Chapter 4

There was a lot of grumbling that morning. Most of it from stomachs. Turns out Mrs. Peterson is a super chef and many kids were looking forward to her morning snacks. She had nothing to offer but a few treats left over from summer vacation.

We sat in a circle on the carpet in room 15, quietly munching stale granola bars. Mr. Harpel took attendance. It didn’t take long. There were only four kids in the whole class. And one person was missing.

“Hajrah?” Mr. Harpel looked up from the red attendance folder.

Hajrah jumped to her feet and saluted. “Sir, yes, sir!” She bounced back on her butt.

“Thank you, Hajrah,” Mr. Harpel said. “Jordan?”

Jordan didn’t answer. He picked at a hole in the leg of his jeans and mumbled something I couldn’t understand. He was in fourth grade. I’d known him less than fifteen minutes, and already I’d seen him pick something off his shirt and eat it. I wasn’t sure if he did that all the time or was just doing it because Mrs. Peterson’s morning snacks had been stolen. Either way, I didn’t sit beside him.

“Myron? Are you here?” Mr. Harpel said.

I didn’t answer. Mr. Harpel knew I was there. I had just investigated a crime scene in the kitchen with him. I was sitting right in front of him. Why did he want to know if I was here? He could see me, couldn’t he? Maybe he’d suddenly lost his vision?

Mr. Harpel smiled. “Sorry, Myron. Of course you’re here. It’s just that some people get upset if they don’t get a chance to say ‘Here!’ when I call their names.”

“I am not one of those people,” I said.

“Thank you for letting me know.” Mr. Harpel closed the attendance folder.

“Wait!” Hajrah jumped to her feet. “You forgot Glitch!”

“Do you mean Danielle?” Mr. Harpel said.

“Yeah, but she calls herself Glitch,” Jordan mumbled.

“Ah, yes! Glitch.” Mr. Harpel wrote something in the attendance folder. “It’s all right. I saw Danielle—er, Glitch—already. She’ll be here soon.” He waved the attendance folder. “Okay, who wants to take the attendance to the office?”

“Myron and me!” Hajrah shouted. She snatched the attendance folder out of Mr. Harpel’s hands and dashed to the door. “Let’s go, Myron!”

I stayed in my spot in the circle.

“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” Mr. Harpel said.

Hajrah bounced at the door. “I think you should come with me. You never know what clues we’ll turn up.”

I’m not good at getting hints, but it was hard to miss this one. Besides, she had a point. I was on a case. I had a snack thief to catch. I wouldn’t do it sitting in the classroom.

I grabbed my notebook from my desk and followed her out the door. Detectives carry notebooks to keep track of clues and suspects.

The hallways outside the class were quiet. All the kids were in their rooms getting to know each other and finding out what they’d be learning this year. I was more interested in learning about our Snack Snatcher.

Hajrah didn’t walk down the corridor—she zipped. She had one speed: fast. She did not zip in a straight line. She carved high-speed curves down the hallway, like a downhill skier. And she talked the whole way.

“You know why I’m in room 15, Myron?” she said as she carved another curve in front of me. “I bounce around too much. That’s what my mom says. And my second-grade teacher last year. Bounce, bounce, bounce.”

I plotted a straight line down the middle of the hallway. Kids like to hang out and chat on the edges of hallways, so walking in the middle gives you the best chance of not crashing into them. Hajrah and I had the hall to ourselves. But you can never tell. If there was a fire drill, this place would be full of kids in seconds.

“What about you?” Hajrah zoomed back. She had her arms out wide and made a noise like an airplane. She circled around me.

“Come on, Myron! If we’re going to be detective partners, we have to know each other. Why are you in room 15?”

Hajrah made another airplane circle and stopped in front of me. She smiled with her arms still open wide, just like Sofia when she wakes up from a long nap. Hajrah was not my sister, but she seemed nice.

“I’m autistic,” I said. “My brain works differently.”

Hajrah wiggled her fingers. Her smile grew bigger. “That will make you a really good detective!”

“My mom says that, too.” I matched Hajrah’s smile with my own.

Hajrah shrugged and zoomed away down the hallway, still buzzing like an airplane.

We turned a corner and saw the main office right in front of us.

Principal Rainer stood outside the office. She was talking to a tall girl with short curly hair. The girl wore a black jacket, orange jeans, and a backpack covered tiny metal buttons. Hajrah dove behind the trophy case. She pulled me in beside her.

“That’s Danielle!” she whispered.

I leaned around the trophy case to get a better look. The buttons on her backpack had pictures of flying robots and spaceships.

“Everyone calls her Glitch because she’s really good with computers,” Hajrah said.

I did not understand this. A glitch is when something does not work. When my dad cannot get our computer to work, he says there is a “glitch” and tells me to go outside and play, even if I don’t want to.

I wondered if Danielle liked being called Glitch. I was going to ask, but Hajrah told me to be quiet. We could hear Principal Rainer speaking.

“I’m going to ask you one more time, Danielle. I expect the truth,” Principal Rainer said. “Did you take the snacks from the kitchen?”

“No!” Glitch said. “I just got here.”

Hajrah whispered, “Last year, Glitch was caught taking stuff from people’s backpacks.”

“Principal Rainer said she had an idea who was behind the thefts,” I said.

I flipped open my notebook and wrote down Danielle’s name and her nickname.

Principal Rainer and Glitch were done talking. Glitch walked toward us. Her face was scrunched up as if she’d just eaten a lemon.

Hajrah held up the attendance folder so it blocked our faces. “Don’t let her see us!”

I peered over the attendance folder. Glitch walked right by us and turned the corner. She didn’t even look in our direction.

“That was close!” Hajrah said. “She looked mad enough to shoot lasers from her eyes. You don’t want to be near Glitch when she gets mad. Trust me.”

I wrote the word “angry” beside Glitch’s name in my notebook. Then I put a question mark beside that. Why was she so mad? Did she take the snacks from the kitchen? I had a lot of questions. But now I had something else, too.

I had my first suspect.