Page 22 of Pick Me Up On Tuesdays

She sighed dramatically. “Go. Get out of my office before I start regretting this.”

I was gone before she could change her mind.

Chapter 8: Mayhem, Jocks, and One Very Angry Dwarf

Turns out, "one condition" became a whole list of conditions. A while later, Principal Catherine sent me a text outlining the rules for our countrywide-documentary-making tour.

"Maximum of 20 students.

A teacher will be present to prevent any ideas of setting the country on fire.

ALL EYES ON ETHAN.

Strict budgeting.

Send progress videos after every step.

DID I MENTION KEEP AN EYE ON ETHAN?"

That was the actual text.

And as if things weren’t already anxiety-inducing, she assigned a dwarf to supervise us. Not to be racist, but they snore like a chainsaw with commitment issues. Good luck to us with sleeping. Worse, this particular dwarf, Mr. Dax, had a reputation for being both strict and

unpredictable—he once made a student write a five-page essay on "Why Cheating is for the Weak" after catching them copying homework. Just imagining it made my fingers twitch. Did the essay have citations? A proper thesis? Did he grade for structure?

So, yeah. This trip just kept on getting better.

Meanwhile, Shun did me a favor and asked Ethan about the car’s price. His response? "It's complicated." The audacity. But,of course, Max had his ways of getting real answers. Turns out, not even winning the competition would cover the full cost. Not to mention, if we lost all hell would embrace us. However, if I freelanced nonstop for all twenty days of our research trip, we might just manage to fix it.

And yet, here I was.

The list had exactly twenty slots. Not twenty-one. Not twenty-five. Just twenty.

So why, at 6:30 a.m. in the freezing morning, was I staring at a swarm of jocks trying to board the school bus like it was game day? FYI they weren't invited.

I gripped my clipboard tighter, fingers cold and slightly clammy. “Name?”

The first guy smirked. “Uh… Timothy Blackwood.”

I squinted at him. Timothy Blackwood was a short, glasses-wearing junior who once passed out from seeing a squirrel fight. The guy standing in front of me was built like a brick wall with the IQ to match.

“Timothy?” I echoed. “As in, Timothy Timothy?”

“Yeah.” He cracked his knuckles, and I saw the real Timothy cowering in the background.

I sighed. “Next.”

A second jock swaggered up. “Oh, I’m, uh—” He looked at the list. “Lillian Parker.”

I deadpanned. “You’re Lillian?"

“Yeah.”

“You—” I gestured at his very much not female self.

“It's twenty first century, man. Be more open-minded.”

I gave him the most unimpressed stare in my arsenal, my brain short-circuiting for a proper response. I could debate the physics of parallel universes, but this? This left me speechless.

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