Kristy and the Middle School Vandal

Stacey looked thoughtful. “I agree with Abby. I mean, what they did to the car, whoever did it, wasn’t funny. It was mean.”

  I had to agree with that. Much as I didn’t like Cary, I didn’t see him sinking to actual vandalism. Cary was too sold on his own cleverness, and the vandalism wasn’t very clever.

  But it was hard to ignore those times when he didn’t have an alibi. And the fact that he didn’t deny being the culprit.

  With a sigh, Abby said, “Well, whoever’s doing it, I wish they’d stop. I mean, I don’t mind missing a couple of classes for fire drills, but if I have to go to summer school to make up for lost days because the teachers go on strike, I’ll do something desperate.”

  “It’s the vandal’s fault. If I didn’t know better, I’d think Mr. Oates-votes was doing it himself, to drum up support for his run for mayor,” said Stacey.

  “He was there for the fire alarm,” I reminded her. “Remember? Mr. Kingbridge was surprised to see him.”

  “Yeah, well, Troy Parker and Brad Simon were there, for that matter. We know Brad Simon is a jerk, and we know Troy Parker was suspended for something major,” Abby pointed out.

  “For that matter, Mal saw Mr. Milhaus walk by her classroom door right before the alarm was pulled. And it was the alarm near her classroom that someone triggered,” I added.

  Abby grinned. “Everybody’s a suspect except you and me, and I’m not so sure about you.”

  “A pattern or motive. That’s what we should be looking at,” announced Stacey. She held up her fingers and counted off: “One: a damaged car with a threat to Mr. Kingbridge; two: two false fire alarms; three: all three are signed MK, in green.”

  “Cars, false alarms, and green chalk. I don’t see a pattern there,” I said. “Isn’t there anything else?”

  “They aren’t good spellers,” Stacey observed. “Isn’t that what Cokie said? They misspelled principal. Even Claudia knows that rule, because the principal always includes that ‘principal is your pal’ line in his welcome back to school speech every year.”

  Just then Abby jumped up. (Abby never does anything slowly, or even at regular speed.) “There’s our bus.”

  “See you guys later,” said Stacey, and we went our separate ways until the BSC meeting.

  The scavenger hunt headquarters for the day was the Pike house, where Mal and Stacey met (or maybe it would be more accurate to say “were met by”) seven Pikes, two Arnolds, two Braddocks, and two Hills: thirteen scavengers in all.

  They were careening around the Pike backyard like pinballs. The minute Mal and Stacey appeared, the entire group converged on them. Stacey closed her eyes, half expecting to be trampled by a herd of scavenger hunters. But Mal, who has slightly more experience with charging herds of kids, said in a loud, calm voice, “Everybody sit down. We can’t start the hunt until everybody SITS DOWN.”

  She pointed to the grass in front of her. Stacey opened her eyes. The kids were sorting themselves out, and soon every one of them had taken a seat on the grass.

  Mal nodded at Stacey.

  Stacey nodded back and cleared her throat. “Okay, you guys, does everybody know what a scavenger hunt is?”

  Hands shot up. Kids wriggled. A few voices cried, “I know, I know.”

  “Carolyn?” said Stacey. “You want to tell us?”

  Carolyn Arnold stood up and said importantly, “A scavenger hunt is when you go hunt for things like a buzzard does. A buzzard is a scavenger, you know.”

  Considerably startled, Mal jumped in, “Well, yes, that’s sort of where the name comes from. You hunt for all kinds of different things.”

  “But you don’t eat them like a buzzard,” interrupted Carolyn’s twin sister Marilyn.

  “EUUUUUUW,” shrieked Margo Pike.

  “Definitely not!” cried Stacey.

  Waving her arms in the air, Haley Braddock jumped up. “It’s where you have a list and you hunt for things on the list, right? You go around and ask people if they have what you’re looking for.”

  Stacey nodded.

  “And you do it in teams,” Adam, one of the Pike triplets, added. “And the best team finds all the stuff on the list first and wins! Let’s start now!”

  He and the other triplets, Byron and Jordan, immediately leaped to their feet.

  “NO!” said Mal.

  Stacey explained, “We can’t start until we divide into teams and we can’t divide into teams until everybody sits down again.”

  Once more everybody sat down.

  Mal reached into her pack and said, “Okay, we have two copies of the list of things we’re looking for here, one copy for each team. You earn points for finishing first.”

  “What if neither team finds everything on the list?” asked Nicky Pike.

  “Then the team with the most things earns the points for winning.”

  Stacey and Mal went on to explain that the list was of clues, rather than specific items, and that several different items might fit a description on the list. For example, the clue might read, “Get a Life.” One team might track down a Life magazine, while another might look for a box of Life cereal. Points would also be given for the most original item in any category. The theme we had chosen for the first hunt, in spite of Claudia’s protests, was school. It was a big, easy category, with lots of possibilities. (Claudia had finally given in, saying, “As long as it’s not my scavenger hunt theme.”)

  “The people on each team have to stay together,” Mal concluded. “No dividing up to find different things on the list.”

  “Rats,” mumbled Byron.

  “The objects can be found, or you can get them by asking people for them,” said Stacey. “But you can’t ask anybody for more than one thing on the list.”

  They divided into teams: Byron, Adam, Jordan, Carolyn, Haley, Norman Hill, and Claire Pike went with Mal. Stacey’s team included Vanessa, Nicky, Margo, Marilyn, Matthew Braddock, and Sarah Hill.

  They were about to take off when Byron said suddenly, “We don’t have a team name.”

  Nicky said, “We want a name, too.”

  “Pikes’ Losers,” Byron teased, pointing at Vanessa, Nicky, and Margo.

  “Ha, ha,” said Margo. “We’re going to find everything first and win. You’ll be the losers.”

  “Finders keepers, losers weepers,” chanted Vanessa. Then she shouted, “That’s it. Our team name is Finders Keepers!”

  “That’s a good one,” said Stacey admiringly.

  Jordan scowled. “Well, we’re the Dream Team.”

  Vanessa smiled. “Go ahead. Dream on!”

  “The Dream Team! I like it,” said Mal hastily. “Let’s coordinate watches.”

  Mal and Stacey coordinated watches.

  “We’ll meet back here in one hour,” said Mal. “That means even if you haven’t found everything on your list, you have to come back here. And if you are late, you lose points.”

  “Eat our dust!” shouted Adam (he’s been watching a lot of bad movies on video lately). The Dream Team took off.

  “Losers weepers,” Margo shouted back.

  Stacey handed Vanessa the piece of paper with the list of clues. Vanessa read the first clue aloud:

  “For the beginning of the school caper, remember that this holds the paper,” Vanessa read aloud. “Not a bad rhyme.” She frowned. “But what holds the paper?

  “A newspaper stand?” said Marilyn.

  Stacey signed “What holds paper?” to Matthew Braddock, who quickly signed something back. (Matthew is deaf and uses American Sign Language. All of us sitters have learned enough ASL to talk with him a little.)

  “A notebook,” said Stacey. “That’s a good idea, Matt.”

  “Or a paper clip,” Nicky offered. “Paper clips hold paper.”

  Vanessa laughed. “I guess we would be in trouble if we tried to bring back a newspaper stand.”

  “Yeah, but we’d get a lot of points for it,” said Nicky.

  “We’ll ask for a notebook or a paper clip and let w
hoever is giving it to us choose,” suggested Sarah.

  Meanwhile, in the front yard, the Pike triplets were arguing vigorously in favor of a tree branch as the answer to the first clue. “A tree, see?” Adam explained. “It’s where paper comes from. Trees are used to make paper. Pine trees.”

  “Pine trees?” said Mal.

  “Maybe,” said Adam, undaunted.

  “We can’t knock on someone’s door and ask for a tree,” said Carolyn scornfully.

  “But we can just pick a pine tree limb up off the ground,” argued Byron.

  The triplets won out. The first item was a tree branch, which Mal ended up carrying for most of the rest of the scavenger hunt.

  By the time the hour was up, the kids had assembled an amazing assortment of school-related (and not so school-related) items from the clues given. The two groups met at the gate to the Pike backyard when the time was up.

  “Nice tree,” said Stacey, grinning at Mal.

  “Whose sneakers?” retorted Mal. The clue had been “Here’s a transportation rule/This helps you make your way to school.” Stacey’s group had decided not on the bus (or tokens from the bus) or a picture of a bicycle, but on their feet. The sneakers were supposed to represent feet.

  “Did you find everything?” shouted Nicky. “We did!”

  “We did, too,” replied Haley.

  Nicky looked crushed. “You did?”

  “No,” said Mal, “we didn’t.”

  Haley grinned. Nicky stuck out his tongue.

  It turned out that Stacey’s group had scored one more item than Mal’s team. But Mal’s team had several things at least as original as the tree branch.

  Everyone headed for home, except Mal and Stacey. Loading up the two teams’ items in separate boxes, carefully labeled, they headed for the BSC meeting with the loot.

  I was fascinated with the boxes of scavenger hunt items. “Shoes? A tree branch? What happened to, you know, bicycles and paper clips?”

  Mal grinned. “They were going after the points for originality.”

  “This is great,” Claudia said, kneeling next to me and peering into one of the boxes. “It makes me see school in a whole different light. Paper as trees in disguise … I like that.” Then Claud noticed something else. “Ew! What’s that?” she asked.

  “That was Norman’s contribution — under the ‘lunch at school’ category,” Mal explained. “It’s a bunch of leftovers from the Papadakises’ refrigerator, mashed together.”

  “We can throw it away,” I said. “I’ll remember it.”

  “Kristy, everybody’s here. How about showing us the clue,” said Abby impatiently.

  How could I have forgotten? I’d been so psyched by the scavenger hunt loot that I had almost forgotten the next clue in the Mystery War.

  Quickly I sat down in the director’s chair. And of course, the phone rang. And rang. It’s sort of like washing your car to make it rain, I guess. Anyway, we didn’t get to the clue until four phone calls later.

  But at last I was able to pull the envelope out. I held it up.

  “Open it!” cried Mal impatiently.

  “Before the phone rings again,” added Jessi.

  That inspired me. I ripped the envelope open and read from the sheet of paper:

  “Ha,” I said sourly, after reading the clue over several times. “We’ve scared him.” I passed the clue to Mal, who handed it to Jessi.

  “How do you know?” asked Claudia.

  “Because this clue makes no sense. I don’t think it’s even a real clue.”

  “ ‘Cafeteria Hamburger’ is a lunch reference,” said Stacey. She wrinkled her nose as if she could actually smell the lunchroom mystery meat.

  “ ‘A Theory of Man and Woman’ is underlined and written as if it was the title of something,” said Mal. “A movie? No. Who’d make a movie with a title like that?”

  “Could be one of those French movies with a bad translation,” said Abby.

  “No,” said Mal, giving Abby a Look. “More likely it’s an article. Or a book. I say a book.”

  “But ‘SMS on Street?’ A fly on the wall? Gimme a break,” said Abby. “I say we find Cary and we —”

  “How about the street address of SMS?” suggested Jessi. “Elm Street?”

  “Could be,” I said.

  Mary Anne had torn a sheet of paper from her notebook and was writing it all down. “Lunch reference, book title, street address, and still unsolved,” she read aloud.

  “I don’t like flies,” Stacey said to no one in particular.

  “Maybe part of the clue is at each place,” Mal mused. “You know, like the first part of the clue is in the lunchroom, the second part is in the library.”

  “But the third part would be the whole school,” said Mary Anne. She frowned. “Unless it means right where the school meets the street, or something like that.”

  I looked at Claudia’s clock (and thought dark thoughts about Cary and my watch). I looked at the phone, half daring it to ring. When it didn’t, I said, “Well, it’s not much, but it’s all we have to go on. We’ll have a look tomorrow. Meanwhile …” I paused. The seconds ticked away. The clock flipped to 6:00. “This meeting of the BSC is hereby adjourned,” I concluded.

  * * *

  “Hmmm,” said Watson at breakfast.

  Watson is not the biggest talker in the morning, so when he does speak, I figure it must be important.

  “Do you mean, hmmm, I need more milk? Or hmmm, where’s the toast?” I asked.

  He looked up from the newspaper he had spread beside his cup of tea and smiled. “I meant, hmmm, that’s some editorial in the mild-mannered Stoneybrook News.”

  The Stoneybrook News is a local paper, in case you hadn’t guessed. It covers the local news, which always makes the front page, and the other, regular news, which gets less attention, unless it is something really major. (Watson and Mom subscribe to The New York Times, too, so they don’t miss the rest of the picture.)

  “What editorial?” I asked, instantly curious.

  Watson pushed the paper toward me. I shoved my plate aside and bent over the editorial page.

  It was a sizzler, all about the lack of responsibility Stoneybrook’s teachers and administrators were demonstrating, as evidenced by students’ acts of vandalism and reckless behavior in recent weeks. The piece made it sound as if SMS were under siege by evil students, while teachers cowered behind their desks.

  “Wow,” I breathed.

  “There are also letters,” said Watson.

  And indeed there were. One was from Mr. Jerome Wetzler, a man who attended the Stoneybrook schools years ago and thinks everything these days is much too lax. He’d written “Bring-back-the-old-days” letters before. Characteristically, he argued that the school budget should be cut even further. The teachers hardly did their work as it was. Why pay them for work they didn’t do? That, apparently, would show the cowardly teachers and bad students what was what. In his day …

  I skipped to the next letter.

  Uh-oh. Mr. Oates for Votes had written in, too. He talked a lot about himself — what a great and caring human being he was, and how he wanted what was best for everybody. Then he got down to business: the school board wouldn’t even consider the teachers’ demands, he wrote, “until order is restored to our once-proud school system.”

  Could a school system be proud? I wondered. I read on.

  Ms. Karush had also written in, pointing out that the teachers were not responsible for the acts of vandalism, and that the teachers’ contracts and the vandalism were two separate issues that needed separate — and different — solutions.

  Naturally, I agreed with Ms. Karush. Teachers have it hard enough as is. I didn’t understand how cutting money and staff would help the situation. It seemed as if it would just make it worse. But even more than that, I was afraid the worst was going to happen.

  School in July.

  In spite of the blistering editorial and the letters in the morn
ing paper, school was uneventful. Before homeroom, we’d divided the different sections of Cary’s clue among us, and agreed to check them out.

  Just after noon, I asked my teacher if I could go to the bathroom.

  She nodded and pointed to a chart on the corner of her desk. “Sign out first,” she said.

  “Why?” I asked. “We’ve never done that before.”

  “New school policy. It’s just to help us keep track of who is in and out of class if another, uh, incident occurs.”

  “Oh. Right,” I said. I signed out and headed for the bathroom.

  As I left my classroom I thought I heard footsteps running down the hall, but I didn’t see anyone. I didn’t think any more about it until I rounded the corner in the same direction the sound had come from — and found a puddle outside the bathroom door.

  “Ew,” I said.

  Then I realized that the puddle was growing.

  Be tough, I told myself. It’s not as bad as you think.

  Gingerly avoiding any contact with the spreading puddle, I pushed the bathroom door open. Inside, the floor was a lake. I could hear the sound of water running.

  “Gross,” I said.

  A hand clamped down on my shoulder. It was Ms. Garcia, one of the teachers. “What’s …” she began, then peered past me. “Quick — find one of the custodians,” she told me. “Hurry!”

  I’d taken about two steps when I saw Mr. Milhaus. “An emergency!” I practically shouted. “The bathroom is flooding!”

  Mr. Milhaus didn’t even ask questions. “I am here. Pardon me,” he said, in his formal way, and stepped past Ms. Garcia and me, into the spreading puddle. Less than a minute later, he came back out. “The sinks have been stoppered and the water left running,” he said. “I have turned off the faucets and shall mop.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Milhaus,” said Ms. Garcia.

  He nodded, and plunged back into the bathroom sea.

  I stared at his feet. Had they been wet before he entered the bathroom the first time? And how did Mr. Milhaus know to come so quickly?

  Stop it, Kristy, I told myself. You suspect everybody of everything.

  I stared absently at the bathroom door, trying to think where the closest unflooded bathroom was. Suddenly, I realized what I was staring at: another “MK,” in green chalk, on the back of the bathroom door.