Kristy and the Middle School Vandal

  “Get it?” said James. “Like Kristy’s Krushers!”

  Everyone loved the name and immediately wanted to be on the Klue Krushers team. But at last Claudia and Mary Anne persuaded the kids that they needed two teams to play, and that the other team could think up their own name. With much tact, they convinced James and Becca to be on the team with Johnny and Jenny, and Charlotte and Rosie to be on the team with Jamie and Mathew. The team with the most Hobarts won the right to be the Klue Krushers. That left Charlotte and Rosie to think up their own team name, with the help of their teammates.

  “How about the Killers,” said Charlotte bloodthirstily, giving the Klue Krushers a look.

  “I bet you can think of something funnier,” said Mary Anne.

  “I like Scavenger Queens,” Becca offered.

  “It’s been taken, Becca,” said Charlotte impatiently.

  “I don’t want to be a Queen,” insisted Jamie.

  “What about the Buzzard Bashers?” said Rosie.

  Everyone liked that, particularly since the Bashers are also the main rivals of the Krushers softball team.

  The names having been settled, Mary Anne outlined the rules and then Claud, heading up the Klue Krushers, read the first clue aloud from her list: “This sings in the trees and floats in the breeze; a part or a whole will fulfill this role.”

  The two teams took off in opposite directions.

  Naturally the Klue Krushers thought it would be a great idea to catch a bird. Claud dissuaded them from that idea, pointing out that it would take too much time.

  “Does anyone in the neighborhood have a canary or a parakeet?” asked James. “Maybe we could borrow one.”

  In the other group, Mary Anne was listening to a similar conversation. Only the Buzzard Bashers wanted to pool their money and go to a pet store, to see if they could buy a bird.

  As Claud had with the Krushers, Mary Anne talked the Buzzard Bashers out of the notion, wondering as she did so if maybe the clue had been too difficult.

  Then Charlotte exclaimed triumphantly, “Feathers!”

  At about the same time, Becca was saying, “Wind chimes!” and pointing to a wind chime mobile that Claud had made out of all kinds of found objects, including spoons, bits of wood, shells, and yes, feathers. It was hanging on the Kishis’ front porch. Claud had given it to her mother for Mother’s Day. She figured her mom wouldn’t mind lending it to a good cause, and borrowed it.

  Janine, who was reading on the front porch, warned the Klue Krushers to return it safely.

  “We will,” promised Jenny.

  “No problem, mate,” piped up Johnny.

  Janine raised an eyebrow. “Australia. The Sydney opera house is quite extraordinary,” she commented, and went back to her book.

  Claudia was impressed with her team’s creativity. The wind chimes definitely sang in trees and floated in the breeze.

  Meanwhile, Mary Anne was resigning herself to carrying an old feather pillow that one of the neighbors had laughingly donated.

  The next clue was: “It’s icky, it’s gooey, it’s stinky, it’s a stew. If you look down at the ground then you will figure out this clue.”

  Charlotte immediately wrinkled her nose. “I have to clean up after Carrot in our backyard. Is that the clue?” (Carrot is the Johannsens’ pet schnauzer.)

  Becca, with Claudia, was echoing almost the same sentiments. “Oh, yuck! Is that clue dog poo?”

  Mary Anne and Claudia each quickly headed off that idea before it could go anywhere. (Actually, we had been thinking about mud.)

  Both groups (with a little help from Claudia and Mary Anne) eventually settled on jars of mud (whew!).

  “Whenever I’m seen, I’m always green; from winter through fall, I don’t shed at all,” Claudia read aloud, keeping an eye on her watch. “We just have time for one more.”

  “The lawn gnome!” shouted Mathew.

  “What?” asked Claud, considerably startled. She looked in the direction he was pointing. Sure enough, almost hidden among the bushes at one side of Kristy’s old house was an ornamental statue. It was an elf in a green suit.

  “We can’t borrow the lawn gnome,” said Claudia. Not only did she not know who it belonged to, but she didn’t want to carry it. It looked heavy. “Besides, what does he have to do with nature?”

  “He’s in a garden,” argued Becca.

  But Claudia stood firm. The Klue Krushers finished up with the more conventional solution, a branch from a fir tree.

  The Buzzard Bashers? Well, they thought of a branch from an evergreen, too, but they rejected it. Not in favor of a lawn gnome, but in favor of … a square of AstroTurf donated by a neighbor.

  Mary Anne kept herself from laughing, just barely. It was, after all, green year round. And as artificial grass, it probably did, somehow, come under the heading “nature.”

  After the strenuous exertions of the morning, it was time for some refreshment. Claudia, of course, had arranged to have a good supply of “healthy” junk food on hand. Meanwhile, some of the kids from the other teams had begun to arrive, along with the other members of the BSC.

  I hopped out of Nannie’s Pink Clinker, accompanied by Abby and Shannon, who helped me carry the boxes of clues from the first four teams. Behind me came David Michael, and Hannie and Linny Papadakis. Mal and Jessi arrived with a Pike contingent, and Logan rode up moments later on his bike.

  So while the teams ate oatmeal cookies and lemonade, and boasted about how well they’d done (Logan and Mary Anne volunteered to keep an eye on them all), the rest of the BSC members and I retired to Claudia’s room to ponder the clues.

  Claudia opened the discussion with the observation that we were going to have a tough time deciding among the teams and declaring any solutions “better” than others. She secretly gave the wind chimes high marks, though, and was attracted to the AstroTurf concept. “It’s like bad art imitating life,” she said.

  Abby immediately shot back, “Whose life?”

  Actually, we all agreed that the best solutions were the AstroTurf, the wind chimes, the dirty socks, the slightly wilting tree branch (not the evergreen — the one that stood for paper), and the sneakers. But how many points should we give each thing? Naturally, each baby-sitter was in favor of giving the most points to her team.

  After awhile, I put my hands over my ears. If I hadn’t been so caught up in the mystery and the Mystery War, I would have organized an objective point-based system ahead of time. But it wasn’t too late. “Enough arguing!” I said. I took a piece of paper and began writing down numbers — points for finishing, points for the most clues, points for the best items. Then I handed it over to Stacey. “Add it up, please.”

  Stacey added it up in about two seconds. She smiled. “It’s close, but the winner is … the Scavenger Queens!”

  Jessi pirouetted and then pumped her fist.

  “Aw, it was rigged,” said Abby.

  Claudia said, “Well, I think we should give the AstroTurf honorable mention. And the wind chimes.”

  “Good idea,” I agreed. “We’ll give honorable mentions for the best items, okay?”

  Everybody liked that idea. We went back downstairs to announce the results.

  It’s amazing how fast a whole kitchen full of kids can quiet down when you are going to announce the winner of a contest.

  I gave them the speech about all of them doing a good job.

  They squirmed.

  I spoke of creativity and inspiration. They grew restless.

  Finally I announced the winners.

  They went ballistic. “Ha!” shouted Hannie. “Queens rule!”

  “Buzzards rule,” retorted Adam.

  “Buzzard Bashers, Buzzard Bashers,” chanted Charlotte in her best cheerleader style.

  “Quiet!” commanded Mal.

  It worked.

  Then someone said, “We demand a rematch!” and it started all over again.

  The scavenger hunt had been a success. A rousing, no
isy success.

  On Monday morning I woke up with a feeling of dread. Practically my first thought was, “The strike. Oh, no.”

  Only one more day before the teachers walked out, if they didn’t have a contract.

  Fortunately, Watson wasn’t at breakfast. He’d left early on business. That meant that the newspaper had left with him. So I didn’t feel obligated to see if another story about the battle between the board of ed and the teachers was on the front page, or check out the letters from various indignant citizens on both sides of the issue.

  On the bus to school, the kids in the back seemed a little rowdier than usual, even for a Monday morning. I registered the noise level in one corner of my mind as Abby and I pondered the most recent and most obscure clue from Cary.

  “USoA has to be United States of America. I mean, what else could it be?” demanded Abby.

  I had to agree. I had come to the same conclusion. We stared hard at the piece of paper, as if our eyes could burn out some hidden letters in invisible ink. Of course, that didn’t work. But after awhile Abby said, “If the lowercase ‘o’ stands for ‘of,’ then maybe the lowercase letters stand for other short words. For example, the ‘t’ could stand for ‘the.’ ”

  “It’s worth a try,” I said.

  It isn’t easy writing on the Wheeze Wagon, but in between the lurches, and whenever it came to a stop, I wrote on the back of my notebook, “IPA2 the F of the United States of America and 2 the R (WITCHES) (look up).”

  “Well, the 2 could stand for ‘to’ then,” I said. I crossed out the “2s” and wrote “to.”

  Abby and I both said, instantly, “The Pledge of Allegiance.”

  “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,” said Abby. Then she stopped.

  We looked at the crude drawing of the witches. Abby said, “Frankly, these witches are typical witch stereotypes. Pointed hats. Crooked noses. Bad hair. Fashion-victim clothes. These four witches stand for something … the original meaning of the word witch … four witches!” Four witches stand.

  I started to laugh. Of course. The four witches meant “for which it stands.”

  The bus lurched to a halt in front of the school. The steps were strangely empty.

  “You guys are gonna have to hustle,” the bus driver told us. “We’re a little behind schedule today.”

  “The Pledge of Allegiance,” I said. “The clue is …”

  “In the flag, I bet. It says ‘look up’ and that’s what you look up to when you say the pledge,” finished Abby. “And Cary is in my homeroom and … we’re going to be late!”

  We flew off the bus and hit the front steps of the school at a run. “Go!” I cried, and Abby sped down the hall to her homeroom as I turned the corner and ducked into mine.

  I learned later that Abby looked up and saw the note. The moment homeroom was dismissed, while the teacher wasn’t looking, she jumped up and snagged the small white square tucked into the metal sleeve holding the flag. She whipped around, holding it triumphantly aloft, but Cary had vanished from the room, so she couldn’t flaunt her victory.

  She unfolded the note and read, “Bring me the head of the False Mischief Knights!”

  With that clue, the two mysteries had dovetailed into one. The final clue in the Mystery War, and the way to keep school from going into the middle of summer were coming down to one and the same thing: the BSC had to find the SMS vandal.

  Through the BSC grapevine, we quickly spread the word of the final clue, and the final challenge. I paused briefly to wonder if Cary himself knew who the vandal was, and if he was going to turn the culprit in if we didn’t. Or did he think going to school in the middle of the summer was another one of those complications that make life interesting?

  We spent the rest of the morning doing a “watch check”: trying to find out who had a digital watch that beeped. Stacey asked Mr. Milhaus what time it was (after not-so-subtly tracking him down in the hall between classes). He pulled out an old-fashioned pocket watch to consult it.

  Mary Anne spotted Brad Simon in the guidance office and saw immediately that he was wearing a large digital watch. Not only that, but he was standing with the woman that Abby had noticed during one of the false fire alarms. Before her head knew what her feet were doing, Mary Anne was walking into the office to pick up a couple of those guidance counselor brochures that no one ever reads. As she did so, one of the inside doors opened, and the guidance counselor said, “Brad? Mrs. Simon?” Mrs. Simon put her hand on Brad’s shoulder and marched him ahead of her into the office.

  Could Brad have eluded his mother to pull the fire alarm switch? It seemed unlikely.

  Once again we met at lunch to discuss the clues.

  We were feeling pretty frustrated.

  “It’s like a sort of clue soup,” I said, “and it’s worse than the SMS mystery meat. I mean, none of it goes together. It’s like putting sugar and salt in the same recipe.”

  Claudia sat down next to me and remarked, “Sugar and salt are good together. Like potato chips and candy bars.”

  We all groaned.

  Claudia laughed and said, “Guess what, you guys. False Mischief Knights news. Emily Bernstein just received a letter from a Mischief Knight. In dark green. For publication. The writer says that everyone at the school is unfair and he — or she — hopes the strike does take place.”

  “Oh, grow up,” said Abby impatiently, meaning the writer of the letter, not Claud. “The world is unfair. And people like this creep just make it worse, always blaming other people for their own problems.”

  “No kidding,” Stacey said. “Because ‘unfair’ is unhappy, we all have to be unhappy, too. Puh-lease.”

  “Well, whoever this green MK is, they’re not staying on top of things. Attention to detail is crucial in crime,” I said.

  “Translate, please,” said Mary Anne with a little smile.

  “He’s not paying attention to details. He uses green to sign his messages, not red, like the real MKs. He damages the wrong car, the light green one instead of the red one. I mean, come on.”

  Mary Anne’s eyes widened. “Colors,” she said.

  Claudia looked up. “Yeah?”

  “Colors. Red and green … the False MK is color blind!”

  “Well, that would explain it,” said Stacey, laughing. “An ingenious theory, Sherlock Spier.”

  “I’m serious,” said Mary Anne, her cheeks flushing now. “I mean it.”

  I said slowly, “It’s a possibility.”

  “Hey!” Claudia shouted. “Hey! She’s right! You’re right, Mary Anne!”

  We all jumped about a mile.

  “Claudia!” Stacey complained.

  “It’s Troy Parker. Think about the way he dresses! Fashion-victim basics. He never ever matches. And the mismatches aren’t deliberate. If he was color blind, that would explain it.”

  “Statistically speaking, males are much more likely to be color blind than females,” remarked Stacey, sounding a little like Janine.

  Jumping up, Abby announced, “The mystery is solved. The school is saved. Mr. Kingbridge, here we come!”

  I grabbed her arm. “Wait.”

  “What?” said Abby.

  “We’ve — I’ve — already accused the wrong person once. I don’t want to do that again. We need more proof,” I said.

  “But how?” asked Mary Anne.

  “Check Troy’s locker for proof,” said Stacey. “Green chalk. Green paint.”

  “Yeah, right. And who here can break into a locker?” said Abby sarcastically.

  In the pause that followed, all of us must have been thinking the same thing.

  Cary Retlin.

  “Okay, okay,” I said, standing up. “I’ll find him and ask him. But I won’t like it.”

  “Think of the school,” urged Claudia. “Think of summer school.”

  * * *

  I tracked Cary down after school.

  I wondered if he slept with that mocking smile
pinned to his lips.

  I said, “We’ve solved the mystery. But we need proof. We need you to open a locker for us so we can get it.”

  “What makes you think I know how to break into lockers?” Cary asked, slamming his own locker shut and locking it, as if for emphasis.

  “You have before,” I reminded him, referring to a past mystery in which Cary had demonstrated lock-loosening skills.

  He didn’t acknowledge that. Instead he said, “Even if I could open a lock, why should I trust you? You could be setting me up for Mr. Kingbridge.”

  I turned red. He didn’t trust me. It seemed weird to realize that as much as I didn’t trust Cary, he felt the same way about me. “You’re right. I could be. But I acted without thinking before. This is different.”

  “If I help you, then you haven’t solved the mystery entirely without my help,” he pointed out. “The BSC will forfeit the Mystery War.”

  Again, he was right. I hesitated for a long moment. But how could I not agree? We had no other way to stop Mr. Oates’s campaign against SMS, and therefore, the strike.

  I nodded slowly. “Okay,” I said. “We’ll forfeit. It’s worth it.”

  Mary Anne zoomed over to us. “We’ve found his locker,” she said.

  I looked at Cary. He didn’t ask whose locker. He just nodded. “You forfeit, I’m in,” he said.

  “I saw Troy Parker a few minutes ago.” Mary Anne panted as we hurried down the hall as fast as we could without arousing teacher-type suspicion. “He was wearing a watch just like the one you have.”

  “Had,” I couldn’t help saying.

  Cary laughed.

  Claudia stood guard at one end of the hall with Stacey. Mal and Jessi took the top and bottom of the stairs and Abby and Mary Anne took the other end of the hall. I followed Cary and watched as he knelt by the locker and went to work.

  I don’t know how he did it, though I swear I watched him like a hawk, but moments later, Cary had the locker open.

  “Awesome, no?” said Cary.

  Ignoring him, I peered into the locker.

  The first thing I saw was a big green permanent marker. I reached in, took it out by one end (hoping I wasn’t ruining any fingerprints) and held it aloft. Abby nodded, and she and Mary Anne took off. I knew they were going for Mr. Kingbridge.