Get a Clue

by Tiffany Schmidt

  “I didn’t send it,” said Win.

  “Obviously,” I said, at the same time his father added, “We’re just trying to get to the bottom of this. If you did, it’s not too late to admit it and fix things.”

  Mrs. Cavendish paused by the trunk, absently tracing the H-shaped logo while studying me. “We have to ask: are you involved with this?”

  The question probably would’ve staggered me if I hadn’t anticipated it. If they thought Win was guilty, then my protests meant I likely was too. “No, but I want to help. Mrs. York implied something was off—now I know what. Can I see the new email?”

  His father frowned. “We didn’t think to ask for it.”

  “Win, pull up your sent box,” I suggested. “Show it to your parents.”

  “They have my phone,” he said. “And my laptop.”

  “Hmm.” I tried not to let the triumph show in my voice. “So, an email Win supposedly sent last night went out while he didn’t have access to any means of emailing?”

  “I’m old, not ancient.” Mr. Cavendish’s eyes sparkled, and for the first time I saw some of his sons’ humor in them. “Even people my age know there are ways to delay sending things.”

  Oh, right. Yeah, that was not the big victory I’d imagined. Dang.

  The momentary hope in Win’s eyes dimmed.

  “He hasn’t even mastered ‘reply all.’ I doubt he’d know how to do that,” interjected Curtis, but they weren’t listening.

  Win wasn’t as tall as Curtis or me, but he wasn’t short. Right then he looked it. Like the power of their combined disapproval had shrunken him.

  “Why are you here?” I gestured at the visitors’ lot, which was mostly empty this time of day—just a substitute teacher getting into her car and a few students passing through on their way to the theater.

  My parents liked to joke that there was no instruction manual for parenting, but I had my doubts. How else did they all learn that passive-aggressive technique of talking about you, in front of you, without including you? Dad liked to use this method for things like asking Mom, “Does it seem like we’re going through coffee faster than we should be? I hope we don’t have to remind Huck about our two-cup rule again. I’d hate to have to take away his coffee privileges.”

  For the Cavendishes it was, “We were hoping Win would use this opportunity to show us he was taking his future seriously by apologizing.”

  “We were going to go with him, of course,” added his mom, before breaking role and addressing him directly. “We’re on your side. We can fix this.”

  “I’m not apologizing for something I didn’t do,” said Win.

  His dad puffed out his cheeks and exhaled slowly, but his words were still gritted. “Then looks like this was a waste of time and we’ve got a stalemate. You’ve never been excited about coming here—I guess you get your wish.”

  Mrs. Cavendish looked torn between going to her husband and her youngest. “Just talk to us, Win. We’re here. We’ll listen. There’s no need for this.”

  His mouth gaped like the word “but” was stuck between his lips.

  “I believe you, Win.” I wanted it said aloud, because there’d been so many statements to the contrary. “And I’ll prove it.” It was the second time I’d gone all big declaration. And it was the second time I’d felt stupid in the aftermath, because . . . how? All I had was a copy of Sherlock Holmes and an unshakable certainty that Winston Cavendish wasn’t lying.

  “Can I—can I talk to Huck alone?” Win’s voice was rough and hesitant. This was the second day he’d been talked about and around without being allowed to say much. “Please?”

  His mom frowned and opened her mouth, then looked more closely at her son. Maybe it was the way he’d tacked on manners, or how his hand drifted across the top of the car door like it was reaching for mine.

  She nodded. “Ten minutes.” His dad’s head jerked up like he was going to object. She poked him. “That’s plenty of time for you to walk home. We’ll meet you there. After that, you’re grounded.”

  Win shut the car door, and we scrambled across the parking lot like it was a footrace. But the air felt crowded with everything accused and unknown, and neither of us spoke until we followed the woods’ trail around the corner.

  Win stopped walking. “You know I’m into you.”

  “Me too,” I blurted, my thoughts spinning wild. Were we really doing this now? After that? He stepped closer, so we must be. I ticked down a mental checklist: Chin angles. Breath check. Lip balm? Was ten minutes enough? It’d have to be, right? I couldn’t mess this up again. I took a step toward him, my pulse hitching. First kiss, let’s do this.

  “But I’m grounded,” he said. “And it’s not like I expect you to wait around for my parents to believe me or get over it.”

  Oh. So clearly we weren’t on the same page and I could stop worrying about how my deodorant was holding up. Or, rather, failing to. My throat loosened. “But . . . you didn’t send the emails. I said I’ll prove it.”

  Win gave a wry half smile. “You were serious about that? How?” He kicked an acorn and started walking. “I mean, I’m glad you believe me and all, but . . . what would you proving it even look like?”

  I hesitated, because I wasn’t sure what my solving it looked like either. But maybe Hero High did have some magic in the English department after all, because Ms. Gregoire had given me the perfect solution in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It all came down to a four-word question: What Would Sherlock Do?

  Holmes was always so confident, and the only thing I was confident about was that Win was being wronged. So WWSD? Win was watching me out of the corner of his eye and we were one street away from his, and the answer was both obvious and brutal. Holmes had spelled this out in no uncertain terms in The Sign of the Four: “The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning.”

  Sherlock would not get romantically involved with the subject of a case.

  “I can’t . . .” Two minutes ago I’d been worried about chapped lips and bad breath, and now, I gritted my teeth. “We can’t—we can’t date while I’m figuring out who’s behind the emails. I need to have clarity and perspective. I can’t be worried if a question is going to upset you or, like, hold your hand while I interrogate you.” Or be distracted by the shape of your mouth while trying to pay attention to the answers coming out of it. Luckily I didn’t say this last part out loud.

  “Interrogate me?” Win chuckled uncertainly. “Wow. Um, yeah. What if you don’t play detective? Can we date then?”

  I was trying to pull out the right words, not the first ones. The ones that wouldn’t hurt and also provided clarity—because I didn’t think I was wrong. Into that delay, Win dropped another doubt. “I don’t want you to be finding out all my screwups and then be stuck wondering if you still want . . .” He shrugged. “Me.”

  Yeah, he so didn’t need to be worried about that, but with every delay I made him a little less confident. I needed a better response, and I needed it thirty seconds ago.

  “I’m going to figure this out,” I announced as we turned onto his block. “You know I love puzzles.”

  Was that a little too close to I love you? I didn’t mean it that way. But Win was frowning, so maybe it overstepped.

  “Puzzles,” he said slowly, jabbing a crosswalk button while refusing to look at me. “Okay. Right. Sure.”

  Those words all meant the same thing and all implied approval, but each had been accompanied by another jab at the button, and I didn’t believe any of them. “Do you have any thoughts on who would do this?”

  Win smirked over his shoulder as he crossed the street. It was his try-hard smirk, the one he wore when he was projecting that he didn’t care, not when he actually didn’t. They differed by angles and the light in his eyes. It wasn’t a face he’d aimed at me before. “Got a notebook? I’ll make you a list.”

  “Time’s up,” his dad called from their stoop as we approached the driveway. “Say goodbye.”


  Win didn’t argue and wouldn’t look at me. “If that’s your choice—I guess, let me know if you need anything. And thanks . . . for believing me.”

  My stomach sank as the door shut behind him. I’d messed this up. I’d failed to communicate that this was a rest stop, not a dead end. Somehow he couldn’t tell I’d decided to start with the temporary role of detective, because I wanted to be his boyfriend for much longer.

  11

  I headed straight for the pottery wheel in art class the next morning. I wasn’t ready to explain this to Rory yet. Not that she wouldn’t understand—the road to her and Toby had had roadblocks and boy-faux-rend detours—but I couldn’t put this into words: How it had felt like a mistake and my only choice. How I had only two weeks until the last admissions committee meeting of the year, only fifteen days until acceptance letters went out. How I wanted to make sure he got one.

  The pottery wheel was my form of meditation: centering clay, making it spin, watching shapes rise tall and graceful beneath my steady hands. Only they weren’t steady today. I sent more than one bowl collapsing. As I went to the table to wedge my clay—again—I almost laughed. Building and crushing—this felt like a metaphor for what I’d be doing to Win’s hopes if I failed.

  My thoughts chased the clay dizzily around the wheel, but unlike it, my fears weren’t easily rinsed down the drain at the end of class. They shadowed me across campus to English and burrowed in deeper. I was just a boy playing detective. I had no special skills or training. It was no different than when I’d read Harry Potter and wished I were a wizard. No amount of finger-crossing got me a Hogwarts letter on my eleventh birthday. There was no point in running around on a broomstick and calling it quidditch. Sitting in English class plotting clues and stakeouts was equally worthless.

  “You with us, Huck?” Ms. Gregoire had paused by my desk. I shook off the daydream of Win and I sharing a magnifying glass. Everyone else in the classroom was typing. My laptop wasn’t even out.

  “Sorry. What was the assignment?” She started to explain, but I interrupted. “You know how you were talking about mysteries the other day? Not knowing the solution until the end?”

  Her expression melted from instructive to intrigued. “Yes.”

  “What if you had a real-life mystery to solve?”

  She tapped a silvery nail against her lip. “Well, I guess I’d ask myself what Sherlock would do.”

  My ribs were too tight—they were cages around my lungs as I gulped air. How had she . . . ? Those were my exact thoughts on the walk to Win’s. And I’d spent all the hours since then wishing for an alternative—someone else to be detective so I could be the date. But this confirmed it: I’d done the right thing. Even if it sucked.

  “He’d go to the scene of the crime,” I said.

  “Sure. Or ask questions of the victim. Often Sherlock only traveled to confirm what he already knew.”

  “Right.” Because Holmes solved some of his cases at first glance, then the rest of the story was a slow unfurling of his solution.

  “Does that help?” After I nodded, she smiled and tapped my desk. “Good. Now get to work.”

  She meant on whatever today’s assignment was, but I could only focus on the case. It didn’t really have a scene, but there was a victim. So once school was over, going to see Win was the best place to start.

  There were no cars in the driveway today. No family huddle behind the front door, which Wink answered with wide eyes. “You can’t be here. Win’s grounded. My parents would—”

  “Is it Morris?” Win called. “He can come in. We’ll just say he’s here to see you if . . .” He trailed off as he saw me. “Oh. Huck. Why are you here? I mean, besides giving Wink a panic attack.”

  “I thought I told you yesterday . . .” I rubbed the back of my neck. This wasn’t the welcome I’d been expecting. “I’m going to solve this.”

  “Oh. Right.” He snapped his fingers. “Because I’m a puzzle.”

  My stomach sank. Okay. I had said that. But I hadn’t meant it that way. And I had hoped to compartmentalize, to keep my feelings for Win shut away from my pragmatic thoughts about the case. So clearly I was failing all around. Sherlock would be so proud.

  “Once this is over,” I told him, “you can pick whatever you want for our first date—restaurant, movie. Anything, everything. Your choice.” We locked eyes, and I could see him warily measuring the sincerity of my words, judging my motives.

  “Is he staying?” Wink asked, and we looked to her. “If he does—maybe I should go?”

  “Take a breath,” Win said. “You’re fine. I’m not going to get you in trouble.”

  Wink visibly followed her brother’s suggestion, and I tried not to let my fascination with their dynamic show as she turned to me. “What’s your plan? Do you have one?”

  “Remember when you offered to make me a list of suspects?” I asked Win. “Let’s start there.”

  “Oh sure. My list of nemeses. I keep that with my cage match invites.”

  Wink smacked him, but if my options were sarcastic or withdrawn, I’d vote snark every time. Also, valid.

  So I wasn’t Sherlock yet. This was my first try, and Ms. Gregoire wouldn’t have assigned the book if I couldn’t handle it. I stood up straighter. “Do you have last year’s yearbook?”

  “Wink does,” he said. She hesitated then turned and walked out of view. Win stepped back to let me in. “Pizza,” he said. “Bowling. Maybe ice cream too. From the new gelato place. Milk It.”

  I laughed. “Is ‘milk it’ the name of the gelato shop, or what you’re doing right now?” Either way, it sounded like a perfect date. Now we just needed to get there. I took a deep breath and tried to channel my inner Sherlock as Win led me down the hall toward his bedroom.

  But Sherlock didn’t think of his clients or Watson in the dry-mouthed way my thoughts circled Win as he pushed open the door. I followed him into a medium-size room with a pair of twin beds, dressers, and desks. The side near the window was neat. The other half was not.

  I grinned and gestured to shelves overflowing with Legos and random screws, those metal bottle caps with sayings. Two broken pairs of swim goggles. So many camera pieces and printed photos. “Tidying Up, huh? Favorite show?”

  “What can I say, everything ‘sparks joy.’ ” His grin was fleeting as he threw himself down on a rumpled bed, bouncing a stack of folded shirts to the floor. I wanted to pick them up and tuck them inside a drawer. Sherlock would so he could examine the contents. But I just wanted to inhale the laundry soap that smelled so much better on him than his siblings.

  I kept scanning the room, not sure what I was looking for: Whodunnit for Dummies? Hate mail? A doll modeled after him, stuck with pins and conveniently labeled “Made by X”? I didn’t find any of these things, but on the floor by his closet was a half-rolled cheeseball poster of the bleach-blond swimming dynamo who came home from the last summer Olympics with another gold medal. He wasn’t wearing it in the poster though; his chest was on full display. If you photoshopped muscles—okay, lots of muscles—onto me, we could be brothers. Blond, tall, dimpled. Granted I couldn’t swim, but it looked like Win had a type. The fact rattled in my head as he watched me inspect his room. Was that why he liked me—or just why he’d given me a second glance?

  And was there some magic trick for banishing these intrusive thoughts and focusing on the case?

  I turned to inspect the cage on his dresser. Inside was a wooden house made with crooked nails and decorated with the guinea pig’s name in lopsided cursive letters—based on that and the wear patterns, he’d made it five, maybe six years ago. A spotted guinea pig waddled out, equally curious to meet me. “Hey, Hudson.”

  “He doesn’t have a carrot, Hud,” Win called from the bed. “But if you promise not to spend the next hour squealing, I’ll give you one later.”

  “Why not give it to him now?” I asked.

  “The vet said he can only have one a day. I have to save it for wh
en Curtis is doing homework. Otherwise he gets cranky—Curtis, not Hudson. He’s at baseball practice. You need to be gone before he’s home to tattle.”

  I stuck a finger through the bars and rubbed Hudson’s nose. It was easier to look at the pet than at the guy. I needed to be objective and open to all possibilities—even the one of Win being guilty.

  But I refused to believe that. Win worried about disturbing his brother’s homework, he talked down his panicking sister, he rescued toddler mittens from snowbanks, and he was direct and honest about the fact he liked me. No way he’d go through all this subterfuge and deception just to get out of applying to Hero High. And if he was going to go through all that trouble, why not do it before his interview? No, it didn’t add up.

  Focus. Sherlock—clues. He always found them on people’s shoes, but Win was in socks. I looked over my shoulder to where he was sprawled on the bed. Gray athletic socks with a logo of a single bee on the heel. Curtis wore bright printed pairs that coordinated with our school colors. Were Win’s remarkable for being unremarkable? His pants: dark jeans. I couldn’t see the brand, but I doubted they were fancy. They were worn in ways that artificially distressed denim never got right.

  “Huck?”

  “Hmm?” I forced my gaze up to meet his.

  “While you were checking me out, I asked what your favorite planet was.”

  “Oh. I—” I cleared my throat. “I was, um, taking observational evidence.”

  He grinned. “Is that what we’re calling it?” Before my face could burn hotter, he shrugged. “So, planet?”

  It took me a second to register that Win had started a round of the question game. Then another second to think. “Pluto? I can never remember, is that still a planet?”

  Win laughed. “Are you joking?”

  “I’m horribly at astronomy. I bet I couldn’t name all seven. Nine? How many are there?”

  “You think you can prove I’m innocent, but you don’t know how many planets are in our solar system?”

  I shrugged. Sherlock didn’t think it was important either. Of course Sherlock was fiction, but it’s not like this would be a question on the SATs or Win relevant.