When we finally got home from shopping for a stuffed toucan and checking out jungle cat library books, my mom was too tired to even think about making dinner. We ordered a pizza and got to eat it watching Animal Planet. That was a big treat. We never, hardly ever got to eat dinner in front of the TV.
After we ate, Erin and I decided to get to work on a mural for our book report. The Group in Cahoots had decided we needed to make the classroom look jungle-y. We opened up the closet where we kept all our art supplies and got avalanched on by a whole bunch of shoe boxes.
“Ahhh!” we yelled.
“Everything okay?” my dad called.
“Yep!” I called back.
“What are you doing with all these shoe boxes?” asked Erin.
“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “We’re going to make something with them, but we don’t know what yet.”
We piled the boxes back up, but one of them was heavier than the rest and rattled. I opened it up, and there was my missing leopard-print flat!
“What in the world?” I said.
“It wasn’t camouflaged,” said Erin. “It was hiding.”
I only had socks on, so I slipped the flat on my foot, and we went back to the dining-room table with construction paper and colored pens.
“Speaking of what in the worlds,” I said, “I almost forgot about the note.”
“Me too,” said Erin.
I looked at the clock, and it was eight. “My mom will say it’s too late to call Emma. We’ll have to do it tomorrow.”
“Hopefully she wrote it and can explain what it’s all about,” said Erin.
“Otherwise,” I said, “it’s just another mystery, like the missing books.”
We started drawing the biggest trees we could on the paper. When we had a pretty good rain forest, Erin went to get her new toucan. She flew it into the dining room and pretended to land it on one of the trees.
“This doesn’t look very good,” she said.
“You’re right,” I said. “We need to make bigger trees.”
“Do you have bigger paper?” she asked.
“Let’s go look.” Then I had an AHA! “Wait, I have an idea. What do you think about this?”
Logan and Zachary came over after lunch on Saturday. Tess sat at the dining-room table with us and set Charlotte Brontosaurus right in the middle. Even though the curtains were closed up tight, we couldn’t be too careful.
“I had to go all the way to the downtown library yesterday, but I finally found something to check out on Pacific pocket mice.” Zachary pulled two magazines out of his backpack. “I think I’m going to study these guys when I grow up. That way when another kid tries to do a report on them, he’ll have an easier time.”
“I might want to be a scientist when I grow up too,” said Erin. “I’m not sure what I want to study, though. There’s tons of stuff written about these already.” She pulled the stuffed toucan we’d found at the mall out of a shopping bag.
“Here’s my stuffed gorilla.” Zachary plopped it in front of him on the table.
“Tess,” I said. “Would you mind getting my ocelot off my bottom bunk and Tiptoe?”
“Sure!” She slid off her chair and ran out of the room.
“We went to the library yesterday too,” I said. “And I got these books.” I tapped a stack on the table. Underneath the books was my Lots About Ocelots notebook. “Oh yeah, look at this.” I pulled the note out and passed it across the table.
Logan read it first. “This is mysterious.”
“I know,” I said. “I thought Erin wrote it, but she didn’t.”
“We called Emma in the other class and asked her,” said Erin. “But she didn’t write it either.”
“And we can’t think of any other E names,” I said.
Zachary read it. “You’re telling people,” he said. “Even though it says not to.”
“I think it’s okay to tell people outside of school,” I said. “You guys wouldn’t get anyone in trouble, right?”
“Right,” everyone said at once.
“I looked behind everything behind me in class and couldn’t find a thing,” I said. “And I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be looking for.”
“Too bad we don’t know a handwriting expert,” said Logan.
We all sat looking at the note for a few minutes, but that wasn’t getting us anywhere.
“Let’s get to work on our play,” I said. “I’ll worry about the note later.”
Tess ran into the room and handed me my ocelot and Zachary her stuffed mouse, Tiptoe.
“Let the Group in Cahoots meeting come to order,” said Logan.
“Erin and I had an idea about the tropical rain forest,” I said. “Instead of drawing a mural, what do you think about using people as trees?”
“Yeah,” said Erin. “We know some kids in school who are experts at being trees because of dance class.”
“Would they mind if Tiptoe crawled on them and maybe tried to dig under their feet?” asked Zachary.
“As long as you pick the right tree, I think it would be fine,” I said. “The people we’re talking about are Abby and Hannah and the Rosemarys.”
“Don’t try to crawl on one of the Rosemarys,” said Erin. “They would freak out.”
“Abby’s probably the best tree for you,” I said.
“But when she gets chopped down,” said Zachary, “Tiptoe will have to run somewhere else.”
“Hannah then,” I said.
“I’m not so sure about her,” said Logan. “Sometimes she’s a little Rosemary-ish.”
“How about Charlie?” I asked. “We could ask him to volunteer.”
“And he could wear a shirt with a pocket that Tiptoe could jump into,” said Erin.
“Are we sure we can trust him?” asked Logan.
“I think we can,” I said.
“Who should be the guy cutting down trees?” asked Zachary.
“Maybe Mr. Harrison,” I said.
We practiced all afternoon, and my mom and dad and Tess even helped. My mom and Tess were very good trees, and my dad was a vexylent woodcutter. At five o’ clock all the kids got picked up, and my mom and dad and Tess and I sat down at the dining-room table to talk about dinner.
“Chinese!” said Tess.
“We ordered in last night,” said my always-wanting-us-to-eat-healthy-food mom.
“Moo shu pork,” said my dad.
“Fine, fine.” My mom and Tess went into the kitchen to call and order.
“What’s this?” My dad picked up the note that was still in the middle of the table. “‘Don’t tell anyone! I’ll get in big trouble! Look behind E.’”
“That’s . . . ,” I started to say. But the way my dad read it made me hear the note differently. “Could you please read it again the way you just did?”
“‘Don’t tell anyone!’” read my dad. “‘I’ll get in big trouble! Look behind E.’”
“‘Look behind E,’” I said. “Not ‘Look behind, signed E.’”
My dad gave me a funny look. If he had been my mom, his eyebrow would have been way, way, way up.
“Thanks, Dad!” I jumped out of my chair. “I think I have it figured out a little bit! I have to go call Erin!”
“Let your mom order the Chinese food first,” called my dad. “I’m starving!”
