by Nancy Krulik
“You’ve gotta talk to Rosa, and fast,” Elizabeth whispered to me as our class walked out of the science lab.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” I whispered back. “I’m going back there right now.”
“But Mrs. Sloane isn’t going to let —”
I didn’t wait for Elizabeth to finish her sentence. “I forgot my notebook in the lab,” I shouted out suddenly.
Mrs. Sloane looked at me. “I didn’t see you take a notebook from your backpack, Jack,” she said.
“You … uh … you must have been too busy looking at Rosa to see,” I said. “But I did. And I have to get it.”
“Okay,” my teacher sighed. “Go get it. And then hurry back to class.”
I turned and ran back into the room, letting the door slam shut behind me.
“Will you stop slamming the door?” Harry the hamster squealed angrily. “What is it with you kids? That’s the third time this morning someone has woken me up.”
“Is it anyone’s fault you sleep all day?” Iggy said.
“The first time I had just fallen asleep,” Harry told him. “There’s nothing more annoying than being woken up when you’ve just fallen asleep.”
“That’s true,” I agreed. “Are you telling me someone came in here before my class did?”
“Oh yeah,” Harry said.
“The kid wanted to play with me,” Rosa said. “How do you think I turned this color?”
“Do you know who turned you green?” I asked her.
Rosa shook her head. “Whoever it was sneezed a few times. And the kid wasn’t very nice.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“Usually after a kid plays with me, I get a chew stick,” Rosa said. “But not this time.”
“Thanks for the info,” I said. I grabbed a chew stick and put it in her cage.
“Hey, tell me the truth,” Rosa said. “Do you think I look better with green fur?”
“You look great,” I assured her. What was I supposed to say? You look like a furry lime Popsicle?
“Thanks.” Rosa grabbed her chewstick. Then she turned around and showed me her green guinea pig rear end.
I figured that meant this conversation was over.
Chapter 12
“So?” Elizabeth asked, as I sat down on the floor beside her. Mrs. Sloane had given our class some quiet reading time. Elizabeth was in the back of the room all by herself, reading a new mystery book.
“I didn’t get much,” I whispered. “Just that the person who covered Rosa in green limeade woke up Harry the hamster just as he’d fallen asleep.”
Elizabeth thought about that for a minute. “Then it must have happened pretty early this morning,” she said.
“How do you know?” I asked her.
“Because hamsters are nocturnal,” she said.
“Nock what?” I asked. I really hate when Elizabeth talks like a Brainiac.
“Nocturnal,” Elizabeth repeated. “It means they sleep in the daytime. So the prankster must have come into the science room early this morning, just as the sun came up and Harry was falling asleep.”
“Oh,” I said. That was interesting, I guess. But it didn’t tell us much.
“Anything else?” Elizabeth asked me.
“The person who put the limeade on Rosa sneezed,” I said.
“Now, that’s important!” Elizabeth said. She wrote “sneezed” in her detective notebook. “Why?” I asked her.
“Charlie sneezes a lot,” she pointed out. “And he said their fur makes him sneeze even more.”
“Yeah. But if guinea pigs make him sneeze, why would he pull a prank that used a guinea pig?” I smiled proudly. I loved it when I outsmarted Elizabeth.
“Charlie doesn’t want to go on a field trip to an apple orchard,” Elizabeth said. “There are too many trees there. Maybe he figured it was worth a few extra sneezes to stop the trip.”
Hmm … I hadn’t thought of it that way.
Elizabeth got up and walked over to where Charlie was sneezing and reading. I followed close behind. “We need to talk to you,” Elizabeth told Charlie.
“Aachoo,” Charlie sneezed.
“Gesundheit,” Elizabeth said. “Where were you this morning before school started? I didn’t see you in the playground when I got here.”
“I went right to the nurse’s office. I had to give her my new medicine.” He stopped for a minute, and looked at us. “Wait a minute. You two don’t think I painted Rosa, do you?”
“Well, you don’t want to go on the field trip,” I said. “And you sneeze a lot.”
“What does sneezing have to do with anything?” Charlie asked me.
Oops. I couldn’t tell Charlie how I knew the prankster sneezed while he was dying Rosa’s fur. That would be giving away my superpower.
“Forget the sneezing,” Elizabeth said. “You were in the building before any other kid. You had a chance to dye Rosa’s fur.”
“I break into hives when I touch a guinea pig,” Charlie said. “Do you see any hives on my arms?” He rolled up his sleeves. There weren’t any red bumps.
Elizabeth looked at her hands for a moment. Then she looked at Charlie’s. Finally, she frowned. “I’m sorry, Charlie,” she said. “We should have known it wasn’t you.”
“Yeah, you should have known bet — aachooo!” Charlie sneezed.
“Gesundheit,” I said.
As I started to follow Elizabeth back to the other side of the room, I asked her, “Why should we have known it wasn’t him?”
Elizabeth held up her hand. There was still green limeade on her fingers. “It takes a long time to wash this stuff off,” she said.
Now I got it. “So all we have to do is find someone with green fingers and we have the prankster,” I said.
Elizabeth nodded. “And we’d better hurry,” she told me. “If we give the prankster enough time to really scrub, eventually the powder will come off.”
“And our whole case will go down the drain,” I added.
Chapter 13
“Hey, Elizabeth, slow down,” I shouted as my partner hurried through the halls.
“We have to hurry, Jack,” Elizabeth said. “I want to be standing at the door of the cafeteria when kids come in so I can check their hands for traces of limeade powder.”
I wasn’t exactly sure how Elizabeth planned on doing that. What was she going to do — stand there by the door demanding to inspect everyone’s hands? That’s the kind of thing a mom does, not a third grader.
Elizabeth turned around to see where I was heading and BAM! She bumped right into Trevor’s cousin Bo. His notebook fell out of his hands and onto the floor.
“Watch where you’re going!” Bo exclaimed.
“I’m sorry —” she began to apologize. Then she stopped herself and looked at the floor. There was a packet of limeade powder next to Bo’s notebook.
“Whoa!” I exclaimed. “You’re the prankster!”
Bo gave me a weird look. “What are you talking about?”
“He’s talking about that,” Elizabeth said. She pointed to the packet of green powder.
“Where did that come from?” Bo asked me.
“Shouldn’t we be asking you that?” I replied.
Just then, Maxine came around the corner. “What are you two doing in the halls during lunch period again?” she asked Elizabeth and me.
“Catching the prankster,” I told her. I pointed to the packet of powder on the floor.
Maxine started to smile. She pulled out her safety notebook. “I’m going to report you, Bo. You’re going to be in major trouble.” She smiled. “I might even get a medal for this.”
“But I didn’t do anything,” Bo said. He actually sounded scared.
“We caught you red-handed,” I told him.
Elizabeth shook her head. “You mean green-handed,” she said. “And I don’t think we did. The only thing Bo has on his hands is dirt.”
“So what?” Maxine said.
“So the evidence would be green,” Elizabeth told her. “That’s the color drink powder the prankster used to paint the guinea pig.”
Maxine looked at the packet of drink powder. “Limeade,” she said. “That’s green.”
Elizabeth gave Maxine a funny look. “What are you doing here, anyway?” she asked. “Were you following Bo? Or us?”
“I’m a safety,” Maxine said. “I can go anywhere, any time. I’m just doing my job.”
“Does your job include turning guinea pigs green?” Elizabeth asked.
“Of course not.” Maxine bit her lip and looked away.
“Why weren’t you surprised that someone had turned Rosa green?” Elizabeth asked her. “You weren’t in the science room when we found her that way.”
Maxine bit her lip a little harder. Then she said, “I don’t have to answer your questions. You aren’t a safety.” But she didn’t sound as tough as she had before. She sounded a little scared.
Suddenly, it all started to make sense. “You can go anywhere,” I said. “No one would question you. It’s what safeties do.”
“Exactly,” Maxine said. “And safeties don’t dye guinea pigs.”
“Really?” Elizabeth asked. “Well if you didn’t do it, then you can take off your gloves and show us your hands.”
“Why would I to do that?” Maxine snickered. “I’m going out to the playground in a minute, and my hands will get cold.”
“But we’re inside now,” I pointed out.
“And it would prove you’re innocent,” Elizabeth said.
“I don’t have to prove anything,” Maxine said. “I’m a safety.” Suddenly she didn’t sound so sure of herself. She turned and started to walk away.
But Elizabeth grabbed her by the arm and stopped her. Then she yanked the glove right off Maxine’s hand.
“Hey!” Maxine reached for the glove. And when she did, she flashed her bright green limeade-colored fingers at us.
“You are the prankster!” I shouted excitedly.
Elizabeth smiled proudly. “Maxine gets to school before everyone,” she said. “It gives her plenty of time to pull pranks. And those gloves were a big clue. They cover her stained fingers.”
And gloves are rough and dry. Just like Iggy said, I thought.
“No wonder you didn’t want us investigating,” Elizabeth said. “You were afraid we’d solve the case.”
“Which we did,” I added proudly.
“You two little jerks have ruined everything,” Maxine said. “I was supposed to be the one who stopped the prankster. Bo was supposed to get in trouble. That’s why I put the packet of limeade in his notebook during math class.”
“You were framing me?” Bo asked.
“It was time someone got you in trouble,” Maxine told Bo. “You think you don’t have to follow the rules. You think you don’t have to listen to me, but everyone has to listen to the safeties. I figured if I could stop the prankster and save the field trip —”
“Then people would think safeties were important,” Elizabeth finished Maxine’s thought.
“Exactly,” Maxine said.
“But why frame Bo?” I asked her.
“Yeah, why frame me?” Bo repeated. “What did I do?”
“How about run in the halls, play dodgeball, and start a food fight in the cafeteria?” Maxine told him. “I have a whole list of rules you’ve broken. This would have been payback for everything.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “You have to turn yourself in,” she told Maxine.
“No I don’t,” Maxine said. “Who’s going to tell on me? You? Principal Bumble would never believe the two of you over a safety.” She turned to Bo. “And she won’t believe you, either. You’re such a troublemaker.”
“But we’ve got proof,” Elizabeth said. “And it’s right there on your fingers.”
Maxine frowned. But she didn’t argue. How could she? She knew we’d caught her — green-handed!
Chapter 14
“I’m glad you guys solved the mystery,” Leo said as our class rode around the apple orchard in a horse-drawn wagon. We had just spent about an hour picking and eating apples. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” I told him. I was having a really great time on the field trip. Everyone was treating Elizabeth and me like we were heroes.
“I have to hand it to you two kissy faces,” Trevor said.
“We are not kissy faces,” I told him for the gazillionth time. “We’re detectives.”
“And good ones,” Elizabeth added.
“I still can’t understand why Maxine would want to stop the field trip,” Leo said.
“She didn’t,” Elizabeth explained. “She just wanted everyone to think she was important.”
“Well, now she’s absent,” Trevor said.
He was right. Maxine hadn’t been allowed to go on the apple-picking trip. And she didn’t get to be a safety anymore, either. I wondered which part she felt worse about.
“Aachoo!” Charlie let out a huge sneeze. “I am so allergic to horses.”
“Aachoo!” Just then, the horse pulling our cart let out a massive sneeze. “I am so allergic to kids!” he whinnied.
I laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Leo asked.
I didn’t answer. Instead, I took a big bite out of a yellow delicious apple and grinned.
My partner and I had done a great job this time. And everyone was happy about it.
“Aachoo!”
“Aachoo!”
Except for Charlie and the horse, anyway.
Preview
Calling All Detectives!
Be sure to read all the
Jack Gets a Clue mysteries!
Here’s a sneak peek of
The Case of the Loose-Toothed Shark …
“Let’s go look at the huge shark tooth,” Alyssa said. “The tooth —” She stopped and stared at the shelf. “The tooth is gone!” she exclaimed. “It’s been stolen!”
Frank the guard came running over. “Oh no,” he said. “It must have happened while I walked into the other room.”
“Did you see anyone in here before it disappeared?” Alyssa asked.
“Yeah, a couple of kids. One of them was really interested in it.” He looked around and then pointed. “There he is.”
“Me?” I asked nervously. “I didn’t steal anything.”
My dad looked at me. “If you say you didn’t take it, you didn’t take it,” he said. But he didn’t sound one hundred percent sure.
“We have to go help with the little kids,” my mother told Elizabeth and me. “We can talk about this later.”
As my parents walked off, I sat down on a bench near the giant freshwater fish tank on the wall. Elizabeth sat down next to me.
“I know you didn’t steal anything,” she said.
Just then I heard kissing noises.
“Kiss. Kiss. Smooch! I love you,” someone said.
Oh great. That was all I needed.
“We are not kissy faces!” I shouted.
Elizabeth laughed and pointed to two white fish near the front of the tank. They looked like they were kissing. “Those are guorami fish,” she said. “They’re also called kissing fish.”
Talk about embarrassing. The fish had been speaking to each other. But I was the only person who had heard them.
I turned to Elizabeth. “Forget about the fish. It looks like we have a new mystery on our hands,” I said. “We have to find out who stole that tooth — and fast!”
About the Author
NANCY KRULIK has written more than 150 books for children and young adults, including three New York Times bestsellers. She is the author of the popular How I Survived Middle School, Katie Kazoo Switcheroo, and George Brown, Class Clown series. Nancy lives in Manhattan with her husband, composer Daniel Burwasser, their two children, Ian and Amanda, and a beagle named Josie.
Copyright
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a ret
rieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
Copyright © 2011 by Nancy Krulik.
Cover art by Gary LaCoste
Cover design by Yaffa Jaskoll
Interior illustrations copyright © 2011 by Scholastic Inc.
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
First printing, October 2011
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e-ISBN 978-0-545-38817-7
