MVP #1

by David A. Kelly

  “Let me see that,” Max said. He took the envelope back from Kat and studied the fingerprints. Close up, he could see small, ridged lines. Max took out his phone and snapped a picture of the fingerprint. He zoomed in on the photo. It was easy to see a big swirl and lots of wavy lines. He showed his friends.

  “Wow! Good thinking, Max,” Luke said.

  “Look at that radial loop,” Max said, pointing to the screen. “And that second finger has a clear arch. These are great clues!”

  “What if they came from Mrs. Doolin when she opened the envelope?” Luke asked. “Maybe she had ink on her hands or something.”

  “Good idea, but I don’t think so,” Alice said. “This looks like paint.”

  Alice used her fingernail to scratch off a small part of one of the blue fingerprints. Tiny blue flakes rubbed off.

  “It wouldn’t rub off if it was ink,” Alice said. “Whoever wrote this note must have been using paint.”

  “Exactly,” Max said. “So all we have to do to catch the Olympic troublemaker is find a match for these fingerprints!”

  Early the next morning, the kids met at the jungle gym on the playground. They had agreed to meet an hour before the Olympics to search for more clues. Kat, Max, Nico, and Luke were waiting for Alice to arrive. While they waited, they took turns swinging from the monkey bars.

  Nico swung from one side of the monkey bars to the other. He never seemed to sit still. He couldn’t wait to put his balance beam, somersault, and vaulting practice to good use in the Olympics.

  “Hey, if we catch the troublemaker, I know what we should do with him,” Luke said. He was sitting on the end of the playground’s slide. Given a choice between sports and sitting, Luke always sat.

  Kat poked Luke in the shoulder. She was wearing yellow and green butterfly clips in her hair today. “Him or her!” she said. “We don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl yet.”

  Luke glared at Kat and then smiled. “Or a dog!” he added. “We should consider all the options.”

  Nico laughed. He dropped down from the last monkey bar. “If it was a dog, we would have found a paw print!” he said.

  “Woof! Woof!” Luke said. He shook his head like a dog and let his tongue hang out until he started drooling.

  Kat patted Luke’s head. “Good dog,” she said. “Now put your tongue back in your mouth!”

  Luke laughed. He wiped the drool off his chin. “All right, but we can create a new Olympic event when we find the troublemaker,” he said. “It’ll be the Olympic dunk tank. We can get one of the big tanks where someone sits on a board above water until you hit the target with a baseball. We can have the Olympic troublemaker sit in it every day at recess. Then all the kids can take turns dunking him—or her—for the whole week!”

  Max nodded and gave Luke a high five. “Great idea!” he said. “But what if we fill the dunk tank with chocolate pudding instead of water? That would be even cooler!”

  “It might not be cooler, but it would be slimier,” Luke said.

  A few minutes later, Alice showed up on her bike. After locking it to the rack in front of the school, she joined everyone at the monkey bars.

  “Let’s start looking for clues,” Alice said. “Luke and Kat can search inside the building. Nico, you take the playground. Max and I will check around the school. Look for anything suspicious.”

  While they were searching, the middle-school students started to arrive. They were all wearing bright purple T-shirts that read Olympic Official. The older kids were in charge of running the events. A little while later, Ms. Suraci showed up. She was wearing an official purple T-shirt, too, and was helping the middle-school kids set up the equipment for each event.

  Eventually, all five kids returned to the monkey bars empty-handed. They continued to brainstorm. “Maybe the threatening note and phone call were just jokes,” Luke said. “Or maybe someone like Quinn did it. He’s always causing trouble.”

  Max nodded. “Maybe. Quinn got called out of our class last week to go to the principal’s office.”

  “Hey, look!” Nico said. “They just brought out the balance beams for the gymnastics event.”

  In the middle of the grassy field, a couple of seventh graders had set out a bunch of long wooden balance beams. They were just wide enough to walk on.

  “Come on, Kat,” Nico said. “Let’s go practice.”

  Nico and Kat ran over to the balance beams. The rest of the kids followed. The boards were lined up a few feet apart for the start of the gymnastics event. Everyone picked a balance beam and tried to walk from one end to the other without falling off. Nico was the fastest, but Kat was close behind.

  Luke pretended that he was being forced to walk the plank. “Arrr! The pirates are after me!” he yelled as he teetered at the end of his balance beam. “Avast! It’s too late!” Luke’s arms flailed around in circles. He fell down onto the grass.

  As Kat hopped off her balance beam, Luke reached out his hand. “Help me, sis!” he said. “There’s sharks in these here waters! Back off, you sharks!” Luke pretended to swat at two sharks with his other hand.

  Kat flicked her curly hair back. “Sorry, Luke,” she said. “If you had helped me clean up the basement last weekend like I asked, I’d help you. But you didn’t, so you’re on your own with the sharks.”

  “Arrr!” Luke called. “My own sister! A rotten dog! I’m going down….”

  “Don’t worry, Luke,” Kat said. “Maybe the sharks will be as lazy as you were and won’t bother to eat you!”

  Over on the basketball court, the kids in the Olympic Official T-shirts had set up three archery targets and put bows and arrows out on tables. On the other side of the field, a middle-school kid with a backpack was setting up orange traffic cones for a running event.

  At nine o’clock, students, teachers, and families began arriving. A couple of food trucks pulled up in the blue parking zone. A police officer arrived and stood watch.

  While the other kids were practicing, Kat left to go to the bathroom. As she reached the top of the front steps, she noticed the posters taped around the door. She stared at one of them for a moment. Then she snapped a picture of it and raced back to the balance beams.

  “Hey!” Kat said. “I just figured out where the blue paint came from! Let me see that envelope again.”

  The kids gathered around Kat. Alice pulled the envelope out of her pocket and handed it to Kat. “Where did it come from?” she asked.

  Kat pointed to the picture she had taken of the posters. “I don’t know where the fingerprint came from, but the blue paint on the envelope seems to match the blue on the Olympic posters. It must have come from Mrs. Zane’s classroom!”

  Kat liked to do art projects, so she was good friends with Mrs. Zane, the school’s art teacher. They all called her Zany for short. The kids in the school loved Mrs. Zane’s class because she let them pick music to listen to. Sometimes she even let them take their art projects outside to work on.

  Alice nodded. “We need to know for sure,” she said.

  Kat took the envelope from Alice. “I know where Mrs. Zane stores the paints,” she said. “I’ll go check.”

  Luke held up his hand and stopped Kat. “You have to get ready for the torch relay with Max and Nico,” he said. He took the envelope from her. “I’ll go check the paint. You three go win the event!”

  And with that, Luke disappeared into the crowd.

  At 9:30 a.m., Mr. Hardy spoke to the crowd from the front steps of the school. He was wearing a bright red, white, and blue shirt. Mr. Hardy welcomed everyone to the Olympics. Then he kicked off the first event—the torch relay.

  “Every two years, runners carry a torch from Athens to the site of that year’s summer or winter Olympics,” Mr. Hardy said. “But our torch relay will be a little different from the ones you see on TV!”

  Mr. Hardy motioned to Ms. Suraci. She reached behind the podium and held up a toilet plunger. Its red rubber top pointed upward like a torch.
<
br />   “Instead of using real flaming torches, we decided to have the students use toilet plungers!” Mr. Hardy said.

  The crowd laughed and clapped. The students lined up in groups of three behind the orange cones that had been set up. Nico, Max, and Kat formed one line. Kat was in front. Alice stood off to the side, ready to cheer for them. Luke was still checking out the blue paint.

  Ms. Suraci handed a plunger to the first person in each line. The kids had to hold the plunger upright in front of them. Then they had to run to the orange cones on the other side of the field and back before handing the plunger to the next person in line. The first group to have all their runners cross the line would be the winner.

  Mr. Hardy moved to the white chalk starting line. He counted down.

  “Five—four—three—two—one—”

  BREEEET!

  Mr. Hardy blew a loud whistle to start the games.

  Everyone watched Kat and the other competitors take off running while trying to hold their plungers straight up in front of them.

  Kat took an early lead, but the redheaded boy next to her sped up and reached the far end of the field first. Just as he rounded the orange cone, his feet slid out from under him and he tumbled to the ground!

  A few seconds later, Kat and a blond girl two lanes over started to go around their cones. And like the first kid, their feet flew out from under them and they rolled onto the ground, too! Before long, the runners from all six teams had slid out on the grass.

  For a moment, nobody moved. Then Kat and the redheaded boy next to her tried to get up. But their feet went sliding out from under them again. They both flipped onto their backs. Their toilet plungers went flying!

  Mr. Hardy and the teachers saw the trouble and ran over to help. But they all went tumbling down, too! Before long, the far end of the field was a tangle of arms and legs.

  After a few minutes, Mr. Hardy and the teachers were able to crawl slowly away from the orange cones on their hands and knees. They motioned for the students to follow their lead. Once everyone was far enough from the cones, they could stand up normally.

  “Wow! That was really slippery!” Mr. Hardy said. He called Mr. Jason, the school janitor, over to investigate. Mr. Jason crept carefully toward the slippery spot. When he got close, he kneeled down and rubbed his fingers in the grass. Then he brought them up to his nose and smelled.

  Mr. Jason crawled gingerly back to Mr. Hardy. “It’s oil,” he said. “Like cooking oil. Somebody must have accidentally spilled it here.”

  “Can we wash it off?” Mr. Hardy asked. “We can’t cancel the torch relay. It’s the first event!”

  Mr. Jason shook his head. “The oil won’t wash off easily,” he said. “But I have an idea. Let me get a tarp from inside the school. We can put that on the ground and then move the cones to a new spot. That way, we can start over.”

  “Good idea,” Mr. Hardy said.

  While Mr. Jason and two middle-school kids worked on moving the cones, Alice pulled Kat, Max, and Nico aside. “This wasn’t an accident,” she said. “Someone put the oil here on purpose to ruin our Olympics!”

  Max looked around. The woods lay just beyond the edge of the racecourse. “Maybe they left some clues,” he said. “Let’s search the area while they’re moving the cones.”

  The kids fanned out and explored along the edge of the nearby woods. Max and Nico checked through the shrubs on the right side. Kat and Alice looked under the long branches of the pine trees.

  The adults were almost finished moving the cones when Kat spoke up. “Bingo!” she called out to the others. “I found something. Come here, quick!”

  Kat lifted one of the long, bristly braches of a pine tree. Underneath sat a small pile of empty cooking oil bottles. Everyone leaned in to take a closer look. Kat picked one up. The clear bottle was empty. It had a shiny gold label with a big red heart on it. She took a picture of it.

  “Someone probably emptied these on the grass and ditched the empty bottles here!” she said.

  “Whoever did it must have done it after the orange cones were in place. Otherwise, the kids setting up would have fallen, too!” Alice said.

  TWEEEEEET!

  Mr. Hardy sounded his whistle. “We are going to restart the torch relay,” he called. “Please line up with your teams again.”

  Kat dropped the bottle back into the pile. “Let’s go,” she said. “We can figure this out after the race.”

  A few minutes later, the teams had regrouped at a new starting point. The orange cones had been moved farther down the field. The kids lined up with their plungers.

  BREEEET!

  Mr. Hardy blew his whistle. The race was on!

  “Come on, Kat!” Alice shouted.

  Kat raced down the field with the plunger held up high. This time, she didn’t slip going around the orange cone. But when she handed the plunger to Max, two of the other teams were already ahead. The crowd cheered wildly as the second set of runners rounded the cones. After making it back, Max quickly handed the plunger to Nico. He took off like a shot.

  It wasn’t enough to catch up to the other teams, though. Before Nico had made it halfway back from the orange cone, three other teams had already crossed the finish line! That meant no medal for Kat, Max, and Nico.

  “I can’t believe we lost!” Nico said. “If only the first race wasn’t messed up. Kat was in second place before everyone slipped in the oil. We could have won if the race wasn’t called!”

  “At least you still have the gymnastics event,” Max said. “You’re a cinch to win that!”

  Just then, Alice spotted Luke. She waved him over. When he finally made it through the crowd, he pulled out a piece of paper with a big splotch of blue painted in the center. He held the envelope with the fingerprint on it next to the splotch of paint.

  “Wow!” Max said.

  “The paint matches exactly!” Luke said. “It took me a while because I had to let the paint dry.”

  “That’s a perfect match!” Alice said. She took the envelope back from Luke and slipped it into her pocket. “Now we just need to find out who’s been using that paint!”

  “It’s probably the same person who drizzled all the oil by the orange cones,” Max said. He told Luke about the torch relay tangle. Kat showed him the picture of the empty oil bottles.

  “What if it’s one of the middle-school kids?” Luke asked. “They’ve been using the blue paint for the posters. Maybe we should check them out?”

  “Good idea,” Kat said.

  But when they looked around the field, there were a lot of middle-school kids there. Everywhere they looked, helpers in purple T-shirts were setting up the events, running the activity stands, or handing out food.

  “There are too many of them,” Nico said.

  “What if we ask Mrs. Zane?” Kat said. “Maybe someone else has been using blue paint.”

  “Okay,” Max said. “Let’s spread out and look. If anyone finds her, just give a whistle.”

  The kids wound their way through families enjoying popcorn and other snacks and passed tables filled with activities like face painting.

  A few minutes later, Nico gave four long whistles from the edge of the crowd. He had found Mrs. Zane near a snack table stocked with orange slices, popcorn, granola bars, and raisins. The kids ran over.

  Kat stepped forward. “Mrs. Zane,” she said, “we have a question for you.”

  “Oh, hi, Kat,” Mrs. Zane said. “What’s my favorite artist up to now? Have you taken any good photos today?”

  Kat blushed. “I’m working on it,” she said. “But we wanted to show you something we found.”

  Alice pulled out the envelope and showed Mrs. Zane the blue fingerprints. Kat told her they thought the blue paint was the key to finding the Olympic troublemaker. “The fingerprints match the blue paint in the art room,” Kat said. “Has anyone else been using it lately?”

  Mrs. Zane thought for a moment. “Well,” she said, “the middle-school stud
ents have been using my paints to make all those signs and banners.”

  Luke looked around the field at the kids in the purple shirts. “We thought of that,” he said. “But we can’t investigate all of them. There are too many.”

  Mrs. Zane nodded. “Yes, that could be a problem,” she said. Mrs. Zane tapped her fingers on the table. “But now that I’m thinking about it, I gave Quinn some blue paint yesterday for a project he’s doing for the principal.”

  “I’ll bet that’s it!” Max said. He looked around at the crowd. It seemed like it had grown even bigger in the last few minutes. “Now we just need to find Quinn.”

  “Actually, that might be easy,” Mrs. Zane said. “I saw him this morning when I parked my car. He’s working in the storage garage.” The storage garage was in the back of the school, near the teachers’ parking lot.

  “Thanks,” Kat said to Mrs. Zane.

  “You’re welcome,” Mrs. Zane said as she turned to go. “Good luck figuring out your mystery!”

  “See, I told you it might be Quinn!” Luke said to Alice after Mrs. Zane had left.

  BREEEET!

  Mr. Hardy’s whistle blew again. It was time for the next event. “The tug-of-war will be starting in fifteen minutes!” he called out.

  Luke tapped Max and Alice on their shoulders. “That’s us!” he said. Max, Alice, and Luke were on a tug-of-war team together. “We should get ready for the event!”

  Alice bit her lip. “Mr. Hardy said fifteen minutes,” she said. “That’s enough time for me and Max to find Quinn. You three can check the tug-of-war for any problems. We’ll check the other events when the tug-of-war is over.”

  “Got it!” Nico said. He, Kat, and Luke took off toward the tug-of-war event.

  —

  Alice and Max walked into the storage garage. A boy with curly red hair was using a piece of sandpaper to smooth the shelves of a wooden bookcase.