Kristy and the Middle School Vandal Read online

  “Oh, ho,” said Cary. “Troy’s guilty — and he’s a Boy Scout!”

  A row of Boy Scout patches on a sash had been wadded up on the floor of the locker. Knot-tying, I thought, remembering the stage sabotage. Something every Boy Scout has to learn.

  Then I saw it. An envelope addressed to the Stoneybrook News. I picked it up, but before I could open it I heard an agitated squeak from Claudia’s and Stacey’s end of the hall. I looked in their direction and saw that they were pointing and waving frantically.

  From behind me a voice said, “What are you doing?”

  I leaped to my feet, still clutching the envelope. I turned to face Troy Parker.

  He looked very angry.

  I swallowed. Cary somehow seemed to melt back and blend in with the lockers. I was facing Troy on my own.

  “This envelope,” I said. “Inside I bet there’s a copy of the letter you sent to the SMS Express.”

  Troy took a step forward, his fists clenched.

  Uh-oh, I thought.

  Then his shoulders drooped and his eyes looked suddenly scared, like a little kid’s.

  Claudia’s voice said, “You’re color blind, aren’t you, Troy?”

  Troy’s head snapped up. “How did you know?”

  “You mixed up the colors of the car you vandalized. I guess you realized that. And the Mischief Knights sign everything in red, not green.”

  “You’re toast, man,” Cary chimed in.

  “So?” shouted Troy. “So what? And so what if I am suspended? Kingbridge is a liar. A total liar. I didn’t steal anything. And I don’t have an attitude. Denying that you’re a thief doesn’t mean you have an attitude!”

  Attitude? He had a chip on his shoulder the size of a log, I thought.

  Troy ranted on, “I hope the teachers do strike! And they have to work all summer. No, I hope they all get fired. And the administration. It would serve everybody right. Let someone else take the blame for a change!”

  I let Troy talk. I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Besides, Mr. Kingbridge had come softly down the hall with Abby and Mary Anne. He was listening to every word.

  He put a hand on Troy’s shoulder.

  Troy turned his head, saw who was there, and closed his mouth with a snap. A sullen look came over his face.

  “Thank you, Kristy,” said Mr. Kingbridge with remarkable calm. “Thank you all. Troy, I think it would be best if you came with me now.”

  Troy went quietly.

  But just before Mr. Kingbridge left, he looked at Cary standing next to me, and glanced at his wrist. He raised an eyebrow. “That is your watch, isn’t it, Cary?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I answered quickly.

  I waited until Mr. Kingbridge and Troy were out of earshot to add, “I guess the war is over. It was fun while it lasted.”

  “And I guess it’s time to give your watch back, even if you don’t fully deserve it,” said Cary. He slid it off his wrist and handed it to me.

  “Thanks,” I replied, and I really meant it. I fastened the watch on my own wrist and instantly felt more organized. It was a beautiful feeling.

  “But don’t think this lets the BSC off the hook. You guys need me. I keep you from becoming complacent. Boring.”

  “Boring,” I said, outraged.

  But before I could say anything else, Cary, as usual, had walked away.

  I put my hands on my hips and glared after him. The Mystery War had been only a battle, after all.

  The war between the BSC and Cary Retlin was still on.

  * * *

  “This emergency meeting of the Stoneybrook School Board has been called to announce that the SMS vandal — one disgruntled student who is not at all representative of our student body — has been apprehended. Appropriate measures are being taken, and I think it is time we stopped letting our negotiations be sidetracked by what has become, essentially, a nonissue,” said Ms. Karush.

  As applause broke out, Mr. Oates leaped to his feet.

  The BSC, out in force and in the front row, applauded still louder, trying to drown out Mr. Oates.

  But eventually he prevailed. Glaring at the audience, he said, “I protest. How do we know that this is an isolated incident? How can we be sure that the teachers haven’t conveniently chosen a scapegoat on which to hang these acts, in order to protect themselves? How —”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Oates,” interrupted a short woman who had been Mr. Oates’s ally at the previous meeting. “Are you accusing the teachers of framing someone?”

  Mr. Oates’s mouth opened and closed, like the mouth of a big, fat fish out of water. “B-but, but …” he sputtered.

  “Sit down,” said the woman.

  The audience rocked the rafters with cheers and applause.

  Mr. Oates sat down.

  Ms. Karush took over again. Debate followed. Lots of talk, much of it not worth repeating. (Except for Mr. Milhaus’s passionate plea not to cut the maintenance budget of the buildings. It turns out he’d personally overseen SMS for over thirty years.)

  But the upshot of the discussion was that the teachers agreed not to go on strike, and the school board made noises about being sure they’d be able to reach a compromise before the school year was out, without maintenance cuts.

  Mr. Kingbridge stopped us on the way out. “Thank you again,” he said. “And good work.”

  “Just another day at school for us,” I said.

  “As long as it’s not summer school,” added Claudia, and we all began to laugh.

  * * *

  So on Tuesday morning, school was back to normal. The bus groaned and wheezed, Abby complained about the pollen count, and we argued about baseball. I saw Logan and Mary Anne walking up the steps to school arm in arm, and paused a moment to admire Claudia’s outfit as she stood talking to Mal and Jessi. I waved at Stacey and Robert (Stacey’s boyfriend) and bounded into the door of the school.

  Summer was coming. I was happy.

  I flung my locker door open — and almost passed out from the stench.

  I reeled back, snorting and coughing.

  Somewhere behind me, someone began to laugh.

  I leaned forward, holding my breath, and peered cautiously into my locker. It was stuffed with magazine pages, the ones with those perfume ads that have really disgusting, stinky perfume in them.

  It was intense. And it was probably going to take me forever to get the scent out of my books, my notebooks, my extra sweatshirt …

  I turned.

  Cary raised his hand in a salute.

  What could I do? I returned the salute and then turned my back on him.

  I peered into the locker again and began, gingerly, to remove books. And I decided that the first thing I was going to do was buy a new lock. A big, conspicuous one that Cary wouldn’t be able to resist trying to open.

  And then I was going to rig my locker with the monster of all booby traps….

  The author gratefully acknowledges

  Nola Thacker

  for her help

  in preparing this manuscript.

  About the Author

  ANN MATTHEWS MARTIN was born on August 12, 1955. She grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, with her parents and her younger sister, Jane.

  There are currently over 176 million copies of The Baby-sitters Club in print. (If you stacked all of these books up, the pile would be 21,245 miles high.) In addition to The Baby-sitters Club, Ann is the author of two other series, Main Street and Family Tree. Her novels include Belle Teal, A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor book), Here Today, A Dog’s Life, On Christmas Eve, Everything for a Dog, Ten Rules for Living with My Sister, and Ten Good and Bad Things About My Life (So Far). She is also the coauthor, with Laura Godwin, of the Doll People series.

  Ann lives in upstate New York with her dog and her cats.

  Copyright © 1996 by Ann M. Martin

  Cover art by Hodges Soileau

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholasti
c Inc. SCHOLASTIC, THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First edition, June 1996

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-79243-1

 

 

  Ann M. Martin, Kristy and the Middle School Vandal

 

 

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