Volume 1, No. 1

The Plague / Hooper ... 5 

Charlene Miller had the idea. Charlene was an asset to the sisterhood. She was tall, she was strong, and she had three older brothers. She understood the workings of the male mind -- and every Grade 4 boy was afraid of her.
Charlene had seen what we all had missed. The simple "f.p." wasn't specific enough. The only way we could really be safe was to designate ourselves and everything we owned as "B.f.p." -- "boy flea proof". With renewed purpose we raced back to the classroom and feverishly added a "B" -- a big, bold, capital "B" in front of the "f.p." on our erasers, our rulers, our Lepage's paste bottles, our notebooks, and most importantly, on the palms of our hands.
Now Grade 4 girls may not know much about Grade 4 boys, but one thing they do know is that boys of any age rarely have an original thought. We all expected it. We all knew it was coming. Sure enough, by plague day three, the boys were strutting around the playground with