“My customers don’t come here to talk politics.”

“This isn’t about politics,” Perri said. “It’s a survey on how one would like to die.”

The man frowned, then started to laugh, and Josie wasn’t sure which reaction scared her more. He was a white man, but with skin so tanned that he was darker than Josie’s father. He had dark hair sprouting from his ears, broken yellow teeth, and truly terrifying eyebrows, scraggly and wild.

“Next commercial,” he said, waving a huge, puffy hand toward a television tuned to a baseball game. “But that’s it. Then you’re out of here.”

They agreed, interviewing all seven patrons as soon as the beer commercials began. The men did not appear happy about answering the questions, but when they glanced at the man who had given the girls permission, they reluctantly went through with it. One especially mean-looking man studied them for a long time before he answered their questions.

“Do you know my daughter?” he asked. “Eve Muhly?”

“She’s a year behind us,” Perri said. “We knew her back in elementary school.” She made this sound as if it were a long, long time ago.

“Is she a good girl?”

The only thing to say to such a question from an adult was yes. Even if another kid was hateful to you, it was wrong to tell an adult. And back then Eve was pretty well behaved in the way that parents cared about, if smellier than ever. No one remembered the story that Perri made up about her back in third grade, but Eve was still famous for smelling, and picking her nose. For being, in general, a mess.

“She’s okay,” Perri said.

“What does that mean? Is she good or is she not?” The man’s voice rose, and Josie thought, I’d be so scared if he were my father.

“She’s good,” Perri said hastily. “Very good.”

“What’s your name?”

“Perri.”

“Isn’t that a boy’s name?”

“No, there’s a writer my mom likes. I was named for her.”

“Are you friends with my girl?”

“N-n-not really.”

“Why not?”

Perri was speechless, something Josie had never seen, and Kat stepped in. “We’re not not friends with her. She’s in a different class from us. But she plays with Binnie Snyder sometimes.”

“The Snyders are our neighbors, so I know them. What’s your name?”

“Kat Hartigan.”

“As in Thornton?” Kat nodded shyly. People were usually impressed when they learned that fact, but she almost never volunteered it. She was clearly surprised when the man added, “That old crook. He bought all that land on the sly to keep the prices low.”

“What do you care?” the owner asked Mr. Muhly. “You didn’t sell, and now your land is worth three times what it was. Anytime you want to give up your acreage, you’ll have a buyer.”

“And then what would I do with myself? Sit around here like the rest of you? That farm has been in my family for almost two hundred years.”

“I’m just saying you’ve got no beef with him.”

“Well, if he hadn’t started building houses out here, someone else would have, sure enough,” Mr. Muhly said. “But I don’t have to like it.”

The commercial break ended, and the girls started to go, for that was the agreement. But the owner insisted on giving them free Cokes and french fries. He even seated them at the bar, although Perri said later she was pretty sure that was against the law. He seemed to find them amusing, Perri in particular. As the girls prepared to leave, strapping on their bike helmets, he suddenly grabbed Kat’s right arm by the wrist.

“Hit it,” he said, indicating his left thigh.

Kat looked to Josie and Perri, but Josie didn’t know what to tell her, and Perri again was at a loss for words. They were supposed to be on guard against strange people, of course, especially those who made unwelcome touches. But this man had let them take over his bar and fed them. Besides, what could he do to Kat with Josie, Perri, and a roomful of men watching?

“Hit it,” he repeated. “Hard as you can.”

Kat complied, but her punch was clearly too soft to please him. So he struck himself, producing a strange, hollow noise on contact.

“Fake,” he said. “Fake! I lost it in an accident when I wasn’t much older than you, working on my father’s place. A tractor flipped over on me.”

“Eleven-year-olds don’t drive tractors,” Perri said.

“My daughter, Eve, drives a tractor and a truck, and she’s only ten,” Mr. Muhly put in. “And she doesn’t wear a helmet while doing it.”

For the rest of the weekend, Josie lived in apprehension, sure that her parents would find out about the visit to Dubby’s. Then, just as she was beginning to believe they had escaped detection, the three were summoned to the principal’s office on Monday, with Mr. Treff in attendance. Josie assumed they were going to be suspended for going to a bar, and Perri cautioned them to volunteer nothing until they knew what was up.

It turned out that one of the mothers had complained about their “morbid” assignment.

“I know it seems unfair, after all the work you’ve done,” the principal said. “But we really need you to pick another topic. Mr. Treff will give you an extension, to make up for the week you’ve lost. But we just can’t condone such a, uh, ghoulish exercise.”

Josie and Kat hung their heads, ashamed of being ghoulish. But Perri, although her face was quite pink with embarrassment, challenged the principal.

“It’s a perfectly good survey,” she said. “I’m not going to redo it.”

“Then you’ll receive a zero, and it will pull your grade down for the semester.”

“My parents will understand. They’d rather that I get a zero than agree to something that I thought was unfair. There’s a principle involved here.”

“And what would that principle be, Perri? The right to ask people gruesome, disturbing questions?”

The principal clearly thought this point would end the discussion, but Perri shook her head. “That’s part of it. Freedom of speech and all. But the principle is that we were given an assignment and we did it according to the rules outlined, and now you’re changing the rules, saying we have to do it over, to get credit we’ve already earned. That’s not fair.”

“There are limits, Perri. There are always limits.”

“Then Mr. Treff should have made it clear when he gave us the assignment.”

“If Mr. Treff failed to tell you that it was wrong to kill people in the name of an assignment, would you assume you could do that?”

“No, but murder is illegal. We didn’t do anything against the law.”

“Perri, you’re a bright girl, but sometimes you have to accept the rules without arguing. Redo the assignment or get a zero. Those are the choices.”

Kat and Josie redid the poll, asking people in the neighborhood to pick their favorite desserts. They had no intention of going back to Dubby’s, however, so the sample was a little smaller although the answers ultimately more diverse, people having more emphatic ideas about dessert than death, as it turned out. Perri handed in the charts and graphs based on the death survey, refusing Mr. Treff’s attempts to give her extra-credit projects that might have made up the damage done by the zero he was forced to give her. Perri got a C in math that semester. On the Friday after grades came out, her parents took Perri, Kat, and Josie to Perri’s favorite restaurant, Peerce’s Plantation. She liked it because it seemed so grown-up and grand, with its striped awnings and views of the reservoir.

“Is this because you got all A’s except for math?” Josie asked Perri. But it was Dr. Kahn who answered her question.

“This is because she got a C in math-because she stood up for what was right.”

“Were Kat and I wrong to redo it, then?” Josie had gotten a B in math, barely. She hated to think what would happen if she had taken the zero. Kat had gotten her usual A. Only Binnie Snyder did better in math than Kat, and Kat was the best in all the other subjects.