by Nancy Krulik
“Actually, water does dry up by itself,” Elizabeth said. “It’s called evaporation. If you leave water standing around long enough, it will turn into vapor that will mix with the air. It was probably just a few drops, so they evaporated quickly.”
“I sure wish you’d thought of that before we interrogated Mr. Broomfield,” I said.
“Why?” Elizabeth asked me. “Because he’s so scary?”
“No,” I answered. “Because it’s lunchtime and I’m starving! Let’s get to the cafeteria.”
Chapter 8
“Where have you two been?”
We weren’t in the cafeteria more than one minute when Elizabeth and I bumped into Maxine.
“We were trying to figure out who’s been pranking everyone around the school,” Elizabeth told her bravely.
Maxine gave her an odd look. “And did you?” she asked.
“Not yet,” I told her. “We were close, but —” “But you couldn’t figure it out,” Maxine said, cutting me off. “You third graders won’t be able to solve this one.” She smiled and pointed to her orange belt with her white-gloved hand. “That’s why the school is lucky to have me.”
“Why are you wearing gloves inside the cafeteria?” I asked her.
“These are safety gloves,” Maxine said. “They give them to us for when it gets cold. I’m going outside to keep the playground safe during recess. It’s pretty chilly out there today.”
Weird. There were other safeties in the fifth grade. But Maxine was the only one wearing her gloves and her belt in the lunchroom.
“Come on, Jack,” Elizabeth said. “Let’s go eat.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “Today’s my favorite meal. Breakfast for lunch. I hope there are still some pancakes left.”
“Don’t worry about the mystery anymore,” Maxine said. “I’ve got everything under control.”
I didn’t get to find out about the pancakes because as soon as Maxine was gone, Leo and Trevor came rushing over.
“Tell me you found the prankster,” Leo said.
“Wish I could,” I told him. “But we haven’t.”
“Not yet,” Elizabeth said. “We thought we had the right guy, but we were wrong. It happens all the time with mysteries.”
“We don’t have time for you to be wrong,” Trevor told her.
Just then, a tall fifth grader named Bo walked over to us. He had straight hair and a whole lot of freckles. He also had a mean grin on his face.
“Don’t feel too bad, Trev,” Bo said. “So what if you and your friends don’t get to go on the upper-school apple-picking trip? It’s time the school did something new. Climbing trees, drinking cider, and eating fresh-baked apple pie is boring after you’ve done it twice. Of course, you’ll never know, will you? Ha! See ya later, losers.”
As Bo walked away, Trevor shook his head. “That guy is such a bully. I can’t believe he’s my cousin.”
I didn’t have any trouble believing that at all.
“You guys had better figure this mystery out fast!” Trevor said.
“We’re doing our best,” Elizabeth replied.
“Do better than your best,” Trevor said. He stood up taller so he seemed even bigger than usual. Then he stomped off.
“This is really important, you guys,” Leo said once Trevor was gone. “The whole school is counting on you two.”
I was about to tell Leo that we were working as fast as we could. But before I could get a word out, a loud scream came from over by the salad bar. I turned in the direction of the scream and watched the lunch lady leap up on a chair. She was panicked about something.
“It sounds like the prankster has struck again!” Elizabeth grabbed me by the arm. “Come on!”
Elizabeth dragged me over to the salad bar to see what kind of monsterish thing could be there. Sure enough, there it was — sitting between the tomatoes and the lettuce — Iggy, the little, green iguana from the science room.
Iggy took a big bite out of a tomato. “Mmm … this tomato is pretty good,” he hissed. “But I like the taste of red cabbage better. Hey! There’s some!” He took a bite of an onion slice and then crawled over to the cabbage.
“Oh no! Don’t let it eat the food!” The lunch lady reached down from the chair and tried to pull some of the vegetables out of the iguana’s reach.
“Whooaaaa!” Suddenly, she lost her footing and let out a yell.
Splat! That was the sound of her landing face-first in the salad bar. I gasped, and Elizabeth’s mouth dropped open. Tomatoes, olives, cabbage, and croutons went flying all over the place.
That was all Bo needed to see. “Food fight!” he shouted as he lobbed a squishy tomato at his buddy, Chris.
“Incoming lettuce!” Chris shouted back. He threw a handful of lettuce leaves right at Bo, but somehow wound up hitting Maxine instead.
“I’m writing you both up,” Maxine shouted at Bo and Chris.
“Heads up!” a fourth grader named Shelby yelled as she poured a handful of croutons over another girl’s head.
A moment later, there were tomatoes, olives, and croutons flying all over the cafeteria. Teachers came running to stop the food fight.
Whoosh! I ducked as a handful of carrots flew past my head. Elizabeth wasn’t as fast. She got pelted by a hailstorm of crunchy croutons.
“Hey!” Elizabeth shouted.
Maxine pulled out her safety notebook. “I’m writing everybody up!” she declared loudly.
For a second, I though about dumping the bowl of cucumber slices on Maxine’s head. But I managed to stop myself.
Not Bo, though. He let Maxine know just what he thought of her writing people up. He grabbed a giant tomato from the salad bar, pulled his arm back like a major league pitcher, and …
Splat! That red, gooey tomato smacked Maxine right on her orange belt.
The lunch lady looked up from the salad bar. Her face was dripping with creamy Italian dressing. “Get that thing out of here!” she shouted, pointing to the iguana.
Any other time I would have laughed really hard at the sight of the lunch lady freaking out over a little iguana. But I knew Principal Bumble wasn’t going to find the food fight funny at all. The field trip was canceled for sure.
Chapter 9
“Jack, you have to talk to that iguana,” Elizabeth whispered to me as the teachers started instructing students to help clean up the mess.
Had Elizabeth gone crazy? “You want me to talk to the iguana here, in front of the whole school?” I asked her.
Elizabeth shook her head. “Of course not.” She looked at the lunch lady. “Do you want us to take the iguana back to the science room?” she asked.
“Definitely,” the lunch lady said. She wiped some salad dressing off the tip of her nose. “Please.”
I scooped up the iguana. “You’ve had enough cabbage, Iggy,” I whispered to him.
“Iggy.” The iguana hissed and stuck his tongue out at me. “I’ve always hated that name. Couldn’t you kids have come up with something more original?”
When we got to the science room I put Iggy back in his cage and gave him a handful of iguana food. “Jack, hurry,” Elizabeth said.
“Iggy, do you remember who took you out of your cage?” I asked him.
“I’m too stylish for a name like Iggy,” he said. “I’d prefer to be called … Lancelot.”
“Lancelot?” I asked.
Elizabeth started to write Lancelot in her notebook. Then she stopped. “There’s no Lancelot at this school,” she said.
“No. Iggy wants me to call him Lancelot,” I explained.
“Call him anything he wants,” Elizabeth said. “Just get the information.”
“Okay, Lancelot,” I said. “Do you remember who took you out of your cage?”
“I didn’t get a good look,” Iggy — er, Lancelot — admitted. “But the hands felt strange. Usually kids have sweaty, sticky hands, but these hands were dry and rough.”
I frowned. That didn’t tell
me much.
“Did those onions give me bad breath?” Iggy asked as he hissed his iguana breath up toward me.
“You smell like an iguana,” I said, trying to be nice. Then I put the lid back on his cage.
“What did he say?” Elizabeth asked me.
“He didn’t get a look at the person’s face,” I said. “But whoever it was had dry, rough hands that felt different than most people’s hands.”
Elizabeth wrote that in her notebook and glanced up at the clock.
“Lunch is over. By now everyone is at recess,” she said.
Oh man. That stunk. I was still starving. Being a detective definitely had some major drawbacks.
Elizabeth didn’t seem to care about food at all, though. She was worried about something else. “We’d better get to the playground,” she told me. “We don’t want Maxine catching us wandering around the halls again.”
It turned out we weren’t the only ones wandering the halls. Just before we reached the door that led to the playground, we bumped into Charlie.
“What are you doing here?” Elizabeth asked him.
“I just came from the nurse’s office,” he explained. “I needed my allergy medicine. Falling leaves make me sneeze.”
“I guess this is a bad time of year for you, huh?” Elizabeth asked him.
Charlie nodded. “There’s a whole line of people at the nurse today. Lots of kids have allergies. Aachoo!”
I felt bad for Charlie. It couldn’t be fun to be coughing and sneezing all the time.
“Did you guys figure out who the prankster is yet?” he asked me.
“Nope.” I frowned.
But Charlie didn’t frown.
“Whatever,” he said. “It’s not like I’m going to have any fun, anyway. I’ll just be sneezing all the time.”
“How come you’re going on the field trip if you get all allergic outside?” I asked Charlie.
“My mom is making me,” Charlie said. “She says I can’t let my allergies keep me from being around the other kids. Aaachooo!“
I stepped back. Speaking for the other kids, I could safely say Charlie’s mom was making a mistake. No kid wants to be around anyone who sneezes that much. I don’t mind hanging out with Charlie when we’re inside. But in an apple orchard, I’d rather stay away.
“Well, see you later,” I said to Charlie.
“Have fun at recess,” Charlie called as Elizabeth and I headed onto the playground.
“Heads up!”
A big red ball went flying past my head as Elizabeth and I stepped onto the playground. I ducked just in time.
“There’s no dodgeball allowed in school!” Maxine shouted at the group of fifth graders who were throwing the ball.
“Who made you boss?” Bo asked her as he ran over and got his ball. Naturally, he was one of the kids playing dodgeball. Trevor and his cousin were the dodgeball kind of kids.
“This orange belt makes me boss,” Maxine told him.
“So you’re a safety,” Bo said. “Big deal. Safeties are just tattletales with belts.” He threw the ball at one of the kids standing near the wall. “Gotcha! You’re out,” he shouted, totally ignoring Maxine.
“I can’t believe Maxine’s worrying about dodgeball,” I whispered to Elizabeth. “She should be helping us with this mystery.”
“We don’t need help!” Elizabeth said angrily. “I solve mysteries all the time. I can figure out who did it by the third chapter.”
“That’s a mystery in a book,” I reminded her. “This is real life.”
“We just have to try harder,” Elizabeth insisted.
I wasn’t sure I could try harder. I’d already interviewed two fighting fish, a janitor with an attitude, and an iguana with bad breath.
That seemed like plenty of hard work to me.
Chapter 10
“You guys had better stick to being kissy faces,” Trevor said to Elizabeth and me as our class started walking toward the busses at the end of the school day. “Because you stink at being detectives.”
“We are not kissy faces!” I shouted back at him. Which was the truth. I didn’t say that we didn’t stink as detectives. Because frankly, we did. At least that’s how I felt. It had never taken Elizabeth and me more than a few hours to solve a mystery before. But here the whole school day was over, and we hadn’t solved anything.
“Hey, did you third graders hear?” Bo asked, as he and two of his friends walked over to us. “Looks like you can make plans for playdates on Friday afternoon. Principal Bumble was really mad about that food fight. And they had to clean out the whole salad bar because that iguana touched everything. Mr. Broomfield really freaked out when he saw all that food all over the place, too.”
“Did Principal Bumble cancel the field trip?” Elizabeth asked him.
“Not yet, but you can bet she will,” Bo said. He looked at his cousin. “Don’t worry, Trev. Maybe you’ll get to go apple picking before you graduate from high school.” He started laughing.
Trevor glared at his cousin. And then he glared at Elizabeth and me. “I don’t know why we thought you two kissy faces could solve anything.”
I looked over at Leo. My best pal. I was hoping he’d say something to defend me. But Leo didn’t say a word. He was as mad at us as everyone else.
Just then, Maxine came over to us. “Okay, everybody onto the busses,” she said. “Move it.”
“Did you find out anything else about the prankster?” Elizabeth asked.
“That’s for me to know, and you to find out,” Maxine said. “Which you never will because you’re not a safety. You can’t do anything to stop these practical jokes.”
I was beginning to think maybe Maxine was right. Elizabeth and I had no suspects and no clues. And for some reason that made Maxine very happy.
“Move it,” she said. “Move it. Move it.”
“Move it. Move it. Move it.”
The next day at school started just the way the previous one had ended. Maxine was standing at the door yelling at everyone. But this time she was sending us into the school instead of rushing us out of it.
“You think Maxine sleeps here?” I asked Elizabeth. “No matter what time it is or where I’ve been, she’s already here.”
“As a safety she has to be around when everyone’s coming and going,” Elizabeth said. “She has to get here early and leave late.”
“I don’t know why she bothers,” I said. “No one around here ever listens to her, anyway. They never listen to anyone on the safety patrol.”
I looked over at Maxine. She was writing something in her safety notebook. I could see her white-gloved fingers moving really, really fast. I couldn’t write with gloves on if I tried. But I figured Maxine had a lot of practice at it.
“Come on, Jack,” Elizabeth urged. “We’re supposed to go right to the science room this morning to check on our bean plants, remember? It’s on the other side of the school.”
“Okay,” I said, trailing behind her. I didn’t like spending so much time with Elizabeth. It was more fun hanging out with Leo before school. He wasn’t obsessed with things like checking on how much his bean plant had grown in the past week. But since no one — not even Leo — seemed to be talking to me anymore, Elizabeth was the only friend I had left.
Naturally, Elizabeth and I were the first ones waiting at the door of the science room that morning. But eventually the other kids showed up. By the time Mrs. Sloane showed up at the lab, we were all there.
“Now, I want you to be sure to count the number of leaves on your plants and measure the stems so you can compare them with last week’s growth,” Mrs. Sloane said as she opened the door to the science lab. “And then we … OH MY GOODNESS!”
Mrs. Sloane’s face turned bright red. Then it turned pale white. For a minute I thought she was going to pass out — or worse.
Something awful was obviously going on inside the science lab. But what was it?
Chapter 11
Elizabet
h and I pushed past Mrs. Sloane to get into the science lab. What we saw was kind of wild and amazing.
I gasped. “How did that happen?” I asked Elizabeth.
Elizabeth shook her head. “I’ve never seen anything like it before,” she replied.
We were staring at the animal cages over by the windows. There was Iggy, a hamster named Harry, and Rosa, the guinea pig.
It was Rosa who had caught everyone’s attention. She was usually brown and white. But today, Rosa the guinea pig was bright green!
Now I knew why Mrs. Sloane was so upset. Rosa looked really weird.
“Whoa!” Trevor shouted out. “Check out Rosa.” He ran over to her cage.
“Trevor, stay away from the guinea pig,” Mrs. Sloane said. “She could be sick.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “I don’t think there’s any illness that would turn a guinea pig’s fur green,” she said.
“Well, something happened to her,” Mrs. Sloane told us.
“I think it’s another prank,” Elizabeth said. “It’s a mean one,” Sasha said. “Who would paint a guinea pig?”
“I don’t think it’s paint,” I told Sasha. “I know that color green. It’s powdered fruit drink. Limeade. That’s my favorite flavor.”
Elizabeth walked over to Rosa’s cage. There was some green powdery stuff around the edges of the cage. My partner dipped her finger into it and then sniffed. “You’re right,” she said. “It’s limeade. But it’s really sticky, as if someone only used a little bit of water.”
“Is that dangerous for Rosa?” Sasha asked.
Elizabeth shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she assured her. “It’s just sugar, water, and food coloring.”
“Aachoo!” Charlie sneezed. “I’ve gotta get out of here. Hamster and guinea pig fur make me sneeze.”
“We’re all getting out of here,” Mrs. Sloane said. She shook her head. “This practical joke is going to be the last straw, I’m afraid.”
Everyone in the class turned to stare at Elizabeth and me. What did they want us to do? It wasn’t like we weren’t working on the case! I’d have liked to see any of them try to solve it.
