The First Day of School Mystery (2 page)

“A letter!” Eric said. “Oh, no! I don’t remember our teacher’s name. I don’t remember our room number.” Eric searched in his backpack. “I can’t find Dr. Prell’s letter.”

“Don’t worry,” Cam told him. “We’re in the same class and I remember.”

Cam closed her eyes and said,
“Click!”

Cam always says
“Click!”
when she wants to remember something. “My mind is like a camera,” Cam says, “and cameras go Click!”

Cam remembers just about everything. It’s as if she has a mental camera and photographs in her head of whatever she’s seen.

Mrs. Lane banged on the horn again.

The cars ahead still didn’t move.

Cam’s real name is Jennifer. But when people found out about her amazing memory they started calling her “The Camera.” Soon “The Camera” became just “Cam.”

“‘Dear Jennifer Jansen,”’ Cam said with her eyes still closed. “‘Welcome to the fifth grade.’”

“Here it is,” Eric said. “I found the letter.”

Cam kept reading from the picture of the letter she had in her head.

“‘Your teacher this year will be Ms. Benson in Room 118. School begins at 8:30 A.M., Wednesday, September 6. Please bring a pencil, pen, notebook, and an eagerness to learn. With best wishes for a great school year, Dr. Jane Prell, principal.’”

“You got every word right,” Eric said.

Cam smiled. She opened her eyes.

“And I’m right, too,” Mrs. Lane told the children. She turned the key and shut off the bus. “If the cars ahead don’t move, we’ll never get to school.”

Mrs. Lane took a small telephone from her pocket. Some papers fell out. She pressed the buttons on the telephone and waited.

“Dr. Prell,” she said. “This is Sally Lane, the bus driver. I’m stuck on Franklin Street, three blocks from the school.... Oh, my. That’s terrible.... Of course ... Yes, I’ll get the children ready.”

Mrs. Lane put the telephone in her pocket. She turned and spoke to the children. “Get your books and things together. A teacher will be here in a few minutes. He’ll walk with you to school.”

Cam and Eric looked out the window and waited. They saw Mr. Day, the gym teacher, walking toward them. When he reached the bus, he blew his whistle.

“Let’s go,” he shouted. “Line up out here.”

Children hurried down the aisle and off the bus. They stood behind Mr. Day.

“Get in a straight double line,” he shouted. “Hold hands.”

Cam and Eric waited until the last children were off the bus before leaving their seats. When Cam passed Mrs. Lane she picked up some papers.

“Are these yours?” Cam asked.

“Oh yes. Thank you,” Mrs. Lane said. “This yellow one is a message from my boss. I’m glad you found it. And this pink one is my dry-cleaning ticket. I’m just losing everything!”

Cam and Eric got off the bus and went to the back of the line.

“Hold hands!” Mr. Day told them.

Cam and Eric held hands.

“I feel like I’m in kindergarten,” Eric said.

“I
am
in kindergarten,” Tommy-in-Kindergarten said.

“Quiet in the back!” Mr. Day shouted.

The children walked past people stuck in their cars. Some were resting or reading. Others were talking on small telephones. Some people smiled and waved to the children.

“Look,” Eric whispered. “Police cars! Maybe there was an accident.”

Cam and Eric kept walking. Then they saw a large tree. When they walked past the tree they saw the front end of a small green car. It had crashed into the tree.

“I hope no one was hurt,” Eric said.

“Quiet in the back!” Mr. Day shouted.

Cam and Eric walked quietly. Then, when they were close to the car, Cam whispered, “Stop.”

Mr. Day and the other children kept walking. Cam waited until the others were a bit ahead. Then she whispered, “The car doesn’t look so bad, and there’s no ambulance, so maybe no one was hurt.”

Police officers were standing by their cars, talking. Cam looked at the green car. She blinked her eyes and said,
“Click!”

Cam and Eric got close to the car and looked in.

“There are papers on the front seat, a white one and a pink one,” Cam told Eric. “There’s a pair of sneakers on the floor and a tennis racket in the back.”

Cam blinked her eyes again and said,
“Click!”

“Get away from there,” a tall police officer told Cam and Eric.

“Let’s go,” Mr. Day called to them.

Cam and Eric ran to the line. They quietly followed Mr. Day and the other children into the school. They went to Room 118, opened the door, and met their new teacher, Ms. Benson.

“You must be Jennifer,” Ms. Benson said to Cam. “And you must be Eric. Your seats are in the back.”

“How does she know our names?” Eric whispered.

“She has a class list. All teachers do,” Cam told him. “Everyone else is here, so who else could we be?”

Cam and Eric looked at the children already sitting at their desks. Lots of their friends and classmates from fourth grade were in Ms. Benson’s class. They were busy copying a list of classroom rules from the chalkboard.

In the front of each desk, right in the middle, was a neatly written name tag. Cam and Eric found their name tags. Their desks were next to each other. They sat down and began to copy Ms. Benson’s classroom rules.

Ms. Benson walked through the room. She looked at the children’s work and smiled. Then the door opened. Two police officers walked in. One was very tall, and one was not so tall and had a short beard.

“I remember the tall policeman,” Cam whispered to Eric. “He told us to get away from the car.”

Ms. Benson hurried to the front of the room.

“I’m Officer Oppen,” said the not-so-tall officer. He showed her a slip of paper and asked, “Is this your car’s license-plate number?”

Ms. Benson nodded.

“Did you drive your car to school this morning?”

“Yes,” Ms. Benson said.

“You left the scene of an accident,” the tall officer told her.

“No I didn’t,” Ms. Benson said quickly. “There must be some mistake.”

“Please,” the officer with the short beard said. “You’ll have to come with us.”

Ms. Benson turned to the class. “Sit quietly,” she said. Then she left the room with the tall officer on one side and the shorter one on the other.

The children did
not
sit quietly.

Danny got up. He put his hands on his hips and said in a high squeaky voice,
“There must be some mistake!”

Danny lowered his voice, pointed, and said,
“You’ll have to come with us.”

He laughed. “My mother told me not to get in trouble. Well, I didn’t. My teacher did! She got arrested!”

“We saw her car,” Eric said. “It’s green and it crashed right into a tree just one block from here. That’s why Cam and I were late. Our bus was stuck in traffic.”

“They should have put handcuffs on her,” Danny said. “They should have told her she has the right to remain silent.”

Cam closed her eyes. She said,
“Click!”
She looked at the picture she had in her head of the small green car.

Dr. Prell came in. Danny quickly sat down.

Cam opened her eyes.

“There are books in the back,” Dr. Prell told the class. “Please find something to read. There will be a teacher here soon.”

Dr. Prell watched as children went to the classroom library and selected books. Cam chose a mystery. Eric took a biography.

Cam sat in her seat. She opened the mystery, but she kept thinking about Ms. Benson and the small green car.

“Here I am,” Mr. Day said as he walked into the room.

“I hope Ms. Benson will be back soon,” Dr. Prell told him. “The children are reading,” she said, and left the room.