Amanda Lester and the Orange Crystal Crisis

by Paula Berinstein

  “You would?” said Amanda.

  “Yes, ma’am. You’re witnesses to a crime. Please come with me.”

  Amanda had been interviewed by the police before—three times, to be exact. The first was when the cook was murdered. The second was when the doctor was murdered. And the third time was after she’d saved her father from the Moriartys at the sugar factory. Ivy had been interviewed for the same reasons.

  The police interrogation added several more hours to the field trip. All the observations they’d been engaged in had to be cut short, but Professor Sidebotham promised them that there would still be an important test on Monday and to review their notes carefully over what was left of the weekend. On the way back the kids were a lot less animated than on the trip out. Some of them looked dazed. Others were crying, and some were making notes. Wiffle and Gordon had managed to sit together this time, and Amanda could hear whispering from their direction. The teachers spent the drive home in a low confab as well, but otherwise all was quiet.

  When the bus drew up to the school, Professor Sidebotham surprised the kids by saying, “Class, please go to the Observation classroom and make note of everything you saw from the time you realized someone had been shot. After that I will join you for a brief discussion.” That led to a lot of groaning and carping, since it was late and the kids were tired and hungry. But go to the classroom they did. Amanda made as many notes as she could, but after ten minutes she was all written out. Holmes wrote for about thirty minutes, finishing long after everyone else had stopped.

  Finally Professors Sidebotham, Buck, and Ducey entered the room. “Send your observations to me now,” said Professor Sidebotham. Everyone clicked Send. “Has everyone forwarded their notes?” She looked out. The students all nodded. “Excellent. Now, Professors Buck, Ducey, and I have something to tell you.”

  Ivy went rigid. Amanda had learned that her friend was a great early warning system and she trusted her instincts. Something was up. Were the police coming out to interview them again? Did they suspect that one of them was an accomplice? What could be so important all of a sudden?

  “Mr. Holmes, what did you see this afternoon at Blackpool?” said Professor Sidebotham.

  “I saw a murder, Professor,” said Holmes. “A man was gunned down in front of us.”

  “Mr. Wiffle? What did you see?”

  “The same as Scapulus said, Professor,” said David Wiffle.

  “Miss Lester?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Amanda. “The same.”

  “Class? Anyone disagree?”

  Everyone shook their head no.

  “You are all incorrect,” said the teacher gravely. Professors Ducey and Buck were looking dead serious. That was pretty much Professor Buck’s usual way, but Professor Ducey was normally a jolly fellow and he looked weird all stone-faced.

  The room buzzed. Finally David Wiffle said, “What do you mean, Professor?”

  “There was no murder today,” said the teacher.

  Ivy elbowed Amanda as if to indicate that she knew what was coming. Amanda looked at her quizzically, but of course Ivy couldn’t see her expression.

  “It was a fake, arranged by the school,” said Professor Sidebotham.

  This time, instead of buzzing, the room went deathly still. With the exception of Ivy, Holmes, and Simon, all the kids’ jaws dropped. Then, after about sixty seconds David Wiffle called out, “You mean it was a joke?”

  “Absolutely not,” said Professor Sidebotham. “I mean it was a demonstration, designed to inspire you to observe in a way you haven’t before.”

  “That’s not fair!” yelled Wiffle.

  “Yeah!” said Gordon.

  “How could you do this to us?” said Owla Snizzle, who was practically in tears.

  The three teachers stood like monuments, waiting for silence. Then Holmes spoke.

  “Good one, Professor!” He grinned from ear to ear, but this show of support did not cause any change in the three teachers. However, Holmes’s actions so irritated Amanda that she grabbed hold of Ivy’s hand and squeezed hard enough that Ivy cried out. Then she leaned over and said, “See what I mean? He’s an idiot.”

  Ivy whispered back, “Don’t be so hard on him. He’s got a great sense of humor.”

  “How can you say that?” said Amanda, wondering if her friend had indeed lost her mind. First she was grumpy and now she was finding insults humorous. She must have forgotten her own advice about hidden treasures. Amanda would definitely have to get to the bottom of this.

  Amanda could hear some of the kids whispering about how ruthless the teachers were. Why, last term they’d spent hundreds of thousands of pounds to blow up the school’s garage and everything in it just so the first-years would have a mystery to solve. This was getting ridiculous. Sure, they wanted to be detectives, but the teachers’ methods were extreme.

  “I see you’re upset,” said Professor Sidebotham. Amanda thought she was about to apologize, but instead she said, “Get over it.” A ripple of protest skittered through the classroom. “You heard me,” she said. “Do you remember that first day when Headmaster Thrillkill told you that you would not be coddled at Legatum? He meant it. This is how we instruct. You may adapt, or you may leave. The choice is yours.”

  For an old lady, she was really tough, thought Amanda. And mean as a hyena. But the woman was one of the sharpest people she’d ever met, and so highly regarded that people came to her for help with their toughest cases. Amanda realized that what the teachers had done made a lot of sense, and she relaxed in her seat. Still, she wasn’t amused by Holmes’s outburst—or his touching her. Who did he think he was anyway?

  After Professor Sidebotham dismissed the class so they could go to dinner, the tension was so thick you could have made pockmarks in it. Kids were grumbling, arguing, slinking, shuffling, starting, stopping, and in one case, snuffling. Wiffle and Bramble seemed to be plotting as usual. Simon and Amphora were arguing, and Editta looked like she was sleepwalking. Nigel was acting as if someone had hit him, a condition that seemed to have come on all of a sudden once they’d left the classroom.

  Amanda saw some of the kids go to their rooms, others to the various lounges. She, Ivy, Nigel, and Simon made for the dining room. They had just sat down with their plates when out of the blue the room started shaking—and shaking, and shaking, and shaking. As dishes clattered to the floor and glass broke all around them, Amanda knew exactly what was happening. Legatum Continuatum was smack in the middle of a huge, honking earthquake.

  9

  Earthquake!

  An earthquake in England! Amanda had never expected that. Back home in L.A. she’d constantly prepared for one and her parents had experienced several, but she’d never actually felt more than a few minor tremors. This one was much stronger, and much more powerful and long lasting than the blast that had rocked the school last term when the garage had exploded.

  “Get in the doorway,” she yelled to everyone in the dining room. She grabbed Ivy and pulled her inside the jamb leading to the hall. “Under the tables now! And stay away from the windows!”

  “What are you doing?” yelled Ivy. “Nigel!” She screamed her dog’s name over and over.

  “It’s the safest place,” yelled Amanda. “Now stand there and don’t move.”

  Of course only a couple of people could fit inside each of the various doorways, but the rest of the kids were able to make it under the tables without anything falling on them. Nigel was cowering under one of them, squealing with his paws over his eyes, poor thing. Simon had made a dive for him and was holding him to keep him from lunging. He called out to Ivy that Nigel was with him and was okay despite the whining and whuffling. Needless to say, the screaming and carrying on in the dining room was even worse than it had been when the man at Blackpool had been shot, or whatever had really happened to him.

  Amanda felt her phone buzz. She wondered if Amphora was all right. There was nothing she could do for her with all this shaking
going on, so she ignored the text. It buzzed again. Could it be Thrillkill? If it was, she wasn’t in a position to answer. He’d just have to wait.

  She could hear loud crashes coming from the kitchen, where it was obvious that pots and pans were falling out of cupboards, probably along with everything in the pantry. Amanda hoped there wasn’t anything hot on the stove. She could hear people running up and down the hall and cried out for them to get away from the windows.

  Ivy was shaking so hard Amanda had to hold her still. Looking out for her made her forget how scared she was. If anything happened to her friend—or her dog—she’d never forgive herself. The shaking must have gone on for twenty seconds—the ground’s, not Ivy’s, which continued for much longer than that. It was a very long time for an earthquake. The room moved back and forth sharply, and by the time the shaking had stopped all the dishes, glasses, flatware, and just about everything else had fallen and mostly broken.

  “Is everyone okay?” Amanda called out.

  “No,” said a lot of people raggedly.

  “Someone is hurt?” she said.

  “No, we’re not hurt,” they said, but they didn’t sound convincing.

  “Just scared then?” Amanda’s background as an Angeleno somehow made her feel as if she should take charge. Even though she hadn’t experienced a quake of this magnitude, everyone looked to her as the expert, which compared to them she was. The people she could see were nodding. Despite the vigor of the quake, no one seemed to be injured, although most of the kids were freaking out at least as much as Ivy.

  “You obviously know that we just had a huge earthquake and you need to be careful,” she said. “There will be aftershocks—lots of them. When that happens, do exactly what you did this time. Stand in a doorway, get under a table, stay away from the windows.”

  “But what about Nigel?” wailed Ivy.

  “Good question,” said Amanda. “Simon, can you think of anything?”

  “I’ll rig up something for him. He might have to stay in a crate for a while.”

  Upon hearing this, Ivy started to wail even louder.

  “I’ll keep him with me, shall I?” said Simon. He knew Ivy could manage without Nigel guiding her, but he also knew that she couldn’t stand to be away from him.

  “I don’t know about that,” she said.

  Just then, Amanda’s phone buzzed again. This time Ivy’s and Simon’s did too. Boy, Thrillkill was quick.

  When Amanda finally looked at her phone, she just about screamed. The first two texts, the ones she’d felt as she stood in the doorway, were from Holmes! He was checking to see if she was all right. Didn’t he have anything better to do while an earthquake was going on? The guy didn’t know when to quit.

  The last text, and the ones Ivy and Simon had received, were a blast from Thrillkill telling everyone to keep calm and take precautions. “Do not go to the chapel,” he warned. “It isn’t safe there.”

  He was right. The chapel was just about the oldest part of the school and was probably in ruins. Amanda wondered if the rest of the school was even still standing. What if everything had collapsed? What if someone had been killed? As she contemplated these disasters, she finally started to tremble herself.

  After several minutes during which no one had the courage to move, one of the older kids stuck his head in the dining room and inquired after them. He told them that a lot of stuff had spilled all over the floors and you could see cracks in the walls. This information was met with additional shrieking, with kids asking whether the school was going to fall down on top of them and demanding to go home to their parents.

  Amanda asked the boy whether the cracks were thick or thin. The kid said they were very skinny. Amanda tried to explain that they weren’t worrisome, but no one wanted to listen. It seemed that the quake had turned all the kids in the dining room into drama queens.

  Then there was a great swish and clatter as the kitchen door opened and a young blonde man ran out with some brooms, which he started handing out with instructions to clear the floors and be careful when walking. He was followed by a tall older man with a Yorkshire accent so thick Amanda couldn’t understand him. At first she thought they were two new janitors, but from the way they were talking, she discovered that they were the new cook and his assistant. She didn’t know why it had never occurred to her that the cook might be a man, but here he was, and now she knew why Amphora had kept looking toward the kitchen. The young guy was a hunk. Whether he was the cook or the assistant she didn’t know. Catching Simon’s eye, she gestured toward each of the men and made a stirring motion, which Simon answered by pointing to the younger guy. He was the cook.

  This was certainly something new, and if the earthquake hadn’t disrupted everything Amanda would have been eager to question Amphora. As it was, she and Simon told Ivy to stay put with Nigel and started pushing the brooms around the hall, piling up debris near the baseboards. A couple of the other kids joined them, and soon they were running into each other with such enthusiasm that they declared they had invented the game of bumper brooms. Amanda felt mildly guilty enjoying herself in the midst of a disaster, but after a bit of thought she decided there was no harm in making the most of the situation. The main downside was that the brooms coughed up a lot of dust and debris, which precipitated a round of furious sneezing.

  Soon the broom wielders were adding flourishes to their game. If you were able to evade an oncoming broom, you got five points. Dodge two at a time and you got extra credit: fifteen points. Steal the debris from someone else’s broom and make it your own, five points. Get your own debris back, five points. Hit a pedestrian, minus five points, unless it was a teacher, and then your entire score was zeroed out and you had to start over. Push your broom and debris all the way down the hall without losing anything, twenty points.

  A few minutes after the game had started, Simon was in the lead with sixty points. Amanda wasn’t doing as well as she’d have liked—ten points. She’d lost points when she hit a couple of kids who had come down from their rooms to see what was happening. Fortunately she’d missed Mrs. Scarper, the matron, who had followed them. Euphoria Mouse, a fourth-year, had managed to accrue forty points and was just about to score a big one when a powerful aftershock hit and the cleanup team ran for the closest doorways. Amanda was really worried about Ivy, so despite the shaking she ran back to the dining room to check on her. Because the floor was so slick, she slipped and fell, practically doing the splits on the gritty surface, but recovered quickly. When she got to the dining room, she could see that Simon had been hit with something—plaster and paint flakes, she thought. He looked like he’d been out in the snow. Then a painting fell off the wall and narrowly missed him because the dummy had left his shelter under the table and was actually standing up. Seeing that he was okay, Amanda kept running toward Ivy and Nigel, who had again taken refuge under a table. Simon followed her and she yelled for him to grab a doorway but he wouldn’t listen. The aftershock lasted so long that more paintings fell off the walls and broke. When the shaking stopped, the cook came out again and observed that one of the pictures he really liked had been destroyed. Then he made a reference to his motorcycle, which explained Amphora’s attraction even more. Amanda had to admit that he cut quite a dashing figure.

  When the shaking stopped, instead of texting as before, Holmes ran in and asked if everyone was all right. Where he had been was anyone’s guess, but he seemed fine. Hearing that yes, they were okay, he grabbed a broom. Working quickly, he set up trash receptacles and made short work of the mess, looking cool and collected the entire time. Amanda watched in amazement. She didn’t have the energy to resent him but she vowed that she’d indulge in a satisfying I-hate-Holmes session later.

  Everyone was still pretty frazzled, but after Holmes’s beautifying routine things had calmed down enough that people were starting to comment. Simon kept saying how cool the quake had felt and wow, he had no idea how powerful earthquakes could be. He wondered if P
rofessor Pole was going to talk about this in Fires and Explosions. Not that either a fire or an explosion had occurred, but the quake was close enough that Simon thought he should address the topic. Then he started asking Amanda questions about earthquakes because, after all, she was the expert. He peppered her with so many of them (Isn’t there a lot of wasted storage space when you can’t put glass things on high shelves?” “What happens to houses that were built before the building codes were upgraded?” “Does American health insurance cover earthquake injuries?” “Do a lot of trees fall down?”) that she soon became exasperated and decided to go off somewhere else.

  That somewhere else proved to be the Holmes House common room, where she searched for news on her phone. It seemed that the effects of the tremor had been felt all around the UK, and also in Belgium and France, of all things. The strength on the moment magnitude scale, which had replaced the old Richter scale in most places, was a whopping 5.5, the strongest officially recorded in the country since 1931, when a 6.1 quake off the coast at Dogger Bank in the North Sea had rattled the area. The epicenter was located in Aspatria this time, on the north side of the Ellen Valley in Cumberland, about thirty-five miles from Windermere.

  Five point five. Wow. That was huge, especially for the UK. There had to be major damage. What had happened to the school remained to be discovered. Amanda shuddered. She couldn’t bear the thought of anyone having been killed, or even injured. Even if that weren’t the case, with each aftershock things could change. It was terrifying.

  As she was contemplating a variety of horrific possibilities, the décor gremlins rushed into the room and began to clear things up. They had decorated the lounge in an alpine lodge style, and there were skis, poles, and antlers all over the place. The basement was a mess too, they said, and it was going to take them weeks if not months to assess the damage and clean it up. Furthermore, some of the reversible walls had been thrashed so they might not be able to keep up the decorating pace they’d set in the past few months. Amanda was relieved. She was tired of Sidebotham’s quizzes.