I Put a Spell on You by Adam Selzer

Author:Adam Selzer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780375891250
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2008-09-08T16:00:00+00:00

19

CHRISSIE

Excerpt from notebook #32: Jake has ended up in trouble for things that were not his fault 10 11 12 13 times….

Detectives aren’t supposed to get their emotions involved in a case. But you can’t always help it when you see the look on a victim’s face.

And as long as I live, I’ll never forget the look on Jennifer’s face Monday morning. She was so red, you’d have thought she must have been really embarrassed—I mean, it was the kind of red you’d think could only be achieved by someone who had just been caught dancing naked in the cafeteria. But her eyes were just as red as her face, which meant that she hadn’t just been embarrassed, she’d also been crying.

Right away, I told her how sorry I was—she and I both knew who the anonymous tipster who had told the police that someone was breaking in that night had been. I told her I had never meant for them to arrest him. I thought they’d just catch him on the grounds, and he’d say, “Oh, I was just here to look at the flowers” or something, and leave. Or that he’d see the cops on the premises, chicken out, and leave. I didn’t count on him to dress up like a burglar and break a window.

Jennifer said it wasn’t my fault, that what I was hoping for was what she had thought would happen, too. She said it was her dad’s own fault for breaking the window instead of going through the door like a normal person. But I still felt bad. And as soon as Marianne arrived and started shouting, Jennifer started bawling.

It was Marianne who started the riot in the classroom on Monday morning. It was her shouting that made Tony pick up the cue and start shouting at Amber and calling her a witch. And it was that that made everyone else start shouting at everyone else. Marianne should have been the one suspended. Sure, Jason had thrown the paper star at Tony, but it was only to defend Amber’s honor—it wasn’t the best idea, but he was only trying to stick up for a girl that he liked. And Jake certainly shouldn’t have been in trouble—he hadn’t done a thing. And everyone knew it.

They were in serious trouble, too. Neither of them was very good at spelling. That meant that they’d be punished as harshly as Floren could manage.

Something was rotten at Gordon Liddy Community School. I still hadn’t figured everything out, but Principal Floren was certainly cheating at the bee by giving Mutual the word list, and I was still guessing that it was Mrs. Boffin who was behind the break-in. I just didn’t have the proof yet.

But one thing I did know was that I had to act. As far as I was concerned, if the school was messing with one of us, they were messing with all of us. If keeping the students from cheating and sabotaging each other was my job, then it was also my job to protect students from injustice.

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