“Looks like a balloon, doesn’t it, Speck?”
Lily and Speck stared up at the full yellow moon hanging over the Gulf. They were both sitting on their front porch. Sharon Blue was busy in the kitchen, making fudge and baking cookies for the upcoming holidays. Lily stared down at a blank pad of paper. She was trying to make sense of the mysterious vanishing bicycle. Speck squatted on the pad, blinking importantly. Lily chewed the cap of her pen. The smell of the fudge made her hungry.
Earlier that night she had spent an hour searching the Internet for information on Solomon Island skinks. She discovered the skinks were extremely picky eaters. They prefered hibiscus blossoms, pothos plants, and hard-boiled eggs. But they wouldn’t eat a hibiscus two days in a row. Solomon Islanders liked variety in their meals.
Maybe a giant chameleon ate the thief and the bike and is living on the roof of the River Bridge walkway. Lily shook her head. That’s just the fudge getting to me.
Lily thought back to everything she had heard and seen after the mysterious bike zoomed down the stairs inside the Biology Building. She also remembered what the guard Pat had told her mother while they stood on the River Bridge. Lily wrote a list of names.
Who They Were |
What They Saw |
Lily (me) |
Nothing |
Mom |
A green-and-red blur |
Miss Cruz |
Thinks it was a bike |
Oscar, the Ice Boy |
A flash of green and red by the Bio Bldg |
The blond kid with the silver scooter |
Saw the bike go into the east end of the River Bridge walkway, then turned around |
Other security guard (Mom says his name is Pat) |
|
Girl on bench |
Saw bike rush past her |
Pink-haired boy |
Saw bike enter walkway from the east and then rush past him (going west) |
|
Says he heard squealing down on street below |
Dark-haired girl |
Saw same thing as her boyfriend |
|
Didn’t hear anything unusual |
Guards on west bank |
Nothing |
“Sorry, Speck,” said Lily. “I guess I should put your name down, too.” She added:
Speck (alias Spectrum) |
Nothing, or else he’s not talking |
The chameleon had turned a shade of canary green, trying hard to match the yellow of Lily’s notepad. He goggled his eyes at the strange marks on the paper, rotated them twice, then blinked his approval.
“That’s at least ten or eleven humans who were witnesses,” said Lily. “And one reptile. Only four people really saw the bike—the students on the bridge and that kid on the Hurricane. But no one got a description of the thief. I suppose it doesn’t matter if the rider of the bike was a girl or a guy. The most important thing is how the bike disappeared.”
Earlier in the evening, Lily and her mother had watched the news on TV. News of the theft and the strange bicycle was the top story on all the channels. But they didn’t mention that the bike vanished, Lily thought. Why not? Didn’t want to scare people from using the bridge? The University was offering a reward of five hundred dollars for information about the missing skink and gradebook. “That could buy a new scooter,” Lily had said to Speck. “Two scooters.”
To Lily, the money was not as important as her mother’s job. If she could solve the mystery and give her mom the credit, Sharon Blue would become a hero. Lily’s mother could get promoted to supervisor. Her mother had been talking about the new job opening for weeks. She’d be good as a supervisor. She likes giving orders.
Lily gazed down at the tiny reptile that slowly crawled across her notepad. Then she looked up at the yellow moon.
Paper, moon, and Speck (partly) were all the same color. Yellow.
Maybe the weird bike did some sort of chameleon trick after all, thought Lily.
She sniffed the air. Her mother was still making fudge. Lily deposited Speck in the pocket of her sweatshirt, then she quietly tiptoed down the porch’s sidesteps and retrieved her scooter from the side of the house. I’ll only be gone a few minutes. Mom won’t even notice.
The River Bridge gleamed white as a bone in the moonlight. Lily raced her gold-and-black Stingray in the cool, open air on the bridge’s upper level, between the covered walkway and the railing. Far below glistened the surface of the wide Mixaloopi. A second moon hung reflected in the water. She braked the Stingray in the middle of the bridge. Only the hum of traffic on the lower level broke the silence. The campus was deserted.
“Keep your eyes open, Speck,” she said. “Look for a good hiding place.”
The breeze blew her hair in front of her eyes as she slowly strolled along the bridge. Nothing looked like a hiding place large enough for a bike. Inside the covered walkway low concrete benches lay every twenty feet. Outside, on the open bridge, old-fashioned lampposts lit Lily’s path.
Lily walked eastward, in the direction of the Bio Building.
Something light touched her shoulder. “Get back up on my ear, Speck,” she said. “Why can’t you stay put—”
Another tap on her shoulder. A person’s hand.
“Gosh, you scared me!” said Lily.
The kid on the Hurricane 5000 stood right behind her. His blond hair was hidden under a black baseball cap turned backward on his head.
“What are you doing out here?” he asked.
Lily gazed at him and folded her arms. “Same thing you are, I’ll bet,” she said. “Looking for clues.”
“Clues?”
“Yeah, for the bike that disappeared.”
“Maybe I am,” admitted Max.
“You saw it, didn’t you?” said Lily. “You saw the whole thing.”
Max nodded. “But I didn’t see how it disappeared.”
“Think it was a trapdoor?” asked Lily.
“Why? Because that pink-haired guy heard squealing tires down on the street? Nah, I haven’t found anything that looks like an escape hatch.”
Lily agreed. The steel and concrete bridge was rock-solid.
“Think the bike bungee-jumped over the side of the bridge?” said Max.
“The guards would have seen it,” said Lily. Unless it pulled a viceroy trick, and looked like something else, she thought.
Lily stared at the walkway’s roof. “Think it could be up there” she asked.
“I haven’t checked that out yet,” said Max. “Hey, what’s that?” He pointed to Lily’s handlebars.
Lily laughed. “That’s just Speck,” she said. “Short for Spectrum. He changes colors.”
“Cool name.” Max gently stroked the apple-green reptile’s tail, as it clung to the Stingray’s handlebars. “I’ve never seen a chameleon up close before,” he said.
“I like the clock on your handlebars,” said Lily. “That’s a Hurricane 5000, right?”
“Yup. Hey, that gives me an idea. Let’s time how long it takes to cross the bridge.”
“Good idea. Let’s time it for riding and for walking.”
A few minutes later, Lily and Max caught their breaths at the eastern edge of the River Bridge. They sat on the same cement bench where the young woman reading the paperback had sat earlier in the day. It had taken them two and one-half minutes to cross the bridge by walking. Kicking their scooters as fast as they could, they covered the same distance in forty seconds.
“Your Stingray’s pretty fast,” said Max, admiringly.
“It’s the driver that makes it fast,” said Lily. “Real athletes ride scooters.”
Max couldn’t wait to tell Dylan the newest item he added to his list:
# 4. Scooter riders are better athletes—male and female.
“The thief was probably racing as fast as we were,” said Lily. “He must have been on the bridge for about thirty seconds before he—or she—turned invisible.”
“My dad says it’s scientifically impossible for a bike to disappear,” he said.
“Speck can disappear,” said Lily. She felt the chameleon crawling around in her sweatshirt pocket. He had scurried inside during the speed timings.
“That’s different,” said Max. “Speck’s not invisible. He blends in.”
“Maybe that’s what the bike did,” suggested Lily. “Blended in with the surroundings.”
“Yeah, but how?” asked Max. “There’s nothing on the bridge but steel and cement and some glass windows and a few benches.”
“It could disguise itself as one part of the bridge,” said Lily.
“Or could a bike go so fast that no one would see it?” wondered Max.
“Could it fly?” Lily looked up at the moon. It was whiter than before and hung in the western half of the sky. “There must be something we’re forgetting.”
“Who’s that?” whispered Max.
Lily tilted her head. “Students? No, wait! That one voice, the guy’s voice, it sounds familiar.”
Max nodded. “I recognize it, too.”
Two shadows were walking hand in hand inside the walkway. Their voices echoed hollowly on the lonely bridge. “They’re coming this way,” squeaked Lily.
She and Max pushed their scooters down the ramp that led from the walkway to the sidewalk below. A row of azalea bushes bordered the sidewalk. The two riders pushed their scooters past the thick clumps and crouched down to spy.
“Now we’re the chameleons,” said Max.
Two pairs of shoes scraped on the cement as the shadows descended the ramp. Max could smell sweet perfume.
“Your scooter is on my foot!” said Lily.
“No, it’s not,” said Max. “It’s sitting over here, on my other side.”
“Then how …?” Lily turned and saw a third scooter hidden among the azaleas. A ruby red scooter.
Oscar put his finger to his lips. “Shhh! They’re right out there,” he whispered.
The shadows had stopped in front of the bushes and the three spies.
I knew it! thought Max. That’s the skinny guard from this afternoon.
Lily squinted through the branches. That’s Pat! But who’s the girl?
“That’s the girl from the bridge,” Max whispered to the others. “She was reading a book on the bench up there when the bike rushed into the walkway.”
“Well, she’s not reading now,” said Lily, squirming.
“I hope they’re not going to kiss,” said Oscar. The three spies turned to look at each other and silently mouthed: “Eewwww!”