Skylar Robbins: The Mystery of the Hidden Jewels by Carrie Cross (well read books TXT) 📕

on purpose. There were little piles mounded on my mirror and smeared on my makeup, but very little anywhere else.”

“Maybe it was a very neat rat.” Alexa smiled.

“Very funny.”

“Sorry.”

“I think it was Smack’s guys trying to send me a message.” I glanced up at Alexa. My throat went dry, remembering it.

She stopped eating and looked at me. “Go on.”

I took a drink. “This morning. In the back of one of my other drawers—”

“What, Skylar?” She knew me well enough to figure out that there was something horrible coming. Something I was afraid to tell her. Her face paled. “Tell me.”

My mouth felt chalky as I remembered the smell. I set down the end of the hot dog, sure if I took another bite I’d throw up. “Squished in the corner there was a dead rat. Really dead. Like split open, reeking dead.”

Alexa covered her mouth with both hands. Her eyes went so wide I could see white all the way around the green parts. “Gross! Are you serious?”

“Completely. I think it was a threat. It’s like Smack’s gang knows I’m searching for the jewels too and they’re trying to scare me off so they can beat me to it. And they are not going to beat me to it.”

“Skylar,” She leaned forward and grabbed my arm. “They killed a rat?”

“No, they must have found it. That one had been dead for a while.”

“Still, that’s so scary. You better not do anything—”

“What,” I interrupted. “Dangerous?” She sounded just like my mom. “This could be exactly what my detective agency needs. It doesn’t even have 200 Likes on Facebook and I’m barely getting any shares. If I find Xandra’s jewels before anyone else, do you realize how huge that could be?” I looked at Alexa like she was crazy for not understanding, and she looked at me like I was being a complete fool.

“God, Skylar, just be careful for once. OK?”

“What are you, my mom?” I hated it when people told me to be careful. That bugged me more than anything, and my BFF should have known it. Alexa’s cheeks turned pink. “Sorry, Lex. I just hate that a bunch of stupid guys are snooping around my house, giving me these looks like they own the place. Well they are not finding Xandra’s jewelry box before I am, not matter what.”

Alexa shook her head but didn’t comment. Dustin and his friends got up from their table and walked past us across the lawn, shouting and laughing. “There goes Brendan,” I said, and Alexa followed him with her eyes.

“So has Dustin talked to you?” she asked, obviously happy to change the subject.

“Not really.” I took a sip of my drink. “After anatomy Mr. Bidden made us all switch seats so we would work with different partners. Dustin said hi to me once. That’s it.”

“At least you got to sit next to him and do a lab together. Brendan hasn’t even looked at me.” Brendan hurried ahead of Dustin and his friends and turned around, gesturing wildly, making everyone laugh. Alexa stared at him for a minute. “Do you think he might go to the dance with me?”

“What dance?”

“What dance?” Her light eyebrows climbed up her forehead. “Are you kidding me?” I shook my head. “There’s a big dance coming up with a live band. I saw a poster in the hall this morning, and everyone was talking about it in ceramics.”

“When?” I asked, looking around for proof of some big dance. “And you think Brendan and Dustin would actually ask us?”

Alexa shook her head. “It’s in like three weeks. And they couldn’t even if they wanted to. It’s a backwards dance.”

“What does that mean? Wait—we have to ask them?” Total nightmare. “No way.”

“Yes,” Alexa nodded. “I don’t know about you, but I’m asking Brendan before someone else does. You should too,” she said, as Emelyn and her friends got up from their table and hurried to catch up with Dustin and Brendan. Emelyn swished white-blonde hair over her shoulder and giggled so loudly we could hear it from across the lawn.

“I guess,” I said quietly, picking at my napkin.

“Come on don’t be scared.” Alexa looked at me with a challenging smile. “He’s had a crush on you since fifth grade.”

I looked at her like she had to be kidding. “No he hasn’t. Don’t you remember in elementary school whenever he saw an A on my papers he’d say in that voice like I was a total joke, ‘Oh of course Skylar got another A’?”

Alexa looked at me like she couldn’t believe I didn’t get this. “You just didn’t realize when he teased you it meant he was interested. Why do you think Emelyn hates you so much? She’s always been jealous.”

“She’s been jealous of me? No way.”

“She has so been jealous of you. And you’ll see why. Dustin’s going to say yes. As soon as you ask him.” Alexa nodded confidently.

I got a sinking feeling. Took a deep breath and blew it out. The backwards dance was only a few weeks away. And I had science class with Dustin next period.

 

20

Could Dustin Coles Actually Like Me?

The next morning I woke up before my alarm went off. Xandra’s treasure map and Smack’s crew were the last things on my mind. I had chickened out after lunch, but Alexa convinced me to ask Dustin to go to the dance with me the next chance I got. My stomach felt like it had a toad leaping around in it every time I thought about it.

After jumping into the shower and washing my hair, I blew it dry upside down to make it full and pinned the sides up in some sparkly pink barrettes. I dusted on a little tan eye shadow to make my blue eyes stand out. Then I put on my cutest jeans and a pink top with rhinestones on the snaps, and ran downstairs. I forced myself to swallow a bowl of cereal and drink some milk. By the time my dad was ready to drive me to school I was a nervous wreck.

“Don’t you look pretty,” he said, picking up a notebook stuffed with loose papers and cramming it into his briefcase. “What’s the occasion?”

“I look that different?” Horrified, I looked into the new mirror in the entryway. I looked like I was ready to go to a party. “I was going to ask someone to go to a dance today, but if he thinks I got all fixed up—”

“You look great every day,” my dad said. “Let’s go.”

“Let’s see,” my mom said, walking over to join us. “Whoa, wait a minute, Skylar. Not so fast,” she said, looking at my shirt.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, my stomach plunging. Not another argument about my clothes, since my mom is totally fashion-clueless.

“Your top is unbuttoned pretty far down. Don’t you think?” she asked my dad. He shrugged.

“They’re snaps, and they’re not—”

She interrupted me. “And too many of them are unsnapped. You don’t want to look cheap.”

“It’s not like you can see my bra or anything. I don’t think I look cheap, do you?” I asked my dad, rounding my shoulders and trying to look as un-cheap as possible. My mom’s foot was about to start tapping any second, I could tell.

“I’m going to stay out of this one,” he said, laughing. “I’m not the fashion police.”

“Oh fine, make me the bad guy,” my mom said, reaching forward to snap me up.

“I can do it myself. I’m not five,” I said, snapping my top all the way up to my neck. “Now do I look prissy enough for school?”

My mom looked hurt and her cheeks turned magenta. Now I’d done it. “Watch it, Skylar. You’re one step away from getting grounded.”

“Apologize to your mother,” my dad said.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Can we please leave now?” I tugged open two snaps, and thought I might undo a third as soon as I got to school.

I didn’t have the nerve to talk to Dustin during English. Emelyn stared at him through the whole class and Mrs. Mintin never stopped lecturing, so I decided to wait until Science to ask him.

By the time I got to Mr. Bidden’s class I was so nervous that my heart was pounding. Worse yet, he had rearranged the desks again and now they formed a big circle. A lab table with a Bunsen burner on it sat in the middle. I was early and chose a desk with several empties on both sides. Dustin walked in right before the bell rang. After looking around the circle, he spotted me. My heart flipped over when he started to walk toward my desk.

I couldn’t believe it. He grabbed the seat next to mine, just like he did on the first day of school. Could Dustin Coles actually like me?

The teacher set a rack of test tubes and an empty pan next to the Bunsen burner and turned it on. “What’s he doing?” Dustin whispered.

“Making soup,” I whispered back, and Dustin actually laughed out loud.

Mr. Bidden stared at us with a mean look on his mole-covered face. I looked down and pretended to take notes. What I really wrote was this:

Want to go to the backwards dance with me?

As soon as the teacher bent down to light the burner, I tore off the square of paper, folded it, and handed it to Dustin. I tried not to pee my pants while he opened it. Mr. Bidden heard the paper rustle and looked right at us. I panicked for a minute, worried that he would snatch the note and read it out loud to the whole class. But he just gave us another stern look and started to explain the experiment.

To my horror, Dustin just folded up the paper and put it in his pocket. I couldn’t even concentrate on the experiment. All I could think about was the fact that I’d just asked Dustin to go to the dance and he hadn’t given me an answer. Was he saving my note while he collected other girls’ invitations so he could pick the best one of us at the end? How long would I have to wait to get his answer? What if he never gave me one at all? Would I have to go through this nervousness a second time and ask him again?

Mr. Bidden warned us to pay attention, then poured some yellow fluid out of a test tube and into the pan that heated over the Bunsen burner. My stomach clenched. I’d seen my dad pour things from one test tube to another lots of times. That’s how he’d speckled his forehead when I was six. I braced myself. And tapped on Dustin’s desk.

“Watch this,” I whispered. Dustin glanced at me and nodded. A blue flame shot out of the pan toward the ceiling, and some of the other kids jumped. So did I, even though I knew it was coming. I hoped Dustin hadn’t noticed that I’d flinched.

“That was cool,” he said, smiling at me as a puff of smoke evaporated.

Excellent!

“Your homework assignment tonight is to answer the questions at the end of chapter three and explain the chemical reaction you saw here today,” Mr. Bidden told us.

We all wrote the assignment down in our notebooks. There was one minute of class left. Dustin touched the pocket containing my note and glanced over at me.

Here it comes! I thought. He’s going to tell me he’ll go to the—

The bell rang and Dustin stood up. “See you around,” he said, and walked out of the classroom. I sat stunned in my seat with my invitation unanswered.

 

21

“He’s off the scale!”

At the break, we went to the bathroom and Alexa brought up Smack’s latest threat. “Skylar, this is serious. You have to tell your mom and dad they planted a dead rat in your drawer.”

“Lex. No way am I telling them.” I brushed my hair and put on lip gloss.

“Don’t you know what that rat meant?” Alexa was more freaked out than I was. Now I was just mad. Crew Gang and their stupid threats were not intimidating me. Not even.

“It means they’re out of ideas. It means they’re trying to scare a thirteen-year-old girl because they’re afraid I’ll find Xandra’s jewels before they will. They know I’m a better detective and they’re quaking.” I didn’t want to admit that they were scaring me.

“Haven’t you ever seen