M
adison was sleeping soundly in a soft, warm place when someone started burrowing into her head with a dentist's drill. Aargh! She rolled onto her stomach and wrapped her pillow around her head and over her ears, but the terrible sound wouldn't stop.
Madison used every ounce of her strength to raise an eyelid. The bright red numbers on her digital clock read 12:16. Groaning, she let her eyelid drop back in place. Last night she had been so excited about starting her first day of seventh grade that she hadn't fallen asleep until late, which meant she'd only been asleep for . . . Madison was so tired she didn't have the energy to subtract.
Brrrng!
Madison struggled to a sitting position. She was pretty certain she knew why someone was calling the Kincaid house after midnight. As much as she wanted to stay under her soft blankets, her curiosity wouldn't let her rest until she'd confirmed her deduction. Dragging herself out of bed, she tiptoed past her father's room with his still un-slept-in bed.
Madison's mother had died when Madison was in first grade, and she'd been raised by her father, Hamilton Kincaid. He was a top criminal defense attorney and a total workaholic. Once he got a case it became his life. It wasn't unusual for Madison's dad to work on a case deep into the night, and it definitely wasn't unusual for a new client to call after midnight.
The second-floor landing was across from her father's first-floor study. Peering through the railing, Madison saw that the door to the study was open.
“I'll be at the jail in half an hour, Mr. Shelby,” her father said.
She ducked back from the railing just as Hamilton walked out of his den. Without looking up, he said, “I know you're listening, Madison. I have to go to the jail. I'll see you at breakfast.”
Most of her friends' parents would never leave a twelve-year-old alone in the middle of the night, but Hamilton was absentminded, and Madison had grown used to taking care of herself. Double-checking that her dad had locked the door behind him, Madison, though curious, went back up to bed.
Madison's alarm went off at 7:15. She sat up right away. She was bleary eyed from her restless night, but if she hit snooze she wouldn't have time to blow-dry. Looking put together on her first day at a new school was seriously important.
By the second or third day, the snooze button would probably be in heavy use again. But today she couldn't afford to go back to sleep.
Grabbing her cell phone from her bedside stand, she speed-dialed Ann. Madison and Ann had met on the first day of soccer practice when they were both five and had been best friends and teammates ever since.
Madison often thought it was cool that two such different girls could be best friends. Madison was orderly, strong willed, and liked a plan, while Ann was happy-go-lucky and ready for anything. Madison loved school, though she knew it sounded dorky. She was a straight-A student and often read books that weren't required reading. She wanted to be the world's greatest crime-solving attorney, so she was always on the lookout for information that could someday come in handy. Sherlock Holmes, for example, could identify 140 different types of tobacco ash and had such a great knowledge of different kinds of soil that he could tell where a person had been by examining the dirt on the sole of a suspect's shoe. Those were just a few of the things Madison would have to know if she wanted to defend the innocent against unjust accusations in court.
Ann was smart, but she didn't read outside of class and didn't care if she got As or Ds as long as she could play soccer. Madison thought of Ann as her “head in the clouds” best friend. Ann probably thought of Madison as her “nose in a book” best friend.
With the first day of school also being the day of tryouts for Pettygrove's championship soccer team, Madison had to make sure she and Ann wore matching socks, a tradition they'd kept since the first day they met.
Weirdly, Ann's phone went straight to voice mail, so Madison left a message and rolled out of bed. After her shower, with her thick brown hair still wet, she threw her pajamas back on and went downstairs. On the way to the kitchen, Madison passed her dad's room. The bed still hadn't been slept in. It must have been a long night at the jail.
As Madison poured herself a big bowl of cereal, she heard her father working in his study. She carried the bowl into his home office.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Morning, honey,” Hamilton said without looking up from the stack of papers he was reading. Though he had changed his clothes since the night before, his socks were mismatched and his hair looked like a hurricane had roared through it.
“It's the first day of junior high, Dad.”
“Oh, yeah.”
Hamilton finally looked up at his twelve-year-old daughter. She was tall for her age and thin, with strong legs from years on the soccer field. Madison knew her dad still had trouble thinking of her as anything but the little girl with pigtails who would color and play with her toys amid his law books.
Because Hamilton was a single parent who was addicted to his work, Madison had basically grown up in his downtown law office. When she was in elementary school, Hamilton would pick her up from school and take her to the firm. As she grew older and started to understand what her father did for a living, Madison began asking him about his casesâand giving him her unsolicited advice on how to win them. Eventually she became a file clerk at his office to earn pocket money, and by now she was addicted to anything having to do with law, including old Perry Mason novels and any lawyer TV show. The other kids in her elementary school would say they wanted to be bakers, teachers, and firefighters when they grew up. Madison wanted to be a criminal defense attorney and try murder cases. Now that she was entering junior high, she was more determined than ever to follow in her father's footsteps.
“New case?” Madison asked, munching on her cereal and pointing at a stack of police reports.
“Uhm,” Hamilton grunted.
“What's it about?”
“Murder. A man named Mark Shelby is charged with killing his wife, but there's no body.”
“Shelby? Mrs. Shelby was my second-grade teacher at Lewis and Clark. Remember?”
Hamilton's face scrunched up. He shook his head apologetically. “I'm not sure I do.”
Madison was annoyed that her dad couldn't remember her second-grade teacher. His brain was so full of legal facts that there wasn't room for much else.
“Mr. Shelby's wife
is
an elementary school teacher, but I don't think he told me where she taught.”
Madison put her spoon down, shocked. “Oh man,” she said, horrified. “Mrs. Shelby was really sweet. Is he guilty? Is Mrs. Shelby dead?”
“Well, she might not be dead, sweetie, so please don't worry yet. My client says he's not guilty. He has no idea why he was arrested. And, like I said, there's no body.”
“If there's no body, how can they arrest him?”
“Circumstantial evidence. If you don't have direct evidence of a crime, like an eyewitness, you can still use circumstances to prove the defendant's guilt. Mark's neighbors have called the police several times because of screaming arguments. Yesterday, Mark and his wife had another argument. A neighbor claims she saw Mark put his wife's body in the back of his station wagon and drive off at high speed. When the police arrived, the house was empty; there were traces of blood on the floor in the kitchen and a knife with blood on the blade on the kitchen counter. Ruth Shelby is still missing.”
Maybe the police had made a big mistake and Mrs. Shelby was okay. For now, all Madison could do was hope.
“Hopefully soccer tryouts won't take too long so I can get to the office to help you,” Madison said, sobered.
“Tryouts, for a star player like you?” Hamilton said. “When the coaches see âMadison Kincaid' on the list, they'll put you on the varsity without a tryout.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Madison said, rolling her eyes. “First of all, junior high doesn't have âvarsity.' You either make the team or you play club. And Pettygrove Junior High has won or placed second in the Junior High City Championship for the past five years. I just hope I make the team.”
“You'll do great. Go get dressed and I'll drive you to school.”
Madison ran upstairs and studied her face in the bathroom mirror. Thankfully, her pale skin was zit free. Not wanting to look like she was overly excited about her first day of school, she decided against any lip gloss, but she did blow-dry her hair. Today she needed her hair to be perfect to impress her new teachers and the other students.
When she was finished in the bathroom, Madison took out the outfit she had decided weeks ago to wear on her first day at Pettygrove Junior High. She was slightly bummed that Ann had been in Europe all summer so that she wasn't around to consult about what to wear. She put on a simple black tank top and pulled on her newish J. Crew jeans, which she'd broken in. Even though she was tall enough for them, talking her father into buying her grown-up jeans hadn't been easy, but she'd finally worn him down.
Madison felt like she'd been waiting for junior high forever. There would be new teachers, tougher classes, and extracurricular activities like debate clubâperfect for someone like her who wanted to get a head start on lawyer skills. There would, of course, be a whole new crowd of boys and girls from the other elementary schools that fed into The Grove, and all of the eighth-grade boys and girls who would rule the school. That made her nervous.
To tell the truth, Madison admitted to herself, as she brushed her hair again, she was never completely comfortable when she wasn't in a classroom or on a soccer field. In elementary school, she had been a soccer star and the other students assumed she was self-assured, but a lot of her confident air was a front. She was uncomfortable in social situations and never really felt that she totally fit in. A mother could have told her the way she was supposed to act with boys, but she didn't have a mom to confide in. And Hamilton was clueless outside of a courtroom.
That's where Ann came in. With her easy, friendly smile, Ann was at home in any social situation. Where Madison worried about saying or doing something stupid, Ann was spontaneous, and the right words always came out of her mouth. Everyone liked Ann, and with Ann by her side Madison knew she'd be okay.
Grabbing her cell phone, Madison tried Ann again. Right to voice mail. Weird; maybe Ann was sleeping in. Madison threw red, green, yellow, white, and black socks into her soccer bag to be safe, along with her well-worn black cleats, sweaty old shin guards, a shirt, shorts, a water bottle, and a snack of crackers and orange slices. Last but not least, she shoved the latest Max Stone legal thriller into her backpack.
Before she was ready to go, she picked up the picture on her night stand. “First day of junior high, Mom,” she said to the photograph of a tall brunette. “Any words of advice?” Even though she didn't remember her mother all that well, Madison still found herself missing her, and often talked to her picture. Taking a deep breath, Madison put the photo back on her nightstand. Then she picked up her backpack and ran to her dad's office. After some cajoling, Hamilton gathered up his papers and followed Madison to the garage, where they got into his black Prius.
The Kincaid house was high in the southwest hills of Portland, and the view on the way down to the city was spectacular on a clear day. The Willamette and Columbia rivers divided Portland into an east side and a west side, and cars streamed over the eight bridges that crossed the rivers. In the distance, Mount Hood towered over the foothills of the Cascade Range. The mountain's snow-covered peak made Hood look peaceful, but every mountain in the Cascades was a dormant volcano. Mount Saint Helens had actually exploded in 1980, blowing out the side of the mountain and covering the city with ash.
The Grove was at the edge of downtown, a quick ride down the hill. They didn't talk much on the ride. Hamilton was busy thinking about his new case and Madison was nervous about the day ahead. As they pulled up, Madison craned her neck to see if she recognized any of the kids streaming into the school. She looked hardest for Ann or Ann's father's Navigator but didn't see either. Kissing her dad on the cheek, she jumped out of the car.
“Good luck today! And kick their butts at soccer!”
“Thanks, Dad! See you at the office when I'm done.”
Hamilton drove off, and suddenly Madison was in the middle of a moving mob of junior high school students. She froze, a knot forming in her stomach. Madison had taken a tour of The Grove on sixth-grader visitor's day, but she had never seen it filled with a thousand students. Compared to her elementary school, it was huge. By sixth grade, Madison was a big fish at Lewis and Clark Elementary School, but here she was a minnow. Would she survive in these waters . . . or be swallowed up?
T
he Grove had been built in the 1960s and looked it. The wide, locker-lined halls had ugly, red-and-puke-brown-patterned linoleum-tiled floors. Located on the edge of downtown Portland, it had a reputation for being the richest, preppiest, best-for-preparing-you-for-the-rigors-of-high-school public junior high in the city. Many of Portland's rich kids went to Prescott-Mather, the closest thing Oregon had to an East Coast prep school, but The Grove had its fair share of wealthy students as well.
An eighth grader's backpack knocked Madison out of her trance, and she realized that she should keep moving. She didn't want to pull her schedule out in the middle of the hall and look like some baby who had no idea where she was going, so she found the nearest girls' room and snuck into a stall. Her first-period class was Pre-Algebra in MH 102.
Okay
, she thought,
where's the math hall?
Luckily all seventh graders got a map of the school with their schedules. Memorizing the location for MH 102, she left the bathroom, trying to look like a confident girl who knew exactly where she was headed.
As she walked to the classroom, Madison searched the halls for Ann. She saw tons of casual friends from elementary school and greeted all of them with a smile and a wave. There was a lot of “How was your summer?” and “Can you believe we're in junior high?” but no Ann in the hallsâor in MH 102. This worried Madison because they were at the same level in math. Then she remembered that there were a few sections of first year pre-algebra and decided she was being silly. The Grove was big and the day had just started.
By the time lunch rolled around, Madison was really worried about Ann, so it was a great relief to see Lacey, one of their friends from sixth grade, when Madison walked into the cafeteria. Lacey shrieked and ran to hug Madison, her blond ponytail bobbing with each step.
“Maddy! Isn't junior high the best? So much better than elementary school. The guys here are amazing. Love your jeans!”
“Um, thanks,” Madison stammered. “Yeah, the first day has been okay for me. . . . ”
“Grab your lunch. Jessi and Becca are already outside.”
Madison looked down at Lacey's tray, which contained a salad and a diet Coke, then eyed the pizza bar. She should probably get a salad like Lacey, but she was hungry, and soccer tryouts were in a few hours. Grabbing a personal-size pizza and a carton of orange juice, Madison followed Lacey and her small salad outside.
Students were seated in clusters on the lawn, and surprisingly Lacey and her friends didn't look like baby sixth graders who had snuck onto campus. Madison said “Hi” to Becca and Jessi. She had been away at soccer camp and hadn't seen them all summer. Anyway, they were more Ann's friends than hers. Now, without Ann, she felt out of place. They chatted a bit about their classes before Madison got to talk about what was bothering her.
“Have you seen Ann?” Becca asked Madison.
“No, I've been looking for her all day. Has anyone seen her?” Madison asked. The other girls shook their heads.
“Hasn't she been in Europe all summer?” Jessi asked.
“Yeah, she's been traveling with her dad. But the strange thing is, she hasn't emailed, texted, or called me, even though she must be back by now, and I've left messages on her cell and emailed but never got anything back.”
“She hasn't called me, either, and her Facebook is way out of date,” Becca said.
“Yeah,” Lacey added. “Her latest picture is way old, like from May.”
“She probably couldn't email from Europe,” Jessi said. “Do they even have email over there?”
“Duh, Jessi, of course they have email in Europe. It's not Mars,” Lacey said.
“I bet something happened in Europe,” Madison said worriedly. “Maybe she was kidnapped.”
All the girls laughed.
“She was probably having a great time with French or Italian boys and was too busy to email or text back home,” said Becca, who had actually kissed a boy and was the expert on anything to do with the opposite sex.
“If she was meeting boys, she would have definitely emailed me,” Madison said, a pit growing in her stomach. “Something horrible might have happened. Her dad is a scientist and he's really weird. Maybe she was kidnapped by criminals who want a formula he discovered, just like Max Stone's
Project Murder
, where the daughter of the rich industrialist was kidnapped so the spies could trade her for the plans for the super computer.”
“Honestly, who is this Max Stone?” Jessi asked. “Can't you read normal books?” Madison blushed. She adored the Max Stone novels.
“You always think the worst has happened,” Becca said. “It's 'cause you hang out with your dad too much.”
“Remember in second grade,” Lacey chimed in, “when Madison announced to the whole class that Jessi had been murdered, because she had found a bloody Kleenex in the girls' room and Jessi wasn't in class?”
“And I was at the nurse's office because I had a bloody nose,” Jessi said.
“That's not fair,” Madison said, embarrassed. “You
could
have been murdered. Okay, maybe I was wrong about that, but this is serious. Ann could be tied up in a basement in London!”
“Or she just might have decided to skip the first day of school to get over jet lag,” Becca said.
“Are you Madison Kincaid?” someone said.
Madison looked up and saw three eighth-grade girls standing over her. The biggest girl was the one who had spoken. She was two inches taller than Madison and twenty muscular pounds heavier, and she was giving Madison a look of pure disdain.
“Yes,” answered Madison, trying to sound confident even though she was nervous.
“I hear you're supposed to be a hotshot forward.”
“That's the position I play.”
“Not any more. I'm Marci Green and I
own
that position, so you better get used to riding the bench,
if
you even make the team.”
Marci's friends sneered at Madison. Becca, Jessi, and Lacey were silent, not knowing how to respond. Then Marci turned her back and walked away with her gang in tow. Madison could hear them laughing as they disappeared from view.