The Mystery of the Missing Everything

^{Chapter 27} “My Favorite Things”

To the student body, Principal Van Vreeland’s proposed Week of a Thousand Quizzes was a grossly unfair punishment; to most of the teachers, it was a huge and unwelcome task. But to Harry Melville, who taught sixth- and seventh-grade Social Studies, it was a dream come true. Some people were good at dancing, while others drove race cars or wrote poems or performed complicated surgeries. Mr. Melville’s gift was for writing difficult test questions, and this was his moment to shine.

Since the principal’s announcement, he had spent every evening here in his small, comfortable home, settled in a wingback chair behind his rolltop desk, carefully crafting the most delightfully difficult Social Studies questions he could. Which states voted to ratify the United States Constitution, and which did not? Who was President Washington’s secretary of the treasury? Who was his deputy secretary of the treasury? In 250 words, describe General Benedict Arnold’s motivation for betraying the Continental Army. Now do it in 500 words.

Stopping to think between questions, Mr. Melville stroked his bushy white beard, singing happily to himself. “Raindrops on something and something on kittens… something some something…”

“Harry? You have a visitor.”

Easing nervously into the room, Ida Finkleman nodded a polite thank-you to Sally Ann Melville while the hardest teacher in school waved her into a chair.

“Why, Ms. Finkleman!” Mr. Melville bellowed affably. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

She looked a bit taken aback by his good spirits. “Um, well… you’ve been at the school a long time, and I thought you could help me. You see, I’d like to help out some students of mine.”

Mr. Melville’s famous eyebrows, white and thick as an arctic forest, arranged themselves into two skeptical arches. “Now why,” he asked, “would you want to do that?”

But as it turned out, Mr. Melville did know a way to help. Exactly as Ms. Finkleman had suspected, the gruff old social studies teacher, at some point in his many years of teaching, had heard of a certain program. “Well, not really a program,” said Mr. Melville, digging an old, yellowed pamphlet from a drawer of the rolltop desk. “It’s just this man from St. Louis. A man with a lot of money.”

Mr. Melville cautioned her that the Piccolini-Provokovsky grant had no formal application process, and that he had never heard of anyone actually winning it. In other words, he said, the whole thing was silly. “But as a wise man once said,” he concluded, referring to himself, “your days on this earth belong to you, and are yours to waste.”

And so, at 10:30 p.m., Ms. Finkleman was in her brown bathrobe, in her cozy recliner with her computer open on her lap, sipping a cup of Sleepytime tea and composing an email to a very rich man from St. Louis named Ivan Piccolini-Provokovsky. She labored over this email, writing and rewriting, trying to get it perfect.

went the email so far.

Involves? For heaven’s sake, Ida. She tapped Delete a bunch of times, and wrote the sentence again.

That seemed about right.

The rest of the email gave a precise and detailed description of the “Save Taproot Valley” video project; a bit of background on Chester and his academic career thus far; and, of course, the most important part of all. The request.

Satisfied at last, Ms. Finkleman crossed her fingers and hit Send.