Ben Winters - The Mystery of the Missing Everything

“Shake it off, man,” said Guy. “Your shot.”

Tenny shaded his eyes with one hand and dribbled awkwardly with the other. They were at the Remsen Playground after school, playing a game called Horse, where the goal is for each player to match the shot the other guy just took. If you missed the shot, you got a letter. The first person with all five letters lost. They’d been playing for six minutes. Tenny had HORS, and Guy had nothing.

“Hey, um, Guy. Can I ask you a quick question, dude?”

Guy scowled. “Take your shot, Tenny.”

Maybe this was a bad idea. Tenny had figured it would be smart to do his first suspect interrogation here, in an atmosphere where Guy was most comfortable—on the court, out in the open air. Nearby, a couple elementary school kids were whacking a tennis ball back and forth; toddlers tottered around in the sandbox; an older kid in a baseball cap was sitting on the playground equipment, humming to himself. It was the perfect setting, Tenny thought, to interrogate a sports person like Guy. People are most relaxed when they’re doing something they love, something they’re good at. Tenny had a recent painful memory of his mom coming to talk about something Very Serious and Important, and how agitated and annoying the whole conversation had been—mainly because she insisted he sit with her at the kitchen table. All he wanted the whole time was to be in the basement, with his guitar, so he could strum chords or lightly fingerpick while she was talking.

“C’mon, Tenny. Shoot. ”

Tenny jumped and spun around, as Guy had just done so effortlessly, and hurled the ball in the general direction of the net. It flew past the backboard toward the metal fence separating the court from the slides and swings. The older kid in the baseball cap at the top of the slide stopped humming and barked in surprise as the ball rattled against the fence.

Tenny was not a sports person. “That’s E for me,” he said, relieved. “You win.”

“Play again?”

“Uh…” Not waiting for an answer, Guy scooped up the ball, dribbled twice, and drove in one easy motion down the court for a smooth, gliding layup. “Your shot, man.”

Okay, this was definitely a bad idea. Tenny was starting to feel like he’d been out here forever, pretending to like basketball. He dribbled twice (as Guy had done), drove in toward the basket in one easy motion (as Guy had done), and then heaved the ball as high and hard as he could, way over the fence. It landed with a distant thump, somewhere on the far side of the swing set.

“Oops,” said Tenny.

“Wow,” said Guy. With no rebound to grab, his hands flapped helplessly against his hips.

“Oh, hey,” said Tenny. “So here’s what I wanted to ask you…”

They sat with their backs against the fence, and soon Tenny got all the info he was after. He confirmed, first of all, that Guy had been angry (was still pretty angry, in fact) about not being able to use the gym to practice for his archery tournament. “Double V says I can use it every day for a week,” he complained, using a nickname for Principal Van Vreeland popular among the cool kids, “and then I get the boot so Pamela and the gymnastics people can have it. Lame, right?”

“Totally.”

Motive confirmed! Tenny thought. Sweetness .

But, as it turned out, Guy had an alibi, too. “Monday? Five forty-five? Sure, man. I was at the mall. Went with my dad to look at baseball mitts, then to dinner. You can ask Tasharoo about the dinner part.”

“Um… Tasharoo?”

“Natasha, man. We’re kind of, like, family friends. My folks have known hers since we were kids. We go to dinner every once in a while at that seafood place, Pirate Sam’s. Family tradition, you know?”

Tenny did know. Pirate Sam’s was a family tradition kind of place. There was a period, years ago, when his own family went every Sunday night for dinner. He always got the Golden Fish Nuggets, which came in a cardboard chest.

“That answer all your questions, Tenners?” said Guy, hauling himself up from the patch of asphalt where they’d settled themselves. Tenny smiled bashfully, surprised at how proud he was that Guy had graced him with a nickname.

He was still smiling when he heard a voice from the playground side, yelling, “Heads up!” The basketball was on its way back, and Tenny just had time to realize that it was Todd Spolin who had thrown it, and that it was Todd who’d been sitting there on the playground equipment, the whole time they were talking—before the ball sailed over the fence in a wide arc and bonked him in the nose.

“Ooh! Tenners!” said Guy, wincing sympathetically.

“Not a sports person,” Tenny mumbled as spots danced before his eyes.

Late that night, in a house across town, in an innocuous upstairs bathroom decorated with olive-green towels and lavender-scented soap, a pair of eyes stared back from a mirror.

It was a typical bathroom mirror with a simple brass frame, hung between a pair of charming seaside watercolors. As for the eyes, they were clouded and dark as they narrowed beneath a troubled brow.

These were the eyes of a person crafting a scheme — a scheme to thwart Bethesda Fielding’s ongoing investi-gation. Unbeknownst to Bethesda, someone had been watching her as she developed her leads, as she teamed up with Tenny, as they made their plans and sought out their suspects. Someone had been hiding behind poles, ducking unnoticed through crowded hallways, paying careful attention to her every move.

Bethesda was clever. A little too clever. She was determined to solve the mystery, and for the person in the upstairs bathroom, that was a problem.

Something had to be done. Bethesda Fielding had to be stopped.

A rap came at the door, and the person in the upstairs bathroom jumped in surprise.

“God! What?”

“You almost done in there? I really gotta pee, sweets.”

Man! Couldn’t a person get five minutes in this house to hatch a nefarious plot?

As soon as school ended on Wednesday, Chester met up with the rest of his team to bike to Tamarkin Reservoir, the big grassy field where they’d be shooting the main scenes of the video. They were all going over as a group: Chester, Rory, Marisol, Kevin, Braxton, Suzie, Todd, and Natasha, the whole team except Pamela, who insisted on walking. “If I’m late, you can shoot some other part first,” she said. “I am not mushing up my hair in a bike helmet before being filmed.”

Chester coasted at the front of the pack of cyclists, weaving back and forth, feeling the gentle breeze on his legs. “Oh, hey,” Rory said suddenly as they turned off Friedman to head toward the reservoir. “I keep meaning to tell you. I asked a couple people to help out. That cool?”

It took Chester a second to realize that Rory was talking to him—he kept forgetting that he was in charge. “Sure,” he said. “Of course.”

“Yeah, actually, I invited a couple people, too,” said Natasha.

“Me, too,” Marisol added quietly.

Chester shrugged. “That’s cool.”

What Chester didn’t yet know was that the couple people Rory had called had each called a couple people, and each of those people had called a couple of their own. The same was true for Natasha’s couple people, and Marisol’s, and Braxton’s… and though Ms. Fischler wasn’t on hand to explain how the total number of people had grown through exponential multiplication, the result was clear when they crested the final hill and kickstanded their bikes at the edge of Tamarkin Reservoir. In the low, green gully, dozens and dozens and dozens of kids were milling around. It was practically the entire eighth grade, along with tons of sixth and seventh graders, plus kids Chester didn’t even recognize, kids from other schools or something. Scanning the crowd, amazed, Chester spotted Kelly Deal and Peter Holsapple, both of whom had graduated last year and were at Pilverton High now.