"You're telling me, I checked it three times and one of those I did afull erase and started over to be very sure...her numbers jumped twentypercent in...a week! AND that never happens without help...or somedrastic thing changing?"Mark knew what the man was implying and Doris's worried glance told himso, he looked back over to the kids and found them busy with packingthe bags still and that meant they had not overheard anything...yet?"Meagan please go with your brother and grab us all a soda from. He knew something was going on – he just didn’t know what it was. ‘It’s like this Lou,’ I said. ‘I found nothing that shows your thugs are working to stiff you, but I have found something you’re really going to hate?’ ‘Then tell me what you know, god-damn it, I’m a busy man. I’ve got better things to do than shoot the shit with some cheap gumshoe.’ As I dug the videotape out of my briefcase, I thought to myself, well, here goes nothing. I slapped the tape in a video machine Lou had in his. I always feltso good when, after a hard day in school, pretending to be a boy, therewould be a message from my boyfriend Hiroto telling me that he couldn'tstop thinking of how pretty I was and that he couldn't wait to see meagain.Hiroto and I dated for several months before school let out and it wastime to move again. It broke my heart to have to leave him and hisgreat kisses but mom said there'd be other boys and this would be ourlast move; dad was being promoted to Senior Vice President and. I went up and started to get showered before she got any more ideas. Kirsty appeared outside the bathroom door and said, "Make sure you're dressed and I'll take you to your room. Mum said I have to wait outside until you are called downstairs."I called Kirsty into the room and spent some time with her reading books while waiting for Kelly to call me down. I was impressed with her progress, the school we had set up seemed to be working well and Michelle appeared to be sticking to the agreed.