Ben Winters: The Mystery of the Missing Everything

They stood up from the deck chairs and flipped a couple flat rocks into the lake, rippling the murky surface and startling the minnows. The solution to the great mystery of Tenny’s return to Mary Todd Lincoln Middle School had at last been revealed, but Bethesda felt a lot less satisfaction than she had anticipated.

“Let’s go, people!” boomed Coach Vasouvian’s big voice, and they ran off to play.

That left just one more mystery, the one that had caused Bethesda so much trouble. Who had scrawled the letters IOM on the lower left-hand wall of the Achievement Alcove… and why?

She never would have found out if they hadn’t crossed paths with the eighth graders from Grover Cleveland, whose week at Taproot Valley was beginning just as the Mary Todd Lincoln week was ending. Everyone was milling around the parking lot outside the Welcome Center, sizing each other up as kids from different schools always do, when a Grover Cleveland girl named Sue Park ran up to Marisol.

“Oh my god! You’re one of the girls from the Save Taproot Valley video!”

She pleaded for an autograph, but Marisol pointed her over to Chester. “That’s the guy you want.”

Sue Park was a bit disappointed, even more so when Chester had autographed the piece of loose-leaf she shoved in his face.

“What does this say? Chapter? Your name is Chapter Hut?”

As the Grover Cleveland kids were rounded up and marched inside, and the Mary Todd Lincoln kids piled back on their bus, Bethesda looked from Chester to Marisol, and back to Chester. Of course! It wasn’t IOM scrawled on the back wall of the Achievement Alcove, directly below Marisol’s charcoal drawing of a fruit bowl. It was an I, and then a heart—a badly drawn, terrible-handwriting heart—and then an M. It had nothing to do with the trophy. Before it was stolen, probably before Pamela even won the thing, Chester had snuck into the Achievement Alcove and left a secret tribute to his all-time favorite artist: I heart Marisol.

During the long bus ride home, Bethesda listened as Marisol and Chester laughingly recounted the game of capture the flag; she watched Tenny sitting in the very back row, fingerpicking his acoustic guitar; she saw Reenie, with no book in her lap, chatting with Bessie about the animal they’d chased up Taproot Hill. They’d decided it was either a gila monster or the world’s last surviving dragon.

Bethesda never told Chester what she’d deduced. She never revealed the solution to Tenny, or Reenie, or anyone.

Some mysteries, she decided, are supposed to stay mysteries.

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.

BEN H. WINTERShas written a number of plays and musicals for children and adults, as well as several books in the bestselling Worst-Case Scenario Survival Guide series. He is also the author of THE SECRET LIFE OF MS. FINKLEMAN and the bestselling parody novel SENSE AND SENSIBILITY AND SEA MONSTERS and ANDROID KARENINA. He lives in the Boston area.

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Jacket art © 2011 by Brett Helquist

Jacket design by Alison Klapthor

The Mystery of the Missing Everything

Copyright © 2011 by Ben H. Winters

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Winters, Ben H.

The mystery of the missing everything / Ben H. Winters.—1st ed.

p. cm.

Summary: When a treasured trophy disappears from the display case at Mary Todd Lincoln Middle School and the principal cancels the eagerly anticipated eighth grade class trip, Bethesda Fielding has no choice but to solve the mystery.

ISBN 978-0-06-196544-9 (tr. bdg.)

[1. Mystery and detective stories. 2. Middle schools—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.W7667My 2011

[Fic]—dc22

2011010167

CIP

AC

EPub Edition © AUGUST 2011 ISBN: 9780062093400

11 12 13 14 15 CG/RRDB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

FIRST EDITION

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