by Lara Bergen
And it was pink!
Sophie had to do it. She reached in. And she pulled it out.
Then she sighed one of the biggest sighs she’d ever sighed in her whole life.
It wasn’t Mindy’s lip-gloss phone. It was a real cell phone.
Aw! Too bad!
She started to put the phone back into the bag. Then suddenly, she jumped. The phone began playing a song. And a man’s picture popped up on the screen.
The real phone was ringing!
What do I do? Sophie thought. What would a snoop do?
She knew that a snoop would answer the phone So that’s what she did (in a disguised voice, of course).
Sophie punched the “talk” but ton. “Er … hello?” she said, very low.
“Hi … Sophie?” a man’s voice replied.
Sophie felt her stomach flip-flop. “Um, yes — I mean, no!” she said. “I mean … how did you know?”
“Isn’t this your phone?” asked the man. “Are you okay, Sophie? Do you have a cold?”
Suddenly, Sophie realized something. Ms. Steele’s name was Sophie, too!
“Um …” She tried to think quickly. “Actually, that Sophie is busy right now. Can I take a message?” she asked.
The man paused. At last, he said, “Sure. Just tell her good luck.”
Then he said good-bye and the phone went dead.
Sophie’s heart began to thump.
Good luck?
That was bad!
So! The Case of the Room 10 Thief had taken a turn. Ms. Steele was the thief. But she was not working alone!
This was even bigger than Sophie had thought. She had to tell Principal Tate right away! But before she could even move, the classroom door opened.
There stood Ms. Steele — the thief! — with Principal Tate. But that wasn’t all. The rest of the class was there, too, back from lunch.
They were all looking at her. And most of their eyes were wide.
“Sophie! What are you doing with my phone?” Ms. Steele cried.
The next thing Sophie knew, she was in the school office — with Principal Tate.
She had planned to go to him, but not exactly like this. Somehow, Sophie had ended up standing there like she was the thief.
“I must say, Miss Miller, I am very surprised,” the principal said, shaking his head. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
Sophie stood in front of his desk very calmly. It would all be okay just as soon as she explained.
She took a deep breath. “I am not the thief, Principal Tate,” she said. “The substitute is!”
The principal lifted one eyebrow, then the other. (He was good at that.) Then he leaned forward on his elbows. “Now, this is even more surprising. What in the world makes you say that?” he asked.
“Well …” Sophie bit her lip. Where should she begin? “For one thing, all this stuff was stolen today — the day that Ms. Steele is here. So it’s pretty elementary, don’t you think?” she said.
“But your classmates seem to think that you did it, to be some kind of snoop,” the principal said, looking at her closely. “And the fact is, you were the one caught holding Ms. Steele’s phone.”
Me? The thief? Never! Sophie felt her face get hot.
“Me? The thief? Never!” She crossed her heart. “I swear! I’m not the one who got a phone call telling me good luck with my robbery! Don’t you think that’s suspicious? Plus she reads books about cats who rob banks!” Sophie paused to take a breath. “And her name is Ms. Steele!”
She crossed her arms. He could not argue with that!
“I bet she robs schools all the time, Principal Tate,” she told him. “You should probably call all your principal friends and see if they’re missing anything.”
“Sophie, Sophie, Sophie.” The principal shook his head.
Uh-oh, Sophie thought. Was that good? Or very bad? The principal never used first names. And now he was using hers. Three times. In a row.
“I would be surprised to learn that Ms. Steele leads a life of crime,” Principal Tate said. “As far as I know, she’s working hard to earn her teaching degree. And this is her first day substituting.” He sighed. “Ever.”
“Well, that’s even better!” Sophie told him. She grinned. “Good thing I was in her class! I showed her that she can’t get away with robbing kids. And the judge might be easy on her if it’s just her first time. Do you want to call in the police now? Or should I?”
The principal opened his mouth. But there was a knock at the door before anything came out.
“Come in,” said Principal Tate.
The door opened. There was Ms. Steele … and Toby. What’s he doing here? Sophie wondered.
“Um … this young man has something to tell you, Mr. Tate,” Ms. Steele said.
Sophie felt her jaw drop. She tried to close it. But she could not. This was just like Toby to try to get her in more trouble!
Sophie glared at him and thought hard about sticking out her tongue.
Then Toby took a deep breath and said, “I’m sorry. I took all the stuff.”
Huh?
Now Sophie was really confused.
Ms. Steele wasn’t the thief? But Sophie had been so sure!
And Toby was the thief? Wow! That surprised even her.
But not as much as the feeling she suddenly got. She felt bad for Toby. He was going to be in big trouble. She started to wish she hadn’t told Principal Tate to call the cops.
Of course, Sophie was also mad. But not at Toby. At herself. What kind of snoop could be so wrong about so much?
The principal looked mad, too. “Mr. Myers, this is very serious,” he said.
Ms. Steele put a hand on Toby’s shoulder. “Why don’t you explain?” she said to him.
Toby looked at Sophie — and looked away fast. “I wasn’t going to steal the stuff and keep it,” he said.
“Then why did you do it?” Principal Tate asked.
“To help her,” Toby said quietly. He nodded at Sophie. She almost gasped.
Help her? How? Sophie had to hear this.
By then, Toby’s face was so red his freckles had almost disappeared.
He took another breath. “She was just so crazy to solve mysteries,” he went on. “She even had a detective hat. But there weren’t any mysteries. So I thought I’d make some up.” Toby shrugged and looked down at the floor. “And it was so easy to take the stuff while everyone was lining up for gym. It’s all in my backpack. I was going to return it, really. I mean, if Sophie the Snoop didn’t find it first.”
Sophie was speechless. But a zillion thoughts zipped through her head.
Thoughts like What? And Really? And Sorry, Ms. Steele….
Sophie had snooped around in the substitute’s bag for nothing. And missed lunch, too.
And speaking of missing, how had she missed Toby’s taking all that stuff? She guessed it was because she had not wanted to look at him much.
What was Toby thinking? She made herself look at him just to see. But his face was down. He was looking at his feet.
So she looked at his red head and wondered, Why did he do what he did?
Was it really because he liked the name Sophie the Snoop and wanted to help her earn it? Or was he just saying that to get out of trouble? Was he trying to prove she couldn’t really solve mysteries? Was he just being mean?
That, for sure, was the biggest mystery!
A few minutes later, Sophie was glad to be out of the principal’s office.
But she was not glad to be back in room 10. Everyone — except Kate — was talking about all the trouble she was in!
Of course, they weren’t just talking about her. They were talking about Toby, too. He’d given everything back and he’d explained what he’d done.
Archie thought it was hilarious. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked him.
“Tweety!” said Ben. He gave his Tweety Bird a hug.
Mindy was furious. “Don’t you ever touch my lip-gloss phone again!” s
he fumed. She inspected it for damage. Then she quickly dabbed on some lip gloss.
Sophie, meanwhile, slunk back to her seat. The one next to Toby. (As if things weren’t bad enough.) She really, really wished she could ask to move. But she could not even look at Ms. Steele. How could she speak to her?
Sophie felt awful for making the sub’s first day of teaching so hard. She should have known better. How could someone named Sophie be bad, after all?
Sophie guessed that she was not as much of a snoop as she had thought. She was still just plain old boring Sophie the Nothing. As usual.
The good news was that it was almost time for art class with her very favorite teacher, Ms. Bart. So Sophie did not have to stay in her seat next to Toby for long. Art could not come soon enough.
She hoped they would do clay. She felt like squeezing stuff in her hands. Or maybe splatter painting. Sophie could really get into that.
Something — anything — to take her mind off Sophie the Snoop.
But when Sophie got to the art room, she saw that there was a little mirror at each of their seats.
Mindy picked hers up. Sophie rolled her eyes as Mindy blew herself a kiss.
Then Ms. Bart called for their attention. She had her hair in two long, long braids. One had glitter stuck to it. The other looked like it had been dipped in purple paint.
“Hey, everyone,” Ms. Bart said. “Today we’re doing something really cool. We’re going to draw self-portraits. That means you draw a picture of you!”
Really?
Sophie looked around. Everyone else — especially Mindy — seemed to think that it was a great idea. But drawing a picture of herself was the last thing Sophie wanted to do just then.
Kate reached for a pencil and quickly drew something round.
“Aren’t you going to look at yourself first?” Sophie asked.
Kate grinned and shrugged. “Well, I know I have a head,” she replied.
Sophie picked up her mirror. She studied her face. It frowned back. She grabbed a pencil and started to draw, then stopped. Blah! It wasn’t right.
Sophie knew that she was not a great artist. No, Sophie the Artist would never be her name. (Sydney and Eve were the best in her class. And Jack, too, if you counted cartoons.) But she loved to sculpt. And draw. And paint. She especially loved to glue stuff. What did Ms. Bart call that? Oh, right. Collage.
But Kate wasn’t a great artist, either, and she was doing okay with her self-portrait.
And Lily was almost finished. Her self-portrait looked a lot more like Mindy than herself. Sophie wasn’t surprised.
Still, that was better than nothing at all. Nothing at all was what Sophie had.
She tried again. And again. But after twenty minutes, all she had was a paper full of gray smudges. And a lapful of eraser dust.
For the first time ever in art class, Sophie was not having fun.
“Sophie, how are you doing?” Ms. Bart asked as she walked up. She knelt down and looked at Sophie’s blank paper, then at Sophie. “What’s up?”
“I can’t do it,” Sophie said glumly. “I mean, I know what I should look like. But when I try to draw it, it comes out wrong.”
Ms. Bart put her hand on Sophie’s shoulder. “It doesn’t have to be perfect,” she said.
“But if it doesn’t look just like me, what’s the point?” Sophie asked.
Ms. Bart smiled. “Come here. Let me show you something.”
She stood up and Sophie followed her to a bulletin board covered with art. Some looked like a real artist had made it. And some did not.
Ms. Bart pointed to a painting of a man. He had one big black eye and one small one. And a very giant nose. “This is a self-portrait by Pablo Picasso — one of the greatest artists in the world,” she said.
Then she pointed to another. “And this is by the artist Marc Chagall.” It showed an artist painting in a bow tie. His skin was blue. And his hair was green. But those were not the strangest things in the picture.
“He has a lot of fingers!” Sophie told Ms. Bart.
The art teacher grinned. “Really, he had just five on each hand, like you and me. But he chose to paint more”
He chose to? Really?
“You don’t think he lost count? Or messed up?” Sophie asked.
Ms. Bart laughed. “Maybe, Sophie. But that’s what I mean. These artists didn’t care if their paintings looked exactly like them. The paintings showed how they felt. In here.” She pointed to her smock, just above her heart. “You can always take a picture of the outside with a camera. But a drawing can show what’s inside. Don’t you think that’s the best part?”
Yeah, maybe. (Unless you were Mindy VonBoffmann. Her outsides were much better than her insides, in Sophie’s opinion.)
But Sophie didn’t see how this solved her problem at all. “So how do I show what’s inside?” she asked Ms. Bart. “I can see the outside, and I can’t even draw that!”
Ms. Bart squeezed her shoulder. “It’ll come. Just relax.”
Sophie sighed and looked back at the portraits on the wall. Then she noticed another one. It had every color of the rainbow in it. It was hard to tell exactly what the person looked like. But Sophie could see that she had long hair, and she was happy, and it would be easy to be her friend.
Sophie turned from the picture to Ms. Bart.
“Is that you?” she asked.
Ms. Bart grinned. “It sure is!”
Sophie headed back to her table. Kate was almost done with her self-portrait. She was adding freckles. “What do you think?” she asked. “Too much?”
Sophie grinned and shook her head. “No. Definitely not.”
Kate had made her hair a little wilder than it really was. And her eyes were kind of far from her triangle nose. But her smile was so big you hardly noticed at all.
Sophie picked up her pencil and thought about how she felt inside. She leaned over her paper and she started to draw.
Ms. Bart came over later, just as she was finishing.
“Sophie,” she said. “That’s wonderful! I can’t wait to hang it up.”
Sophie smiled. It wasn’t perfect. Her ears looked like seashells. And her bangs were way too short. But she liked the way her smile curled up just enough. And her long eyelashes made her light brown eyes stand out.
Some kids had just drawn a face. But Sophie drew a shirt, too. Not the plain red one she was wearing. No. This shirt was green, and it had a rainbow heart in the middle that got bigger the more she drew. Her smile was not as big as Kate’s. But it showed lots of teeth (and a space for the one she had lost recently).
In fact, the more she looked at her portrait, the more proud Sophie felt. But she wasn’t sure she wanted it hung up.
“Is it okay if I take it with me?” she asked Ms. Bart.
The art teacher nodded. “Oh, yes!” she said. “Of course!”
Sophie had one more thing to add. It was the most important part — a big speech bubble. Because her feelings had something to say to someone.
Back in room 10, after art, Sophie walked up to Ms. Steele.
She swallowed. Two times. And she handed the sub her self-portrait.
“For me?” Ms. Steele asked. She gently took it. And something happened to her eyes. They got crinkly at the corners. Sophie got a little worried. Then she saw that it was part of a big smile.
The sub looked down at Sophie’s picture and read the words:
I am sorry I snooped in your stuff.
I hope you sub for us again.
I have a message for you, too:
“Good luck, Sophie Steele.”
Ms. Steele’s eyes moved to Sophie. “Thank you so much, Sophie. This means a lot.”
Sophie sighed. She felt much better. It was good to have those feelings out.
But she was still feeling other things. They quickly filled her insides up.
She still felt sorry that her snooping had gone so wrong. She had thought she was a natural snoop. Now she guessed
that she was not.
And she felt mixed up about Toby. Was he really being mean? Had he been trying to make her look silly when he’d faked those mysteries? Or maybe he didn’t hate her as much as she thought. Maybe he was trying to help her be Sophie the Snoop after all.
It was so hard to know!
She went back to her seat — the one next to Toby.
I should have asked the sub if I could move, Sophie thought.
She checked the clock. It was almost three. Phew. Any minute, the bell would ring. Then she could get up and go.
But maybe, just maybe, she should take this chance. Maybe she should say something to Toby. Maybe she should even thank him.
But how?
Well, there was one way. Sophie swallowed — hard.
“Thank you, Toby,” she said very, very softly.
Toby’s head was down. He’d been pulling rubber off the edge of his shoe. Slowly, he looked up.
“For what?” he asked her.
“Uh …” Sophie bit her lip. Her mind was suddenly blank. What should she say next?
“For getting us both in big trouble today”?
No. That was no good. “For trying to help me be Sophie the Snoop”?
But Toby was looking at her so funny Sophie wished she’d kept her mouth shut.
“Uh, for letting me borrow your pencil. Even if I did get cooties on it,” she mumbled.
“Oh, that.” Toby shrugged. But then he also grinned a little.
Wow. They were almost having a conversation!
And then the bell rang.
Ms. Steele stood up.
“Good-bye, class,” she said. “It’s been a … um … very memorable day.”
Sophie got up along with the rest of the class. Then she turned back to Toby. There were suddenly things she wanted to ask. Did he even know she was playing soccer now? And had he gotten a new dog yet?
But the next thing she knew, Archie was standing next to them. And that wasn’t all. He had her Sherlock Holmes hat!
“Hey, that’s my hat! Hand it over!” Sophie cried.
Archie stuck out his tongue. “Make me!” He laughed.
Sophie glared and tried to grab the hat. But Archie was too quick.
