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

hiking up a mountain than doing homework, so maybe middle school had been hard for him. But he still shouldn’t have scared her like that. “I have to get at least a C in English. My dad keeps telling me I need to apply myself more. He still doesn’t understand that I’m trying as hard as I can.” Her voice caught and she got quiet. “I just hope I can understand the textbooks. And I’m so afraid I’ll make a fool of myself if we have to read out loud.”

Stumbling over easy words made her feel stupid, and she was anything but dumb. Her brain just couldn’t process what was written on the page. “We probably won’t have to,” I said. “Not in seventh grade, right?”

“Yeah, they probably figure we should be able to read by now,” Alexa mumbled, and my heart sank.

I hadn’t meant to hurt her feelings. “Want to share our lockers? Then we’ll always see each other between classes,” I said, hoping to cheer her up. “And you can help me find my way around Pacific.” Maybe the thought of us helping each other would make her feel better.

“OK,” Alexa agreed, knowing how easily I got lost. “That’s a great idea. Tomorrow I’ll meet you in first period, then we can find our lockers at the break.”

“I better finish getting my stuff ready. See you in the morning. If I can find the building,” I said, picking the corner of my pillow.

“You will. I’m more worried about what’ll happen once we go inside.” I heard Alexa take a deep breath.

I took one too. “See you tomorrow.”

 

6

The First Day of Middle School

As soon as my alarm went off I bolted out of bed without hitting the snooze button once. My stomach flipped over. The first day of middle school! After my shower I put on the outfit I picked out the night before, grabbed my backpack, and ran downstairs to the kitchen. My mom’s back was turned as she fussed with a stack of folders she planned to take to work.

“Ready,” I announced.

“Not so fast, Kiddo,” she said, setting down a bowl of oatmeal with sliced strawberries on top. My dad was sitting at the table, reading the paper and sipping coffee. He was working from home so he could keep an eye on the guys who were ripping out some of our old appliances and the rain gutters and putting in new ones. There was no way he would leave me home alone after school with a bunch of strangers. My mom wanted to keep the hundred-year-old countertops with yellowed tiles featuring a tiny flowered print. Fortunately the ancient wood paneling would be replaced by smooth drywall, ready for paint. The crumbling exterior also needed major help. I realized later that my dad keeping his eye on the construction crew was a great idea.

“Mom, I am so not hungry.”

“You’re just stressing because it’s the first day at your new school.” My mom handed me a spoon and a glass of orange juice. “It’ll help if you eat something.”

“All right,” I grumbled. As soon as I took the first bite I realized I was starving. “I just hope I’m not late.”

My mom smiled. “Relax, Honey. We have plenty of time.” The doorbell rang and my dad stood up and walked through the living room to answer the door. I heard loud voices and booted feet come through the entryway. Then banging and crunching noises as heavy tools were set down. The construction crew had arrived. While I was eating, my mom disappeared into a hallway and came back with something hideous hanging off the end of her stiff arm. “Here you go.”

I looked up and my stomach bottomed out. “Oh please don’t make me wear that.”

She gave me an annoyed look and shook the bulky sweater at me. Like she would ever wear something that ugly. “Mom, I’m starting a new school.”

“Skylar.”

I stared at her, horrified. “But I’ve had that sweater since fifth grade.”

“It was big on you then, and it still fits,” she said, sensibly.

“Mom, that thing’s vile. And there’s going to be boys at Pacific. Older ones.” There would be hotties in my grade, too. Like Dustin.

Lines deepened in her forehead. “Middle school boys aren’t going to protect you from the cold, Skylar.” She draped the sweater over one of my shoulders.

Time to change up my strategy. “It’s going to be eighty degrees today, Mom.”

“And it’s sixty-five now and breezy. Please hurry up and put it on. If you keep arguing with me you are going to be late.”

Yanking thick, itchy wool around my shoulders I grumbled, “Could anything make me look like a bigger tool?” She didn’t answer. Just walked toward the garage, looking over her shoulder to make sure I was coming.

Before I followed her I snuck a peek into the living room. It looked like Harley-Davidson was having a party. Beefy men with beards and tattoos lurked around, ready to start working but like they weren’t sure what to do. A short, angry guy peered into every corner as if he was looking for something. I knew my parents would never have hired a scroungy crew like that if our next-door neighbor hadn’t raved about the great job they had done on her house. She’d showed off her kitchen to my parents, who agreed that it looked amazing. Their prices were fair, too. However, I found out later that there were other details about the men that our new neighbor did not share with my mom and dad.

She beeped the horn. I headed for the garage, glancing over my shoulder at my dad who was watching the strange crew roam around our new house. We didn’t talk much as we wound down the hill and drove past the beach, heading toward Pacific Middle School. After begging her to drop me off around the corner so no one would see me getting a ride from my mommy, I walked up to the entrance of the school I had been so looking forward to starting. My first day of seventh grade wasn’t turning out to be nearly as fun as I had imagined.

Pacific was huge compared to elementary school. I had to find my way to six rooms in different buildings, and I didn’t know where any of them were. Worse yet, a breeze came up and it was cold, so I kept the sweater on. If someone started a Worst Dressed list, I’d be number one. My face was hot, my stomach felt jumpy, and my hands were sweating. How pathetic.

Looking around, I didn’t see Alexa or one single person I knew. I wanted to get to my first class before the other girls noticed me wandering around alone, wondered why I didn’t have any friends, and decided there must be something wrong with me. I wouldn’t have admitted it to anybody, but I was scared to death. Then a worse thought hit me: If I wasn’t even brave enough to make it through the first day of middle school, how could I run my own detective agency?

One of my undercover detective fantasies took over and I tried to get my confidence back.

I walked through a glamorous hotel wearing high heels, a short blonde wig, and brown contact lenses. A sparkling chandelier dangled from the ceiling and knots of foreign businessmen bustled around me. I was wired with an earpiece, a microphone, and a recording device, ready to eavesdrop on a secret meeting of anti-American forces. Suddenly enemy agents in suits and dark sunglasses rushed through the lobby, heading straight for me. Before they could catch me I darted into an elevator, came back out disguised as a man, and escaped into a waiting limousine.

“Private detectives aren’t chicken,” I mumbled to myself.

Yeah, right.

I finally found room A-12 just as Alexa rushed around the corner. “Hurry,” I said, and she caught up to me right as the warning bell rang.

“I went to room A-21 by mistake. I thought it said A-12,” she admitted, and her cheeks turned pink.

“It’s OK. Come on.”

We walked inside the classroom and I couldn’t believe what I saw. I grabbed Alexa’s arm and pointed toward the fourth row with my eyes. Dustin Coles was in our first class. She steered me down the first aisle and I could almost feel Alexa vibing me not to look at him. But, OMG, he got so tan over the summer. And Dustin had actually asked Alexa where I was, twice. Once at the party I’d missed and once when she ran into him at the mall. Did the biggest hottie in Santa Monica really care what I was doing before we came back to school?

Apparently not. Dustin barely looked up when I walked in. He glanced at me and nodded his head in the fastest hello possible. Then the boy on his other side started talking to him and he turned away, just as I started walking down the aisle toward the fourth row. Maybe when Dustin asked Alexa about me during the break he was just trying to think of something to say. My heart sank as I realized he probably wasn’t interested in me after all.

There weren’t any empty desks near him anyway. I looked around the room, hoping I wouldn’t spot my enemy. And then my stomach lurched. There she was. On Dustin’s other side. The bully who had hated my guts for two years: Emelyn Peters.

I remembered the first day that Emelyn came to our elementary school from Florida, sneering as she looked around, complaining about the shabby classroom.

“They wouldn’t put up with these conditions in West Palm Beach,” Emelyn said, sticking her pointy nose into the air and flipping white-blonde hair over one shoulder.

“What’s wrong with it?” I asked innocently.

“Yeah, what’s wrong with it?” Alexa put her hands on her hips.

Emelyn whirled around and glared at us, and her eyes narrowed. “This school is a total dump. But it figures you two wouldn’t get it.”

That was our first taste of Emelyn Peters. She’d grown up rich and spoiled, until her dad got sent to prison for stealing money from the company where he worked. Then Emelyn moved to California with her mom and her tall, blond older brother and started acting like the queen of our elementary school. When her brother got suspended from Pacific for selling marijuana, Emelyn bragged about it to everybody like he was really cool. Then she started crushing on Dustin and things got ugly.

In fifth grade Alexa, Emelyn, Dustin, and I had all been in the same class. Alexa’s best subject was art, and one day we all had to sketch each other in charcoal. My picture of Alexa came out okay, but her drawing looked exactly like me. The teacher hung it on the bulletin board with the other best ones. Dustin looked at Alexa’s sketch and then at me. “You look better up there than in real life.” Dustin was trying to tease me, but when he realized it sounded like a compliment, he blushed. Emelyn Peters glared at me like she wanted to rip my hair out—then, and any time Dustin had talked to me since. She got suspended twice last year for bullying, but it didn’t do any good. Emelyn was as mean as ever. She wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone, and she let us all know it.

Alexa and I couldn’t find two chairs next to each other, so she had to sit one row over and two seats back. I looked over my shoulder and Emelyn pointed at me and blew her cheeks out like a bloated fish, which was exactly what I felt like in my fifth-grade sweater. Thanks, Mom. Why hadn’t I stuffed the stupid thing in my locker when I had the chance? Ripping it from around my shoulders, I tried to cram it into my backpack but it didn’t fit. I hung the sweater on the back of my chair and could almost feel everyone behind me staring at its ugliness.

The teacher hobbled in and wrote her name on the board. “Good morning, class, I’m Mrs. Mintin.” Mrs. Mintin wore her gray hair in a tight bun, and she walked slowly as if her pointy shoes hurt her feet. “Everyone please take out a sheet of paper. I’d like you all to write two paragraphs describing a problem you had over the summer, and how you solved it. You have twenty minutes. Begin.”

After thinking for a minute, I wrote a long paragraph about how we had to