Skylar Robbins: The Mystery of the Hidden Jewels - Carrie Cross (most popular novels of all time TXT) 📗

of the polished wood, and best of all it has secret compartments. The drawer in the center has a panel behind it that pulls sideways, revealing a little chamber. This is my favorite spot to hide money and my most prized possession. I thought Grandpa’s desk would just fit inside that little round room.

“There are so many bigger bedrooms,” my mother said. “Why would you pick the smallest one?”

My dad stuck up for me. “Hey, if I were a kid I’d want to live in that turret too. Like Rapunzel, right Skylar?” He took his microscope cases out of the trunk and gently closed the hood. He wouldn’t let the moving men touch any of his equipment.

“Fairy tales have nothing to do with it, Dad.” Wrapping long hair behind my ears, I looked right into my mom’s eyes. “I don’t care how small my bedroom is. I just want that pointy turret room above it for my office.” It was the perfect spot for a detective to nestle in and solve a whopper of a mystery. Like where had Xandra Collins hidden her jewelry box before she disappeared?

I couldn’t get Ms. Knight’s words out of my mind. She hid her jewelry box somewhere on the estate. Whoever is smart enough and brave enough to follow the clues she left behind will be rewarded by inheriting her fortune in diamonds. And her heirs couldn’t find a single clue in three years!

“You want an office to work in? That’s a good reason,” my mom said, turning to the movers. “The big desk goes upstairs.” The one with the dark wavy hair looked at her until she gave him a nod. Then they picked up my heavy desk with their muscles bulging.

“Thanks, Mom.” I carried a box of art supplies up two flights of stairs with a giant pair of moving men following, and led them into my bedroom. “My desk goes up there.” I pointed up the spiral staircase.

The dark-haired guy groaned, and the short blond with the freckled arms swore. If my mom had heard him say the s-word in front of me she would have freaked. “I’m sorry, I know it’s heavy. But you guys look like you work out like—all the time.” Their arms were bigger than my thighs. “You can get it up there, can’t you?” I smiled hopefully.

The blond nodded his head at me. “Smart kid,” he commented. “Knows how to get what she wants.” They grunted and heaved, turned my heavy desk on its end, and managed to get it up the stairs and into the little room in the tip of the turret. One of them yelled, “Where do you want it facing?”

I bolted up the staircase and made a careful decision, looking out all the windows and picking the best view. “Facing that way, please.” I pointed across the railing at the edge of the yard. The rocky cliffs fell away into the canyon below. Beyond the other side of the mountains I could see a slice of dark blue ocean foaming in the distance. With my desk positioned that way I could look out over the canyon and watch the sun set or a storm rage while I was at my desk doing homework or working on the mystery of the hidden jewels.

After the movers positioned my desk, I followed them back to their truck and got a big box containing a multicolored stained-glass lamp I’d bought for four dollars at a garage sale. It had a brass base and dangly crystals hanging all around the edge of the shade. A few of the crystals were missing, but I just thought it made the lamp seem more antique, like something you’d find in the library inside an old castle. Which is exactly how I wanted to decorate my office.

Then I unzipped the pocket in my purse and took out the item I’d carefully wrapped in tissue. The gold shield had an eagle curled around the top, and DET. ROBBINS was stamped across the badge in block letters. I remembered when I’d gotten it. It was a horrible day, and I wasn’t ready.

“Skylar, always remember to look for clues in unexpected places. They won’t be sitting right under your nose, waiting for you to find them.” Grandpa’s papery fingers touched my arm and he pulled me closer to him on the hospital bed. I could tell by the look on his face that he was about to say something important. “I want you to have this.” My grandfather pressed his detective badge into my hand and folded my fingers around it. “Skylar, don’t ever let anyone tell you there is something you cannot do. There is no mystery or problem you cannot solve, and nothing you can’t achieve if you set your mind to it.”

It was the best advice I’d ever gotten, and some of the last words my grandfather ever spoke to me. I pictured his face as I turned the golden oval over in my hand and ran my fingers over its shiny surface. Then I set his badge on the cotton pad and closed the little white box.

My grandfather left me his beautiful wood desk in his will. Opening the center drawer, I slid the top drawer completely out and opened the chamber hiding behind it, slipping the box into the hidden compartment. Working on mysteries at Grandpa’s desk with his badge inside would be inspiring, like he was close by. Thinking about it made me feel like a real detective.

I topped the antique desk with orange-, mint-, and chocolate-scented candles and a small fern in a clay pot, and then walked down the stairs to my bedroom. I wanted to hurry and finish unpacking so I could start to explore our new house and the yard. After my grandfather figured something out, he used to dust off his hands with satisfaction and say, “Case closed.” Even though he was gone, I wanted to close my own case and feel like I’d made him proud of me. And there were clues hidden somewhere in this house just waiting for me to find them.

 

5

Nerves

The day before school started I went over to Alexa’s and her mom gave us a ride to the drugstore. “I’m so glad your parents bought the turret house,” Alexa said as we walked inside. “That would completely reek if you had to go to a different school.”

“I know, right?” I agreed, looking around the crowded store. “I can’t believe tomorrow is—”

“Middle school!” Alexa grabbed my arm. She was even more nervous than I was. We walked down the wide center aisle, heading for the makeup department.

“Have you been practicing sign language?” I asked. A hearing-impaired boy in my summer school class had taught me some signs, and I’d loved watching the interpreter translate during class. I taught myself the fingerspelling alphabet from a chart I found online:

When I got back from Shadow Hills I watched sign language videos on YouTube, and then taught the signs to Alexa so we could tell secrets in school and no one would know what we were talking about.

She nodded, bouncing her fist twice. YES.

I touched my lips with my right hand, and then lowered the back of that hand into my left palm. GOOD.

Alexa looked at me and tried to fingerspell S-E-C-R-T L-A-N-G-U-G. I figured out that she meant secret language, and we both smiled.

I love the stationery aisle, and we spent a long time in it debating over the spiral notebooks and different kinds of pens. I finally chose a pink binder, paper with college-ruled lines, and dividers so I could make separate sections for taking notes in my classes. Alexa put a pocket dictionary in our basket, and I got a fresh blank pad like the kind my grandfather always kept handy. I could never have enough pads of paper to fill up with ideas and notes on things I planned to investigate. We spent a long time in the candle aisle because it smelled so good. Like vanilla, rose, and cinnamon. Then I picked up a lockable file box for storing clues.

We saved the makeup aisle for last, since this was the first year we were allowed to wear any. “Light colors only, and no lip liner, mascara, or eye liner,” my mom had warned. “If I can tell you’re wearing makeup you’ve got too much on.”

Alexa and I compared many different pale-colored lipsticks and glosses. We opened one tester after another, twisting the product out of each tube and examining each color. She picked up a spicy red Cover Girl lipstick and showed it to me. “With your dark hair and fair skin you would look so glam in this.”

“Like my mom would ever let me wear a dark color like that.” Alexa shrugged and put it back. She ended up buying a light peach-colored lip gloss that was also peach scented and flavored, and I got shimmering cherry pink. We bought little makeup mirrors and breath mints, in case there were any cute boys in our classes. Most importantly, Dustin Coles for me, and Brendan Tadman for her. Every time I thought about Dustin my heart sped up. When Alexa saw him and he asked where I was, that meant something important: Dustin Coles cared what I was doing over the summer! I’d waited almost three months to see him again, and middle school was finally about to start.

Alexa was nervous too. She liked his BF Brendan, and so did all the popular girls in school who weren’t crushing on Dustin. Brendan was really cute and a total crack-up. He’d make these crazy comments that were so hilarious you just about wet your pants laughing. Brendan had thick blondish-brown hair and amazing light brown eyes. They were kind of golden, like a tiger’s. The only bad thing was, he didn’t pay any attention to Alexa. He was the cutest boy in elementary school besides Dustin, and neither one of them were interested in us in sixth grade. This semester we were determined to change their minds.

That night I raced back and forth between my bedroom and my office, trying to get my backpack ready. I kept forgetting things I needed for my notebook pouch, and ran up and down the spiral stairs several times to grab a ruler or my new calculator. When I finally thought I had everything I needed, I realized I hadn’t packed anything to write with.

When I thought about bedtime, sleep sounded impossible.

Could I find my way around Pacific and get to my classes on time? Would my teachers be cool—or not? Then a hideous thought hit me: Would a certain blonde bully who had hated my guts since fifth grade be in any of my classes? Thinking about her made my temples hurt. I called Alexa and she picked up instantly like she was hoping I’d get in touch.

“Hi Lex. It’s almost here. Are you ready?”

“I have a stomachache.”

“Probably just nerves. I’m nervous too.”

“You don’t have nearly as much to worry about,” Alexa said softly. “You don’t have a giant secret you’re trying to keep from three-hundred other kids—or a thousand. Who could figure it out at any second, point, laugh, and make you the fool of the school.”

“They won’t,” was all I could think of to say. Hoping I was right, and knowing I wasn’t.

Alexa barked a fake laugh. “You know how to read.”

“You do too,” I tried to reassure her, as if she was being silly.

Alexa knew I was lying. She exhaled into the phone. “Barely.”

When she started school in a tiny town in Texas, Alexa’s first grade teacher told her parents she had Attention Deficit Disorder and wasn’t paying attention, and that’s why she was having trouble learning how to read and spell. Her teacher said she wasn’t trying hard enough. Then she moved to California. Our second grade teacher noticed Alexa had trouble recognizing and writing letters, and suggested she get tested for a learning disability called dyslexia.

He was right: Alexa was dyslexic. She got some tutoring after school but she said it didn’t help much, and her father never forgot what her first grade teacher said. “You have to try harder!” her dad would insist. Alexa told me more than once that if I hadn’t been in her class, helping her study and explaining our assignments, she would have failed English.

“I’ll help you,” I said, realizing it wasn’t enough.

“I know, but you can’t take my tests or do my homework for me. And Ronnie told me I’d better be ready. Middle school is way harder than sixth grade.” Alexa’s big brother would rather be rock climbing or