Smashie McPerter and the Mystery of the Missing Goop

by N. Griffin

  But Dontel and Smashie, who normally adored math class, were both distracted and could scarcely pay attention.

  “Sort yourselves into groups of four or five and compare your work,” said Ms. Early. “I want all of you to really think, Room 11.”

  Dontel shook his head wearily at Smashie. “We might as well try taxing Billy now,” he said.

  Smashie pulled her mind back to the investigation. “Even though we are the world’s worst taxers today,” she agreed.

  “Dontel and Smashie,” called Ms. Early, “are you paying attention?”

  “Yes,” said Dontel. “I was just going to ask Billy to work with me and Smashie.”

  “Sure,” said Billy.

  “Can I, too?” asked Cyrus.

  “And me?” asked Jacinda.

  “That’d be great,” said Smashie. But in her heart she despaired. Losing John as a suspect was a giant failure. She had been so sure he was the perp! Billy was a pale second choice. And how were they going to tax him anyhow, in front of Cyrus and Jacinda?

  But she grabbed a bin of math cubes and a sheaf of paper and headed with Billy and Dontel to the meeting area rug to work. As they passed Ms. Early’s desk, Smashie began to hum a few bars of “Smacked in the Heart.”

  But “Be sparing with that paper, Smashie” was all Ms. Early said. “We are running low.”

  Smashie’s heart sank. “We will be,” she said, and slouched back over to her group.

  Dontel looked at her. She shook her head. He patted her comfortingly on the arm.

  “What’s the suit, Smash?” Jacinda asked amiably, joining them from the back of the room, a pencil in her hand.

  “Oh, just a . . . just a suit,” said Smashie. “For . . . for choreographing. And thinking,” she said, still unhappy with her attempt with Ms. Early but uncomfortable with her fib. “So how many tens do you all think we can make out of that number?” she asked her group.

  But the other children were still eyeing Smashie’s suit.

  “My mom and dad have belts like that,” said Cyrus. “They’re mechanics, so they always have tools handy.”

  “My dad works with computers, but he got laid off a while ago,” said Jacinda. “He’s still looking for a job. But my mom’s a patent lawyer.”

  “What’s a patent lawyer?”

  “They help you make sure no one else can copy an idea you have for an invention or something.”

  “Oh,” said Smashie. “Well, my mom’s a phlebotomist. They’re the ones that take your blood at the doctor.”

  “Ugh!” said Jacinda. “I hate needles!”

  “Everybody does,” said Smashie. “My mom says it’s tough being the one no one wants to see.”

  “Smashie’s group! Get to work!” Ms. Early was stern.

  The group hastily started working.

  Smashie wrote in large numerals at the top of a piece of paper.

  “Here, Smashie,” said Billy. “Have some cubes. Let’s see how many tens we can use to build this.”

  “Thanks,” said Smashie. She glanced over in Ms. Early’s direction. Ms. Early was busy with Tatiana’s group and was not looking their way. “Bet you’re still real mad about the musicale, huh?” she said, arranging cubes into sticks of ten. “Because you can’t sing ‘Machine Gun Jailbreak’?”

  “‘Machine Gun Jailbreak’ is a great song,” said Billy determinedly.

  “Billy,” said Smashie meaningfully.

  “Oh, heck, I don’t care if I can’t sing it,” said Billy.

  Smashie dropped her cubes.

  “I knew Ms. Early wouldn’t let me sing ‘Machine Gun Jailbreak,’” Billy continued. “I was just stirring things up. And besides, all I really want is my hair lengthened and molded into a shape. I can’t wait for the musicale!”

  Dontel looked up from his own work, shocked. “What?” he said incredulously.

  “Yeah,” said Billy happily. “A good hair molding will be a blast. My mom’ll freak. I’m hoping Charlene can make me an actual hair roller-skate shape like Tatiana’s! Or if I don’t have enough hair for that” — his eyes glinted — “maybe she can mold me into some kind of monster! And I can tell my mom it’s permanent!”

  Smashie and Dontel looked at each other in despair. Both their suspects had fended them off before they could even tax them — and fended them off spectacularly. The motives they had thought of yesterday had completely fallen apart. Neither John nor Billy had any desire at all to sabotage the musicale. And it was clear that Billy actively wanted Charlene to use the goop on him, so it was no prank of his, either.

  Ugh!

  They had no more suspects. Smashie’s suit had failed and so had all the notions sparked by yesterday’s motion, including Dontel’s plan to convince Ms. Early to let Smashie sing. What were they going to do?

  “Ms. Early!” Joyce was at her cubby. “I just came back here to get some markers from my backpack, and guess what!”

  Smashie and Dontel sat up straight, their failures forgotten.

  “The hair goop is gone!” cried Dontel before Ms. Early could respond.

  “Yes!” cried Joyce. “How did you know? What is going on in here?”

  Once again, Room 11 exploded in talk.

  “That’s the third missing jar!” cried Siggie.

  “It is!” wailed Willette. “Why is all our goop going missing?”

  “It certainly is strange,” said Ms. Early, frowning a bit.

  “Everything in our room goes missing!” cried Tatiana. “First our hamster, now our goop!”

  “We can’t do our Hair Extravaganza and Musicale without our special hair!” cried Joyce. “We’re going to have to cancel!”

  John stared at her, his gaze torn somewhere between disappointment and hope. Charlene’s eyes were like saucers.

  “Pool our resources!” Smashie shouted, one fist raised. “Everybody has to bring in what smells good from their house! Like vanilla and fancy soaps you use only for guests! Charlene can help us invent hair goop for ourselves in science class!”

  “Now, don’t everybody get all worked up,” said Ms. Early. “Smashie, especially you.”

  “What do you mean?” cried Smashie, stung. But she knew. She rather liked to get worked up, and Ms. Early often had to calm her down. Especially during the hamster episode.

  “Wait a minute,” said Dontel. “I smell lavender. Do you?”

  The class lifted its collective noses skyward, sniffing.

  “I do,” said John, “but why wouldn’t we? Joyce is covered in the stuff.”

  “It’s on my hands, too,” Charlene pointed out.

  “But I could swear . . .” Dontel’s voice trailed off.

  “Class.” Ms. Early was firm. “We are not going to make more of this than is rational.” She glanced at the clock above the open door to the classroom. “I think that does it for math. We certainly didn’t get very far. Put your things away, children, and get ready for recess.”

  The rumble of Mr. Bloom’s cleaning cart passed by their door. Smashie stared. For behind the cart was Mr. Bloom.

  His hair was lengthened. And molded. Into something of a shape.

  “He looked like Ben Franklin!” Smashie told Dontel on the blacktop once the class arrived out of doors for morning recess. “Mr. Bloom usually just has a rim of hair around his bald spot. But today he has LENGTHENED AND MOLDED locks flowing around his bald spot, just like our country’s famous forefather!”

  “Mr. Bloom?” Dontel was incredulous. “But that makes no sense!” He whipped out his Investigation Notebook and turned to the Opportunity List. “Wait a minute. Maybe it does.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Smashie.

  “Well, he came in our room after the second jar went missing. With the recycling bins, remember?”

  Smashie shuddered. Of course she remembered, what with Mrs. Armstrong coming to shout at her at the same time. “But he wasn’t in our room at all during math today. And that’s when the jar of goop Joyce brought in went
missing. Do you think maybe he is getting one of the kids to steal it for him?” said Smashie.

  “Smashie!” said Dontel. “I can’t imagine that Mr. Bloom — one of our favorite adults — would ask one of us kids to steal! That’s just nuts!”

  “I don’t know, Dontel! All I know is that he is the only person with lengthened and molded hair that didn’t get it done by Charlene in our class!”

  “It does explain why I smelled that lavender and lilac even more,” said Dontel reluctantly. “If he was passing by our door.”

  “Yes,” said Smashie. “And since he was in the hallway earlier, too. That’s a clue! We should add that to the list.”

  And, very hastily, she took out her Investigation Notebook from her tool belt and wrote:

  “Maybe it’s a conspiracy of all the baldish teachers!” Smashie cried. “Maybe Mr. Flange will be next!” While Mr. Flange, the art teacher, had a luxurious mustache, it was true that he had barely a spear of hair left on his head. “If Mr. Flange shows up tomorrow with hair in a wild hairdo, then we’ll know! We can tax all the unhairy teachers! We can —”

  “Smashie,” said Dontel, “I think we have to calm down. We need a plan.”

  “Well, I know what our next plan is,” said Smashie firmly. “Tax Mr. Bloom.”

  “It just feels wrong to me,” said Dontel. “I can’t help it. He’s so nice about talking to me about space. I don’t want to disrespect him!”

  “I know.” Smashie’s hectic thoughts slowed. “I really like him, too. But you are the one who said we couldn’t let personal feelings get in the way. If Mr. Bloom is a thief, he must be brought to justice. We are good at that. Better than at taxing people, even.”

  “True,” said Dontel. He thought for a moment. Then he sighed. “All right. Fine. Ms. Early said our room is low on paper. We could ask Miss Martone, the yard lady, if we could go to Mr. Bloom’s trailer to get paper and then talk to him while we’re there.”

  “All right,” Smashie agreed, “but I don’t think that lady likes me much still. After yesterday and the Jerk and all.”

  “Let me do the talking,” said Dontel.

  They made their way toward the yard lady, passing Jacinda and Charlene, who were, as yesterday, watching Carlos from Room 12 across the blacktop. Carlos’s shoulders looked hunchy, like he knew Charlene’s eyes were upon him.

  “This whole like-like thing is weird,” said Smashie.

  “Tell me about it,” said Dontel.

  “What do you two want?” asked Miss Martone as they reached her. “Here to call me a jerk again?”

  “We’re real sorry you thought that, ma’am,” said Dontel. “Smashie here feels terrible.”

  Smashie nodded.

  “The dance isn’t called the Jerk like an insult,” Dontel explained. “It means jerk like jerk your arms around. Smashie here was just teaching the kids. For our musicale.”

  “Oh,” said the yard lady. “Well! That does make more sense.” And she smiled at Smashie and Dontel. “I get it now. No hard feelings.” And she rumpled Smashie’s hair. Smashie didn’t mind. Now that her hair music note had been washed out, it was already pretty sticky-outy again.

  “We were just going to ask you if we can go get some more paper for our room from Mr. Bloom,” said Dontel. “We’re low.”

  “Sure thing,” said Miss Martone. “Just don’t miss the whistle at the end of recess.”

  “We won’t,” said Dontel, and off they went.

  Normally, Smashie and Dontel loved to go visit Mr. Bloom in his little trailer just outside the main building. All of the children at the Rebecca Lee Crumpler Elementary School did. Besides being filled with supplies for the classrooms and for cleaning, it was full of Mr. Bloom’s hobbies as well: tiny bonsai trees he had pruned into beautiful shapes and lots of reading material about alien life-forms. And his music player bellowed opera songs through the open windows and doors of the trailer all day long. But Smashie and Dontel were not happy at all as they made their way to the trailer with their dark, sad suspicions about the man who had always been one of their favorite adults in the school.

  “This is our worst case ever,” said Smashie. “Why do we have to keep suspecting our friends?”

  “It is only our second case, Smashie,” Dontel pointed out. “But you are right about the part about our friends.”

  “Mi chiamano Mimì, ma il mio nome è Lucia . . .” A lady sang Italianly from the trailer as they approached.

  Through the open door, Mr. Bloom was working his hands over his hair. And before their very eyes, his hair transformed from the Ben Franklin hanks Smashie had described to Dontel to something more like the aging rock stars on the albums Smashie’s mother loved to play.

  Mr. Bloom heard them and turned around. “Why, hello there, Miss McP. and Mr. M.! Nice to see you! What can I do you for?”

  The scent of lavender was overpowering.

  “We need . . . paper,” said Dontel faintly.

  “Coming right up. Let me just wash this goop off my hands. Wonderful stuff. ’Course you two are too young to worry about hair loss, but, my stars, this is doing the trick! Until I wash it, I guess. Herr Goop, it’s called. Heh, heh! Pretty clever, that. It says right on the jar that it lengthens and molds the hair, and darned if it doesn’t! Check me out!”

  “It looks super,” Smashie said uncomfortably. She and Dontel looked at each other in shock. Was Mr. Bloom confessing to stealing right before their eyes? But why didn’t he seem sorry? Or ashamed? Or ready to turn himself in to the authorities? Maybe Mr. Bloom was such a hardened criminal that he didn’t even care if he was discovered! Maybe he rejoiced in the revelation of his crimes!

  Be brave, Smashie, Smashie said to herself. Start taxing him!

  “Mr. Bloom,” she said in a strangled voice, “when did you get that goop?”

  Mr. Bloom finished washing his hands and moved to the large boxes of ruled paper he kept near his bonsai trees. “Oh, just a couple of days ago. I believe it was the day you folks planned your big musicale. Which I’m very much looking forward to, by the by. I love a good musical number.”

  And he whistled along to the Italian lady as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

  “May I see the jar?” asked Dontel.

  “Sure.” Mr. Bloom tossed it to him and, still whistling, headed over to extract several reams of paper from a box. Exactly like a proud stealie-pants would!

  “This jar is the one, all right,” whispered Dontel to Smashie. “The first one Charlene used on you.”

  Smashie looked at it and agreed. There hadn’t been serial numbers on that first jar, and there were none on this one, either. Clearly this was made before Charlene’s mom got the idea to use those numbers to label their product.

  Dontel handed the jar back to Mr. Bloom as the custodian placed the paper carefully into their befuddled, suspicious arms.

  “Mr. Bloom,” said Smashie, gulping, “what about the other jars? When did you take those?”

  Mr. Bloom looked puzzled. “Well, I’d say I ‘found’ that jar, rather than ‘took’ it, Miss McP.”

  “Found?” said Dontel.

  “It was in the hallway right outside Room 11 — your room.”

  “But what about the other jars?”

  “Other jars?” said Mr. Bloom. “What other jars? This is the only jar I found. I didn’t take other jars. Heck, all I did was find this one, and it gave me real hope.”

  “But two more went missing from our room, too!” said Smashie, studying Mr. Bloom’s face for signs of pride in his thievery.

  “And you came in with the recycling bins when one of them —” Dontel began bravely.

  “What?” Mr. Bloom cut him off. “You kids came in here thinking I stole the goop from your class?” His feelings were clearly hurt.

  Dontel swallowed. “It’s just that the jars keep going missing.”

  Mr. Bloom’s eyes widened. “Well, I only found the one, and here” — he handed it to Smashie — “you take i
t back right now. I’ve used a lot of it, but I sure didn’t mean to take your supply. I thought it was just something that had been tossed away. And I certainly didn’t take any others.” His shoulders slumped and he shook his head. “Never thought I’d see the day when two decent kids like yourselves would accuse me of thieving. I surely did not.”

  Smashie felt terrible. Of course Mr. Bloom was not a stealie-pants! Why had she ever even thought it?

  “We’re sorry, Mr. Bloom!” cried Smashie.

  “It must have rolled out the door like Ms. Early said,” said Dontel, bowing his head in shame.

  “You keep that goop,” said Smashie. “Please! Your hair looks great!”

  “I can’t do that,” said Mr. Bloom. “Not with you kids thinking so poorly of me. Not if it’s going to make everybody in Room 11 think I’m a thief.” He sighed. “It’s too bad. I did promise Mr. Flange he could have a go.”

  Smashie’s mind filled with the image of their taciturn art teacher sporting a lengthened and molded mustache.

  “Please keep it,” Dontel begged the custodian. “Please. We’re sorry we taxed you. We know you’d never do anything dishonest. And our class doesn’t even know about what we thought.”

  Mr. Bloom hesitated, then took the jar from Smashie. “Well, if you say so. I sure hope you find your missing goop.”

  “We do, too,” said Smashie.

  But Mr. Bloom’s shoulders were still sagging as Smashie and Dontel left the trailer, their arms full of paper and hearts full of guilt.

  “We are awful, awful children,” said Smashie as they made their way back to the blacktop. Recess was almost over, and the rest of the third-graders were already lining up to go in.

  “I know,” said Dontel miserably. “And terrible investigators, too. We haven’t picked a single suspect that has even turned out to be for-real suspicious!”

  “And we are still goopless because we gave Mr. Bloom back the goop he had. You know what this means, Dontel?”

  “Kids will drop out of the Hair Extravaganza and Musicale because of no cool hair,” said Dontel unhappily. “And our teacher will be very sad.”