The Class

by Frances O’Roark Dowell

  “I can read too!” Garrett chimed in. “Stop! Green light! Go!”

  Rosie sank into the couch, ignoring her brothers, the two most annoying three-year-olds on the face of the planet. Hi, Lila! she texted. What’s the Petra report for today? I still don’t get her eating lunch with Stefan. Lower your standards much?

  Next, to Matt Collins: I saw you staring at Lila today. Are you in loooovvvve?

  To Garrison: I heard Mrs. Herrera has two drunk driving charges on her license, and that’s why she’s going to get fired soon.

  To Carson: My life is SO boring.

  Then she waited. Of course Lila, Miss Overeager Pleaser, texted back two seconds later. How low can you go, right? I mean, Stefan? Why not date a hamburger?

  Rosie rolled her eyes. Wha??

  I mean, Stefan practically is a hamburger, right?

  He’s okay, Rosie texted. We were friends in preschool.

  I thought you said he reads too much.

  I thought we were talking about Petra.

  Ping! A text from Matt scrolled across the top of the screen. Lila!?!? UR NUTS!!!!

  Rosie didn’t bother replying. Matt was boring. She tried Carson again. How’s travel soccer going? I heard you were playing striker.

  Lila again. Petra smelled bad today. Like she was having stomach problems.

  You mean like farts? If you mean farts, just say farts.

  Yeah. Definitely farts!

  Gabe turned up the TV. “Turn it down, or I’ll turn it down for you!” Rosie commanded.

  “Rosie Posie is a nosey toesey!” Gabe said with a pout. But he turned down the TV.

  My brothers suck, she wrote Lila. Why couldn’t I have a sister?

  I have a little sister, Lila texted back. She’s okay, but she picks her nose.

  You’re all about the body stuff, aren’t you? Farts, boogers. Sort of gross, Lila!

  Why oh why did Petra have to go insane? Rosie wondered, leaning back against the couch cushions. She used to be so funny, and not fart and booger funny, either. Mean funny. It was like Petra could look at people and know their secrets. “Matt Collins is afraid of heights,” she’d observed one day at the pool last summer. “I’ll give you ten dollars if you ever see him go off the diving board or down the slide.” According to Petra, Carson played dumb because he was afraid he really was dumb, Garrison hardly ever talked because he was scared his voice would crack, and Cammi Lovett wore baggy shirts because she’d developed breasts over the summer—real ones. Petra knew which girls had actually started their periods and which ones said they had but hadn’t.

  What happened to that Petra? Where did she go? Who was the girl in class today who called herself Petra but was someone else entirely? Rosie had actually overheard Petra asking Elizabeth Hernandez if she was interested in collecting clothes for kids who lived in some homeless shelter over near the mall.

  “It’s my mom’s deal,” Petra had told Elizabeth. “She’s kind of a professional do-gooder. Really—she used to work for United Way. Now she volunteers a hundred hours a week at the shelter.”

  Elizabeth’s face had gone all red and splotchy. “Uh, wow, that would be—collecting clothes would be—”

  “Awesome, right?” Petra had finished for her. “If you could make some posters, I’ll bring in some collection bins. Mrs. Herrera said it would be okay.”

  Clothes for the homeless? Okay, great, sure. Homeless people needed clothes like everybody else, Rosie guessed. But the old Petra wouldn’t have touched somebody else’s used and probably still dirty old clothes for a million dollars. Girl Scout work, she would have called it.

  So when had Petra Wilde become a Girl Scout?

  I miss the old Petra, she started to text Lila, but Lila wouldn’t get it. Lila was scared of Petra and glad that Petra had become the class weirdo. Rosie deleted the text. What she needed to do was get the old Petra back, the one with good hair and a mean sense of humor. Maybe if Rosie went into school on Monday and slapped Petra really hard, Petra would get over herself. Snap out of it, Petra! she’d yell, and Petra’s eyes would open superwide, like she’d been a zombie for a while, but Rosie’s slap had awakened her.

  Of course, if she slapped Petra, she’d be automatically suspended from school. Besides, Rosie didn’t like drama—not loud, dramatic drama anyway. No, she needed a quieter plan, one that would appeal to Petra’s sneaky, devious side. She needed a plan that would remind Petra of how fun it was to be mean.

  What could Rosie do that was subtle, yet would get Petra’s attention? It would have to be at school, because Insane Petra probably wouldn’t come over to her house (and honestly, Rosie didn’t want Insane Petra in her house), and it would have to be something that would cause a stir, but not a commotion. Nothing overly dramatic or crazy. Nothing that would make Henry Lloyd do backflips and start shouting nonsense words.

  Rosie closed her eyes. She pictured Mrs. Herrera’s classroom. Desks, book nook, Editor’s Roundtable, Mrs. Herrera’s desk and bookshelf—Rosie stopped. Mrs. Herrera’s bookshelf, where Mrs. Herrera kept her special collection of special things. “These things remind me of why I want to teach,” Mrs. Herrera had told them the first day of school, and Rosie and Petra had looked at each other and pretended to gag. The things on the shelf weren’t that great—a stupid book, a stupid picture of some supposedly awesome teacher Mrs. Herrera had when she was in high school, her father’s junior high diploma, and a bunch of other junk. A football, some sugar cubes. Stupid. But the more Rosie thought about the shelf, the more she was sure the answer was there. Rosie had to lure the old Petra back with an example of good, mean fun, and what better than to do something that would make Mrs. Herrera go all Woe is me and start sniffling and snorting and telling the class about how special her special things were and how everything was meaningful, boo hoo!

  Meet me at school early on Monday, she texted Lila. Get your mom to drive you so that you’re there before the buses get there. I’ll be waiting.

  Because Rosie wasn’t going to do the dastardly deed herself, of course.

  That’s what other people were for.

  Chapter Twelve

  Ethan

  Monday, October 9

  Ethan checked for Rogan and Cole as soon as he walked into the cafeteria at lunchtime, making sure they were sitting at their usual table. Sometimes they got kicked over to another table by a group of eighth-grade football players, but no, there they were, same old place, unwrapping their sandwiches. Cool. The Trio of Trouble needed to have a serious discussion about how they were going to track down whoever stole the special things from Mrs. Herrera’s special collection. The thief would be caught, and he—or she—would be brought to justice.

  Ethan waved at his friends with his lacrosse stick and started toward the table, stopping as always to say hi to Stefan, Ben, and Bart. Well, mostly he was saying hi to Stefan, who lived on Ethan’s street and was kind of like family—like a cousin or something. They didn’t hang out much anymore, and Stefan had never been a lot of fun to begin with (you had to pull him out of a book to get him to do anything), but family was family, and it was important to keep in touch.

  “My mom said Mr. Rylant fell and broke his hip on Saturday,” Ethan told Stefan as he waved his stick at Ben and Bart. “She’s going to start a meal train on SignUp.com.”

  “That sucks,” Stefan said. “I mean about Mr. Rylant. I saw him out walking Sporty Saturday morning.”

  Ethan nodded. “Yeah, Sporty’s a good dog.”

  He didn’t have anything else to say, so he waved his stick again and headed over to his table. On the way, he passed Cammi and Carson sitting together, their Spanish books open in front of them. Normally, he wouldn’t stop to talk, but Carson looked up as Ethan was right by their table and said, “Dude, pass me the ball!”

  “No ball in this pocket, dog,” Ethan said. “Not allowed in the cafeteria.”

  “I’m surprised they let you carry your stick in here,” Cammi said, and Ethan felt like telling
her that he was surprised to see her hanging out with Carson Bennett instead of Becca Hobbes, but what did he care? He wasn’t into labels, anyway, all this who’s popular, who’s not. All he cared about was the stick in his hand—and finding out who stole Mrs. Herrera’s stuff.

  “So have you heard any rumors about what happened to Mrs. H’s special things?” he asked, tossing the stick from one hand to the other. “Because I think it sucks that there’s, like, a thief in our classroom.”

  Carson shrugged. “You got me, dude. I mean, it’s not like any of it was worth anything. So why steal it?”

  “Yeah,” Cammi agreed. “What’s the motivation?”

  “Exactly,” Carson said, nodding like Cammi had said something brilliant. “Motivation is key here.”

  “Cool,” Ethan said, and waved his stick at them before heading over to his table.

  * * *

  Ethan was no stranger to bad news. Like when he learned that Luke was going to play goalie on the Comets, the region’s best lacrosse travel team in the thirteen-and-under league? It had taken him a week to recover after he heard that. And when he saw the class list and realized he was going to have to put up with Henry Lloyd for another year, he’d eaten a whole bag of Fritos. Henry drove him crazy. Henry drove everybody crazy except for Stefan, who must have had special superpowers to put up with Henry as much as he did.

  But when he heard that Mrs. Herrera’s signed copy of Hatchet had been stolen? It was like someone had punched Ethan in the gut.

  “A number of things from my special collection are missing, including my signed copy of Hatchet,” Mrs. Herrera had announced Monday in LA, right before lunch, and everybody in the class started going What—what—what? at the same time. Not Ethan, though. It wasn’t that he wasn’t as shocked as everyone else. It was just that he thought he might cry.

  He loved Hatchet.

  He even sort of loved Mrs. Herrera. Not romantically—dude, gross—but as a teacher he didn’t hate. Which of course meant she was about to get fired, because that was the kind of luck Ethan seemed to be having lately. He finally got a teacher he actually liked and it turned out she had some sort of criminal past. Ariana said she’d helped one of her students run away from home, that it was a big secret that a lot a people knew about, but that the court documents had been sealed. Rogan said there was no way that had happened, that Mrs. Herrera would have already been fired by now if it had, but why would Ariana make something like that up? Ethan was pretty sure that any day now Mrs. Herrera was going to get sacked.

  Which was just his luck.

  Until this year, school had been a total waste of time. Ethan figured that everything they were trying to teach him was available 24/7 on his phone, so why should he bother learning it? Besides, he was going to be a professional lacrosse player, so he didn’t actually need an education. But his mom kept making him go to school, day after boring day, and sometimes Ethan thought that if he had to sit in a stupid classroom one more second, he might explode, his blood and guts flying all over the place and splotching up the windows.

  But this year school finally got interesting. There was the weirdness with Becca and Petra, for one thing. Not that they’d become friends or anything, but when they gave each other those bad haircuts like some sort of practical joke? Awesome! Next, there was a rumor that Stefan and Petra were going to the dance together—how freakishly cool was that?

  And Mrs. Herrera was a pretty decent teacher. She let them talk about sports for the first five minutes of homeroom class every Monday, and she was a big Cleveland Browns fan. Ethan wasn’t, but he respected that she had a team. He thought her little football was cool, even though he’d had to look up who Jim Brown was. But that was okay, because Jim Brown was totally cool and now Ethan knew all about him if the subject ever came up. And Mrs. Herrera wasn’t too boring, at least not most of the time. Okay, sometimes when she was teaching stuff in LA like verbs and how to write a good paragraph, things got kind of snoozy. But mostly Ethan could halfway deal with her, and that was saying a lot.

  Maybe Ethan wouldn’t have cared so much about somebody stealing Hatchet, but Hatchet was the only book he’d ever actually liked. Okay, loved. The book they’d been reading in class, Wonder, was okay, but that Auggie kid was way too strange. Not just his face, but his super-annoying positive attitude. Brian in Hatchet? Totally awesome.

  “When I was in college studying to be a teacher, Gary Paulsen came to a class I was taking in children’s literature,” Mrs. Herrera had told Ethan before handing him a copy of the book (not her autographed copy, but the one from the book nook). “He made a huge impression on me, not only as a writer, but as a human being who lived a fascinating and valuable life. I know you say you don’t like to read, but I think you would enjoy this book.”

  Then she told him a bunch of interesting stuff, like the fact that Gary Paulsen was really into sled-dog racing, and how some man had tried to kidnap him when he was a kid, so his mom beat the guy to death. After that, Ethan couldn’t wait to start the book, a feeling he’d never had before in his life.

  Ethan read Hatchet in, like, three hours. It was awesome. And the next day he asked Mrs. Herrera if he could look at her autographed copy, and she’d let him. She didn’t even say the usual teacher stuff, like Be very careful or Are your hands clean? It was like she trusted him with it because she knew he’d totally gotten into the book. She knew he wasn’t going to drop it or throw it across the room at Cole.

  So now he was bummed. In fact, Ethan felt like he’d been punched in the gut. When Mrs. Herrera had told the class that Hatchet had been stolen, his hand had shot into the air. “We’ll get Hatchet back for you, Mrs. Herrera!” he’d practically shouted, his voice all emotional. “We’ll figure out who committed this crime!”

  By we he meant Rogan, Cole, and himself. The Trio of Trouble.

  * * *

  “It was Becca Hobbes,” Rogan said as soon as Ethan sat down. “Obviously. Only, Cole here disagrees with me.”

  “It’s too obvious,” argued Cole, who as always was drawing something in his sketchbook. “I mean, at least now that Becca’s gotten all strange. You know who I think did it? Ariana. Because she’s the last person in the world you’d think would do it. Becca used to be that person, but now she’s prime suspect numero uno, and the prime suspect never ends up being the one who’s done the crime.”

  He held up his drawing of Ariana wearing a burglar’s mask and carrying a sack filled with stuff over her shoulder.

  “Dude, nice. But what’s Ariana’s motive?” Ethan asked, feeling like Sherlock Holmes (and a little like Cammi Lovett). “Why would she do it?”

  “She wants to get everyone to quit talking about how she called Becca a—you know,” Cole replied. “And she knows, given how Becca’s been acting lately, that everyone will think Becca did it. It’s called subterfuge, my friend.”

  Ethan shook his head. “Nah, Ariana wouldn’t risk it. Because if she got caught, then she’d have to hand over her Queen of the Nice Girls crown.”

  “Yeah, I’m with Ethan here,” Rogan said. “Ariana’s got too much to lose. So how about Petra?”

  “Old Petra, sure,” Cole said. “New Petra? I don’t think so.”

  Ethan agreed. “It’s like she traded in her meanness for… I don’t know. Something else.”

  “A space alien suit,” Rogan supplied. “The only reason I’d go to the middle-school dance is to see her there with Stefan.”

  They all cracked up at that.

  “Hey, maybe Stefan did it!” Cole exclaimed, and they cracked up some more.

  Ethan looked over where Ariana, Elizabeth, and Aadita were eating lunch. He didn’t know why he and Rogan and Cole were mostly focused on girls when the thief was probably Henry. Henry was famous for doing dumb, super-irritating things. Stealing Mrs. Herrera’s favorite book would be right up his alley.

  But when his eyes landed on Ellie Barker, a new thought came to Ethan’s brain. Ellie was kind of this mystery
girl, always taking notes and hanging around different groups of people without actually joining in. Plus, she liked to read, and he’d seen her standing next to Mrs. Herrera’s special collection of special things a lot. It was like she couldn’t take her eyes off it.

  But why would Ellie steal a copy of Hatchet? Or those three little kittens (including the one with the broken ear)? What would she do with that picture of Mrs. Herrera’s favorite teacher? None of it made sense to Ethan. Well, maybe stealing Hatchet—in spite of what Carson thought, it was probably super valuable. But the other stuff was junk.

  Ellie Barker. Ethan nodded his head slowly. Other than Aadita, she was the last person in the world who anyone would suspect. And that was why Ethan suspected her. Now all he had to do was figure out where she’d hidden the goods. Now all he had to do was spy on the spy.

  “Hey, guys, I’ve got an idea,” he said to Rogan and Cole, and the Trio of Trouble leaned in and started to make a plan.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ellie

  Monday, October 9

  If Ellie had stolen goods to hide, the baseball field dugouts were where she would hide them, which was why she’d spent the last few minutes of recess nosing around the home-team side. She could imagine taping Hatchet underneath one of the long benches, or digging a hole in the dirt and burying the three little ceramic kittens. As for the picture of Mrs. Herrera’s favorite teacher, well, Ellie didn’t know how you’d hide that in a dugout. Maybe you’d put it right out in the open, figuring that no one came out here in the fall anyway, so why bother hiding it? It wasn’t like anyone else was going to want it even if they did find it.

  She figured whoever had taken the special things was pulling a prank and had hidden the booty until they could return it without being seen. She was hoping to get a peek into Henry’s locker later that afternoon, because he was the most obvious prankster in their class and the person with the least self-control, but for now she was running her hand under the dugout bench. Her hand touched something hard and bumpy, and when she leaned down to get a look, she found a humongous wad of dried gum under the bench. How did anyone fit that much gum in their mouth? It made Ellie’s jaw hurt just imagining it.