Vanished!

by James Ponti

  I was still confused as she got up and I took her seat. I looked at the tie for a moment and then it hit me.

  “Three stripes, purple, green, purple,” I said.

  “Just like inside the locker,” she replied.

  Then it was my turn to have a realization. “And now I remember where I saw it,” I said as I got my phone and opened my photo gallery. “Check it out.”

  I handed her the phone and she looked at the picture I took of Becca, the girl who wouldn’t look at Lucy in French class.

  “The back of a girl’s head?” she said.

  “I was staring at it all through second period. Look at her hair ribbon.”

  Margaret grinned when she saw it. “Purple, green, purple.”

  She looked up at me. “What does it mean?”

  I shook my head. “I have no idea. But I intend to find out.”

  We printed both pictures and taped them to the wall.

  We sent an e-mail to Marcus (or rather the secret drop box we use to communicate with him) catching him up and giving him our list of requests for Dr. Putney.

  “So what’s the plan for tomorrow?” Margaret asked.

  “I’ll keep an eye on Lucy,” I said. “But I’m also going to find out everything I can about Yin.”

  “I’ll try to see if I can learn more about Tanner from Tori,” she said. “And keep on the lookout for purple and green stripes.”

  “You should see if you can reserve one of the practice rooms.”

  “Why?”

  “So we can snoop around,” I said. “One of them has a piano.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” she said. “And what are you going to do if Tanner gives you a hard time?”

  I took a deep breath. “Remind myself that I’m Florian Bates.”

  “Then I have no doubt you’ll crush him,” she said. Then she stopped for a moment and looked over at the caseboard we’d made for the search for her parents. “Just like I have no doubt that one day you’ll figure out where I came from.”

  I didn’t respond; I just sat there and tried not to give anything away.

  9.

  Sorry, Bro

  OUR SECOND DAY AT CHATHAM was filled with us trying to follow up on our initial leads, learn as much as possible about Lucy and Yin, and discover how someone could get in and out of a practice room without anybody else seeing. It was also filled with an endless stream of schoolwork.

  This is the part that Sherlock Holmes never had to deal with. And yes, I know he’s fictional, but real-life detectives don’t have to deal with it either. I’m pretty sure Margaret and I are the only ones at the FBI who have to worry about solving algebraic equations at the same time we’re solving cases.

  The fun started in life science with a pop quiz about the differences between mollusks, arthropods, and echinoderms. (You know, because it’s so embarrassing when you call one of them by the wrong name.) Then Madame Thibault assigned us a five-minute oral presentation—to be done entirely in French—about one person from French history who most affects our daily lives.

  She also gave me the stink eye because I was looking around the room instead of paying attention as she went over the assignment. I was focusing on my FBI assignment at the time. I kept an eye on Becca and noticed she wore the same hair ribbon and still used hand sanitizer way more often than she needed.

  Twice I tried (and failed) to strike up a conversation with Lucy. Since her official hosting duties were over, I didn’t have the built-in excuse of walking with her between classes. Still, when I saw her in the hallway before science I jokingly said, “Hey, I thought you were going to meet me outside the cafeteria after lunch yesterday. I had to find algebra all on my own.”

  To which she replied, “Sorry about that.” No explanation, just: “Sorry about that.”

  And on the way from French to gym, I said, “Can you believe that assignment? Five minutes, in French, about a historic figure. Who do you think you’re going to talk about?”

  To which she shrugged and responded, “I don’t know.”

  We were back to three-word answers. Frustrating. But on a more positive note, since I knew what to look for, I was able to confirm that between classes she definitely was making it a point to check the trophy case in front of the library. The sticky residue from the day before was gone. I was determined to see if it made a return.

  While I didn’t know what the mark meant, it seemed to indicate that someone was secretly communicating with her by leaving a signal. If she had something to do with Loki, it might mean other people were involved too.

  Third period was gym, and when I went into the boys’ locker room, I discovered one important fact that had eluded my attention the day before: Tanner and I were in the same PE class. I hadn’t noticed earlier because all we did was run on the track and I was trying to catch up to Lucy. But there was no missing him this time.

  He made sure of that.

  “Is that your name?” he asked as he saw me put on my shirt. “Alice?”

  Because I was only a guest, I didn’t have any Chatham gym clothes. I just used my normal ones: maroon shorts and a gray T-shirt with the name ALICE DEAL written above a Viking logo. Apparently this was hilarious.

  “Hey, guys, check it out,” he continued. “His name is Alice.”

  “Alice Deal,” I said. “It’s not my name; it’s the name of my school.”

  “Whatever you say . . . Alice.” He laughed. And since he thought it was funny, all of his buddies thought it was hysterical. I was Florian no longer. In the obnoxious world of locker room thugs, I’d become Alice.

  Things got even more fun in the gym when I found out we were playing floor hockey, a sport I knew virtually nothing about but which luckily involved lots of physical contact. The coach split us up into teams of five and had us rotate playing.

  Tanner was, of course, the best player on the best team. They kept winning, which meant they stayed on the court as new teams came out to challenge them.

  “Next victim!” he’d call out at the end of each game as the losing team walked toward the bleachers.

  I dreaded the moment when it would be our turn and I would be the “next victim.” He’d completely succeeded at getting under my skin and I didn’t know what to do about it. Then I remembered what Margaret had told me the night before. She said that I needed to use my strengths to counter his. So I went with TOAST and studied him, looking for any little details that might add up to something big.

  The first one I noticed was the way he’d try to fake out his opponent during face-offs. He did a flurry of feints and moves with his hands and stick that were impossible to keep up with. But if you simply ignored them and stared at his feet, his forward foot always pointed in the direction he was going to hit the puck.

  The second thing I picked up on was his big scoring move. He’d stand facing away from the goal and when the puck came to him, he’d lean back hard and use his body to clear out space, then he’d spin around and shoot. It worked every time.

  “Next victim!” he called out when they won yet again.

  We walked onto the court and I think I surprised everybody when I said I wanted to take the face-off. My teammates were certainly happy not to go up against Tanner, and he was even happier to see me come his way.

  “Alice!” he bellowed to the laughter of his friends. “So happy you could join us.”

  The coach shot him a look but didn’t say anything. Then, as the coach got ready to drop the puck, Tanner started moving his stick back and forth to distract me, but I ignored it and looked at his feet. I knew he was going to my left so I just went that way when he hit it.

  I stole the puck and quickly passed it to a teammate, who shot it into the goal. Just like that we were up one to nothing.

  “Nice one,” the goal scorer shouted to me as he jogged back into position.

  “More like lucky one,” Tanner sniped under his breath.

  I smiled because that’s when I knew I had him. Now I was under
his skin.

  Another face-off. Another steal. Another goal.

  The score was two to nothing and the kids in the bleachers were beginning to sit up and take notice.

  Tanner was too good an athlete to keep making the same mistake, so that was the last time the face-off trick worked. But a few plays later I saw him with his back to the goal setting up to score. I knew exactly what he planned to do, so I slipped into position behind him.

  He leaned his considerably larger (and sweatier) body back against mine and snarled, “All right, Alice, you’re about to get schooled.”

  The puck came to him and he went to slam back and clear me out of the way. But before he could, I stepped to the side. There was no one there for him to lean against so he lost his balance and fell flat on his butt.

  While he tumbled, I stole the puck and ran the length of the court and scored. This drew applause from the crowd and high fives from my teammates. It was a glorious sports moment but the exhilaration lasted only about twenty seconds. That’s how long it took for the next play to get under way. I wasn’t anywhere near the puck when Tanner steamrollered me and I slammed into the floor.

  “Foul!” the coach called as he blew on his whistle. “Foul!”

  Foul or not, it didn’t matter. I was done for the day. Every inch of my body ached and it took me about twenty seconds to catch my breath. When I finally did and opened my eyes, I saw Tanner leaning over me to offer a hand up.

  “Sorry, bro,” he said with a mischievous grin. “I guess I didn’t see you there.”

  I didn’t respond and I didn’t take his hand. I got up on my own (slowly) and walked over to the bleachers trying not to limp. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing how much I hurt.

  The pain continued all through fourth-period ancient history, during which we had an in-class writing assignment about the contributions of Roman architecture. (A lucky break for me since I’d lived in Rome and was able to use specific examples.) And I was still aching as I made my way through the cafeteria line.

  “Why are you walking like that?” Margaret asked.

  I gave her a look. “Because I took your advice during PE.” She had no idea what I was talking about, so I said, “I’ll explain it later.”

  Thanks to Lucy’s warning, I knew to skip the Neptune Nuggets (the thought that it might be illegal to call them fish sticks would haunt me for some time) and went with the pizza again. I also reminded myself that I should start bringing a lunch.

  “Where do you want to sit?” Margaret asked.

  “How about there?” I suggested as I nodded toward a table on the far side of the cafeteria where Yin sat alone.

  “You think you can make it that far?” she joked.

  “I’ll do my best,” I said with a faint smile. “Just don’t rush.”

  “I’ve got good news,” she told me as we walked. “I reserved a practice room this afternoon. Meet me in front of the performing arts center after school and you can look for any trapdoors or secret entryways while I work on my piano.”

  “Excellent,” I said.

  “And I’ve got a lead on the mysterious RIB.”

  “Boy or girl?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “But I do know that he or she also has a practice room booked for after school, so we will find out.”

  “I’m glad one of us has made progress. I feel like I’ve been running in circles.”

  We reached Yin’s table and Margaret asked, “Are those seats reserved?”

  He looked surprised. “You want to sit with me?”

  “Of course.”

  “That’s wonderful.” He smiled. “Please, join me.”

  We sat down and he seemed genuinely pleased to have someone to share lunch with. I got the impression that he usually ate alone and I felt kind of bad considering we were there with an ulterior motive. I also noticed that the woman we’d seen him with the day before was sitting at a nearby faculty table. She was definitely watching us.

  We told Yin our situation, or at least our cover story, that we were on an exchange program from Deal.

  “Like me,” he said. “I’m on an exchange from China.”

  “Where in China?” I asked, even though I knew the answer. I didn’t want him to know that we’d researched him.

  “Nanjing,” he said. “My parents are both professors in the music department at Nanjing University.”

  “But isn’t that your mother there?” I said, motioning toward the faculty table.

  He rolled his eyes. “No. That’s Mrs. Chiang. She’s not my mother. She’s my . . . I don’t know the exact word . . . sponsor.”

  He explained that his family was still back in Nanjing and that he was living with the Chiangs, who worked at the Chinese embassy. The embassy had arranged a deal with Chatham for him to attend and her to teach Mandarin so she could keep an eye on him. She seemed more like a chaperone than a sponsor.

  “How do you like Washington?” asked Margaret.

  “I think it’s great,” he said. “Although, between school, the National Symphony, and composing, I don’t get much time to explore it. Mostly I see it on Saturday afternoons. The Chiangs always take me someplace on Saturday afternoons.”

  By this point I felt really bad for him. He was away from his family. Away from his country. And had little time to be a kid. I decided that he needed friends more than we needed to ask him about the practice room. So I didn’t bring it up. Instead I tried to get to know him. Not because he was a suspect but because he was worth knowing.

  “So you like baseball,” I said.

  He gave me a curious look. “No. Why would you think that?”

  “Yesterday you were wearing a Baltimore Orioles cap.”

  He laughed. “No, I don’t like baseball. I like songbirds. I like anything that’s musical.”

  This made all of us laugh. We continued talking and had a really good time until Tanner made an unwanted appearance.

  “How goes it, Alice?” he said, making a point of slapping me square on the back for maximum sting.

  I winced in pain.

  “Oooh, sorry, I forgot. Still hurting?”

  “No, I’m fine,” I replied.

  “I see you’ve met Yo-Yo,” he added with a nod toward Yin.

  I could tell that Yin feared him, which made two of us. Luckily, there were three at the table.

  “His name is Yin Yae,” said Margaret. “Not Yo-Yo. You should learn it.”

  “My mistake,” he said, sensing that Margaret was not one to mess with. He continued on, but when he left, our happy mood was gone. I looked over and noticed that Mrs. Chiang had paid particularly close attention to Tanner’s visit.

  “He started calling me Yo-Yo last year,” he said. “At first I thought it was a compliment. I thought he was comparing me to Yo-Yo Ma, who is a great Chinese cellist. But then I discovered that he was just making fun of my name. I don’t even think he knows who Yo-Yo Ma is.”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure you’re right about that,” said Margaret.

  It was quiet for a moment before I asked, “What are you doing this Saturday?”

  “What do you mean?” he said.

  “You told us that you take little field trips on Saturday afternoons,” I explained. “Where are you going this Saturday?”

  He thought for a second. “The zoo.”

  “Can I meet you there? Would the Chiangs be okay with that?”

  He flashed a huge grin. “Of course. That would be great.” He turned to Margaret. “Both of you?”

  She smiled right back at him. “Are you kidding? I’m all about the zoo. I wouldn’t miss it.”

  “Great! We’ll all go to the zoo.” He smiled and added a word that broke my heart. “Friends.”

  After the bell rang, as Margaret and I walked to algebra together, I turned to her and said, “Just so you know, I asked as a friend. Not because he’s a suspect.”

  She looked at me and said, “You think I didn’t
know that? You’re not the only one who can read people, Florian.”

  We sat down in algebra, and because the fire alarm had postponed it the day before, we had to take the unit test. Tanner sat one row behind me and an aisle to the right. I could see him with my peripheral vision when I turned my head slightly.

  Here, away from the jungle laws of the gym and cafeteria, he wasn’t talking tough or giving me a hard time. This was not his element. He was obviously still nervous about failing the test and what that might do to his eligibility to play lacrosse—which presented me with a dilemma.

  I considered him a suspect who I needed to be able to study, but I also knew that he was a bully who tormented kids like Yin and me. Winning him over might help the case, but it would make me feel lousy. I weighed the options and made a decision that challenged my morals.

  I decided to let him cheat off my test.

  I didn’t do anything overt, just moved my paper to the edge of my desk and slid ever so slightly to my left, giving him a clear view of my answer sheet. I started answering the questions and when I glanced over, I could see him copying every one down.

  We’d gone over the unit in depth at Deal and I knew it cold. When I finished and put my pencil down, I was certain I had a perfect score. Seconds later I heard Tanner put his pencil down and let out a huge sigh of relief.

  After class I didn’t say anything to anybody, not even Margaret. I just got up and headed to English, unsure if I’d made the right decision.

  Tanner caught up with me just outside the door to my next class.

  “Dude, tell me you aced that test just now,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I answered. “It was easy. I got a hundred percent. I’m certain of it.”

  He let out a huge sigh. “I was all wrong about you. I was a total jerk and you saved me.”

  I noticed we’d caught the attention of a few people in the hall, including Lucy.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “How did I save you?”

  He let out a hardy laugh. “If you don’t know, then you don’t know. We’ll keep it that way. I still owe you.”

  “You didn’t copy off my test, did you?”

  He just flashed a grin and shrugged. “Like I said, if you don’t know . . .”