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“Shut up,” he mumbled. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Uh-huh.”

Nick didn’t know what Gibby was doing now, but it was distracting, and he couldn’t have that. “Did you bring me what I asked you for?”

Jazz sat on the edge of Nick’s bed, putting her Coach purse on her lap. “Well, here’s the thing. I found one in the backyard shed where the landscapers keep the tools. I got dirt on my forehead. It was wonderful. I felt likeIndiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.And in the back, I saw a gigantic web. Like, the biggest I’d ever seen.”

Nick shuddered at the thought.

“Ah,” Jazz said, watching him. “Now I know why you couldn’t get one by yourself. I didn’t know you were scared of spiders.”

“I’m notscaredof them,” Nick retorted. “I would just rather they didn’t exist near me at any point in my life.”

“Spiders are good for the ecosystem,” she said, and Nick wondered why anyone would think she wasn’t smart. “They eat the bad bugs.” She reached a hand into her purse.

“I’m with Nick on this one,” Gibby said, taking a step back. “I don’t want that thing near me.”

“Why did you have Jazz bring you a spider?” Seth asked.

“Because I need it,” Nick replied. “It’s Phase One of Operation Turn Nick into an Extraordinary and—”

“You really need to come up with a better name,” Gibby muttered, studying the idea board. “And would you look at that. Shadow Star’s picture, front and center. How interesting. Wouldn’t you say that’s interesting, Seth? Shadow Star, being front and center?”

Seth glared at her. “I have no opinion about it one way or another.”

Gibby snorted. “Are you sure about that? Because if I were you, I’d—”

Jazz pulled a specimen jar out of her purse. “Okay, but you all rudely interrupted my story and didn’t let me finish. That’s not nice. There was the gigantic spiderweb, but—”

“Got it!” Nick crowed, snatching the plastic jar out of Jazz’s hand. The thing inside that was most certainlynota spider scrabbled along the side of the jar, and Nick almost shrieked and threw it across the room. Somehow, he was able to call upon all his bravery at once and resisted. Instead, he set it down on his desk next to the idea board and backed away slowly.

“What is that?” he asked, and his voice wasn’t high-pitched, no matter what anyone might say otherwise.

“If I canfinish,maybe you’ll find out,” Jazz said, mouth twisted down. “As I was saying, I didn’t see a spider, but I did see something else. It was caught in the web, and it wasstruggling.I felt really bad about it, so I saved it from the web like Indy saved himself from having his heart ripped out of his chest.” She frowned. “Can you believe that movie is only rated PG?”

“That’s because other than R, another rating didn’t exist,” Seth said. “That movie was partly the reason they came up with—”

“What is it?” Nick said, shoving Gibby toward the jar. “I think it hissed at me.”

Gibby glared at him before taking a step toward his desk. “It’s… It’s a…It’s a…”

“Cricket,” Jazz said. “Obviously. What are you going to do with it?” She had a tiny compact mirror out and was puckering her lips at her reflection.

Nick stared at her. “You brought me a cricket.”

She closed the compact. “At great risk to my life. I don’t think you sound very grateful.”

Nick remembered the way the jock’s fingers had bent awkwardly and said, “No, no. I am. I don’t know if it’ll work with a cricket. I don’t even know what a cricketdoes.”

“We don’t even know what you’re trying to do,” Seth pointed out.

Ah! Nick’s moment to shine! “Spider-Man was bitten by a radioactive spider, right?” he said excitedly. He couldn’t wait for the forthcoming praise to be lavished upon him. “As shown by the fact that they’ve rebooted the movies four hundred times—he’s in Oscorp and breaks off from the convenient tour group and gets bitten on the hand by a spider that’s a part of unsanctioned experiments. Which, if you think about it, potentially opens up the multibillion-dollar company to a lawsuit in addition to turning Peter Parker into a superhero, but I digress. Also, I feel bad for Andrew Garfield. He was a good Spider-Man trapped in terrible movies. Sure, the new guy is good, but poor Andrew. His hair is so curly.”

“I’m not going to like this, am I?” Seth muttered.

“No, because you’re going toloveit. Now, I don’t have access to radioactive isotopes. I don’t even know where you can get them. I tried looking online, but apparently you can’t just buy them whenever you want. I should mention that I’ve probably been flagged for that search by the CIA or the NSA, but we’ll worry about that later.”

“I can’t wait,” Gibby said dryly. “The idea of you having anything radioactive should be reason enough for its limited access.”