Science Fair Sabotage

by Anthony VanArsdale

  The children looked all around. Violet was the first to look up. “There are stars on the ceiling!” she said.

  Sure enough, with the black light, the ceiling was glowing like the night sky.

  “A garden that blooms at night—stars!” said Jessie. “Good eyes, Violet.”

  Henry panned the light across the ceiling. “They must be made of some kind of special paint,” he said.

  “We need to figure out what the clue means,” said Jessie. “We only have a few minutes before we’re stuck in here!”

  Henry studied the glowing stars. With his finger, he traced the shape that the brightest ones made. “It’s like a constellation,” he said.

  “What’s that?” asked Benny.

  “A constellation is a shape made by the brightest stars,” Jessie explained.

  Benny tilted his head. “Oh, I see. It looks like the letter T!”

  “Does that mean we need to look for something that starts with that letter?” asked Violet. She studied the room. “T could stand for table, tray, teacup, typewriter. Now that I think of it, there are a lot of things that start with T.”

  Henry squinted at the shape. “I don’t think it’s a T. I think it’s an arrow!”

  Benny clicked on his light and guided it along the arrow and across the room. The beam came to rest on the coffin in the corner. “I knew there was something in there!” he said. Benny stepped behind Jessie.

  The other children turned on their flashlights and pointed them at the wooden box. Slowly, Henry walked over. As he pulled on the cover, the hinges gave an eerie creak. Finally, Henry yanked open the cover and shined his flashlight inside.

  “There’s nothing here!” he said.

  “See, Benny? Nothing to worry about,” said Jessie.

  “Except we need to figure out how to get out of here!” said Violet. “We don’t have much time left.”

  Henry, Jessie, and Violet searched around the old coffin. The inside was smooth and lined with silk. Henry felt along the edges. “I don’t feel anything hidden inside,” he said.

  “Maybe we misread the clue,” said Jessie.

  Benny was still standing away from the coffin. He noticed something on the open cover. “There’s a pocket!” he said.

  Jessie looked at the lid, where there was a small pouch. “Good eyes, Benny,” she said, reaching inside.

  “Hurry!” said Benny, wringing his hands. “We have less than a minute to get out!”

  “There’s something in here!” said Jessie. She pulled out a long, metal object with a fancy-looking handle.

  “It’s the skeleton key!” Benny cried.

  The children ran to the entrance. Jessie jiggled the key into the lock, and the heavy door swung open. The Aldens rushed out as the room went black.

  “Just in time!” said a tall man standing on the other side of the door. James Alden smiled at his four grandchildren.

  “I’ll say!” said Henry. “That was a close call!”

  “Your grandchildren are indeed terrific mystery solvers, James! Just as you described them.” Verónica applauded along with her daughter, Maru.

  Verónica was a friend of Grandfather’s. The Aldens were staying with her and Maru as they visited the town of Hammond Hills. It was October in the Northeast, and the rolling hills of Appalachia were alive with the bright colors of autumn. People had come from miles around to look at the brilliant leaves and enjoy fall activities.

  “I’m glad you were able to solve my escape room!” said Maru. “Were the riddles hard to figure out?”

  “The riddles were very clever,” said Jessie.

  “But we all worked together to solve them,” said Violet.

  “I was the clue reader!” said Benny, smiling proudly.

  Henry nodded.

  “We used to live in one room,” said Henry. “And we escaped from it as well!”

  GERTRUDE CHANDLER WARNER discovered when she was teaching that many readers who like an exciting story could find no books that were both easy and fun to read. She decided to try to meet this need, and her first book, The Boxcar Children, quickly proved she had succeeded.

  Miss Warner drew on her own experiences to write the mystery. As a child she spent hours watching trains go by on the tracks opposite her family home. She often dreamed about what it would be like to set up housekeeping in a caboose or freight car—the situation the Alden children find themselves in.

  While the mystery element is central to each of Miss Warner’s books, she never thought of them as strictly juvenile mysteries. She liked to stress the Aldens’ independence and resourcefulness and their solid New England devotion to using up and making do. The Aldens go about most of their adventures with as little adult supervision as possible—something else that delights young readers.

  Miss Warner lived in Putnam, Connecticut, until her death in 1979. During her lifetime, she received hundreds of letters from girls and boys telling her how much they liked her books.

  GERTRUDE CHANDLER WARNER grew up in Putnam, Connecticut. She wrote The Boxcar Children because she had always dreamed about what it would be like to live in a caboose or a freight car—just as the Aldens do. When readers asked for more adventures, Warner wrote more books—a total of nineteen in all.

  After her death, other authors have continued to write stories about Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny Alden, and today the Boxcar Children series has more than one hundred and fifty books.