You try to put your lost ticket and the possibility of spending Spring Break with your sister in Eau Claire out of your mind long enough to take this one last test. You file into the lecture hall, take a seat in the back, and unfold the alleged desk from your armrest.
The T.A.s hand out the exams, half short answer and half matching questions, on alternating blue and pink pastel paper. Since you’re the only student in your row of cramped metal seats, your T.A. hands you your exam individually. Oddly enough, it’s on green paper, the color of the mint julep you had one time at Fowl Play on the insistence of a classmate from Atlanta.
The drink was strong, but it left a funny aftertaste in your mouth that took two brushings to wash away. This test is starting to give you a bad aftertaste too, even though the questions aren’t too much worse than the midterm. It’s not that the short answer questions are hard — they’re mostly just definitions — but there’s something wrong with the test.
After all, you don’t recall professor Kaplan ever mentioning that the Colorado River flows into the Gulf of California, the narrow sea separating Mexico from the Baja peninsula. This is Principle of Macroeconomic Theory, after all, and the study guide mostly dealt with comparative advantage and demand curves.
Fortunately, the Colorado River question was the same riddle you’d had to solve in the treasure hunt to win your missing spring break tickets.
Spring break! You’d all but forgotten about your lost tickets. Now you hurry through the matching questions, trying to get out of this test in time to do something about the missing ticket before your red-eye flight leaves without you.
You choose from the list of possible answers, “some of which may be repeated,” and write “P” in the blank. Fast now. Question two: “I.” Question three: “L.” Question four: “L” again. That’s the repeat, you decide, and resume your fast-forward pace. Question nine now; you fill in “Y” and stop, staring at your test. There’s a pattern of answers in the matching questions. You’ve spelled out “P-I-L-L-S-B-U-R-Y.” You recheck your answers; you’re sure they’re correct.
It seems too perfect to be coincidence now: the special test, the questions only you would know and now the word — is it a name? — “Pillsbury.” Maybe you’re being paranoid, but sometimes they really are out to get you.
But what could Pillsbury mean? In high school, your best friend’s mom had been an executive at the Pillsbury company, and you’d spent a day in ninth grade following her around at the Pillsbury Center downtown. And your major adviser has an office in Pillsbury Hall.
Other students are already finishing and handing their tests in. You rise from your seat, but freeze as an almost nauseating fear washes over you. You could just ask professor Kaplan why you’ve been so carefully singled out on the test, but what if he’s conspiring against you? Maybe you should follow the Pillsbury lead and see if it gets you any answers — assuming it’s a code at all and not just the random sequence of answers on a test.
You steel yourself against the rising panic and make your choice.

If you go to the Pillsbury Center, in downtown Minneapolis,See BUSING TO MARGARITAVILLE page 16
If you head for Pillsbury Hall,See HE’S GOT YOUR TICKET TO RIDE page 13

If you decide to confront your professor, See THE NEAR-BEATING OF A COLLEGE PROFESSOR page 10