by Adam Selzer
I was still spending every minute of my time in the library reading about Shakespeare, but I could not get the nerve to talk to Jennifer about it. She would probably ignore me again. Perhaps if I became more knowledgeable about Shakespeare and rock music, and then won the spelling bee, she would be impressed.
At the end of the day, Jason recommended two or three Paranormal Execution songs that I might especially enjoy, patted me on the back, and told me to have a good day. Amber wiggled her fingers in my face, spun around, and said that she had just given me good luck. I imagined that my parents would think that this witchcraft was very bad, but how could giving someone good luck be bad?
As I was walking down the hallway, I was approached by Mrs. Rosemary.
“Hi, Mutual!” she said. “Principal Floren would like to speak with you for a moment!”
“I need to get to my parents, or they will worry,” I said. This was true, but the real reason I wanted to leave was that I was anxious to get home and listen to music on the headphones while I studied.
“Oh, it will only be for a second,” said Mrs. Rosemary. “He just needs to see how you’re doing.”
“All right.” I nodded. She was smiling so brightly that I could not say no to her, though I was slightly afraid that she would pull a muscle in her cheeks. She would certainly be sore in the morning.
She led me into the office, then pointed into a room in the office where Principal Floren was sitting at his desk.
“Mr. Scrivener!” he said happily. “Come in. Take a seat.”
I walked in and sat in front of his desk. Few, if any, people had ever called me mister before, but I took it as a sign of respect.
“How are you enjoying your time here at Gordon Liddy?” he asked.
“Oh, it is very nice,” I said. “I am learning a lot.”
“Wonderful!” he said. “One of my top priorities is creating a positive learning environment for all of our students.”
“And next week will be the spelling bee,” I said.
“Precisely what I wanted to talk to you about!” he said, smiling. “Are you a good speller, Mutual?”
“Give me a word,” I said. “Give me any word, and I’ll do it.”
“Really?” he said. “All right…how about…‘sinister’?”
“Sinister,” I said. “Adjective. Evil or corrupt. Also Latin for left-handed. The reporters uncovered the president’s sinister plan. S-I-N-I-S-T-E-R. Sinister.”
He nodded. “Very impressive, Mr. Scrivener. But I’m a little bit concerned, because all of the other students have been here so much longer—it seems like they may have an unfair advantage over you. Some people have suggested to me that you may need help to keep the contest even.”
“I believe I will be all right,” I said.
“Just the same,” said Principal Floren, “it’s a longstanding policy of ours to make sure that new students don’t have a disadvantage, because we want the spelling bee to have a perfectly level playing field. Many of the words on the master word list are words that we know they’ve had in spelling classes since they were in second grade, after all.”
I nodded. “Yes, sir,” I said.
“You don’t have to call me sir,” he said. “Just ‘Principal’ is fine. Anyway, to make sure you have a fair shot, I want to give you this list of words.” He handed me a handwritten sheet of several words, none of which were matched with a definition or part of speech.
“Thank you,” I said, taking it, “but are you sure that this is moral?”
“I just want to make sure the spelling bee is fair,” he said. “As long as the principal is doing something, it’s moral. But just in case anyone thinks that it isn’t fair for you to have the same advantages that the other students had, I need you to keep this top secret. You can’t tell anyone about this. Not even your parents or your friends. Memorize the list, then destroy it. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Principal Floren,” I said.
“Good, Mr. Scrivener. Sometimes we have to do things secretly—it’s one of the executive privileges that come with being the principal,” he said. “Now be careful!”
I told him I would, and got up to leave.
When I arrived at the car, my parents were nearly in hysterics.
“Where have you been?” Mother asked. “Most of the other children have already gone home! We were afraid you had been kidnapped! Or killed!”
“Nothing is wrong, Mother,” I said. “Principal Floren asked me to stay a couple of extra minutes.”
“Keeping children after school!” said Mother. “That can hardly even be legal, can it, Norm?”
“No,” said Father. “Not legal.”
“That is what Jason says about keeping people after school for detention,” I said.
“Detention, eh?” asked Mother. “Is that what they do to troublemakers around here?”
“Yes,” I said.
“So that is what happened, then?” she said. “He gave you a detention? Well, Mutual, do not feel bad. People are going to persecute you for being different. They have never met someone as moral or germ-free as you, and they will surely want to punish you for it. That is the way the world works.”
“No one has persecuted me for being moral,” I said.
“That is what they are making it look like, Mutual,” she said. “But I know better. I know their tricks and manners.”
“But Principal Floren did not give me detention,” I said. “He only wanted to make sure I was able to spell well enough to be in the bee.”
“Well, then, I expect you certainly showed him,” she said. “They think that just because we have not let them get their hooks into you, you must not be able to spell anything. Well, they will be in for a surprise next week!”
That night, I sat alone in my room, listening to Paranormal Execution. This was the first time I had listened to an entire album all at once—I liked the way they paced it so the first song was fast, then the next was slower. The songs all sort of flowed together. It would make me feel excited, then give me a chance to recover. Some songs made me feel as though I were marching into battle, and some made me feel as though I were in a little medieval village, relaxing after a long day of hunting for dragons.
Also, for the first time, I was able to understand the words. I had always heard that rock musicians were not smart, but the songs I heard used lots of words that indicated that the person who wrote them had a fine vocabulary. Like in my favorite song, “Obfuscate.”
Between the trees of a malodorous swamp
Hidden far from sight
Under a veil of mist and fog
I obfuscate by night
I actually had to look up two of those words. “Obfuscate” means “to cover up or hide.” “Malodorous” means “stinky.” In any case, I did not see how hiding in a stinky swamp was such a corruptive influence. If I ever find myself in a stinky swamp, I shall also wish to obfuscate. If one does not obfuscate in the swamp at night, one might be discovered by a hungry alligator.
If these words were indeed in common usage in the “outside world,” then perhaps I really was at an unfair disadvantage. I had never heard of these words at all—my parents certainly did not use them.
I was so caught up in listening to the music that I did not even glance at the list of words Principal Floren had given me until late at night. When I finally did look at it, I found that it was a list of sloppily handwritten words—and all of them were words that I knew perfectly well how to spell. I did not look at it very carefully. Since it was all words that I knew, and since the handwriting was very hard to read, I simply put it into a drawer on my desk. I appreciated that the school wished to give me extra help, but it was not necessary.
If Chrissie had not found out about it, I believe that I would have forgotten about the list altogether.
16
CHRISSIE
Excerpt from notebook #5: Principal Floren can never figure out how to operate gadgets or computers by himself.
Mrs. Rosemary does most of that stuff for him.
The last memo I ever sent to Principal Floren was right after lunch on Friday—it was a warning that there were old ladies around, and that they were up to no good. I never heard back from him, of course. And, even though I kept waiting all day, hoping he’d do SOMETHING to make me trust him again, I never got a note back from him regarding the warning about the break-in, either.
Obviously, it was up to me.
I waited in my favorite hiding place in the bushes after school, just watching the front door. I knew that since it was Friday, the only people in the office would be Principal Floren and Mrs. Rosemary. All the teachers left early on Friday. And Floren and Mrs. Rosemary would be leaving early to set up the meeting they were having with the teachers to talk about how to prepare students to deal with the press at the bee. They were holding it at a restaurant in town, but I wasn’t sure which one, or I’d have shown up to spy on them.
Mutual was the last one out the door that day, which I thought was strange. He’d been the first one out every other day since he’d come to Gordon Liddy. When he got to his car, his parents looked like they were in hysterics. It would have been a perfect day to hide near the car and find out more about them, but I had too much to do. Investigating the school was more important than investigating other students.
Ten minutes after Mutual left, Mrs. Rosemary came out, smiling as usual. Sometimes I think that when she was a kid, something must have made her smile for so long that her face got stuck that way. Those stories parents tell about that sort of thing aren’t true, of course, but it might work for freaks of nature like Mrs. Rosemary.
Five minutes later, Principal Floren walked out, whistling a tune I didn’t recognize. I knew that he only whistled when he was nervous, though, so I suspected that something fishy was indeed going on.
Once his car was out of the parking lot, it was time to make my move. I walked into the front door and headed to the office, fingering the lock-picking kit that I had in my pocket.
But, to my surprise, the door wasn’t locked at all.
I walked right in, unlocked the padlock on the filing cabinet, and pulled out the copy of the master word list. I was just about to make a run for it when I noticed that there was a video camera set up in Principal Floren’s office—and it was running. Surveillance! They were doing a better job of security than I thought! I was a bit surprised that Floren could even use the recorder—technology isn’t his strong point.
But it looked like he could use the camera, all right. There was a shelf behind his desk covered in discs labeled things like “Monday morning—9 a.m. till noon” and “Tuesday—written test.” Apparently he’d been recording things the whole week!
The camera would have caught me breaking in, so I turned it off, took out the disc, and put it into my bag with the word list. Before I left, I grabbed a blank disc off a pile on Floren’s desk to put in the camera, so they wouldn’t notice that one was missing until they played it back.
I crept back out as though everything was normal—no one would have suspected anything if they saw me, since I often stayed late anyway. With the recording and the master word list safely in my backpack, I walked home and headed up to my room.
There I watched the disc I’d taken out of the recorder, and saw the footage of what had gone on before I went in. I couldn’t believe what I saw. Floren, the guy I actually, for some stupid reason, used to trust, was giving Mutual a copy of the master word list!
Something was going on, all right! And Principal Floren was in on it! The way he was talking to Mutual, Mutual probably wouldn’t even realize that he was cheating by looking at that list.
Apparently Principal Floren wanted Mutual to win the bee, for some reason. Otherwise, why would he have given him a copy of the word list?
And someone ELSE wanted Jennifer to win—enough that they were somehow helping her dad break into the school.
Maybe the old ladies from the playground were involved—they seemed to want Mutual to win, too.
I still had a lot to find out. What did Floren care who won? Who called Jennifer’s dad?
Maybe it was Mrs. Boffin. Maybe she was in league with the old ladies—they were just about her age. And it made sense that she’d want one of the kids who had been her students all along to beat Mutual—it would make her look bad if some kid who just blew in from homeschooling beat every last one of the kids she’d taught all year.
At the time, I had a framed picture of myself with Floren in the office on my desk. I’d been thinking of getting rid of it for a long time, but that was the afternoon that I finally put it in the trash. I guess I thought I’d be really depressed when I finally dropped it into my garbage can, but I was mostly just relieved, like a weight was off my back. I was still depressed, but mostly depressed that I’d been wrong about him all those years. It felt good to know that I was starting to do what I should have been doing all along. Better late than never.
That night, after dinner, I walked back up to the school to see if anything had happened and try to find more clues. When I got there, Officer Beadle was putting police tape around a broken window. The break-in had happened, all right.
“Jim!” I shouted.
Officer Beadle looked up from his work. “Hey, Chrissie!” he said. “Might’ve known you’d be swinging by.”
“What happened?”
“Just what you said was going to happen, kid,” he said. “You did the right thing by telling us.” He put down the tape for a second and picked up his thermos, which had been sitting in the snow, and took a sip.
“Did you get any messages from the school saying something was going to happen tonight?”
“Nope.” He shook his head.
“Didn’t think so,” I said. “So what happened, exactly?”
“We saw a guy all dressed in black crawling through the snow, and then he broke a window and climbed in.”
“Obviously not a career criminal,” I said, snorting.
“Yeah, the guy was about as sneaky as a rhinoceros.” Officer Beadle chuckled. “Plus the door was unlocked. He could’ve just walked right in.”
“Was it Mitch Van Den Berg?”
“I can’t comment on that, hon.”
He took another sip from his thermos, then thoughtfully pulled a foam cup out of a sack and poured some coffee for me, too. Officer Beadle, in particular, sort of thinks of me as an honorary member of the force. I do more detective work around town than any of them, after all.
“Did he get away with anything?” I asked, taking a very small sip. I’m not much for coffee, but it was cold outside, and the coffee was hot. And investigators always drink coffee when they’re discussing cases outside. There’s a scene showing that in practically every cop movie ever made.
“Nope. We caught him rooting through the file cabinets, making a mess. He didn’t find anything, though. He was empty-handed when we took him in.”
“So he got arrested?” I asked.
Right away, I thought of Jennifer. I had hoped that if he didn’t get the list, they wouldn’t have to arrest him!
“Yeah,” said Officer Beadle. “Murray got to take him into the station to book him and everything, but me? I drew the short straw. So I’m stuck here, putting up the police tape. Is that just my luck or what? First guy to get booked in a month, and I’m missing out on all the action.”
“I didn’t think he’d get arrested!” I said. “I thought you’d just scare him off!”
“Yeah,” said Officer Beadle. “If he’d gone through the door, we probably would have just told him to get lost. But when someone breaks a window and climbs in, you sort of have to arrest them, you know.”
I suddenly felt terrible. I’d gotten Jennifer’s dad arrested! She was going to be horrified.
I knew how she felt. I was feeling more horrified myself all the time by how messed up things had been. It really, really stinks to find out you were wrong about something you believed in. But just bein
g wrong about the faculty couldn’t be as bad as finding out your dad was arrested. I was going to have to make it up to her somehow.
The best thing I could do was figure out who was really responsible for the bee being so messed up and bring them to justice. I’d get some more proof and have them dead to rights.
And I’d show everyone at a time when the whole town couldn’t possibly ignore me: right in the middle of the all-school spelling bee.
17
JENNIFER
alibi—noun. Proof offered by persons accused of a crime that they were elsewhere at the time of the crime. Harlan had the perfect alibi when someone accused him of sticking his finger into the blueberry pie—he couldn’t have done it, because at the time of the pie poking he was busy using that finger to pick his nose!
Okay. One of the things people have said is that I was with Dad when he broke in. Anyway, that’s what Marianne is saying. But I wasn’t. The police know it—I wasn’t with him when they caught him. And I have an alibi, too. Friday was the night of the Shakespeare Club meeting in Cornersville Trace.
Mom drove me, as usual, and spent the entire trip drilling me on my spelling—I didn’t miss a single word, so I didn’t get any particularly bad lectures.
“Now,” Mom said, when we pulled up to the bookstore, “you ask the people there whether it’s true that there were no spelling rules in Shakespeare’s day. I still think that Mrs. Jonson is just trying to sabotage you.”
“I’ll ask, Mom,” I said. “Bye!” And I ran out of the car like I was running away from a herd of angry elephants with machine guns, across the parking lot and into the store.
I love the Shakespeare Club. No one is just there to put it on their college application. In fact, most of the people there are way too old to be worried about grades or colleges or résumés—they’re just there because they like Shakespeare. Nobody joins the Just Say No Club because they enjoy talking about the dangers of drug abuse.