Ben Winters - The Mystery of the Missing Everything

She thought: Did anyone else hear that bang?

She thought: How do you know when a potbellied pig is confused?

A little before four o’clock, Janitor Steve yawned a big, long, end-of-the-week yawn and resumed his slow progress down the Front Hall. He was pushing his extrawide bristly broom and his gigantic rolling trash can, gathering up dust balls and crumpled-up late passes and granola-bar wrappers from his beautiful floor. Bending to pick up one tattered sheet of loose-leaf, he saw that it was decorated with a not-half-bad cartoon of Principal Van Vreeland, shouting and waving two stick-figure fists in the air.

“Heh heh,” said Janitor Steve, and then jerked nervously at the sound of footsteps coming down the hallway. But no—it wasn’t the clack of Van Vreeland’s heels, but the squeak of sneakers on linoleum. It was that bubbly kid with the glasses, Bethesda, the mystery solver, hurrying from Hallway B toward the front door, her head bent down, scribbling furiously in a notebook. Janitor Steve had barely resumed his sweeping when another student—a new girl, Irene or something—stormed down Hallway C and swept past him like a fast-moving thundercloud.

And then, just as the door slammed behind her, along came Ms. Finkleman, the music lady, looking exhausted. She nodded politely, like always, and pushed open the front door.

Now that he was reasonably sure the school was empty, Janitor Steve lifted his broom handle and tapped on the air ducts, just as Bethesda had seen him do on Wednesday, when she came to investigate the Achievement Alcove. He tapped, and then listened—tapped again—nothing. Last week the vents had been making strange noises, noises that had kept Janitor Steve on edge: little pops and pings and bangs. Now, though, nothing.

“You got what you wanted, didn’t you?” he said, peering up at the silent ducts. “You got what you wanted and now you’re gone.”

He knew. Janitor Steve knew exactly who had stolen that trophy, and he knew why. But nobody had bothered to ask.

It was Bethesda’s habit, when she needed the internet, to use the computers at the library. They had a computer at home, of course, in her father’s messy den, but Bethesda preferred the library computers, because (A) they were a heck of a lot faster, and (B) when she was on the library computers, her father wasn’t standing behind her, telling her the fascinating origin of the term “mouse pad” for the seven hundredth time.

Unfortunately, only one of the library computers was working, and a wide-eyed fourth grader in a plaid button-down shirt and headphones was immersed in some sort of outer-space alien-shooting game, bouncing crazily in his seat, whispering, “Take that, freakazoid!” over and over. Bethesda put her name on the sign-up sheet, and was heading to the detective fiction section to kill some time when she saw Reenie Maslow.

“Oh. Hey, Reenie,” said Bethesda in a quiet library voice. She gave a little wave as she walked over to the beanbag chair where Reenie was settled, a book balanced on her lap, one finger idly twisting her hair. “What are you doing here?”

Reenie looked up and scowled fiercely, and Bethesda stopped. All she had meant by “What are you doing here?” was just “Why are you at the library today?” Nobody came to the library on Friday afternoons—nobody but Bethesda, anyway. But Reenie clearly thought she meant “What are you doing here?,” as in “You don’t belong here.” Reenie didn’t answer, just made a kind of irritated noise in the back of her throat and went back to her book.

Argle bargle!

Bethesda had tried over and over to be friendly to Reenie Maslow, just as she tried to be friendly with all new kids. But Reenie always seemed to take things the wrong way, always seemed to be actively seeking out reasons to be annoyed. It was especially frustrating because, in theory, Bethesda and Reenie Maslow should have gotten along great.

Fact: they were both short.

Fact: they both had tannish-reddish hair that they wore pulled back, Bethesda in barrettes or a pair of short pigtails, Reenie clipped above her ears.

Fact: they both liked to read. Her whole life, Bethesda had never known anyone who liked books as much as she did, a fact she had always taken secret pride in. Back in elementary school, Mrs. Levine had posted a reading chart, on which each completed book earned you a new sticker. Eventually she had to staple an extra strip of poster board at the end of Bethesda’s row, which poked haphazardly off the side of the chart, overladen with stickers like a bent, snow-covered tree limb. But Reenie was even more of a bookworm than Bethesda; every time you saw her, her backpack was bulging with books.

So they should have been friends: two short, book-loving, glasses-wearing girls with reddish hair. And yet…

“Hey, what are you reading?”

Reenie looked up at Bethesda, exhaled with impatience, and said, “A book, okay?” Then she looked back down, exaggeratedly flipped to the next page, and kept reading.

“Bethesda?” called the librarian, Ms. Gotwals, from the computer desk. “Bethesda Fielding?”

Thank god. It was four fifteen, the alien-slaying fourth grader was forced to relinquish his seat at the computers, and Bethesda had an excuse to escape this awkward non-conversation. She settled into the hard plastic chair, flipped open her Sock-Snow, and commenced her research. In half an hour she filled her notebook with all sorts of brilliant mystery-solving advice. She found tips on making timelines, tips on evaluating evidence, and (best of all) tips on what one website called the “classic physiological signs of guilt”: sweating, shaking, eyes darting around the room, long pauses in speech….

And then, too soon, it was four forty-five, and Bethesda had to give the computer back to the fourth grader, who was waiting anxiously to reclaim it. She was strapping on her bike helmet, getting ready to go, when Bethesda’s eyes landed again on the small, thin figure of Reenie Maslow, lost in the smooshy heap of the beanbag chair, her legs tucked beneath her, immersed in what she was reading. The pose of book-loving absorption was so familiar, Bethesda felt like she could be looking in a mirror.

Should she try to talk to Reenie again? She heard her father in her head, gently encouraging her to try. Resentment is the worst tasting mint of all, he’d say. It takes more muscles to frown. Only you can prevent forest fires. (Or whatever.)

“I’ll see ya round, Reenie.”

“’Bye,” Reenie answered, and flashed a quick, half-friendly smile before bending back to her book. Well , Bethesda thought, it’s a start. Now what?

“Oh, hey, Reenie, random question for you,” Bethesda said. “You weren’t by any chance hanging around school on Monday evening, were you?”

Reenie tensed, slammed the book closed, and glared at Bethesda. “No! God! Why would you even accuse me of something like that?”

“Accuse you? No! I wasn’t! Reenie…”

Too late. Reenie Maslow heaved herself up out of her beanbag chair, grabbed her bag, and stomped out of the library.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Bethesda protested helplessly, but no one was listening. Ms. Gotwals was away from her desk, the boy at the computer was immersed in freakazoid destruction, and Reenie Maslow was long gone.

Bethesda left the library, unchained her bike, and pedaled slowly home.

The next day was a perfect autumn Saturday, cool but not cold, where the whole world smells like crisp leaves and warm apple cider. It was the kind of day that says, “Hey! Kid! Grab a ball of some kind and get out here! Enjoy the day!”