Amanda Lester and the Orange Crystal Crisis

by Paula Berinstein

  As he turned to go back to his seat, Holmes caught her eye. Oh no. He was probably out to get her after that awful thing she’d said. He stared for a second, then slowly began to smile in a way that seemed to say, “Thanks for the joke.” In spite of herself, Amanda felt her lips widen, and before she knew it she was grinning too. The boy gave her a wink. Wait a minute. Was he serious or making fun of her? Whatever he was up to, she would not be made a fool of again. She felt herself stiffen. Holmes and Moriarty, Moriarty and Holmes. They were two sides of the same coin. She couldn’t believe she’d ever thought the ancestral Moriarty was cool. Well, she was over that bad girl stage. From now on she would give these guys the disrespect they deserved. She frowned. Seeing the change in her, Holmes’s face fell and he turned away.

  Despite Holmes’s odd behavior, and despite the fact that Professor Pole’s program that simulated fires and explosions reminded Amanda of the Explosions! game Nick was so crazy about, she enjoyed the rest of the class and looked forward to the exercises the teacher had assigned. The students were not to try any more real-life experiments for the first few weeks of the class. Rather, they would simulate various types of disasters digitally, starting with the garage explosion and fire that had kicked off the class project last term. After that they would tackle electrical fires and gas explosions before moving on to dynamite and lightning fires. Professor Pole’s graphics were incredibly cool, but the real power of his program was in the physics and chemistry, which he’d worked on in consultation with experts around the world. Later on the kids would do lab experiments, but only if they achieved certain scores on the simulations and with strict safety protocols in place. Everyone was super excited, especially Simon, who started planning all sorts of weird conflagrations. He had some nutty idea about seeing if he could change Earth’s tilt so he could fix global warming. Amanda and Ivy were looking forward to seeing that.

  “You can tease me all you want,” he said. “Glitter explosions in a beaker are nothing. The point of all this training is to solve big, important problems. If you must know, I wrote to that professor at UCLA over the break, the one who invented the microscope/cell phone apparatus we used to detect the sugar virus last term. I told him we used the lens from my glasses and it worked great. I asked him if he thinks that’s worth an academic paper, and I’m sure he’ll say yes.”

  Simon and Professor Kindseth had discovered a way to turn a cell phone into a powerful microscope using an attachment manufactured on a 3D printer. The only catch had been that they didn’t have the proper lens for it, that is until they hit on the idea of using one from Simon’s coke bottle glasses. The microscope had worked beautifully, and they had discovered that the cook’s pink sugar was actually tainted with a destructive virus.

  “That’s admirable,” said Amanda.

  “I’ll say,” said Ivy. “I’m impressed.”

  “I think it’s nuts,” said Amphora, invading their little circle. “You’re twelve. There’s no way you could publish a scientific paper. Fugeddaboutit.” She sounded silly trying to affect a Brooklyn accent with her posh London/Cambridge way of talking.

  “I don’t care about your opinion, dodo,” said Simon. “You know, one day your frivolous behavior is going to come back to bite you. You should get a clue and grow up.”

  “You’re a prat,” said Amphora. “I’m going to blow you up in my simulations. It will make the class so much more fun.”

  “You know what, you two?” said Ivy. “You’re getting so predictable you’re boring me. I’ve had enough. Come on, Amanda.”

  Ivy grabbed Amanda’s arm, pulled Nigel’s lead, and headed off toward the Holmes House common room. Amanda glanced behind her. Simon and Amphora were still arguing.

  3

  Professor Redleaf’s Surprise

  Amanda had never seen Ivy so edgy. She was normally the calmest person in the world, but something had rattled her. It couldn’t be Editta’s disappearance, which wasn’t even a disappearance yet. And it couldn’t be Simon and Amphora’s constant bickering because Ivy was used to that. What was up?

  The two girls ducked into the Holmes House common room, which this day had been decorated to look like an airplane hangar. Amanda found it baffling. She didn’t know anything about planes, other than what she’d seen on the trip over from L.A., and she couldn’t figure out what she was looking at. Ivy dragged her over to a couch and practically threw her down. Nigel sat next to Amanda and let his tongue loll out.

  “What’s going on?” Ivy demanded. She seemed more impatient than Amanda had ever seen her. Somehow her dark glasses made her look menacing when she was like that, which was weird considering that Ivy was less than five feet tall.

  “Are you okay?” said Amanda, staring at her from this angle and that, trying to read her.

  “No, I’m not okay. Something bad is going on around here and we have to find out what it is.” The reflection from her sunglasses flashed as she moved her head.

  “You mean what I told you earlier? How do you know about that?” She leaned in and kept her voice low so their conversation would be private.

  “How do I know about anything?” said Ivy too loudly. Amanda jumped back as if she’d been hit. “I’ve heard stuff. You know how good my hearing is.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Amanda tried lowering her voice again.

  “There wasn’t time,” said Ivy softly, getting the message. “I know something is up with the teachers. They’re talking about catastrophe. We need to figure out what this is and fix it. They sound like they haven’t any idea what to do, and that worries me half to death.”

  Amanda delivered the nutshell version of what she’d heard outside Thrillkill’s office. Ivy kept shaking her head. Nigel wagged his tail against her, whomp, whomp, whomp, and she scratched her leg. Between Ivy’s red hair and Nigel’s golden coat, they looked like life itself against the backdrop of the hangar. Amanda wondered what it would be like to have colored hair. Brown was okay, but it wasn’t very interesting.

  “Yes, that confirms what I’ve been hearing,” said Ivy when Amanda had finished. “What worries me the most is that the teachers seem so disorganized. I’ve never seen them like this. Do you think Mavis is really going to escape? If she does, maybe she’ll break Blixus out of Strangeways too.”

  “I don’t know,” said Amanda. “They’ve gone up against the Moriartys before. Why should this time be any different?” A thought struck her. Maybe losing Nick had made the criminals more desperate and dangerous. It probably wasn’t a good idea to raise the possibility, though. Everyone was sick to death of Nick, and every time she mentioned his name she felt like she was imposing.

  “That’s what I can’t figure out,” said Ivy. “Unless they have whatever it is the teachers lost. Do you have any idea what it could be?”

  “Not a clue.”

  Amanda got up and started pacing, then remembered that she had to stay close to Ivy to keep anyone who walked in from hearing their conversation. She caught sight of the new clock Nick had hung up after breaking the old one, which had bothered Amanda with its loud ticking. Nick again. Why did everything have to remind her of him? If this kept up she’d do poorly in her classes. She had to exorcise him. Maybe she should learn to meditate. Or throw darts at his picture. Editta would probably have stuck pins in his effigy. Where was that girl anyway?

  “Me either,” said Ivy. “We’re going to have to do it soon, though.”

  “Yes. Maybe we should talk tonight.”

  “Definitely. I’m a little worried about discussing all this in front of Amphora, though. She seems so distracted with all that fighting.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Amanda. “She and Simon have gotten worse. Maybe they stored it all up over the break. Let’s meet somewhere we don’t usually go and she won’t look for us.”

  “One of the labs?”

  “How about the disguise room up on the top floor?” Amanda felt the most at home there. It was a thea
trical place, full of costumes, wigs, makeup, and props. A filmmaker’s dream.

  “Yes, that sounds like a good idea. Eight o’clock?”

  “You’re on.”

  Amanda was really looking forward to cyberforensics class. The previous term when she’d needed to get into the Moriartys’ computer she’d had no idea how to get past the logon screen. After that she’d promised herself she’d become an expert so that would never happen again.

  The class was taught by Professor Redleaf, a white hat hacker of mysterious origin who was rumored to have broken into some of the most sensitive computer networks on the planet. A number of the older students said she came from the Amazon jungle. Others said she had been born in the heart of Africa. She always wore a white hat of one sort or another, Amanda guessed for symbolic reasons, and appeared to be completely emotionless, speaking in a voice that resembled a dial tone. She also seemed to be full of secrets, which wasn’t unusual at Legatum, but her manner implied that her secrets were rather more sinister than those of the other teachers. There was an air of magic about her, which was saying something considering that detectives are among the least magical people in the world. What really floored Amanda, however, was that as soon as Scapulus Holmes walked into the class, Professor Redleaf seemed to know him and even smiled at him, whereupon he smiled back and said, “Good morning, Professor. How’s that Silver Fern project coming along?”

  Showoff! How did they know each other? Did this mean that Holmes was some hacking genius? Was he going to be the teacher’s pet? Amanda could feel herself fuming. She realized she was being irrational but she didn’t care. Sometimes irrationality was called for, and this seemed like one of those times. Who did he think he was, anyway? Here not half a day and already acting like the great Sherlock.

  Professor Redleaf didn’t answer Holmes’s question out loud, but somehow Amanda got the feeling she had conveyed the answer anyway. Holmes seemed satisfied with whatever invisible message she had delivered and settled in his chair. Professor Redleaf started the class immediately after that, and told them that their project for the term was to divide into teams that would simultaneously try to hack into each other’s computers.

  Instead of going by the school’s houses—Holmes, Van Helden, Dupin, and Father Brown—the students would be assigned randomly using an algorithm Professor Redleaf had written. Amanda was disappointed to find that she wasn’t on the same team as her friends, who had been split up as well, but when she learned that she would be working with the Wiffle kid, she just about had a fit, and so did he. Whiny brat that he was, he asked the teacher if he could be transferred, a question Professor Redleaf wouldn’t dignify with an answer. Normally Amanda and the kid found themselves competing, and the idea of working together not only didn’t sit well with either of them, but seemed to make them hate each other even more. Amanda had no idea how she was going to manage this. The only consolation was that she wasn’t on the same team as Holmes and wouldn’t have to listen to his bragging. Not that she knew for sure that he would brag. She just figured it was in his genes. That and winking, apparently.

  Amanda knew the class was going to be hard, but when Professor Redleaf offered an overview full of unfamiliar jargon (she’d heard of SSL and IP addresses, but that was about it), she realized that it was going to be way more difficult than she’d imagined. She was conversant with a variety of media capture and editing programs, but the technical details that made them all work were another thing. Apparently Amphora was feeling the same way because when Amanda glanced at her, her mouth was hanging open. Ivy seemed unperturbed, thank goodness, and Simon, well Simon was eating the whole thing up with a relish Amanda had seen only when he’d made the smartphone microscope last term. Needless to say, Holmes was smiling as if he knew something the others didn’t, which no doubt he did. Oh great. Another freakish Holmes.

  Suddenly it occurred to her that perhaps they would all emerge from the school as freaks. Look at the kind of observational skills they were developing. They were so attentive and detail-oriented that they might never be able to turn off all that analyzing and would be beset by runaway trivia racing through their heads day and night. And what about the self-defense training? Could they ever walk down a street again without imagining that everyone they saw posed a physical threat? No wonder all the teachers were so weird. This stuff warped a person. It had certainly warped Sherlock Holmes, but funnily enough not her ancestor, G. Lestrade. He was too dumb to get it, and yet his stupidity had saved him and let him live a normal life. Maybe she should get out now, before she turned into a freakazoid.

  Suddenly she realized that something was going on up front and she was so lost in her own morbid thoughts that she was missing it. Professor Redleaf was standing there staring at her screen with a horrified look on her face. She looked at Scapulus Holmes and said sharply, “Mr. Holmes, please see me after class.”

  During the rest of the session Professor Redleaf seemed distracted. Everyone was jumpy as a result—except Holmes, who remained stolid. Just watching him convinced Amanda that Simon wasn’t the world’s most irritating nerd anymore. Holmes had just bumped him out of first place.

  The first thing Amanda thought as she headed for lunch was that Professor Redleaf’s alarming surprise must have had something to do with the missing item. The second thing was, what was wrong with Ivy? And the third thing was that Editta was still AWOL. What was going on?

  When she arrived at the dining room she could see that everything looked different from the way it had earlier. The tables, which had been arranged lengthwise at 8:00 a.m., were now pushed together to form geometric shapes. The sideboards with beverages and condiments now stood smack in the middle of the room and sported bright-colored cloths decorated with abstract designs. The normal silverware had been replaced with clunky implements that were so heavy and awkwardly designed that it was hard to eat with them. And each plate featured a great big hole in the middle. How you were supposed to eat off those was anyone’s guess. It seemed that the décor gremlins had lost their minds along with everyone else. Or was this supposed to be a test? Maybe the students were supposed to rig up something before they put food on the plates so it wouldn’t drip through. You never knew around here.

  Whatever the intent, Simon had solved the problem by placing a glass over the hole in his plate, which seemed to do the trick. The other kids did likewise, except for Holmes, whom Amanda caught sticking a dessert plate under his. Typical. He had to do everything better than everyone else.

  After placing a small portion of spinach lasagna around her glass, Amanda said to Ivy, Simon, and Amphora, “Something big is happening.”

  “Something big is always happening around here,” said Simon. “That’s what it means to be a detective.” The sauce from his lasagna was starting to separate from the solid parts and roll toward the glass. Amanda wondered if it would make it through the hole.

  “No, I mean something big and very bad,” said Amanda.

  “Ah, this must have something to do with Nick, then,” said Simon, whereupon Amphora glared at him so hard that he stuck his tongue out.

  “Actually, I don’t know,” said Amanda. “Maybe it does.” She didn’t like the idea that Nick had wreaked even more havoc than they knew about, but she couldn’t discount the possibility.

  “Well, what is it?” said Amphora. She hadn’t quite managed to get her glass in the right place, and her food was definitely seeking the hole in the plate.

  “Something really important to the school is missing and the teachers are going nuts. Thrillkill has completely lost it. When I showed up at his office this morning, he’d completely forgotten that he asked me to be there. He was all, ‘Oh, hello, Miss Lester. Fancy meeting you here.’”

  “Did he have his hair dryer?” Simon said. He was referring to the hair dryer the headmaster always carried in order to melt icicles. He had a morbid fear of them and destroyed them when they crossed his path. This late in the year (mid-April) there
weren’t any, so Simon’s question was obviously designed to provoke rather than elucidate. Was something wrong with him too? Come to think of it, he was being more obnoxious than usual.

  “Simon, cut it out,” said Amanda. “This is serious.”

  “Sorry,” said Simon, looking down at his plate. The food had pooled around the sides of the glass, which were red with marinara sauce. It was getting to be a huge mess.

  “Whatever it is, the teachers are fighting because of it.” Amanda’s food was pooling too. Simon was usually so good with engineering problems. Apparently his solution to this one needed some tweaking, however.

  “Which teachers?” said Amphora, looking toward the kitchen.

  “Scribbish, Hoxby, Peaksribbon, Mukherjee, I think Pargeter, and some others whose voices I didn’t recognize.”

  “Were they yelling?” said Simon.

  “Pretty much, yes,” said Amanda, trying to eat faster than the sauce could run. She wasn’t winning the battle.

  “She’s right,” said Ivy. “I’ve been hearing things too.” Her plate was nice and neat. How did she do it?

  “Oh?” said Amphora. “What things?” She looked at the kitchen again.

  “Something important is missing and the teachers are blaming each other,” said Ivy. “I don’t know what it is or why it matters, but every time I hear them discussing it they act as if it’s a disaster.”

  “Yes, that’s what I’ve gathered too,” said Amanda.

  “Does this have anything to do with that phone call we heard Professor Feeney make last term?” said Simon, who now had a marinara mustache.

  “What phone call?” said Ivy, who didn’t.

  “When Amanda and I were analyzing the sugar virus in the lab, we overheard Professor Feeney out in the hall talking to someone about something that was missing,” said Simon. “She seemed upset.”

  “That was quite a while ago,” said Ivy. “I didn’t hear anything last term. I got the impression this was all new.”