Competing for the Cup Page 3

  Peaches giggled at his story, but Elaine looked like she had heard enough. “You’re deflecting. Watson might fall for it, but I will not.”

  Peaches immediately stopped giggling.

  Nav accepted defeat graciously. He had a better strategy ready anyway. “Let’s be frank. I had nothing to do with stealing any Guys. Although it does pain me to have to tell you . . .” He paused for effect.

  “Get to the point,” Elaine snapped.

  Nav leaned forward and whispered, “I did notice Leo Ducasse sneaking out of both Snapdragon Cottage and Birch House earlier that day.”

  “Leo?” Elaine said.

  Nine minutes later: “Nav said that?”

  Leo Ducasse sat in the same chair that Nav had vacated, facing Detective Cucumber Patch and Watson, both of whom stared soberly back at him.

  “No, no, no,” he went on in his French accent, denying the accusation. “But,” he added, lowering his voice, “I did see Alex Taylor carrying something in a huge equipment bag.”

  “Alex?” Elaine said.

  Seven minutes later: “No,” Alex Taylor protested. “Take your questions to Wyatt Blain. He claims he hurt his arm during warm-up, but it happened during the fire.”

  “Wyatt?” Elaine said.

  Four minutes later: “Will,” declared Wyatt Blain. “Find Will.”

  Forty seconds later: Wyatt exited the student lounge, leaving Watson and Elaine alone to ponder the staggering amount of information they hadn’t gotten. They had heard a lot of stories, but none of them offered any real facts or led to any solid conclusions.

  “Oh, I’m so confused,” moaned Peaches.

  “How shocking,” Elaine commented cruelly. As usual, Peaches didn’t catch the insult. Elaine picked up the last of her cards: Will and Josh. “Two more left. And failure is not in the cards.”

  Currently oblivious to his sought-after status, Will delivered Sally’s cooler bag to Rudy in the tack room, as requested. He set it on the desk and proceeded to pull out several plastic containers while Rudy, leaning on the edge of a smaller work desk with his arms folded, watched.

  “What’s in that one?” Rudy asked as Will pulled out the largest container.

  Will tipped it one way, then the other, trying to identify the sloshy substance inside. “Maybe it’s . . . food?” He laughed.

  “Oh, yeah, you’re really selling it.” Rudy moved forward to take a look, seeming to forget about his injured foot. The second he stepped down on it, he stumbled, barely catching himself on the larger desk before falling. He groaned in pain.

  “Whoa!” said Will. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m . . .” Rudy let Will help him to his chair. “I think I may have pushed it a little this afternoon.”

  Trying to be helpful, Will set the big container in front of his teacher. “Here, try this,” he suggested, removing the lid. When the smell hit him, he blurted out, “Or not.”

  Rudy peered at the whatever-it-was with genuine puzzlement. “Is that meat loaf? Why is it so watery?” He offered it to Will. “Here, I dare you.”

  “No, I’m, uh . . .” The smell hit Will again, and he held up a hand. “I’m a vegetarian?” Actually, the maybe meat loaf didn’t smell all that bad. It was the way it looked that made his stomach turn, almost like the mess poor Thunder made after he’d had too many treats last month. And, okay, the smell really was bad. Why on earth had Sally put cinnamon in meat loaf? The prankster side of Will couldn’t help it — he was dying to see Rudy try some. “Oh, come on, sir, you need to get your strength back up,” he urged.

  Rudy made a skeptical face but spooned up a couple of suspicious meatlike chunks and put them in his mouth. Will counted to two before Rudy gagged and spit them back out.

  Still feeling helpless and confused by TK’s strange behavior, as if the entire earth were rotating without them, Kit entered her math classroom. Anya was with her, trying to lift her spirits with nonstop cheerful chatter. “What if we wallpaper our ceiling in pictures?” she suggested. “Wouldn’t that be fun?”

  Kit automatically headed to her desk. “Yeah, ceiling paper — sounds great.”

  Anya waved her hand in Kit’s face. “Hello! Earth to Kit?”

  It finally dawned on Kit that she was being really rude to her friend. “Sorry,” she said. “I can’t stop thinking about TK.” She moved to sit, and her eyes landed on a yellow sticky note on her desktop. She picked it up and read it. “And I’m not the only one,” she said, smiling for the first time that day.

  “What’s that?”

  Kit turned the paper so that Anya could read it. It said, Have fun. Let TK come to you.

  “Ooooh, it’s so intriguing,” said Anya. “I wonder who wrote it.”

  Kit wondered, too. She didn’t recognize the handwriting, and the message was too short for her to get a sense of the writer’s identity. She glanced around the classroom, still smiling. Somebody cares, she thought. Somebody wants to help me and TK! But why are they being so mysterious about it?

  Early the next morning, Elaine wandered the hallways before the first class bell, hunting for her final suspects. She spotted Will and stepped right in his path. She knew how sneaky he could be. Sneaky and cute. Really cute. But now was not the time to notice such things.

  “I need to talk to you straightaway,” she said, using her best authoritative tone.

  Will broke out in a heart-melting smile. “Hey! Your hair looks really nice! Did you do something new with it?”

  A compliment, and such a personal one, was the last thing Elaine expected. She paused, blushing, and stroked her long ponytail. Will had never complimented her hair before, which was strange because she always wore it this way. She found herself growing warm, pleased that she’d managed to wear her hair the way he liked all this time without even knowing it.

  Will looked embarrassed. “Oh, sorry. What was your question?”

  How odd. Elaine had no idea what she’d been about to say. She racked her brain, trying to remember. “Culprit . . .” she murmured, and then it came back to her. “Oh! Um, the Guy Fawkes . . . thing. You wouldn’t be the one responsible, would you?”

  “Oh, no way,” Will replied. “No, I wouldn’t want to wreck your bonfire night.” He smiled again and started to leave, then turned back. “Josh looked rather sketchy,” he offered. “More so than usual, I mean.”

  Elaine accepted the tip with a vague nod. Oh, that smile of his . . . She felt dizzy, but there was something so pleasant about it that she simply watched Will walk away, admiring how nicely he moved, like one of those famous Lipizzaner stallions that could trot so stylishly while never seeming to touch the ground.

  She resumed her way down the corridor, thinking that maybe it was time to give the ends of her hair a bit of a trim and try that fancy new shampoo. . . .

  English class ended, leaving Josh to wish he had some kind of futuristic science-fiction teleporter-type thingy. That way he could just pop! out of the room and avoid Elaine.

  He knew she was looking for him. He knew that the minute he stepped out the door, she would appear, probably in a puff of black smoke. He could practically feel her out there waiting to catch him in her cold iron grasp. She would wrest the truth from him, and he would be defenseless to stop her. Why? Simple. She gave him the creeps. She was just too perfect and prepared for even the tiniest events. She laminated everything within a six-mile reach. Worst of all, she didn’t think his jokes were funny.

  Yup, something was definitely wrong with her.

  But facts were facts: he had to leave the classroom at some point. So he got up and trudged to the door, only to jump back when Peaches popped in, chirping, “Good cop!”

  When Elaine appeared behind her, Josh really jumped back. “It almost feels like you’ve been avoiding us,” Elaine commented.

  Again Josh wished he had that teleporter. Maybe he could find the next best thing. Come on, secret passageway! Covington was an old school. Maybe there was a secret door somewhere
that would lead to a hidden refuge, like old catacombs lit by torches or better yet, a cave with a stone door that had a guardian genie who would protect him from anyone who freaked him out — in other words, Elaine.

  He threw himself at the nearest wall, patting it and poking the wall phone unit, desperately looking for the salvation that he knew wasn’t there. “What’s the point of having a fancy old castle if there are no secret passageways?” he grumbled, knowing he was just wasting time. That was the whole point, wasn’t it? Delay, delay, delay, and try to avoid all unpleasantness until it went away.

  Unfortunately, unpleasantness didn’t usually go away. Present example: Elaine was still there.

  “We need to talk about the Guy Fawkes incident,” she said, closing in on him. Peaches closed in with her, but Peaches was just too cute to appear properly menacing.

  Taking comfort in that, Josh sank into a nearby chair. “Look, I’m telling you right now, you have the wrong dude, okay? The only foxes I know are the two foxes right in front of me so . . .”

  “Aww!” Peaches said, seeming pleased by the compliment.

  Elaine rolled her eyes. “Don’t even try to use that maple-syrupy charm on us. Look, if you didn’t do it, then tell us who did.”

  Josh froze. Looking into Elaine’s eyes was like gazing into a nightmare. “Um . . . I forget.”

  “This could all be over now, Joshua. You just need to say a name.”

  “Just a name. Um . . .” Josh scrambled for some way, any way, to stall some more. “Alex,” he muttered. “Wyatt . . .? Who was I supposed to . . .? Uhh . . . can we go back to the good cop Peaches? ’Cause she kind of reminds me of those old lady-cop shows that my gran liked.” When Elaine’s glare grew darker, which should have been impossible but such was his luck, Josh said, “Yeah, okay, fine, I liked them, too, but, like, they’re awesome, right? And —”

  “Tell. Us. NOW,” Elaine said, getting in his face.

  Josh couldn’t take it. Those nightmare eyes! She was going to laminate him any second! “It was Will!” he shouted. Getting ahold of himself, he repeated in a more normal voice, “It was Will.”

  A strange look crossed Elaine’s face at this news. She stepped back. “Thank you. You’ve been very helpful. Excuse me.” And she left.

  Now that her nightmare eyes were off him, Josh regained what little courage he possessed. He sprinted to the door and called after her, “You can’t do this! There will be consequences! Dire ones!” He gave a frustrated, “Argh!” and frowned at Peaches. “I’m weak, Peaches. So weak.”

  She gave him a sweet, understanding look. “It is better you told her. Now she won’t make me abduct you in the night.” With that, Peaches hurried after her boss, leaving Josh to ponder her parting words. . . .

  Kit entered the tack room with Anya in tow. “Hey, Dad! I have a proper English breakfast courtesy of Sally.” She handed him a small cooler bag.

  Rudy shuddered. “Ugh! More? Forget it.” He handed the bag back. “Feed it to Ducky.”

  As much as her dad’s ugh response surprised Kit, the idea of offering the food to Ducky did not. Anya’s horse, Just Ducky, or Ducky for short, was well known for eating absolutely anything you put in front of him. His favorites included crackers, watermelon, and sour gummy candies, but he was not by any means discerning. Anya occasionally worried that he might get sick from it, but as they say, everything came out all right in the end.

  Everything was not all right now, though. “That’s not very nice,” Kit said to Rudy. After all, Sally had gone to a lot of trouble to make the food. When she had asked Kit to deliver it for her, Kit had seen how much it meant to her. Sally was obviously concerned that Rudy get the best nutrition possible so that his foot would heal well. The school depended on him. But he was refusing it, just like that?

  “You want not nice?” Rudy asked. “Tell her not to cook again. Like, ever. Forever and ever.”

  Kit wasn’t going to let him get away with being so rude. “Ooh, look at me,” she said in a bad imitation of her father. “I’m Rudy, the rough, tough cowboy. I don’t like when nice ladies are nice to me.”

  Rudy sighed.

  Hm, not enough response, Kit thought. I’ve got to hit him harder. She turned to Anya. “Come on, Anya. Join in.”

  Anya squirmed uncomfortably. “I can’t,” she said. “He’s a teacher!”

  Doing her best Anya imitation, Kit said primly, “You would have me poke fun at an instructor? Oh, I couldn’t possibly! Oh, my heavens!”

  That did it. Anya struck a sassy pose and, in a dreadful American accent, said to Rudy, “I’m Mr. Bridges, and I am understandably miffed because I got injured and now I can’t do my job to the best of my abilities.” She ended the speech with a growly “Huh!”

  Everyone — including Rudy — burst out laughing. It was so out of character for Anya! Kit was pleased to see her loosen up so much, and to hear her home country’s accent butchered so badly in the process only made it funnier.

  “You nailed it, Anya!” Kit giggled.

  Rudy surrendered to the teens. “Okay, okay, I’m being ridiculous.”

  “And ungrateful,” added Kit.

  Rudy nodded. “And grouchy.”

  “And mean,” Kit said.

  “All right, you can stop now,” Rudy advised his daughter. “I’m starting to feel better.”

  Mission accomplished! Kit thought happily. True, the breakfast had been rejected, but Rudy was smiling, and that meant the world to Kit. “See you this aft,” she told him, using her signature shorthand, and headed for the door with the cooler.

  Rudy stopped her. “Where are you going with that?”

  “I’m taking it to Ducky,” Kit replied. “And then I’m going to tell Sally that you looooved it.”

  Rudy gave her a lopsided grin. “Smooth.”

  As the girls made their exit, Anya tried out her American accent again. “Hi, I’m Kit! I use my bed for jumping, and I eat chocolate for breakfast, duuuude!”

  Kit laughed. “Well, it is true.”

  And then she got it. From out of the blue, she suddenly understood what her mysterious note writer was trying to tell her. “Oh! That’s what the note meant! Just have fun!”

  She started running, followed by Anya.

  Kit was prepared for Operation Happy Horse.

  She led Anya to the stables and went straight to TK’s stall. She opened the door wide.

  It was as if the black gelding hadn’t moved a muscle since the day before — he still stood with his head in the far corner, looking droopy. The sight made Kit’s heart hurt, but she was sure her plan would work. Throwing all the happy energy she could muster into her voice and gestures, she said, “Come on, my friend! I reeeally miss you! Let’s just hang out — no strings.”

  TK’s left ear flicked.

  “Perhaps the gentleman would like a shiny new apple!” Anya suggested, also injecting her voice with positive energy. She handed Kit the biggest, shiniest apple they’d been able to find in the kitchen.

  “Oh, very nice!” said Kit, holding it out to TK.

  He didn’t respond.

  “Come on, dude! It’s just good manners to accept.”

  TK whinnied into the corner as if to say, “Nope, I’m not gonna move.”

  Kit let her apple-laden arm drop.

  “Time for phase two?” Anya asked.

  Kit nodded. “Phase two.”

  The girls turned to Nav, who was busy in the next stall grooming his bay gelding, Prince. “Hey, Nav,” Kit greeted him. “Are you busy? We could use a hand. See, I’m trying to have fun and let TK come to me, and I think you and Prince would be a big help.” She watched Nav carefully, wondering if he might be her mysterious note writer. If he was, he surely would recognize his own phrases.

  Nav seemed surprised by the request but pleased. “Of course. Anything.”

  His response left Kit unsure as to whether he was the note writer, but it allowed her to begin Operation Happy Horse in earnest.


  First she, Anya, and Nav ran around in front of TK’s open stall, flailing all of their limbs around wildly. Kit leaped up and down, waving pieces of hay while Nav carried Anya around piggyback style as she beat him with a twig. Then Kit and Anya skipped back and forth, arm in arm, hooting and hollering in glee, while Nav walked Prince after them in an attempt to show TK that Prince thought all the fun was pretty exciting and maybe he should join in. All of them forced their laughter at first, trying to ignite TK’s curiosity, but the goofier they acted, the more their laughter became real.

  Then came the carrot dance. Waving long carrots that they’d nicked from the kitchen, the three students pranced around in front of TK, yelling, “Mmm, look at these yummy carrots!” and tickling one another with the long, floppy green carrot tops. Nav made a great show of eating one of them, chewing and making loud “Mmmm!” noises while staring straight at TK. Then they used the carrots as swords and pretended to duel with them, Nav calling out, “En garde, TK!”

  At this point, they at least had TK’s attention. He had swung his big head around and was watching, ears forward, probably wondering if they’d gone mad. That was good, though — just what Kit wanted. His curiosity was piqued. Now it was time for phase three.

  “How about we go outside and play a game of tag?” Kit laughed with her friends, and they all dashed outside with Prince, making sure that TK watched as they left. They made as much noise as possible in the open stable courtyard, chasing one another with a lot more whooping and hollering.

  “Kit!” Nav tapped her shoulder and pointed to the stable doorway.

  TK was standing there.