Where'd You Go, Bernadette

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 21

My first day back at Galer Street, on the way to music, I passed my cubby. It was stuffed with notices from the past few months. Crammed in with all the flyers about the recycling challenge and Bike-to-School Day was an envelope, a stamped envelope, addressed to me in care of Galer Street. The return address was a contracting company in Denver and the writing: Mom’s.

Kennedy saw my face and she started hanging on me, all “What is it? What is it? What is it?” I didn’t want to open the envelope in front of her. But I couldn’t open it alone. So I ran back to homeroom. Mr. Levy was with some teachers who were about to walk to Starbucks on their break. As soon as Mr. Levy saw me, he told the others to go on ahead. We shut the door, and I tried to tell him everything all at once, about the intervention and Audrey Griffin who saved Mom and Choate and my roommate who didn’t like me and Antarctica and Soo-Lin’s baby and finding Mom and now this, the missing letter. But it squirted out in a big jumble. So I did the next best thing. I went to my locker and gave him the book I wrote at Choate. Then I went to music.

At lunch recess, Mr. Levy found me. He said he liked my book OK, but in his mind, it needed more work. He had an idea. For my spring research project, how about I complete it? He suggested I ask Audrey and Paul Jellinek and Ms. Goodyear and anyone else to provide documents. And Mom, of course, but she wasn’t going to be back from Antarctica for two weeks. Mr. Levy said he’d give me credit for the classes I’d missed so I could graduate with the rest of my class. And that’s what this is.