“OK, little birdies, fly back to your classes,” the principal said, and waved them out of her office. Flinch got up slowly, still wondering if maybe he should snatch the trash can from under her desk and liberate the poor, innocent candy bar. Matilda seemed to read his mind and pulled him out of the office.

Once in the hall, the NERDS stared at their new schedules.

“That woman is going to be trouble,” Pufferfish said.

“What if she starts watching us?” Matilda said. She took a shot of her asthma inhaler. “Look, she’s got me hyperventilating.”

Flinch shuddered. “Did you see what she did to my candy? What kind of a heartless person throws away a perfectly good Chocolate Coconut Bomb Bar?”

Jackson waved them off. “Everyone relax. She’s no different than any other teacher. She just wants you to know who’s boss around here. All we have to do is dazzle her with a few smiles or ask for extra help we don’t really need—you know, pretend that we look up to her. We’ll have her eating out of the palms of our hands in no time. Trust me. It’ll work like a charm.”

“That would work well if she was sane,” Duncan said. “But you heard her in there. She thinks we’re birds. I bet the woman is sitting on an egg right now. It’s best if we just stay off her radar. We can’t be late or act suspicious.”

“I hate to say this, but I miss the old days when Heathcliff could just hypnotize our teachers so they wouldn’t remember us dashing off to save the world.” Ruby sighed.

“Well, I liked him a lot better back then than I do now,” Jackson said. “The ‘I’m a creepy giant head that can take over the world’ thing is really obnoxious.”

“So now what? We just go off to our separate classes?” Flinch asked.

The children shrugged. For some, it was the first time they had been separated in years, but what could they do?

Flinch watched his friends drift away down the hall and realized there was a comfort in being part of a group. When they were gone, he looked down at his schedule. His first class of the day was math—his worst subject.

“There’s another thing we should consider,” Flinch shouted to the others. “Ms. Dove might be evil.”

Math was hard, even on the first day, and science class was no better. With his brain drowning in algebraic equations and plate tectonics, Flinch headed off to history class, where he was bombarded with dates and names from hundreds of years ago. To top it all off, he had Latin, which he was surprised to learn, was a language that no one spoke anymore. What kind of a madhouse was Ms. Dove running? Worst of all, without sweets Flinch actually had the ability to pay attention. It was an unusual feeling for him to hear facts and remember them. Somehow it felt wrong.

He drifted from one class to the next, catching only brief glimpses of his teammates as they hurried down the halls. He didn’t like being alone. Before he became a spy, being alone meant being a target for bullies. Like jackals, they hunted those who were separated from the pack. Once the weak were identified, the bullies would descend, dishing out brutal wedgies and painful flicks to the neck, sticking wet fingers in the ears and spitting paper wads in the eyes. Nothing was quite as terror-inducing as the bullies’ high-pitched giggles as they cornered their prey. Flinch scanned the halls. If bullies came at him, he would have to take their abuse. He was too strong and fast to fight back. He could hurt someone, or worse, blow the team’s cover.

But being lonely, concentrating in class, and fearing bullies were nothing compared to the heart-racing experience called lunch. Normally, lunch would have been a feast of chocolate-covered morsels, caramel layers, and cream filling, all soaking in the finest high-fructose corn syrup money could buy. But Ms. Dove’s school had no such pleasures. For the first time in as long as he could remember, Flinch had to eat what most scientists would call “real food.” Some of it was green and leafy, some of it was broiled and baked, and there was a slice of something labeled “whole grain bread” and a few little orange logs he was told were called carrots. There wasn’t a peanut butter cup or red rope in sight. He appealed to the lunch lady, who knew what Flinch usually ate, but the big, burly figure said his hands were tied. Ms. Dove had already set up a lunch date with him to discuss what to serve in the cafeteria.

“It’s just going to get worse, kid,” the lunch lady warned. “Tomorrow we’re serving hummus on pita bread with baba ghanoush.”

“Baba ghanoush doesn’t happen to have little colored marshmallows in it, does it?”

The lunch lady shook his head.

The rest of the day didn’t get much better. When Flinch’s last class was over, he just wanted to go home and drown his sorrows in a couple of cases of juice boxes. But before he could even close his locker, he found himself surrounded by four very large boys. Every school has a few bullies whose growth spurts defy all logic. They are impossibly tall. They have mustaches. The four kids who confronted Flinch looked like gorillas wearing human costumes.

“Hey, kid, you didn’t pay the new student fee,” one of the boys said. He was skinny with a mop of red hair that hung in his eyes.

“New student fee?”

“Yeah, we’re here to collect. It’s five bucks, which is a great deal. Last year it was ten,” the second boy said, and the others chuckled. This one was a bit too chubby for his T-shirt.

Flinch sighed. He would have happily handed over five dollars just to avoid the hassle, but he was broke. He said as much, and suspecting the boys would not accept an IOU, he prepared for the inevitable: pushing, manhandling, maybe a purple nurple, maybe a pink belly—typical bully stuff—and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it without blowing his cover. Sometimes, being a superpowered spy was a real bummer.

The third boy stepped forward. He was the shortest of the bunch, but to call him the shortest was like saying he was the smallest giant. He had a wide, thin smile and big buggy eyes like an amphibian. He opened Flinch’s locker and went through everything, tossing books and papers aside in search of some money. “I think he’s telling the truth. He’s broke. Must have spent all his money on candy. There’s a trash bag’s worth of wrappers in here.”

The fourth boy was average-looking, but every time he breathed, a high-pitched whistle filled the air. “Well, you know what happens when you can’t pay the fee.” He laughed, then grabbed Flinch by the shirt and shoved him inside the locker.

The door slammed in Flinch’s face and he was plunged into darkness. His first thought was to wait until the boys were gone and then free himself, but suddenly he didn’t feel well. Nausea came on like a hurricane. A fever raced through him, making him feel like someone had lit a bonfire in his head. But the most peculiar sensation was his anger. He was angrier than he had ever been—even angrier than when they stopped making tropical fruit–flavored Now and Laters. He wanted to punish these kids for making him an easy target. Who were these … these fleas to treat him so disrespectfully? Couldn’t they see his intelligence and power? They needed to be taught a lesson!

With a swift kick, his locker door flew off its hinges and crashed against the far wall. He stepped out, fists clenched. The first bully shook off his surprise and charged at Flinch, who caught him in the chest with a punch that sent him skidding down the hallway several yards. The other three boys stared at their fallen friend in bewilderment, and the universal truth about bullies was revealed once again: They are usually cowards.

The boys tried to run, but Flinch wouldn’t let them. He raced down the hall like a jaguar and blocked their way. They turned to run back the other way, but he blocked them again, in the blink of an eye. He grabbed two of the boys by their shirts and launched them down the hall like twin bowling balls. They slid into their fallen friend and crumpled into a pile with him at the bottom. Then Flinch grabbed the fourth boy, the one with the whistling nose, and lifted him off the ground over his head. He wanted to toss him out a high window. He wanted to slam his body onto the floor. He wanted to crush the fool so that no one would dare challenge his mighty power. It would be a message to the world that he was someone to fear.