Room One by Andrew Clements

Author:Andrew Clements
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers

She reached out quickly and took both his hands in hers, and when he tried to pull away, she held on. “Ted, listen to me. I’m so sorry. But you have to hear this. I started feeling like I had to do something last night. Even though I promised you I wouldn’t tell anyone. But I wanted to talk to you first. So I didn’t do anything, and I didn’t tell anyone. Not even my husband.”

Ted shook his head, as if he hadn’t heard right. “What?”

She said it again. “I didn’t do anything, and I didn’t tell anyone. No one.”

Looking into her face, Ted knew Mrs. Mitchell wasn’t lying. He just knew. And the mistake he’d made about her cut him to the heart. Not to mention his rotten detective work. Good detectives are suspicious of circumstantial evidence.

He stammered, “I … I thought … I thought you …”

She shook her head. And before Ted could finish his apology, another question took complete control of his thinking, and he said, “Then what happened? Why did the police show up and take them away?”

Mrs. Mitchell said, “I don’t know. But I can find out. I’ll call Deputy Linwood at lunchtime, and I’ll tell you everything I learn, all right?”

Ted wanted to run out the front door of the school and ride his bike over to town hall and make somebody give him the facts, right now.

But he knew he couldn’t, so he nodded, and Mrs. Mitchell said, “Then let’s get back to class.”

Ted opened the door. In one corner Kevin was arguing with Hannah, Lizzie, and Keith, shouting about the best way to find a lowest common denominator. And in the other corner, the eighth graders were passing Carla’s iPod from hand to hand, trying to make one pair of earphones work for four pairs of ears.

Mrs. Mitchell had the corners of room one quiet and focused on schoolwork in less than fifteen seconds.

But at the sixth-grade island out in the middle, Ted Hammond was focused on something else. He was thinking like a detective again, a detective who had work to do.

Because this case wasn’t closed. Ted felt responsible for April. And her mom and brother, too. He wouldn’t feel settled about it until Mrs. Mitchell learned exactly what had happened to them.

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