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"Gotcha," the new boy replied lazily. "I talked to your principal. She's okay. A lot friendlier than the headmaster at Cutler Day."

Phoebe Cutler Day School was a private high school on the outskirts of town, named for one of Otis Bransom's granddaughters. Very expensive. "Since you're standing in our doorway," Maggie said, "and joining our peer jury, isn't Mrs. Marsh your principal now, too?"

The boy laughed and entered the room. He moved with an easy, comfortable stride that announced a healthy dose of self-confidence. "You're right. You're absolutely right. But I've only been here two days. I haven't got used to the change yet. Still got jet lag." Dropping his books on the floor, he slid into his seat.

Maggie's eyebrows rose. "You flew here from Cutler Day?" she asked dryly. "Short trip. It's only thirty minutes from town."

This time, he didn't laugh. When she looked at him, he was gazing back coolly. His eyes were dark. Very dark brown, almost black. And not all that

warm, come to think of it, at least not at this particular moment. Not while he was looking at her. "I meant, I'm still adjusting to the change," he said. His voice had lost its easy warmth, too. But it warmed again as he turned away from her and spoke to the others. 'Thomas Aquinas Whittier," he said, smiling. "Dump the Thomas, call me Whit. So what should I know about this deal that I don't? Your . . . our principal filled me in some, but Fve never done this gig before. We're supposed to judge whether or not the culprit is guilty, and then decide if he gets death by hanging or just a slap on the wrist?"

"That's pretty much it," Alex Goodman said, his voice friendly. Not as competitive as Scout, Alex seemed happy to have another guy on the panel. "You're a junior?"

"Yep." Thomas Whittier kept his face turned away from Maggie. Deliberately, she was sure. Giving new meaning to the expression "cold shoulder." It actually did feel chilly.

"How come you switched from Cutler Day?" Alex wore a friendly smile. While he wasn't as gorgeous as Scout, Alex was what most Bransom girls called "cute" or "adorable." Not that tall, with a face that would still look boyish when he was forty. He was always messing with his dark blond hair, trying, Maggie suspected, to make it lie flat like Scout's. It never did.

"Two reasons. One, I hated the place. Two, I'm interested in what's going on with your courthouse here. History in the making. Can't miss that."

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"Courthouses, plural," Maggie couldn't resist correcting. "We have two. For right now, anyway."

"What I meant. Courthouses." He still wasn't looking at her. "I dig architecture. I know some of the history of the Bransom home, and I wanted to be around to see what happens to it. Have they decided yet? Stay ... or go? Which is it?"

"I thought you said you were going into law, not architecture." Maggie saw Helen frowning at her, and knew what the frown meant. Be nice. Maggie ignored it.

Whittier kept his back to her. "I am going into law. Does that mean I can't be interested in architecture? Is there a rule here that says we're only allowed to be interested in one thing? Isn't that kind of limiting?"

Maggie noticed then that Scout looked happier. She couldn't remember the last time she'd seen him looking so smug. He's glad this guy doesn't like me, she told herself, annoyed with Scout. And he's glad the feeling seems to be mutual. Like he owns me or something.

She did date Scout sometimes. Often, actually. They'd gone to a lot of movies and picnics over the summer. But Scout had a lot of problems, and Maggie never knew what to say to him when he was feeling down. Then, too, she wasn't interested in getting serious, especially not with someone whose father owned a business in Felicity and would almost certainly offer his only son a very good job right here in town after college. The son would probably take it. And live here forever. Gross.

Scout had a lot of nerve relishing the cold shoulder the new boy was giving Maggie Keene.

Tossing her head in annoyance, she sat up very straight. "Before we start discussing the courthouses and the pros and cons of tearing that old monstrosity down or fixing it up, we have a hearing to conduct here. And two more after that. I suggest we get started if we don't want to miss our first period classes, okay, everybody?"

"Yes, ma y am\" Whit said, throwing a salute her way.

Of course he didn't look at Maggie when he said it.

And of course she pretended she didn't notice.

She nodded at Susan to signal they were all in place, and Susan called the hearing to order.

Throughout that hearing and the two that followed, Maggie had the uneasy feeling that there were eyes on her, targeting her like an X ray. She told herself she was imagining things, but her nerves began to sing a warning. It was hard to concentrate on the business at hand.

Look up the word "innocent" in the dictionary. James's name won't be there.

The jury retired to the jury room. Maggie knew it was an open-and-shut case, and didn't expect much argument from any of the peer jurors. Not even from the two cheerleaders. She knew for a fact that James had recently tried to steal Bennie's car; she was always leaving the keys in the ignition when she left her little red sportscar. Maggie also knew that when Tanya had seen him and screamed for help, he'd knocked her down as he ran past her. She'd scraped her elbow and broken her new sunglasses.

James had, of course, denied the episode, saying he was just checking to see who the car belonged to so he could take the keys to the owner. No one could prove otherwise.

Maggie was sure Bennie and Tanya hadn't forgotten, or forgiven, the incident. They wouldn't argue with any punishment handed down to James Keith on this fine October morning.

They didn't.

While ideas on what the guilty party's punishment might be were tossed around, Maggie noticed that Lane was coolly studying Thomas Whittier, openly and unself-consciously. Lane was leaning back in her chair, one finger lazily curling a lock of her long, sleek, ink black hair, the very hair that Maggie Keene had coveted since the very first day she saw Lane Bridgewater walking the halls of Bransom High. She had immediately thought wistfully of at least a dozen wonderful things you could

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do with hair that didn't frizz up when there was so much as one drop of moisture in the air, and had glared at the new, gorgeous girl, who wasn't really all that tall but walked as if she thought she were.

Up close, Maggie had realized with relief that Lane wasn't really beautiful. Lane herself had said laughingly, "I didn't always look like this. I was scrawny and my hair was short and straight, and I had braces and glasses. I am so grateful I grew up." Her olive skin was smooth and unblemished, and her eyes were nearly perfect, a deep, dark blue, with thick, smoky lashes, set exactly the right distance apart and topped by perfectly arched brows. But her mouth was too wide, her nose too thin.

Not that a single guy at Bransom High ever noticed those slight imperfections. Every adolescent male head turned when, in their freshman year, Lane Bridgewater arrived at Bransom High. Maggie and Helen always made a point of welcoming the kids who came in from outlying areas and didn't know anyone in Felicity. So Maggie had swallowed her envy and approached Lane. And discovered three surprising things. The first was, while Lane had been raised in one of the rural areas, she now lived in town. "My dad's no farmer," she had said ruefully. "He's just a construction worker who wanted to grow vegetables. Problem. He didn't know how. We lost everything we owned. Now he's a construction worker again, but this time he's working on the new courthouse instead of owning his own business like he used to." They were living in a rented house on the east side of town, which

made Lane a "townie" now, and accessible for friendship, should anyone be interested.

Maggie was interested. Secretly, she was hoping some of Lane's cool sophistication would rub off on her. By the time she finally realized it probably wasn't going to, she liked Lane enough to continue the friendship anyway. That had been the second surprising thing.

Equally surprising was the fact that Helen and Lane got along. As different as they seemed to be at first glance, they had two things in common. Sports, which all three girls loved, and the fact that Helen had once lived in the country, too, although her parents had never farmed. When Helen reached adolescence, they felt she should have the advantages of town life, and had sold their country house to buy a condominium in Felicity. Currently, Dr. and Mrs. Morgan were in Egypt on an archaeological dig, and Helen was boarding with Ms. Gross.

"I love living in town," Lane said repeatedly. "God, I hated the country! Nothing to do but listen to the hay dry. My dad, the gentleman farmer! He's still brooding over losing the farm. Me and my mom, we couldn't be happier. Poor ... but happy."

Poor or not, Lane had a flair for dressing that the other girls envied. She could take a simple skirt and blouse and, by adding an inexpensive print scarf or belt, jazz up the outfit so that it looked like it had been sold to her that way ... at one of the better stores in town.

Today, she had dressed in white trousers that Maggie knew she'd bought at the Army-Navy sur---

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plus store, topping them with a red-striped boat-neck T-shirt and a matching scarf. Where on earth had she dug up the white yachting cap she was wearing low over her thick, dark bangs? She looked as if she had a date for sailing after school.

There was no body of water large enough for boating in all of Greene County.

Nevertheless, Lane made a very fetching picture, leaning back in her chair, her incredible eyes fixed on Thomas Whittier. If he glanced away from Alex, with whom he was discussing James Keith's punishment, and noticed Lane . . . really noticed her, Maggie was sure he'd be hers. Except, Lane already had a boyfriend. There was justice in the world. He was a college boy, of course. Maggie had seerv his picture in Lane's wallet. Cute. Very cute. Almost as cute as the new guy.

Getting back to the business at hand, Maggie said briskly, "Okay, so what have we decided? Death by hanging or a slap on the wrist?" Instantly, she realized that she had stolen Thomas Whittier's line, and felt her cheeks burn again.

"After-school detention, four weeks," Alex announced. "Right, everyone?"

Heads nodded.

"Four weeks?" Helen looked dubious. "James will have a fit. That's the longest he's ever been given. He'll hate us all."

Scout laughed. "Like he doesn't already. He hates us, he hates school, James hates life. Giving him a lighter sentence won't change that. Come on, Morgan, peer jury is no place for gutless wonders.

James asked for it, and we're going to give it to him."

Helen's cheeks flushed. "Fin not a gutless wonder, Scout. I wasn't arguing. I was just saying . . . James can get pretty nasty. I've seen him slap trays of food out of people's hands in the cafeteria. And Tanya almost broke her arm when he knocked her down last week."

Tanya and Bennie nodded soberly.

"We can handle James," Scout insisted. "Relax. Let's go give him the good news."

Maggie banged her gavel to dismiss the session, and they all trooped out of the room. She didn't think Whit had noticed Lane. But she couldn't be sure.

James Keith went ballistic upon hearing his sentence. And he directed most of his fury at Maggie, who had stood up to read the verdict and the sentence.

"Four weeks?" he shouted, his beefy face red with rage. "Are you crazy? I got a job after school! No way can I sit in some stinking classroom for four weeks! You're supposed to give me a fine, that's what you did before. I can pay a fine. But I'll lose my job if I miss four weeks in a row."

They had given him fines in the past. He always paid them, but it never changed his behavior in the slightest. Which was why they'd decided against it this time.

"Four weeks," the judge repeated firmly. "From three p.m. to five, Ms. Gross's office. Be there, James. Or I'll up it to six weeks."

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James kicked the chair he'd been sitting in, punched Ralph's arm angrily, and called Maggie names she had only heard in movies, but Susan, the judge, never gave an inch. She finally put an end to James's tantrum by banging her gavel on the desk and adding a hefty fine to the detention.

"Hey, that ain't fair!" James's blonde girlfriend shouted. "You already gave him detention, you can't fine him, too!"

"Sure I can," Susan answered, standing up. "I just did. Pay the bailiff, James."

The "bailiff," a thin, pale girl named Wendy, went even paler at the idea of being approached by the volatile defendant, but she needn't have worried. James threw the money at Ralph and ordered him to pay, then stalked out, dragging his girlfriend along with him. When he reached the doorway, he turned and snarled over his shoulder, "You all think you're so hot! You sit there in them chairs like you're something special. This ain't a real court. You're just pretendin', like brat kids playin' grown-up. I lose my job over this, you all better watch out, that's all I've got to say."

When James had gone, Thomas Whittier turned to Maggie and surprised her by asking, "You really think that's all he's got to say?"

"No way. I think James Keith has plenty to say, and I think we should take him seriously. Helen's right. He's a bomb waiting to go off. I wish we could have expelled him, but we don't have the power to do that. Only Mrs. Marsh can do that, and even

then she has to let him have a hearing in front of the school board."

Surprised that she was actually talking to him, Maggie's lips clamped together. Then she relented. He'd been rude. But now he was being friendly. And she'd been rude, too. Time to make amends. She lifted her head to look straight at him and apologized, "If I was rude, Fm sorry."

He laughed."//?"

"Okay, okay, I was rude. Like I said, Fm sorry."

"You're forgiven. So what's next?"

What was next was the case of two girls, best friends, who had cheated on an important test and been caught. They sat white-faced and silent during their hearing, and never opened their mouths, not even when the judge asked for comments from "the accused." The jury went easy on them. No one liked the idea of cheats at Bransom, but their lawyer insisted it was the first time they'd ever done anything like that, and both girls were so shaken, the jury felt they'd learned their lesson. They were ordered to take another test, a different one, and to write a one-thousand-word essay on the merits of honesty.