Talisa gave me a piece of paper. Across the top were these words:
SOMERS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL LIBRARY SCAVENGER HUNT
“Just a few rules before we get started,” Mr. Ramos said.
“Ugh, more rules,” Joshua said.
“Every game has rules, and this one is no exception,” Mr. Ramos went on. “There will be four people to a team. We have twenty kids, as Mrs. Finkel said, so that’s five perfectly equal teams of four. You should stay with your team the whole time. When you find something on the list, write it down in the space on your sheet, and then leave the item where you found it so other people can have a chance.”
“But if we move it, we have a better chance at winning,” Lucy said.
“That sounds like cheating,” Mrs. Anderson said sternly.
Lucy sat back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest. “I was just saying,” she said.
“There is no cheating,” Mrs. Finkel said. “Be respectful of people who are not on your team. A cheating team is a losing team.”
“That’s right,” Mr. Ramos said. “And the final rule is stay inside the library. Everything you need is here. Any questions?”
Joshua called out, “Can we play the Ouija board instead?”
“No,” Mrs. Finkel told him. “And no calling out. Let’s try being respectful of each other, okay, Joshua?”
No Calling Out is one of our weekday classroom Ground Rules. Joshua folded his arms across his chest. Another kid named Clark raised his hand and Mr. Ramos called on him. “Is there a prize?” he asked.
“Yes, there is,” Mr. Ramos said. And before anyone could ask what it was, he added, “And you will find out what it is when we declare the winner.”
“Aw, man,” Joshua said. “I wanted to know right now.”
Sometimes Joshua says things that the rest of us are thinking. But Mrs. Finkel gave him a look that said: Don’t call out again, or I’ll send you to the principal. I wondered if Mr. O’Neil was here on the weekend, too.
“Now you’ll have a few minutes to confer with your group before we get started,” Mr. Ramos said.
Talisa, Arielle, and Lucy bent their heads together. “Wait, I have a question,” I said.
“Yes, Stella?”
“What does that word mean that you just said?”
“What word?”
“Um,” I said. It’s hard to remember a word when you don’t know what it means. But I love learning new words. The more words I know, the more words I can put in my books. “Con, something.”
“Confer?”
“Yeah, that one.”
“It means to talk to each other and figure out your strategy.”
“Okay?” Mrs. Finkel asked.
I shook my head. “Now I have another question. What does strategy mean?”
“It means your plan.”
Of course I knew what plan meant, so I was all set. “Thanks,” I said.
I bent my head toward the other girls’ so we could confer quietly. “This is what I think,” Lucy said, her voice just a whisper. “We should each have jobs. Arielle’s job will be holding the list. Talisa’s job will be deciding what order to find things. Stella’s job will be writing things down.”
“What’s your job?” Talisa asked.
“I’ll tell us where to go,” she said.
Lucy can be a little bossy sometimes, but it was okay because I wanted the writing-down job anyway.
“All right, is everyone ready?” Mrs. Anderson asked.
All us kids chorused, “Yes!”
“On your marks, get set, go!”
“Okay,” Talisa told us. “I’ve decided we’re going to start with the first thing. A book under a hundred pages.”
“I know where the kindergarten books are,” I said. “They’re right—”
“Wait,” Lucy cut me off. “It’s my job to tell you where to go. And anyway, I remember from when we were in kindergarten. They’re right next to Mr. Ramos’s desk.”
“No, they moved them to the back,” I said. “Right where we’re sleeping. We should go there.”
“Okay, fine,” Lucy said. “But when we get there, I’ll write it down this time so it’s fair.”
We raced to the Young Readers corner. When we got there, we didn’t know who was supposed to pull the book off the shelf. I grabbed one that Penny had read last month—Days With Frog and Toad by Arnold Lobel—and I flipped to the last page. “It’s sixty-four pages,” I said.
“I’ll write it down,” Lucy said.
She took the pencil that Cooper had given to me, and wrote Days With Frog and Toad on the blank line.
Talisa looked back at the list. “Now we have to find a book that’s OVER two hundred pages.”
“Let’s go to the fantasy section,” Lucy said. “My sister says they are the longest books.”
This time Lucy took a book off the shelf. She picked the one that had the biggest binding, and when she flipped to the back we couldn’t believe how many pages it was—six hundred and fifty-two pages! I’d have to write at least five books to have that many!
I wrote the name of the book down, and then Talisa told us the next item on the list. “Find a book with purple writing on the cover.”
That was harder to find, because none of us could remember a book with purple writing on the cover, so we kept having to pull books off the shelf (and put them back) until we found one. But finally we did. I wrote it down, and we moved on to the next thing—a book with a unicorn on the cover. And the next thing—a book with a flower. And the one after that. And the one after that.
“What’s next?” I asked, after we’d found a book dedicated to someone with the same first name as someone in our class.
“Now we have to find a book that was published at least ten years ago,” Talisa said. “But how do we know when it was published?”
“Maybe if it looks really old we’ll know it’s at least ten,” Lucy said.
“But sometimes books look old even after just a little bit of time,” Arielle said softly. “Like if you bend the binding, or doggy-ear the pages.”
I never do that with my books. But it didn’t matter, because I knew how to check how old a book was. “You can tell what year a book was published because it says it, right inside,” I told them. I took a book off the shelf, and flipped a couple pages. “Look. This one was published two years ago.”
“Okay, we need an older one,” Talisa said.
“Obviously,” Lucy said. “Let’s go over there.” She pointed to the biographies section. “Biographies are usually written about old people. Maybe we’ll find an old book.”
“That’s a great idea,” Arielle said.
Lucy took a book off the shelf and flipped to the page with the date. “Eight years old,” she said. Which is the same age all of us are. “Too young.”
Talisa picked out a book, but it was only four years old. Then Arielle picked a book, but it was only seven years old.
Then I picked one. It was called My Missing Friend. “Hey look, this is weird,” I said. “The author’s name is Stella B.”
My friends all looked. “This is your book?” Talisa asked.
I shook my head. “None of my books are in the library—at least not yet,” I said. I flipped to the date page. “Besides, this one was written in nineteen thirty-three.”
“That’s definitely more than ten years old!” Lucy said. “Write it down!”
Arielle held up the clipboard and I wrote down the name of the book.
“What’s next?”
“Oooooh eeeeeee,” someone said. It was so soft, almost a whisper.
“What did you say?” I asked.
“I didn’t say anything,” Lucy said.
“Someone did,” I said.
“I didn’t hear anything,” Talisa said.
“Me either,” Arielle said.
“Ooooooh eeeeeee ooooooooooooooh!” came the voice again. Still whispery, but a little bit louder this time.
“I heard that,” Arielle said in a shaky voice.
“Me too,” Talisa said.
I started to get a prickly feeling all over.
“Who’s there?” Lucy demanded.
“It’s the library ghost,” the voice said. But this time instead of sounding whispery it sounded familiar.
“JOSHUA!” my friends and I cried out at the same time.
He came around from behind the biography shelf. “What are you guys doing?”
“None of your beeswax,” Lucy told him.
I slipped the old book back on the shelf and stood in front of it so he couldn’t see. “Why aren’t you with your group?” I asked.
“That’s none of your beeswax,” he said.
“Hey, kids,” Mrs. Anderson said. “How’s it going?”
“Fine,” Joshua said quickly.
“Actually,” Lucy said to her mom. “Joshua isn’t supposed to be in our group.”
“I lost my group,” Joshua said.
Mrs. Anderson held out a hand toward him. “Why don’t we go find them?” she said, and she led him away.
“Whew,” Lucy said. “Good thing my mom’s here.”
“Did you want your mom to chaperone?” I asked her.
“ ’Course I did. Why?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t want my mom to stay tonight—then it would feel too much like sleeping at home.”
“She’s not sleeping next to us,” Lucy said. “We might not even be able to see her.”
“You guys,” Talisa said. “We have one more thing to find.”
“What?” Arielle asked.
“We each have to pick a book to read tonight, and bring it to Mr. Ramos’s desk for checkout.”
I knew exactly what book I was going to read. The book by the other Stella B. I pulled it off the shelf. The other girls raced around looking for their own books. Since we had to stick together, we raced together.
“No running!” Mrs. Finkel called.
How did she expect us to win if we weren’t allowed to run?
When Talisa, Lucy, and Arielle had their books, we went to Mr. Ramos’s desk. He was talking to someone on his cell phone.
“Excuse me, are we first?” Lucy asked, but Mr. Ramos held up two fingers and mouthed the words “two seconds.”
I happen to know when a grown-up says it’ll be two seconds they mean much longer.
I turned my book over to read what it was about. Because we’d been rushing, I didn’t get to see.
Stella B and her best friend did everything together: They read all the same books, and sang all the same songs. They even cut clothes from the same cloth and made matching outfits.
But one day Stella’s best friend didn’t show up when she was supposed to.
A chill went up my spine and I shuddered. “What’s wrong?” Talisa asked.
“In the book the other Stella B’s friend went missing,” I said. “She was supposed to show up, and she didn’t. Just like . . .”
“Just like Evie,” Arielle quietly supplied.
I felt another chill, and shuddered again as I nodded.
“Oh, come on, you guys,” Lucy said. “You heard what Asher’s dad said. He said Evie is under the weather. That means sick.”
“But did you see the looks he and Mrs. Finkel gave each other when he said it?” I asked.
Lucy rolled her eyes.
“I wasn’t looking at him so I didn’t see,” Arielle admitted.
“I was,” Talisa said. “I saw. She shook her head.”
“That’s right, she did,” I said. I put My Missing Friend down on the desk. “I don’t want to read this. I’m going to get another book.”
I went right to the chapter book section. “Where’s your group, Stella?” Mrs. Finkel asked.
“Over there,” I said quickly. I was talking fast because I didn’t have much time.
“You’re supposed to be all together.”
I grabbed a book off the shelf—I’d read it before, so I knew it wasn’t too scary. “I just had to get this,” I said, and I raced back over to my friends.
“Where’s Mr. Ramos?” I asked.
“He went out into the hall,” Arielle said.
“So now what?” I asked.
“Mo-om!” Lucy called. “We’re all done and Mr. Ramos isn’t here. Now what?”
Mrs. Anderson told us to write our names on sticky notes and stick them on our books so Mr. Ramos could check them out when he came back. The next group finished, and the next. Everyone put sticky notes on their books. We left them in a pile on Mr. Ramos’s desk, and we handed our sheets up to Mrs. Finkel.
“Did we win?” Lucy asked.
“We’ll check your answers while you’re at dinner, and announce the winner when you return, but right now it’s time for dinner.”
