For a long time I really wanted to live in Paris so I could go to a sidewalk café and eat lunch on the banks of the Rhine. Then my dad told me the Rhine was in Germany. But it doesn’t really matter because I can’t speak French anyway, so this whole fantasy really doesn’t make much sense. I just like the idea of eating croissants outside in the sunshine and ordering lunch from a waiter with a little mustache and a lopsided beret.
Eating in the cafeteria just isn’t the same. I mean, the lunch monitor lady does have a little mustache, but the similarities stop there. Sad but true.
I was already sitting at our usual table when my best friend, Leah Livingston, glided over to sit beside me. Leah’s been my best friend since fourth grade, and in all those years she’s never really changed. She’s one of those people who likes to do absolutely everything by the rules all the time. And she expects everyone else to be just as perfect as she is; otherwise she throws whiny little fits. It gets annoying sometimes, but I guess it’s not her fault. Her mom’s real overprotective. And Leah’s pretty, so people put up with her.
As soon as Leah put her tray down on the table, I set the shoe down next to it.
Leah cocked an eyebrow. “Jendra,” she said with a grin, trying to be funny, “are you dieting again?”
“I found this in the bathroom,” I told her bluntly.
“You’re amazing,” said our mutual friend Matthew Greyson, plunking down in the seat on my other side. “I can never find shoes I like!” Matt and Leah and I always hang around together, but we’re just friends. People never believe that, but that’s too bad.
“Why did you bring that thing to the table?” Leah demanded. The shoe was pretty grungy-looking. I’ll give her that. She gave it the evil eye and tried to protect her pizza from it by moving it to the far side of her tray.
“Because I found it in the toilet,” I said. It seemed pretty obvious to me.
Leah didn’t say anything. She just gave me a look.
“What?” I demanded. “What’s wrong with that?”
Matt said with a wicked smile, “I’m surprised you didn’t find a whole outfit. You were in the bathroom for like twenty-five minutes.” He swept his auburn hair back out of his eyes and took out a deck of Magic cards to entertain himself while he waited for the line to go down. “But, really, though, what’s up with the shoe?”
I smiled slowly and explained, “I’ve been trying to figure out whose it is.”
Suddenly Matt surprised me by yelling, “Mine!” He grabbed the shoe and shoved it on his foot. “There,” he said triumphantly. “It fits. Now can we get married and live happily ever after?”
“Don’t wear that shoe!” Leah exclaimed in horror, wrinkling her nose in disgust. Matt took it off. “You don’t know where it’s been.”
“Yes, I do,” Matt contradicted, wide-eyed. “Jendra says it’s been in the toilet.”
Leah shuddered. She looked really grossed out. Almost too grossed out to eat. When Leah starts feeling disgusted, she literally cannot eat. As it is, she only eats enough to keep a goldfish alive! At my last birthday party—and I swear to you this is true—Leah whined about eating ice cream. She said it would make her fat. So, instead, she just ate a big bowl of ice.
Leah stared at the shoe. “Don’t you wonder how it got in the toilet?” she demanded.
“It wasn’t like it was spawned there or something,” I said, rolling my eyes. “It fell off some guy’s foot.”
Leah cocked an eyebrow again. She does that a lot. “Some guy who just happened to be hanging out in the girls’ bathroom?”
“No,” I said, rolling my eyes.
Hearing that, Leah guessed darkly, “The boys’ bathroom?” as if I had sunk to some new low.
“No,” I said again. “I was in the girls’ bathroom. And he wasn’t just hanging out in there. Actually, he was hanging right above my head. Somebody was pulling his body up through a hole in the ceiling.”
Leah and Matt did not look impressed.
“Don’t you think that’s kind of weird?” I asked desperately.
“I think you’re kind of weird,” Matt offered, “but we already knew that.”
“I think somebody must be up to something sinister,” I declared. “Maybe somebody murdered this man, and then dragged him up into the ceiling to hide the body.”
“I’ll bet that’s it,” Leah said sarcastically, picking the pepperoni off her pizza. She always gets the pepperoni pizza, and then she always picks the pepperoni off. I don’t know why she does that! (Maybe because of that rumor somebody spread that the plain cheese pizza is made with goat’s milk. Leah will believe anything—unless she hears it from me, of course.)
“You guys don’t believe me, do you?” I asked suspiciously. I don’t know why they never believe me!
Well, actually, I do know why. It’s because I make up stuff all the time and try to convince them it’s true. Like, one time I told them that our PE substitute was an Iraqi spy, and another time I told them I had a twin sister named Claudette, who for some reason lived in France (probably because she liked the croissants there so much). It’s not that I want to tell lies, but, honestly, our life is so boring! I think it would be a crime not to spice it up a little when I can! Besides, sometimes I think that if I make enough people believe something is true, it will become true.
Okay! Okay! So I’m a pathological liar! So kill me!
Leah sighed and batted her eyelashes. With Leah, that’s like a signal. It usually means she’s about to have a fit. “I think Mr. Talbert wears loafers like that,” she offered blandly. I could tell she was just humoring me. “But I’m pretty positive he’s still alive, Jen. I’m sure somebody would have noticed by now if the principal had been murdered and hidden away in a girls’ bathroom ceiling.”
“Well, look what I found stuck to the bottom of the shoe,” I said. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the piece of pompon strand. “I think there’s only one possible explanation here.”
“Oh, my gosh!” Matt exclaimed suddenly. He let his green eyes get really, really big before he gasped, “Mr. Talbert is really a cheerleader! No wonder he decided to make pep rallies mandatory.”
I groaned at him and snatched back the shoe. “Oh, will you shut up! I’m really serious!”
“You don’t think a cheerleader killed him, do you, Jendra?” Leah asked flatly. She was giving me one of her Oh-you’re-being-so-immature-and-just-for-that-I’m-about-to-throw-a-whiny-fit looks.
I shrugged. “Maybe a cheerleader witnessed his . . . abduction.”
That shut her up pretty fast. Just hearing the word abduction made her tremble.
“Look, Jendra,” Matt told me, “if you’re wondering about the cheerleaders, why don’t you just talk to Tina? I’m sure she’ll be happy to answer any of your weird questions, as long as you don’t take up more than five minutes of her busy schedule.”
Tina Sheperd is this gorgeous, popular, smart eighth-grade cheerleader. She’s the one who organizes all the cheerleading functions and makes up all the cheers. And, in her spare time, she’s also Matt’s cousin.
Tina always makes a really big deal about being nice and talking to everybody—the really, really popular people and the rest of us poor slobs, too. But, actually, it’s kind of tricky to spend any kind of quality time with her unless you’re somebody she considers important . . . or unless you’re Matt and can blackmail her by threatening to tell her parents about the time she skipped computer science and hung out in the parking lot behind the school . . . or unless you’re me, and you happen to annoy Matt until he uses his influence to force Tina to talk to you.
Actually, I had only talked to Tina once before. I was at Matt’s house, sprawled out across the couch, playing video games while Matt was upstairs in the shower. And then Tina walked in and said, “Hey, Jendra.”
“Hi, Tina,” I replied shakily.
She smiled. “You’re surprised I know your name, huh?” She had perfect teeth. White, straight, clean. Everything mine aren’t.
“Yeah, kind of,” I admitted.
Tina laughed warmly and said, “I know all of Mattie’s friends.” Then, somehow, I ended up lending her ten dollars, and she left to go to the movies with some tennis player named Jonathan. To date, that had been my only experience with Tina Sheperd.
But when Matt suggested it, I suddenly decided that asking Tina about the shoe was an excellent idea. I needed to talk to a cheerleader, after all. And if she was anything, Tina was a cheerleader. In fact, she was the cheerleader.
So, while Leah finished eating her picked-apart pizza, Matt led me over to the table by the window where Tina and her friends always eat lunch.
Tina looked up almost right away and saw us standing behind her. “Hi, Mattie,” she said with a smile that looked sincere enough. “Hi, Jendra. Do you guys know Jamey, LaKaisha, Martin, Lisa, Andrew, Kevin, Tony, Ryan, and Keith?”
“Of course not,” Matt said bluntly. “I only know you because your mom is my father’s sister. But Jendra needs to ask you a question.”
Tina raised her eyebrows, interested. “Yeah?” she said, smiling at me. She nodded at the girl sitting next to her, who immediately grabbed an empty chair from another table and slid it over next to Tina. Patting the chair, Tina told me, “Sit down. What’s up?”
“Right now,” I replied, “I really don’t know what’s up. But a few minutes ago, when I was in the bathroom, some guys’ legs were dangling up above my head.” I chose that moment to place the loafer on the table. Then I finished the story.
Tina took the piece of pompon from me and stared at it intently. “Bizarre!” she said, like she really meant it. At least somebody was interested in what I had to say! Slipping the piece of pompon into her pocket and taking the shoe, she said, “Well, I don’t know, Jendra. I wish I had something to say. That really is strange!” She took a sip of her imported mineral water before saying, “Thanks for brightening up our lunch, anyway.” She started laughing, and the rest of the table quickly joined in. “Yeah, this will give us something to talk about for a while.”
I smiled weakly. Matt was already standing, so I slowly rose to join him.
“Oh, and Jendra,” Tina added softly, her gray eyes sparkling.
“Yeah?”
“As soon as I hear anything, I promise you’ll be the first to know.”
I nodded. “Thanks,” I told her. The bell rang and I hurried off to history.