The Detention Club Page 14

  She sighed.

  “That’s not how it works, unfortunately,” she said. “Have you ever heard the word ‘ownership’? That’s what you’re doing by going to detention—you’re taking responsibility for your actions.”

  “Have you ever heard of the word ‘parole’?” I replied. “Or the phrase, ‘Time off for good behavior’?”

  “You’re not in prison,” she said. “I’m sorry, Peter, there’s nothing I can do about your detention situation.”

  I started heading back out.

  “Peter,” she said, and I stopped. “You can still participate in the inventors’ fair if you can work on a prototype in your spare time. That’s the best I can do.”

  On the way home I couldn’t help myself and stopped by Drew’s house. I figured even though we’d agreed to separate, maybe he’d beg me to take him back. Maybe he’d be up for joining the club in detention and things would be perfect. He was sitting in the middle of the backyard, counting clovers.

  “How many did you collect?” I asked.

  “Not many.”

  “But there are tons of clovers all around you. It would take forever.”

  “I’m not exactly in a rush,” he said, not looking at me.

  I waited ten seconds for him to break down in tears and beg me to take him back, but he just kept staring at the grass.

  “Speaking of collecting, I kinda feel like counting the mica,” I said.

  He looked at me with a puzzled expression on his face.

  “Why? You hate the mica.”

  “I don’t know, I just feel like it,” I said, and started climbing up the ladder to Corbett Canyon. At the top of the ladder I looked down at Drew—he was staring at his clovers. This made me a little mad, I was only pretending to be interested in the mica to make him happy, and he didn’t even care. I went inside and opened up the safe—and gasped.

  The bag was gone!

  “Where’s the mica?” I shouted. He raced up the ladder.

  “It should be right there,” he said.

  I sat down in the middle of the tree house.

  “The thief stole our mica collection,” I said.

  “That’s impossible, there’s a lock on the safe,” Drew replied.

  “I can’t believe this happened,” I said, and kicked at the wall.

  “You don’t care,” Drew said. “You’re the one who wanted to chuck the mica.”

  “I do care!” I shouted. “Now I’m going to really have to catch the thief. If you joined my detention club, you could help us solve the mystery of the thief.”

  “Oh, so you’re in a club now?” he said, and climbed back down the ladder without looking at me.

  “And to think I even felt sorry for you,” I called out after him, but he was gone.

  A minute later he climbed back into the tree house and sat next to me.

  “I thought you were going somewhere,” I said.

  “Well, I live here,” he said.

  “Oh—right.”

  We didn’t say anything. It started feeling really awkward sitting in the tiny tree house together and not talking like that, so eventually I left.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I WAS WORRIED THAT EVERYONE IN detention had forgotten that I was kind of leading the thief investigation, but when I showed up the next afternoon they were all waiting for me. “So what do we do now?” Hugh asked.

  “Today we’re going to profile the thief,” I said.

  “You mean, like on TV?” Trent asked.

  “Exactly. All those shows are about first figuring out what kind of person the criminal is—that’s what we have to do. So here’s a question: Who would want to steal stuff from us?”

  “Here’s what a thief would be like,” Sally said, counting off her fingers on one hand. “He’s probably a loner. He doesn’t hang out with anyone on weekends or after school. He does bad in classes. He’s not athletic. Nobody likes him.”

  I reddened—basically she was describing me to a T.

  “How do we even know it’s a guy?” Trent asked.

  “A girl would never steal your basketball,” Sally scoffed.

  “Why would a guy want to steal a stupid horseshoe key chain?”

  “It’s not stupid!”

  “Stop fighting,” I said. “It could be a boy or girl. And yeah, that’s the obvious choice, that it’s a loner, but it could just as easily be someone popular. Maybe it’s a popular person jealous of an even more popular person.”

  Donnie was holding his temples, as if his gigantic brain was about to melt from information overload. “So you’re saying it could be a loner, but it could also be a popular person. It could be a boy, but it could also be a girl. It could be an athlete, or it could be a worm. That’s not narrowing the profile down at all. We’re not getting anywhere!”

  “You’re being impatient, we’ve only just started profiling the thief. Remember, it usually takes an entire TV episode to do this,” I said.

  “Forget the profiling thing,” Hugh said, slamming his fist on the desk. “Donnie’s right, what we need is action.”

  “Now that’s what I’m talking about,” Trent said, punching Hugh in the shoulder.

  Mr. Tinsley shook his head at Trent, but didn’t take off his headphones. A second later he went back to grading papers. I turned to Hugh.

  “We just have to keep coming up with a profile of the thief and—”

  “Give it a rest, Peter. We need to do this the American way, with action. What does the U.S. do when we have a problem? We kick butt and take names later!” Hugh said, and everyone nodded.

  “U.S.A.,” Hank started chanting, and everyone joined him, and within seconds it sounded like we were at the Olympics.

  “U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S—”

  “Knock it off!” Mr. Tinsley hollered.

  “Tomorrow,” Hugh whispered to us, “we start taking the fight to the thief.”

  This didn’t sound good.

  Taking the fight to the thief basically meant shaking down anyone that made the mistake of crossing paths with the Sweet brothers between classes. Hugh and Hank started conducting random locker searches on Wednesday by sneaking up on kids at their lockers and between periods forced random students to empty their pockets.

  “Why’d you pat him down?” I asked, after Hank let a sixth grader run off.

  “He looked away from me when I made eye contact with him,” he said.

  “Everyone looks away from you when you make eye contact with them,” I pointed out. He shrugged. “Plus, you’re twice his size.”

  “The thief didn’t steal my sweatshirt, he stole my hat—look closely at him—see? Our heads are similarly sized,” Hank said. “He probably wears my hat in bed every night. I can just see it. Let’s go grab him again.”

  “You’re getting out of control,” I said, but he wouldn’t listen.

  I had to admit, though, patting down random kids seemed to make everyone feel better about things. It wasn’t getting us closer to finding the thief, but at least we were doing something hands-on about it. At the end of the day Trent came up behind me.

  “Donnie said he has a really good idea for how to catch the thief,” he said.

  My stomach fell. Being in charge of the thief investigation was my job!

  “Hurry up,” Hugh shouted when me and Trent got to detention. Everyone else was there already, huddled around Donnie’s desk.

  “So what’s your great idea?” I asked him, unable to hide my jealousy, but luckily nobody noticed. Donnie took out his copy of last year’s Hemenway Elementary face book and a copy of last year’s Fenwick Elementary face book (which he’d borrowed from Carson) from his schoolbag and laid them out on his desk. He motioned to Hugh, who pulled out his copy of last year’s Fenwick Middle yearbook and handed it to me.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “No more random searches,” he said, and everyone nodded.

  “I was saying that the other day,” I kinda shou
ted.

  “Quiet, Peter, we’re finally making headway here,” Sally said, shushing me.

  My ears boiled.

  “We’re going to use traditional means of deduction,” Donnie said. “I got this idea because I’m on the yearbook committee. We have before us the name and photo of every student who goes to the school right now. We’re going to one by one look at each photo and discuss the possibility of whether they’re the thief or not until we narrow the list of suspects down to one person.”

  “But that’s what I was trying to do with the profiling,” I said.

  “No, your idea was to try to get inside the mind of a thief or whatever,” Sally said. “And all we got out of that was that the thief might be a girl, but it might also be a boy, or a jock, or an unathletic person, or someone in band—”

  “Okay, let’s start with the sixth grade, so let’s look at the fifth graders last year,” Trent said. “Then we’ll look at the seventh and eighth graders.”

  They edged me out and started whispering about the different students. I couldn’t believe it—they were treating Donnie like the leader all of a sudden! I picked up Hugh’s middle-school yearbook. I’d never seen one before. I started flipping through it. Maybe Donnie was right. I suddenly had this feeling that if I stared into the eyes of the thief, even in a school picture, I’d be able to tell. I was good at reading Drew by just staring at his eyeballs, so maybe I had an undiscovered talent for it. For the first time I saw that Sunny really was the president of all the clubs—every group photo had her in front holding the sign saying the name of the club. I sighed and turned to the first page of student photos. The very first person, Anna Ardsley, was smiling at me. She looked sketchy because her eyes were black (although I couldn’t say for sure, given that the picture was in black and white), and I felt a chill in my chest. Was I staring at the thief?

  “Guys!” I whispered. “I think I found the—”

  But then I looked at the next student photo, Craig Bailey, and he definitely looked like he could be the thief, too, even more so than Anna. I looked into the eyes of a few more students. They all looked kinda guilty, if you asked me.

  I exhaled.

  The others weren’t faring much better. They’d get excited about a potential suspect but then realize they were listing the same reasons they’d come up with about the previous student, and in the end they’d mark in red pen next to the photo, “Maybe.”

  “Any good suspects yet?” I asked.

  “Maybe we’re missing something staring right at us,” Trent admitted, scratching his head. “They’re all pretty good.”

  “This kid seems the creepiest, though,” Donnie said, pointing at a picture of Pierre Something. Poor kid couldn’t catch a break, even after he was long gone.

  I snickered at Donnie.

  “He doesn’t even go to school here,” I said. “Nice investigative skills.”

  “I wish he still went here,” Sally said sadly. “Remember when he brought in those really fancy cookies?”

  “Once—and then nobody talked to him again!” I noted.

  “That doesn’t mean the cookies weren’t amazing,” she said.

  I sighed and turned back to the middle-school yearbook and flipped through the pages. Pictures of teachers wearing wigs on Halloween for the annual costume pageant, some sports photos, more class pictures, a two-page spread of the school itself, and then I came across a strange page with no pictures on it.

  Across the top it read, “Last Will and Testament.”

  “Hey, Hugh, what’s this?” I asked, sliding the book his way.

  “That’s this stupid thing where departing eighth graders leave behind their most prized possessions to someone in the sixth or seventh grade. They don’t actually leave it behind, it’s just an excuse to throw a shout out to someone in the yearbook,” he said, before turning back to the Fenwick Elementary face book again. I read some of the entries in the Last Will and Testament.

  I, Jared Kinesky, leave behind my Nalgene water bottle to Toby Moller, who was always so thirsty.

  I, Ava Bernstein, leave behind my lunch box for Suzy Comer, who also thinks it’s funny.

  “Stop wasting your time, Peter,” Trent barked. “We should all be focusing on discussing these mug shots.”

  “What’s the point? You even just said that everyone looks kinda guilty,” I snapped. “I’m telling you, the key is to work on the profile of the thief.”

  “We’ve already done that, and it was useless,” Hank said.

  “But he’s right,” Sally said. “This isn’t working!”

  “Fine, Peter, tell us again what the profile of the thief should be,” Donnie said, clearly angry that I was competing with him for control of the investigation.

  “Okay, we know that the thief is someone who’s stealing stuff from everyone, so he has a big collection of stuff that he’s hiding somewhere, for one thing,” I said. “And the thief is definitely skilled at the art of hiding and deception, two. And—”

  “Oh my God,” Donnie said, slapping his forehead.

  “What?” Sally asked.

  Everyone looked at Donnie. He looked like he’d seen a ghost. More specifically, he looked like he’d seen a ghost standing behind me, and it made me shiver.

  “Don’t you get it?” he asked everyone.

  I suddenly felt afraid. Very afraid.

  “Get what?” Trent asked.

  “I wish people would be more direct in here,” Hank whined.

  Donnie rolled his eyes.

  “Peter’s the thief!” he said.

  I was relieved—for a second I thought he’d figured out that I was framing everybody into detention. I laughed out loud.

  “Why would I describe myself if I was the thief?” I said.

  “No, it makes perfect sense,” Hugh said. “Peter’s a magician, which means he knows how to make things disappear.”

  “I’m just an assistant,” I said softly.

  “On top of that, he was the best collector back in elementary school,” Trent noted.

  “He still collects!” Sally shouted.

  “And what are thieves, but illegal collectors?” Hank said, nodding.

  “I’m not sure that’s Webster’s definition of—,” I started, but Sally cut me off.

  “Oh my God—of course, Peter even got caught already. Angie told me he got detention for stealing chemicals from science class.”

  “Angie talked about me?” I asked, but everyone was staring at me. “Look, I was borrowing them. What? There’s a big difference. Why can’t anyone understand that?”

  The Sweet brothers stared at me. I held my hands out.

  “I swear to you, I’m not the thief,” I said. The weird thing was that even though I really wasn’t the thief, I felt kinda like I was lying as I said it.

  “But you fit the profile,” Donnie said. “You’re the only student at Fenwick Middle who fits the profile perfectly.”

  “What can I do to prove I’m not the thief?” I asked.

  “The only thing you can do is find the thief,” Hugh said.

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to this whole time.”

  “You’re not going to be able to, because you’re the thief!” Trent shouted.

  “Let’s call the principal,” Sally said. “Where the heck is Mr. Tinsley?”

  “I swear I’m not the thief,” I repeated.

  “Here’s the deal,” Hugh said, stamping his fist on the desk. “You have till Monday to find the thief and get our stuff back, especially my hat, and if you can’t, we’re going to turn you in to the principal.”

  “I’m telling you, I’m not—”

  But by then they’d stopped listening to me. Mr. Tinsley finally walked in at that point, apologizing for being late, and I could feel everyone’s eyes on me as if a half dozen magnifying glasses were being aimed at my back. Sally poked me in the ribs a minute later. I turned around.

  “Could you draw me a unicorn?” she asked.

/>   “Are you crazy?” I whispered. “You just accused me of being the thief.”

  “It’s apples and oranges. You being the thief doesn’t make you any less qualified to draw me a unicorn, does it?”

  I sighed and started drawing her a stupid unicorn.

  It was windy as I walked home after detention. I couldn’t believe that things had somehow gotten worse. This was all the thief’s fault. Now I really did need to catch him, but it seemed impossible. I kicked a rock down the street and replayed what had happened in detention; I had to admit, it kinda made sense that they’d think I could be the thief. I was the best collector in school, I was the best possible suspect, really. Nobody else was a magician, and a collector, and—I froze in my tracks, suddenly realizing who the real thief was.

  It was Drew!

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  BY THE TIME I GOT TO DREW’S HOUSE, it was dark out, but I didn’t care. I stomped through the backyard and, sure enough, the Coleman lantern was on up in the tree house, and I could see Drew sitting inside, probably hatching a plan to steal back his winter jacket from me.

  “Get down here!” I shouted.

  Drew peeked out the window at me, then climbed down from Corbett Canyon. I went over and started shaking him by his shoulders.

  “Are you insane? Why would you steal from people?” I shouted. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in right now?”

  “What are you talking about? Get off me!”

  “Everyone in detention thinks I’m the thief, but the truth is you’re the thief—admit it!”

  “I’m not the thief, Peter!” he cried.

  “Who else would steal our mica collection? You wanted it for yourself this whole time. And you’re mad that I made friends through detention and was winning the experiment, and sure enough, everyone in detention has gotten stuff stolen! You said so yourself how much you hated the Sweet brothers!”