The Mystery of the Missing Everything

Acknowledgments

If you’re like me, and you always read the dedication page and wonder, Who’s that person?, please know that Raedina Winters was my father’s mother. She died in the summer of 2010 at age ninety-eight, a couple weeks after giving her final tap-dance lesson. She was brilliant, funny, and beautiful, and she loved her family.

Thanks to everyone who read and enjoyed The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman, and all the kids I got to hang out with promoting the book—particularly the boisterous ragamuffins at the Anderson School, P. S. 334.

Thanks to the many friends who may have caught glimpses of their names, personalities, or favorite bands in this book or the last one. Any similarity between Chester Hu and Dan Chu is strictly coincidental, except that I love them both a lot.

A thousand million thanks to my agent, Molly Lyons at Joelle Delbourgo Associates, and to everyone at HarperCollins who worked so hard to make my work look good and find its way into the bookstores; especially my editor, Sarah Sevier, who more than anyone helped me create the world of Mary Todd Lincoln Middle School.

Last and probably most, a million trillion thanks to my darling family: Diana, Rosalie, and Isaac Winters.