MY COMBINATION LOCK NEVER OPENS on the first try. I don’t know why.

I had just done the numbers: 14, back to 7, over to 28… Nope, it didn’t open. I was about to try again when I heard a now-familiar voice say, “I collect bobble-heads.”

I turned to see Spoon.

“Good to know,” I said.

Spoon gestured for me to move out of the way. He pulled out a huge key ring, found the one he was looking for, and stuck it in the back of my lock. The lock opened, presto.

“What’s your combination?” he asked me.

I said, “Umm, should I tell you?”

“Hello?” Spoon jangled his keys in my face. “You think I need your combination to break in?”

“Good point.” I told him the numbers. He fiddled with the lock and handed it back to me. “It should work with no problems now.”

He started to leave.

“Wait, Spoon?”

He turned toward me. “What did you call me?”

“Sorry, I don’t know your name.”

“Spoon,” he said, looking up and smiling as though trying the word out for the first time. “I like it. Spoon. Yeah. Call me Spoon, okay?”

“Sure”-he looked at me so expectantly-“uh, Spoon.” He beamed. I wasn’t sure how to ask this, but I figured what the heck. “You have a lot of keys there.”

“Don’t call me Keys, okay? I prefer Spoon.”

“Yeah, of course. Spoon it is. You said before that your dad is the janitor here, right?”

“Right. By the way, the White Witch in the Narnia series? I think she’s sexy as all get out.”

“Yeah, me too,” I said, trying to get him back on track.

“Can your dad really get you into locked places in the school?”

Spoon smiled. “Sure, but I don’t really need to ask my dad. I got the keys here.” He dangled them in case I didn’t know what keys he meant. “But we can’t go in the girls’ locker room. I asked him about that-”