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directions to the cooper’s or wanting to take a photo with me. I wanted to say, “No, I don’t have to, I’m on my lunch hour.” But I didn’t. Because I am a professional.
    “Hello, Mother. Good day, Father,” I said when I entered the silversmith’s studio. Even though I was on break, Mom and Dad were working. Bryan Denton was, too, but I ignored him. The moderners watched us, waiting for something exciting and historical to occur.
    “Good afternoon, Elizabeth!” Mom gave me a big hug. She was sticky with sweat, but I couldn’t complain, because so was I.
    “Would you like to see this silverware that I am engraving with our family’s monogram?” Dad asked me.
    “Nope!” I gave him a smile. No way was I going to spend my hour-long lunch getting dragged into historical playacting with my dad. I’m on break here, people .
    I had almost made it to the stairs in the back of the work-67

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    shop when Bryan came out from behind his workbench and cornered me. “Miss Connelly,” he said. “May I escort you?”
    “Oh, God, Bryan,” I said, then noticed the moderners still watching us. “I mean, how kind of you to offer, but that shan’t be necessary.”
    “I insist,” he said, taking my elbow and leading me out on to the porch.
    “Okay,” I said once we were outside. “ What ? I have thirty-seven minutes left for lunch, if you were wondering.”
    “I’ve been thinking it over,” Bryan said, “and I’ve decided that, because I am your dad’s apprentice this summer, it would make a lot of sense for you to be my girlfriend.”
    “Really,” I said.
    “Yes. I’ve done a lot of research on this, and apprentices often court their masters’ daughters. Then they get married and continue in the family business. So you and I would just take over being the silversmiths when your father gets too old.”
    “Gross, Bryan, I’m not marrying you.”
    “I’m not saying us . I just mean, that’s what they would do.
    So we should, too. It would be so historically accurate, for the silversmith’s daughter to date the silversmith’s apprentice!”
    “Wow, how romantic of you.” I heaved a sigh and leaned against the wooden porch railing. “This may be hard for you to believe, but I don’t actually decide to date guys based on what would be the most historically accurate . And also?” Unbid-den, a memory popped into my mind: Dan, lounging on a 68

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    tree stump in Reenactmentland, half-grinning at me. “I don’t want to be someone’s girlfriend just because it would make a lot of sense . Making sense has nothing to do with it.” I curtsied at Bryan, then went back inside and stomped upstairs. The lamest guy I know wants to date me. My ex-boyfriend wants to be friends. The only guy who has any potential lives ninety years too late. I hate boys, and my life is a joke.
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Chapter 7
THE TELEPHONE WARS
    T awny got right on everyone’s case to come up with an awesome plan of attack that would prove to Reenactmentland that we were serious contenders. “They’re just resting on their laurels!!!” she said in an e-mail to all of us on Monday night. “They think we don’t have any game!!
    Let’s prove to those farbs that they have underestimated us!!!!”
    But so far they hadn’t underestimated us, because so far we hadn’t come up with any awesome counterattacks.
    Of course we had Tawny’s fantastic Undercover Operation battle plan, but according to the people constructing and sewing the uniforms, that was at least two weeks away from PAST PERFECT
    being ready to go. They needed materials and fabric to make the costumes, and they could work on them only when their supervisors weren’t around. Tawny had sent another e-mail asking, “Can’t this happen any faster???” to which Patience, the milliner girl and self-appointed costume designer, replied,
    “look tawny, we are not going to half ass this. just because theyre farbs doesnt make it ok for us to show up in some