Ben Winters - The Mystery of the Missing Everything

Never did Bethesda suspect that a day would come, in the not-too-distant future, when she’d wish she’d let Chester make his fake confession after all.

As Bethesda guided Chester away from the Main Office, Ms. Finkleman walked toward it, dreading the job she had foolishly agreed to do.

Hers was a ridiculous and utterly useless mission, one that everyone else on the faculty was either too scared or too smart to attempt. Ask Principal Van Vreeland to change her mind? Ms. Finkleman chuckled mirthlessly as she turned the corner into the Front Hall. Principal Van Vreeland never changed her mind. Once, when she accidentally had typed three a.m. instead of p.m. in an all-faculty email, the principal had refused to admit her error, and they’d all had to attend a two-hour curriculum-planning meeting in the middle of the night.

Besides, Ms. Finkleman had really hoped not to get involved in all this trophy nonsense. She had so much on her plate already. There was the sixth-grade winter concert—“A Big Boatload of Bernstein!”—she had to prepare. There was the eighth-grade student she was privately mentoring. And there was her seventh-grade Music Fundamentals class, who of course were clamoring to do rock and roll like last year’s kids.

But the other teachers had begged her to go ask Principal Van Vreeland to give the kids their extracurriculars back, so everything could return to normal. “She respects you,” Ms. Fischler had argued. “I mean, after the whole thing with the Choral Corral, she didn’t kill you.”

That seemed like a pretty low standard for respect to Ms. Finkleman, and yet here she was, slowly pulling open the door of the Main Office. And there was her elegantly dressed, agitated boss, perched on the edge of Mrs. Gingertee’s desk, reviewing student records with the help of the cowering assistant principal.

“Principal Van Vreeland?” Ms. Finkleman ventured. “I—”

“Whatever it is, it can wait!” snapped the principal, waving a folder as if evidence would fly out if she shook it hard enough. “All that matters right now is finding that trophy!”

“That’s just it, Principal,” Ms. Finkleman began. “The other teachers and I have noted, it somewhat interferes with the educational process—”

“Ms. Finkleman! Please! No time!”

“No time! No time!” echoed Jasper, like a parrot. He gathered up an armful of student folders, and the pair of them disappeared into the principal’s private office.

“Well, then,” said Ms. Finkleman to the empty air. “Thanks anyway.”

She sighed. What a waste of time.

But if Ms. Finkleman hadn’t been the one to take on the useless mission, she wouldn’t have been the one standing outside the Main Office at that moment, turning her head by happenstance toward the Achievement Alcove, directly to her left. She wouldn’t, then, have seen the clue—the same three little letters, IOM, written on the back wall beneath Marisol Pierce’s fruit-bowl drawing, that Bethesda had seen two days earlier.

But Ms. Finkleman did see the clue—and knew immediately, or thought she knew, what it meant.

She was involved in all this trophy nonsense now, like it or not.

Bethesda, still enjoying the pleasant sensation of having done Chester a good turn, adjusted her butterfly barrettes in the mirror in her locker, cheerfully saluted her Benjamin Franklin action figure, and grabbed her lunch. A few minutes later she emerged from the school and found her favorite seat at the picnic tables.

On that list of inalienable rights belonging exclusively to eighth graders, eating lunch outside at the picnic tables was very near to the top, second only to the Taproot Valley trip itself. The cluster of sagging, battered tables, arranged in a loose semicircle just to the right of the school’s front entrance, was officially open to any Mary Todd Lincoln student who felt like eating there. Unofficially, however, it was eighth-grader territory.

It was a beautiful day, and everyone was outside. Hayley, her retainer resting snugly in its orange case. Shelly Schwartz, with her sister Suzie beside her in the pink-framed glasses. Kevin McKelvey, tall and thin in his rumpled blue blazer, munching an apple and flipping through a thick book of sheet music. Pamela and Natasha, whispering to each other.

But still something… Bethesda couldn’t put her finger on it, but something was off somehow. Was it just that Todd Spolin, whose interests were traditionally limited to heavy metal music, pro wrestling, and spitballs, was whistling gently to the little blue-green swallow, sweetly offering it bites of his Ding Dong?

Bethesda opened her lunch bag and carefully removed three click-top containers. “Oh, sweet,” she said, cracking open the first translucent box. “Spaghetti!” She looked around, prepared for the onslaught of would-be bite-havers. Bethesda’s dad’s cooking skills were semilegendary among her friends, as was his uncanny ability to arrange even the messiest, most complicated meals into neatly stacked portable containers.

“All right, who wants?” offered Bethesda, waggling a sloppy forkful.

“No thanks,” said Shelly, and Suzie remained silent. Hayley, on the far end of the opposite bench, muttered, “Can’t,” and gestured vaguely to her retainer. Bethesda angled the pasta-laden fork toward Violet Kelp, who shook her head.

“Okay…”

This was weird. Violet always took a bite, as would anybody who had peanut-butter-and-jelly packed for her every day. But today Violet kept nibbling her sad little sandwich.

“Anybody else going insane about Fischler?” asked Bethesda, raising her voice to reach all four tables. The first big math test of the year was looming, and complaining about it had become a daily routine. But today, no one seemed to be up for a gripe session. Even Braxton, who could usually be relied upon to complain about any subject, at any time, wouldn’t meet Bethesda’s eye.

“All right,” said Bethesda finally. “Shelly? Is something going on?”

Shelly sighed and laid a firm hand on Bethesda’s shoulder. “Okay. Well, it’s not a big deal, but people are kind of mad at you.”

“Really?” Bethesda swept her gaze anxiously around the tables again. Like most people in the universe, Bethesda liked to think she didn’t care when people were mad at her; also like most people in the universe, she actually cared a lot. “Who?”

“Oh, you know…,” Shelly began, then glanced pleadingly at Suzie, who reluctantly finished the thought: “Everybody.”

A small twisted leaf came unstuck from the oak and drifted down into Bethesda’s open container of spaghetti, but she ignored it.

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, Violet said that Ellis said Lindsey Deming saw you talking to Chester, when he was right about to go in and confess, and that you stopped him.”

“So?”

Shelly and Suzie looked at each other, shaking their heads. “It’s Taproot Valley , Bethesda.”

“I know. But—”

Violet put down her sandwich and chimed in. “It’s so obvious. You want to solve the mystery yourself, so you stopped Chester from confessing, which would have saved the trip.”

“Just so you can be the one to figure it out,” added Suzie. “And be like this big hero, or whatever.”

“That’s crazy, you guys,” Bethesda protested. She raised her voice. “I mean, Chester is innocent.”

“Maybe,” answered Ezra. “How do you even know?”

“Because… well…” Bethesda’s nervous fingers clacked and unclacked the lid of her smallest lunch container, which held three miraculously crisp pieces of garlic bread. She did know, but explaining would mean betraying Chester’s crush on Marisol. “I dunno,” she said, feeling impossibly lame. “I just do.”