Ben Winters - The Mystery of the Missing Everything

So the kids stood around talking about the video, about camp, about the five-day nightmare of test-taking they faced in a week— if their video didn’t do its job. They munched their snacks at the Mr. Schwartz–enforced distance, while Suzie, her face pursed with concentration behind the neon-pink frames of her glasses, made the final tweaks on their masterpiece.

“This is going to be so cool, Chester,” said Marisol quietly.

“We’ll see,” he said, nervous, wiping bits of apple pie off his chin.

Chester just wished Victor Glebe was there to share the moment. But after walking out on the first meeting at the picnic benches, Victor had never returned. He hadn’t taken part in the songwriting sessions, nor the days of rehearsal on Saturday and Sunday, not even the video shoot itself.

“All right,” said Suzie at last, pushing back from the desk. “Are we ready?”

The video started with a close-up of Pamela. She sang Kevin and Rory’s heartfelt opening couplet, about the dream “as sweet and delicious as peach ice cream,” and then the second one, about “the cruel and wicked principal / who stole our dreams away, who tore them to pieces and burned them up / like a great big pile of hay.”

“Still not crazy about ‘great big pile of hay,’” muttered Kevin, and Rory shrugged. Meanwhile, on the screen, the shot widened to reveal a long line of kids, arrayed behind Pamela, singing “ooh” and “aah” and fluttering their fingers like flames. Behind them was the giant woodsy mural, strung between two trees; behind the mural was the lush green field of Tamarkin Reservoir.

“Awesome,” said Shelly.

“ So awesome!” Braxton whooped. Suzie shushed them both.

Then the music really kicked in. First, driving drums (which Chester had contributed himself), then a fierce guitar part, complete with a shot of Todd, standing on a desk in the middle of the field, pretending to play what Tenny had recorded. Then there was a second close-up of Pamela, pouting and contemplating a tree. Then the song jumped into the second section, more driving and rhythmic, with lots of different kids taking turns, singing about what they’d be missing at Taproot Valley:

“Trust falls!”

“Bird calls!”

“Hot dog roastin’!”

“Marshmallow toastin’!”

Ezra popped into the shot upside down, descending from the top of the frame (he was in fact hanging by his knees from a tree branch) to sing Rory’s favorite lyric: “And fire ants, crawling in our pants!”

“That is so funny, Rory,” said Pamela, laughing. This was a significant compliment for a part of the video in which she didn’t appear. Rory said, “Thanks,” grinned, and ran a hand through his perfect hair.

While the song modulated and dipped in and out of a minor key (Kevin nodding with satisfaction at his compositional cleverness), there was a quick close-up of Pamela. She sang, “Without our trip, we’re sad as trolls/ lost in the lonesome valley of our souls!” accompanied by a sweeping shot of the sandbox at Remsen Playground, meant to represent the lonesome valley of their souls. Then there was a shot of a huge group of students down on their knees, begging, their cheeks wet with tears—actually seltzer, daubed on each cheek by Chester with a turkey baster. Then came another close-up of Pamela. Then a bear appeared, for some reason, at the top of a flight of stairs, got angry about something off camera, and fell down the steps.

By the time the video approached its conclusion, Chester and his team were all clapping and dancing happily around the den, while Mr. Schwartz chased them around with a DustBuster. Natasha, the choreographer, had outdone herself on the last part: a shot of nearly a hundred people in the basin of Tamarkin Reservoir, pretending to ride horses, leaning this way and then that way, all together and then individually, creating a cool rhythmic pattern with their bodies, even as Rory’s lyric reached its passionate peak:

“Please, please, please save our trip to outdoor ed! Let us stuff a bunch of nature facts into our heads! Let us go where the salmon swim and the bumblebees play! Make a donation and save the day! And we’ll be on our waaaaaaaaaaay!”

The kids in the den sang along with the kids on the screen, holding that big last note even longer than they’d held it in the video, which was for a full ten seconds. When it ended they clapped and hooted like lunatics, hugging and patting each other on the back. Shelly handed out plastic cups and Suzie poured celebratory glasses of sparkling cider. (“Coasters?” said Mr. Schwartz. “Has everyone got a coaster?”) Even Natasha and Todd slapped each other an exuberant five, forgetting momentarily that they weren’t getting along.

“All right, Suzie,” said Chester, when the revelry died down. “Let’s post this puppy.”

In another part of town, in an upstairs bathroom, someone stared deeply into the bathroom mirror, wondering whether to go through with this crazy stunt.

“I could leave this house right now and go do the worst thing I have ever done. Betray all I’ve ever believed in, and all I’ve been taught to believe. Or I can go downstairs, make some hot chocolate, and play Super DonkeyKong on the computer.”

For a long moment, the mind behind the face weighed these options—the brow bent with concentration, the eyes troubled and pensive, the mouth watering at the thought of creamy hot chocolate. Then the face disappeared from the mirror, and a moment later a lone, mysterious figure snuck out the bathroom door, tiptoed silently down the stairs, and crept out the front door.

At the first quack of her Three Ducks Quacking alarm clock, Bethesda Fielding woke up, and she woke up singing.

“Set you free!” she sang as she got dressed. “Set you free!” as she tugged her reddish-tannish hair into barrettes and laced up her Chuck Taylors. “Sweet little thing I’m gonna set you free!”

Yes, the mystery solving was going a bit slower than she had anticipated.

Yes, everyone in school was still mad at her… madder than ever, actually, what with the looming Week of a Thousand Quizzes.

And yes, her dad was making chili at 7:45 in the morning, which was kind of gross. But the charity dinner at her mom’s law firm was in a couple nights, and her dad, being her dad, still wasn’t satisfied with his recipe. She obliged him with a quick taste test, told him it was the best batch yet, and went back to singing.

“You been locked up too long! And that’s wrong, so wrong!” Bethesda sang as she hefted her backpack and headed out the front door into the cool mid-October morning. “So turn to me! And I’ll set you free!”

She sang in a high, comical falsetto, just as Kevin had. Whoever wrote the song—whether it was a pair of mysterious strangers in the Band and Chorus room, or Kevin improvising it to fool her—it was one heck of a catchy tune.

The song died on Bethesda’s lips when she saw her bike.

Her beautiful blue Schwinn with the blue and silver piping was just where she had left it yesterday, chained to the mailbox outside the house, the long, plastic-sheathed handlebars angled toward the road, the chrome gleaming in the sun. But the tires had been deflated, and lay hanging from the scuffed rims, sad, deflated, and saggy.

The thief! Bethesda thought, breaking into a run. The thief!

She raced to the road, looked one way and then another, but saw nothing. No stranger booking it down Chesterton Street, no one diving furtively into the bushes. Just a couple of squirrels tussling over a nut on Mrs. Beverly’s neatly manicured lawn, looking very much incapable of tampering with a bicycle.