countless bitches that call me lover."

Alaska jumped in.

"Oh shit did you just diss the feminine gender / I'll pummel your ass then stick you in a blender / you think I like Tori and Ani so I can't rhyme / but I got flow like Ghostbusters got slime / objectify women and it's fuckin' on / you'll be dead and gone like ancient Babylon."

Takumi picked it up again.

"If my eye offends me I will pluck it out / I got props for girls like old men got gout / oh shit now my rhyming got all whack / Lara help me out and pick up the slack."

Lara rhymed quietly and nervously — and with even more flagrant disregard for the beat than me. "My name's Lara and I'm from Romania / thees is pretty hard, um, I once visited Albania / I love riding in Alaska's Geo / My two best vowels in English are EO II'm not so good weeth the leetle i's / but they make me sound cosmopoleeteen, right? / Oh, Takumi, I think I'm done / end thees game weeth some fun."

"I drop bombs like Hiroshima, or better yet Nagasaki / when girls hear me flow they think that I'm Rocky / to represent my homeland I still drink sake / the kids don't get my rhymin' so sometimes they mock me / my build ain't small but I wouldn't call it stocky / then again, unlike Pudge, I'm not super gawky / I'm the fuckin' fox and this is my crew / our freestyle's infused with funk like my gym shoes. And we're out."

The Colonel rapped it up with freestyle beat-boxing, and we gave ourselves a round of applause.

"You ripped it up, Alaska," Takumi says, laughing.

"I do what I can to represent the ladies. Lara had my back."

"Yeah, I deed."

And then Alaska decided that although it wasn't nearly dark yet, it was time for us to get shitfaced.

"Two nights in a row is maybe pushing our luck," Takumi said as Alaska opened the wine.

"Luck is for suckers." She smiled and put the bottle to her lips. We had saltines and a hunk of Cheddar cheese provided by the Colonel for dinner, and sipping the warm pink wine out of the bottle with our cheese and saltines made for a fine dinner. And when we ran out of cheese, well, all the more room for Strawberry Hill.