“Pat! Pat, are you there?”
Sharon Blue whispered into her two-way radio. She wanted another guard to meet her at the Bio Building.
“Quiet now, Speck,” said Lily. As her mother tiptoed down to the first floor, Lily peered up the steps that led to the third-floor auditorium.
What if there’s someone else up there? A second thief? Or a whole gang of them? Perhaps someone had hid from her mother in a shadowy corner, waiting for the right moment to escape. Lily patted her left ear, felt Speck still clinging there, then climbed the steps.
A poster at the top of the steps announced:
THE WORLD’S FIRST DEFENSE TEAM
A stone arch next to the poster led into a large airy auditorium. The floor and walls were cool gray marble. A maze of glass display cases were alive with squirming, slithering, swimming, buzzing, and crawling creatures.
Lily saw creatures she recognized and some she had only read about on the Internet. Each case was labeled with the animal’s name: Glass Snake … Bombardier Beetle … Clown Fish … Io Moth …
Lily’s sneakers crunched loudly on broken glass. Good move, Lily, she thought. If there is someone up here, they know I’m up here, too. The broken glass meant that something else was also wandering around the auditorium. One of the creatures must have escaped. Which one? She stood next to a damaged case that looked like a terrarium. A sunlamp attached to its wire-mesh lid beamed down into a leafy, empty case. Three hard-boiled eggs gleamed in the sunlamp’s blaze.
Lily saw a printed card on the floor among the shattered glass. She bent down and read:
SOLOMON ISLAND SKINK
(Also: Monkey-Tailed Skink)
Solomon Islands, Pacific Ocean
“See, Speck?” said Lily, straightening up. “One of your relatives. Just like I said. But those eggs look weird.” She peered closer at the hard-boiled eggs. “Is that sugar?” she said. All three eggs were sprinkled with bits of shiny glass.
“If there’s glass on the inside of the case, then someone smashed into it from the outside,” said Lily to Speck. “This is what Mom meant when she said the exhibit was broken into. But why would someone steal a skink?”
“Lily!” Her mother’s voice bounced up the stairwell.
Speck scampered to the safety of Lily’s ear. Lily snatched up the typewritten card and retreated down the steps. Before she reached the bottom, however, she heard a heavy bang. Then another. The front doors, she thought.
She found her mother outside, flying down the stone steps that led from the doors to the sidewalk below. “Stop, thief!” her mother yelled.
Lily saw her mother point at a familiar dark-haired boy. The Ice Boy on the ruby-red scooter. He wore a bright green T-shirt. The two colors must have reminded her mother of the blur she had seen inside the Bio Building.
“Come over here,” commanded her mother. The dark-haired boy stood still. A fierce, scared expression clouded his face. It looked to Lily as if the boy was trying to decide whether to run or stay. He had one foot on the deck of his scooter, and the other foot poised to kick off.
“What were you doing in the building?” demanded Sharon Blue.
“But, Mom!” said Lily.
Her mother silenced her with a wave of a hand. “Not now, Lily.”
“But it couldn’t have been him,” said Lily. “I saw him outside.”
Sharon Blue turned to face her daughter. “What are you talking about?”
“When I was waiting for you,” explained Lily. “I saw him”—she pointed at the boy. “He was in the alley behind the building. He and another boy were riding scooters.”
“What’s your name?” asked Sharon Blue.
“Oscar,” said the boy. “Oscar Santiago.”
“From Santiago Market?” asked Sharon. Oscar nodded.
“What were you doing in the alley?”
“Taking a shortcut,” said Oscar. “I was delivering ice to Riverside Dorm.”
“I saw him, Mom,” said Lily. “He was outside when I heard the glass breaking upstairs.”
Sharon’s voice softened as she said to Oscar, “Good thing you have a witness, young man. I apologize.”
“Two witnesses,” grinned Lily. She patted her left ear.
Oscar caught a glimpse of something small and green moving in the girl’s hair.
Sharon Blue’s radio suddenly squawked. Sharon listened carefully to the report from one of her fellow security guards. “It’s over by the bridge,” she said to Lily.
Lily and Oscar, out of curiosity, both followed Sharon toward the River Bridge. Halfway to the bridge, a blond boy on a gleaming silver Hurricane scooter shimmered past them on the sidewalk. Oscar saw the boy wink.
“That was the other scooter,” said Lily.
“I’ve seen that boy before,” said her mother. “I think his father is a professor.”
Lily turned to Oscar, as he slowly propelled his scooter alongside her. “That reminds me,” she said. “How did you—?”
“Not crash?” asked Oscar. “Well, you have to know what you’re doing.”
“I have a Double-Z Stingray,” said Lily. “I know how to ride. And I was sure you were going to crash into that other kid.”
“Luck,” said Oscar.
“Skill,” said Lily, smiling. Then she added, “Actually, I closed my eyes.”
Oscar chuckled. “I did, too.”
Speck, still clinging to Lily’s ear, pointed his eye-cones at Oscar’s scooter. The chameleon stared at the scuff marks, the wobbly front wheel, and the cut on Oscar’s knee.
They also passed one of the teachers from the Biology Building. Lily recognized her as Miss Cruz.
“I already talked with your partner back there,” said Miss Cruz wearily to Lily’s mother. She pointed toward the Mixaloopi River Bridge.
“You saw the thief?” said Sharon Blue.
“Just a glimpse,” Miss Cruz said.
“When were you in the building?” asked Sharon.
Miss Cruz was sweating and breathing hard. “I’m tired, I think I need to sit down. Could you ask me these questions later?”
They watched the teacher walk off toward the Bio Building.
At the River Bridge, Lily, her mother, and Oscar met the skinny security guard that had talked with Max Martin. He’s as skinny as a skink, thought Lily. The guard was the Pat that Sharon Blue had called on her radio from the Biology Building. He filled her in on the details of the vanishing bicycle. He read her the statements made by Max, the two students on the bridge, and the girl who had been sitting and reading on the bench. He also told her what the guards on the other end of the bridge had not seen.
Lily spied the two students, the pink-haired boy and the black-haired girl, exiting the walkway. They were walking toward the bus stop below the bridge.
“Where’s that other girl you interviewed?” asked Sharon Blue.
The skinny, pale guard blinked at the empty bench. “She’s gone,” he said.
“And you didn’t get her name?” asked Sharon.
Pat flipped nervously through the pages of his notebook.
“She’s vanished like the missing bike,” said Oscar to Lily.
“Or she blended in with the background,” Lily said. “Like a chameleon.”