The Mystery of the Missing Everything

^{Chapter 35} Things You’re Not Supposed to Know

“So there is going to be seventh-grade stuff, plus everything we’ve done so far this year. Got it, people?”

In first period, Ms. Fischler was handing out the testing schedule for next week. Monday, percentage/fraction conversion. Tuesday, algebraic inequalities. Wednesday, she promised, “will be kind of the easy day. We’ll just be mapping binomials, so bring your graphing calculators.”

In second period, Dr. Capshaw announced that they’d be suspending their progress through Animal Farm until after the quiz week, since they’d have no time for class discussions, anyway.

“But we want to know what happens,” said Ellis Walters.

“I’m sorry,” said Dr. Capshaw. “But you are of course welcome to read ahead on your own.”

“Like we’ll have time,” grumbled Ellis.

It was like this all over school. Everybody had thought that, somehow, the Week of a Thousand Quizzes wouldn’t really happen. The trophy thief would confess, or be caught; Principal Van Vreeland would, miraculously, change her mind; a tornado would come out of nowhere, lift up the whole school in the middle of the night, and carry it out to sea. Alas, nothing of the sort had occurred, and now, with the dreaded week of testing four days away, Principal Van Vreeland had succeeded in her goal: everybody in the entire school was as miserable and angry as she was. (Except Mr. Melville, whose constant whistling wasn’t helping matters in the least.)

Adding to the general funk was the fact that it was the second Thursday of the month, and that was fish-stick day. By the time the lunch bell rang, the queasy smell of deep-fried cod was drifting out of the cafeteria and suffusing the whole school. Just inside the cafeteria doors, in this thick fog of fish-stick smell, Bethesda was pacing, waiting for her sidekick.

“Tenny! Finally!” she yelped as he slouched into the cafeteria.

“Hey,” he said absently. “So, uh, I talked to Ms. Finkleman this morning. Yeah, I don’t think she did it.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Bethesda said impatiently. She told Tenny about her dream, about the little piece of Boney Bones, about Mr. Darlington and the propped-open door.

“Whoa,” he said mildly. Clearly the massiveness of the revelation had barely registered. Well, terrific, thought Bethesda. Their investigation was collapsing all around them, and he’d disappeared into one of his fogs of weirdness.

“We can still do this, Tenny, if we focus. The suspect list can’t matter that much. We have tons of other clues.” Urgently, she ticked them off on her hand, trying to fake confidence she didn’t feel. “One. The mysterious singers in the Band room. Two, the scattered glass. Three, the red dots. Four… the… Tenny? Hello?”

She couldn’t take it anymore. He was drumming his fingers on the table, puffing out his cheeks, staring off in random directions.

“What’s up, Tenny? Are you listening? Not listening? Are you writing songs in your head or something?”

“What? No.” He shook his head, made a face. “I’m just thinking.”

“About what? Tenny!”

Suddenly his spaced-out expression came into sharp focus. “Bethesda, did it ever occur to you there might be other things in the world beside your project?”

“My project?” Bethesda stared back at him. “Our project!”

“Okay, so the eighth grade doesn’t get to go to Taproot Valley. What’s the big deal?”

“What’s the big deal?” she echoed, flabbergasted. “God! Tenny, we’re supposed to be solving a mystery together, and you’re, like, the biggest mystery of all. You suddenly show up from St. Francis Xavier, and you won’t even tell me why you got kicked out…”

“I didn’t get kicked out!”

His shout drew attention from all over the lunchroom. In the suddenly hushed, staring crowd, Tenny drew the hood of his sweatshirt up over his hair and shrank down in his seat.

“Thanks a lot, Bethesda.”

“It’s not my fault. How was I supposed to know?”

“Did you ever think that there are things you’re not supposed to know?”

Tenny sat with arms folded, his eyes blazing from the depths of his hood.

The anger that had been simmering in Bethesda since 8:20 that morning, when she emerged from Mr. Darlington’s room and had her gut-wrenching epiphany, now came to full boil. She threw up her arms and stomped past Tenny out of the cafeteria toward the front door of the school.

“Bethesda?” said Tenny, close at her heels. “Where are you going?”

“What do you care?”

Bethesda heard the nastiness in her voice and knew instantly that she’d regret it. But it was too late now. She was a missile heading for its target.

Find the thief? she thought furiously. Find her? I’ve known who it was from the very beginning!

And there was the prime suspect, the real suspect, sitting blithely on a picnic bench, exactly where Bethesda had known she would be—in Bethesda’s seat, at Bethesda’s place, wedged between Shelly and Hayley, her glasses off and folded on the table beside her, her reddish-tannish hair clipped above her ears, a book balanced on her lap. Always reading, Bethesda thought disdainfully, always making sure everyone knows how smart you are.

IOM. Irene Olivia Maslow.

“I know it was you.”

Reenie raised her head slowly and returned Bethesda’s stare unflinchingly.

“You know what was me?”

The picnic-tables crowd looked over at the confron-tation. Most of them were clustered around a laptop Suzie had checked out from Technologies, watching the “Save Taproot Valley” video for the zillionth time. Suzie hit a button, the movie paused on a shot of Braxton with paws outstretched, and everyone’s attention turned to the strange sight of Bethesda Fielding glowering at Reenie Maslow.

“You’re the one who stole Pamela’s trophy.”

In all the mystery books, in all the movies, when the hero swoops in to unmask her nefarious adversary, there’s always this dramatic confrontation, where the bad guy either makes a break for it, or begs for mercy. Bethesda took a big dramatic step backward, waiting for one of those things to happen. But Reenie neither sprinted toward Friedman Street nor fell pleadingly to her knees. Instead she carefully picked up her glasses off the picnic bench, unfolded the stems to put them on, and said, “No I didn’t.”

Bethesda blinked.

“Yes you did.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Yes you did!”

Bethesda was feeling less like a world-class detec-tive unmasking her diabolical foe, and more like a kindergartner fighting in a sandbox.

“All right, let’s all just calm down here,” said Chester Hu, rising from his place beside Suzie and stepping toward them, waving his hands for calm. “Bethesda, why do you think Reenie did it?”

“Excellent question!” Bethesda replied, thrusting a finger into the air. In her most resonant, closing-argument voice, Bethesda revealed the powerful evidence she had kept hidden for so long. “In the Achievement Alcove, behind the trophy case, I found three little initials written on the base of the back wall. IOM! As in Irene Olivia Maslow!”

Bethesda stepped backward and crossed her arms: Case closed.

The problem was, no one looked all that convinced.

“Wait—IOM?” asked Pamela, wrinkling her nose with confusion. “Wouldn’t she have signed it ROM? Everyone calls her Reenie.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” added Suzie, and Shelly nodded in agreement.

“Actually,” Bessie Stringer threw in, “Why would she sign it at all?”

“Good point,” said Ezra.

“Well… I don’t know!” Bethesda sputtered. “Ask her!”

But Reenie said nothing. She just sat there and looked at Bethesda, her face blank.

“Also, IOM could stand for a lot of stuff,” put in Rory, smoothing his long black hair with one hand. “Like Ireland’s only mountain. Or interesting oily monkeys.”

Bethesda sighed in frustration. “You guys, come on! Reenie did it! It’s so obvious.”

Marisol Pierce looked at Bethesda. “I don’t know. It doesn’t really seem all that obvious.”

“Yeah,” Pamela agreed. She made a sour, skeptical face. “Why would Reenie steal my trophy?”

“Because…,” Bethesda started, and then stopped and glanced quickly at Reenie, who sat still and cold as a statue.

“Well, for a lot of reasons.”

“Name one.”

“Well… to… um…”

“Iggy oinked merrily!” Rory shouted suddenly.

“Good one,” said Ezra, and slapped him five.

Suzie started the video again, and everyone turned back to Braxton’s classic pratfall, already in progress. Bethesda stood helplessly, her hands flapping at her sides. Just like that, her big dramatic moment had passed.

Except that, suddenly, Reenie turned and addressed her with a voice coiled tightly as a striking snake. “Bethesda, I am very sorry that your little investigation didn’t work out as you planned it,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean you should go around blaming people just because you happen to dislike them.”

“Dislike you?” Bethesda was stunned. “I don’t dislike you! You dislike me!”

“I don’t dislike you. I barely know you.” Reenie stepped carefully around Bethesda, chucked her empty lunch bag in the garbage, and walked toward the door of the school.

“Wait!” Bethesda shouted. She knew she was right and she knew she could prove it. “Wait!”

Suzie paused the movie again, this time on one of the innumerable Pamela Preston close-ups. Reenie stopped at the door, shaking her head sadly, like she was the mature one, tolerating Bethesda’s childish behavior out of sheer pity.

“Pamela’s trophy was stolen from the Achievement Alcove at approximately five forty-five on Monday the twentieth,” Bethesda announced, then pointed dramatically at Reenie. “What were you doing at five forty-five that day?”

“I… well… Mondays…” Reenie thought for a moment, and then her cool-as-a-cucumber attitude abruptly disappeared. Her face got red and she stared at Bethesda with open hostility. “That’s none of your business!”

“Aha!” said Bethesda. All the eighth graders leaned in closer, except Pamela, who snuck a quick admiring glance at her freeze-framed face on the screen. “If Reenie wasn’t stealing the trophy, she’d tell us where she was!”

“Bethesda, no offense, but I’m, like, totally sure you’re wrong,” said Natasha, speaking up for the first time. “Reenie, why don’t you just tell us what you were doing. Then Bethesda will know she made a mistake.”

“Fine. I was… I…,” Reenie began, and then stopped and cleared her throat. She looked caught and helpless, like a mouse in the jaws of a trap. Bethesda felt a fleeting rush of sympathy, quickly drowned in a wave of anticipation. Her moment of triumph was at hand! Bethesda Fielding, Master Detective, would be the hero after all!

“I was at home, with my tutor.”

“Tutor? Why would you need a tutor?”

Reenie looked straight up in the air, took a deep breath, and returned her gaze to Bethesda. “Because I’m way, way behind.”

Bethesda scrunched up her face. “Behind? In what subject?”

“All of them.”

Bethesda’s heart lurched in her chest. Oh, no.

“But… but you’re so smart. You’re always reading. Trying to get ahead.”

Reenie let out a small, rueful laugh. “Get ahead? Hardly. I’m just trying to keep up.”

“But why didn’t you just tell everyone that?”

“Why didn’t I tell everyone?” Reenie laughed again, shaking her head. “If everyone thought you were some sort of genius, and actually they were completely wrong, would you tell them?”

Bethesda opened her mouth and then shut it again. The crowd at the picnic tables was hushed and still. Suzie’s computer went dark and the school’s official screen saver came up, an image of Mary Todd Lincoln wearing a Bluetooth headset. Looking helplessly around the picnic benches, Bethesda’s eyes landed on Tenny, who wore an expression of total disgust—an expression, she knew, that had nothing to do with fish sticks.