Claudia and the Middle School Mystery

  After the water fountain, we headed for the girls’ room. We didn’t want to hang out in any one place too long, in case Mr. Kingbridge noticed and got suspicious.

  Being in the girls’ room made me remember all those nasty things Shawna and her friends had said about me. I got mad all over again, which was probably good — it kept me from being too nervous.

  Finally, it was three o’clock. We stepped out into the hall. It was empty. “Okay, this is it!” said Dawn. “Stacey, man your post.”

  “Don’t you mean ‘woman’ my post?” said Stacey, giggling. Dawn gave her a Look.

  “Come on, Stacey. This is serious,” she said. “Now don’t forget — come running if you spot Shawna or any of her friends. Or Mr. Kingbridge, for that matter!”

  “Check!” said Stacey, giving Dawn a mock salute. Then she wished us luck and headed down the hall.

  A few moments later, Dawn and I were standing in front of Shawna’s locker. Dawn looked around and then bent over the dial. She twisted it a few times and tried the latch.

  Whooosh! The locker opened and an avalanche of stuff fell out. Crumpled-up papers, stuffed notebooks, old chewed-up pens … and a picture of the most gorgeous guy I’d ever seen.

  “Who’s that?” I asked, grabbing it.

  “Come on, Claud,” said Dawn. “This is no time for boy-watching. Quick! Put it back before somebody comes.”

  She was right. I got down on the floor, grabbed a handful of papers, and shoved them back into the locker. Boy, Shawna was a slob! I tried to check through the papers as I put them away, but nothing interesting was written on them.

  “Check the shelf,” said Dawn.

  I nodded and stood on my tiptoes to see what was up there. “A bathing suit, a hairbrush, a copy of the school manual …” Pretty boring, I thought. “And what’s this? Ew! A gross, old, moldy orange!” I pulled my hand away from it.

  “Shhhh!” said Dawn. “Who’s coming?”

  I listened and heard footsteps. They were coming closer. Dawn and I tried to act casual. “So, did you understand the assignment for English class?” I asked.

  Dawn and I aren’t even in the same English class, but I don’t think the janitor knew. That’s who was coming. He walked by, pushing a cart. He didn’t give us a second look.

  “Okay, let’s get serious,” said Dawn. “Look for a note.” She bent over and started rummaging around in the papers that covered the bottom of Shawna’s locker.

  For some reason, I looked at the inside of the locker door. Shawna had all the usual stuff — a mirror, some stickers, some posters of cute boys — but there, stuck in the vent — what was that? I pulled out a folded-up piece of pink paper. A note. “Dawn, listen to what this says,” I said.

  “‘Congratulations on your A–. Who would have guessed that C.K.’s paper would have had so many right answers?’”

  C.K. That was me. Evidence! I stuffed the note into my pocket, and Dawn slammed the locker shut. We ran down the hall, grabbed Stacey, and then leaned against the wall, panting. Victory!

  Then I had a terrible thought. The note wasn’t worth a thing. If I showed it to Mr. Zorzi or the principal, they’d want to know where I got it. And if I wouldn’t tell them (which I couldn’t), why should they believe that Shawna’s friend even wrote it?

  “Why don’t you guys go on,” I said to Dawn and Stacey after I’d told them what I’d realized. “I just remembered a book I need from my locker.”

  When they’d left, I headed for Shawna’s locker and stuck the note into the vent. It wasn’t going to do me any good, and by putting it back I felt a little less guilty about what we’d done.

  I also felt pretty low. Now we were really at a dead end. It looked like I was just going to have to accept that F.

  “You what?” asked Dawn. “I can’t believe you put that note back!”

  It was lunchtime, the day after we’d tried Breaking and Entering into Shawna’s locker. Dawn had been telling everybody the details of what we’d done and what we’d found. Then I spoke up and told them how I’d put the note back.

  “After all that!” said Stacey. “Oh, well, I guess you’re right. You couldn’t really have used it for evidence without incriminating yourself.”

  “That’s true,” said Kristy. “But boy, I wish I could have seen Shawna’s face if you had confronted her with that note!” She shook her head.

  Mary Anne looked at me and smiled. “You did the right thing, Claud,” she said softly. “I’m proud of you.”

  “I may have done the right thing,” I said. “But Shawna didn’t. And I still need to prove it.” I frowned down at my disgusting-looking Sloppy Joe. “I just can’t think of anything else to do, though. I’m stuck.”

  For a few minutes nobody said anything. It seemed like we were all stuck. I felt miserable.

  “And on top of everything else,” I said, breaking the silence, “I have a math quiz coming up. What if I don’t get an A on it?” I couldn’t even think about what might happen if I started to fail math.

  “Don’t worry, Claud,” said Stacey. “I’ll help you study. You can get all A’s if we work hard enough.” She stopped to think for a moment. “But you know, maybe you should ask Mr. Zorzi if you can sit in a different seat on the day of the test. We wouldn’t want the whole thing to start all over again.”

  She had a point. Shawna had done it once — why wouldn’t she do it again? “Okay, you’re right,” I said. “I’ll ask him. But we still haven’t figured out how to prove that Shawna was the cheater instead of me.”

  “I’ve got it!” said Kristy. She’d been quiet for a few minutes, and she must have been thinking hard. “Remember how we tricked Cokie Gray into incriminating herself?”

  “Yeah!” said Dawn. “That’s right. Remember when she was pretending to be Kristy’s mystery admirer? We finally tricked her into admitting that she was the one sending all those weird notes.”

  “That’s not the only time we tricked Cokie,” said Mary Anne. “Remember when she was trying to make us believe that there was a bad-luck curse on me?”

  “That’s right,” said Kristy, grinning. “She walked straight into our trap.” She rubbed her hands together. “And if it worked on Cokie, it’ll work on Shawna.”

  “Right!” said Stacey, beaming at me. “We’ll just let Shawna do the work of proving her own guilt.”

  I nodded slowly. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll try anything at this point.”

  “Now all you have to do is figure out how to set her up in front of Mr. Zorzi,” said Mary Anne, just as the bell rang. Lunch period was over.

  * * *

  The chalk screeched on the blackboard as Mr. Zorzi drew a complicated-looking diagram. It was Monday and math class was just about to begin. I’d spent practically the whole weekend trying to think up traps for Shawna to fall into, but I hadn’t come up with much. Still, I was eager to get going.

  I decided to start right away. My first idea was to try to nudge Shawna into confessing by using certain meaningful words — words that would let her know that I was “onto her game,” as they say in the detective movies.

  “Oh!” I said, looking into my notebook. “I can’t find my copy of that last handout.” As I said the word copy I looked at Shawna. “Does anyone else have a copy I can borrow?” I asked. “I’d hate to cheat Mr. Zorzi out of another one.”

  Shawna was looking back at me with a puzzled expression. Some of the other kids in class were giving me funny looks, too.

  I hardly noticed their glances. I was on a roll. “Can I just steal your copy for a minute, Shawna?” I said. “I really need it — and that’s no lie.”

  I’d expected Shawna to break down and confess when she heard all those incriminating words. But she was looking at me as if I’d gone crazy. “Sure, you can borrow it,” she said, bending over to search through her backpack. “But I don’t think we’re going to need it today.”

  I was disappointed. Shawna didn’t seem to be getting the messages I
was sending to her. I guess she just didn’t feel all that guilty about what she’d done. It wasn’t going to be easy to make her crack.

  “Here, Claudia,” said Shawna, reaching over to give me the handout.

  “Oh, never mind,” I said.

  “Claudia! Shawna!” said Mr. Zorzi. “Are you ready to get started?” I’d been so involved in carrying out my plan to trap Shawna that I hadn’t noticed him standing in front of the class, ready to begin.

  “Yes, Mr. Zorzi,” I said. Shawna was still sitting there with the paper in her hand. She raised her eyebrows at me and shook her head. Then she put the handout away.

  “Yes, Mr. Zorzi,” she echoed.

  Oh, my lord. I had really been expecting that plan to work. Maybe it would have, if I had been able to keep it up long enough. I hadn’t really come up with too many other ideas for trapping Shawna. What was I going to do next?

  Mr. Zorzi droned on about “whole numbers.” He wasn’t making a lot of sense — but then, I wasn’t paying that much attention to him. I was thinking hard.

  How could I prove that Shawna had copied off of my paper? First, I decided, I’d have to show that it was possible for her to read my answers from where she sat. But what was I going to do, give her an eye test?

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, the answer popped into my mind. I thought of this bumper sticker I’d seen once on an old junky car on the highway. “IF YOU CAN READ THIS, YOU’RE TOO CLOSE!” The sticker was printed in pretty small letters, so that you wouldn’t be able to read it unless you were right behind the other car.

  I looked down at my notebook. So far I hadn’t taken any notes on Mr. Zorzi’s lecture. Guess what I wrote across the page. I wrote it in letters about the same size as my regular writing, so it would make a good test of Shawna’s vision. Here’s what it said: “IF YOU CAN READ THIS, YOU ARE A CHEATER AND YOU MIGHT AS WELL ADMIT IT!”

  I looked at it and almost burst out laughing. This had to work. Now I just had to wait for Shawna to notice what I’d written. When she read it (and I was sure she’d be able to) her face would turn all red and she’d probably say something incriminating.

  There was only one problem. Unlike me, Shawna was paying attention to Mr. Zorzi. She was taking notes on everything he said. She had no reason to look over at me — or my paper.

  I had to get her attention. First, I cleared my throat. “Ahem!” I said, loudly. She didn’t look. I tapped my pen against my desk, hoping that she’d turn to see where the noise was coming from. She seemed absorbed in her note taking.

  “Pssst … Shawna!” I whispered, as quietly as I could. She didn’t seem to hear me.

  I’d caught the attention of some of the other kids in class, though. They were looking at me, watching to see what I would do next.

  Desperate times call for desperate measures, I thought. I gave a huge yawn, stretching my arms over my head.

  “Claudia Kishi!” said Mr. Zorzi. “What on earth are you doing?”

  Ooops. I’d gotten kind of carried away and forgotten where I was.

  “Sorry, Mr. Zorzi,” I said, giving him my best smile.

  “I suppose you know all about the whole numbers,” said Mr. Zorzi, “and you don’t need to review this material with the rest of us.”

  Yikes. That brought me back to earth. After all, even if I could prove that Shawna was guilty, I still needed to keep up with my class. And I wasn’t doing a very good job of it that day.

  “Yes, Mr. Zorzi,” I said without thinking. “I mean, no, Mr. Zorzi,” I said, correcting myself. “I’ll pay attention. I’m sorry.”

  I heard some giggles behind me. I turned to see who was laughing, and saw one of the kids making the “she’s nuts!” sign and pointing at me.

  Better get a grip, Claud, I thought. My plans were not working out the way they were supposed to. I decided to give up and listen to Mr. Zorzi instead. I figured I might as well get something out of that day’s class.

  I turned to a fresh page in my notebook and then looked over at Shawna’s desk to check on what notes she’d taken so far. Then it hit me. Of course! All I had to do to prove that she could read my paper was to prove that I could read hers!

  I leaned over just a bit so I could see more clearly. She was scribbling away. I caught a few words: “So then he said, ‘Well, I heard that Susan told Jason that you were going to ask me to the dance.’ And so I said …”

  Wow. Shawna wasn’t taking notes on what Mr. Zorzi was saying. All this time she’d been writing notes — to her friend!

  And it looked like juicy stuff. I leaned over again to read some more. “… but Susan said that Jason said I had really nice hair …”

  I was totally absorbed in what I was reading. I didn’t even hear Mr. Zorzi call my name this time, but he must have been trying to get my attention for quite awhile. Just as I was getting to a really good part of Shawna’s note, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I must have jumped about six feet straight up out of my seat.

  “Claudia,” said Mr. Zorzi, shaking his head. I looked up at him with my mouth open. I couldn’t think of a thing to say. I couldn’t believe I had been caught in the act, doing what I’d been trying so hard to catch Shawna doing.

  Just then, the bell rang. I was in luck — math class was over.

  Mallory and I were sitting for her brothers and sisters that afternoon and you can’t imagine what a bad mood the triplets were in. They still wouldn’t tell which of them had broken the window, and they were still grounded. They hadn’t been outside, they hadn’t seen their friends, and they weren’t allowed to use the phone. When I reached the Pikes’ house, they barely said hello.

  Being grounded wasn’t what was bothering the triplets — it was the fact that they weren’t even earning any allowance money. And no allowance money meant no baseball cards, no candy bars, no comic books … “Not even a single piece of bubble gum!” Adam wailed, telling me about it.

  I was sympathetic, but as baby-sitters we had to enforce Mrs. Pike’s rules. And the triplets weren’t happy about that. They were sick of being inside, sick of Pig Latin, even sick of that “op-talk” Jessi had taught them — they were sick of just about everything. So I’ll admit that I was pretty happy when Mallory suggested that I take the younger Pikes outside to play.

  “I’ll keep an eye on the triplets, Claud,” she said. “I’m working on an idea that might solve the problem. And the problem has to be solved — or else I might go crazy.”

  “Fine with me, Mal,” I said. I rounded up the rest of the kids and headed outside. Then Mallory went to work on the triplets.

  Adam, Jordan, and Byron were lounging around the living room, listlessly playing with their Matchbox car collection. Mallory sat down and watched for a few minutes, ignoring the bored looks they gave her. By this time she’d gotten used to their foul mood.

  “I’ve got an idea, guys,” she said.

  “Oh yeah?” asked Adam.

  “So what?” asked Jordan.

  “Big deal,” said Byron.

  “Oh, okay,” said Mallory. “I guess you don’t want to hear how you might be able to get ungrounded and get your allowances back. Fine with me!” And she got up to leave the room.

  “Wait a minute!” said the boys at once. They begged her to tell them her idea.

  “You know those reenactments you see on TV?” she asked. “Sometimes when they act out the crime it suddenly becomes obvious that the innocent-seeming person was guilty all along.”

  The triplets nodded.

  “Well, how about if we reenact this crime?” Mal asked.

  The triplets looked doubtful.

  “It may be your only chance,” said Mallory.

  The triplets exchanged glances.

  “How do we start?” asked Jordan.

  Mallory told them that they should do everything possible to re-create the day that the window had been broken. “Think about that day. Try to remember everything about it,” she said.

  The triplets were quiet for a momen
t, thinking. Then they had a quick, hushed discussion. Adam turned to Mallory. “Wait here,” he said. The boys ran upstairs, and when they came back down, Mallory burst out laughing. They had changed into the same clothes they’d been wearing on the day the window had been broken!

  “Okay, guys,” she said. “Now I know Mom said you couldn’t go outside, but I think it’s time to make an exception to the rule. After all, how can we reenact the crime unless we’re at the scene of the crime itself?”

  The boys grabbed their baseball equipment and followed Mallory outside. “Whoops!” said Byron, when they’d reached the backyard. “Forgot my batting glove!” He ran back inside.

  “He didn’t really forget it,” said Jordan. “He’s just re-creating. On the day the window broke, he really did forget his glove. So he’s doing it again.”

  Mallory rolled her eyes. She could see that the triplets were going to take this to the limit. And she was right. They seemed to think that every single thing they’d done that day was important. Adam even remembered every dumb knock-knock joke he’d told.

  Finally the boys got around to reenacting what they’d each been doing when the ball went through the window. And, as Mallory told me later, she saw right away whose fault it was — “everybody’s and nobody’s.”

  What happened that day (as reenacted by the triplets) was this: Jordan was pitching, Byron was at bat, and Adam was behind him, catching. (No one was fielding.)

  Jordan pitched kind of a wild pitch, way up in the air and “outside.” Byron swung at it, even though he should have let it go by. It glanced off his bat, and he saw that it was going toward the house. He yelled to Adam to catch it, but Adam misjudged the direction of the ball and ran the wrong way. Then the ball crashed through the basement window. And you know the rest of the story.

  Mallory said she was relieved to have finally found out what had happened — and she said the triplets seemed happy to let the story out. They’d kept it quiet for so long.