The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman Read Online Free Page B

L’il Otters swim team. They had drifted apart, however, for all the reasons that ten-year-old girls do: Pamela’s family moved to a different, bigger house, out of biking distance from Bethesda’s; Pamela had started hanging out a lot with Natasha Belinsky and Todd Spolin, neither of whom Bethesda was too crazy about; and once, during their last season together on the Otters, Suzie told Bethesda that Todd said that Pamela said the backstroke (Bethesda’s specialty) wasn’t really swimming—“it was more, like, impressive floating.”
    Anyway, since they had gotten to Mary Todd Lincoln, Bethesda and Pamela didn’t hang out so much. And Pamela was the last person Bethesda felt like running into, just as she realized the SPDSTAMF was maybe going to be harder than she’d imagined.
    “So? How’s it going with the
fascinating
Ms. Finkleman? ” Pamela replied, her eyes twinkling ever so slightly.
    “Oh, you know,” Bethesda replied. “Fine, I guess.”
    “Oh, great!” Pamela said warmly, as if Bethesda had said something totally different. “Well,
my
Special Project is going really well, too. Really,
really
well.” Talking very rapidly, and with a lot more hand gestures than Bethesda thought necessary, Pamela explained thatshe had dropped the Jesse James theme this time, and instead was studying the mystery of those weird piles of small rocks that ringed the school athletic field.
    “I mean, have you noticed those piles? ”
    “Uh, yeah, I guess so,” Bethesda said, shading her eyes against the bright white sun and Pamela’s enthusiastic smile.
    “Well. I’m still piecing together the evidence and all, but you know what I think? ” Pamela lowered her voice and leaned forward over her handlebars, giving Bethesda a rich noseful of her lilac perfume. “I think it’s
aliens.”
    “Really?” Despite herself, Bethesda was intrigued. “Aliens?”
    “Yes! Not the aliens themselves, just, like,
signs
of them. They’re preparing to land on our athletic field.”
    “Wow.” Bethesda smiled weakly. “Aliens. Are you here to check the newspaper archives? ”
    “What? No, I don’t need to. I’ve got it all pieced together. I’m just on the way to the art store to get some pink poster board. Won’t that be cute?”
    Yeah. Cute. As she biked home, Bethesda’s mind raced with anxiety. The clock was counting down to Monday morning, when Special Projects were due, and Pamela Preston had aliens from outer space about to land on theMary Todd Lincoln athletic field. Bethesda, on the other hand, had (drum roll, please!) the world’s most boring music teacher!
Erf!
    Bethesda’s purple scarf caught in her rear wheel; she braked too hard, jerked the bike to the right, and slammed into the red-and-white striped barber pole outside Sully’s Unisex Salon.
    “Argle bargle,” Bethesda cried as she struggled to her feet and picked little bits of deicing salt out of her palms. Argle bargle was another favorite phrase of Bethesda’s father, for expressing intense emotional frustration or physical pain. When you were experiencing both, you said it twice. “Argle bargle!”
    After dinner that night, Bethesda sat at the kitchen table, a bottle of Snapple open in front of her, considering the meager data she’d collected thus far. There was the intriguing information about the tattoo. That was good. There was the intriguing clue from Ms. Finkleman’s desk drawer. That was also good. And there was—what else? The bowl of clementine oranges? No help there.
    Bethesda sighed and decided her best bet was to focus on the clue from the desk. The original, written on ascrap of yellowing copy paper, was taped to the bottom of Ms. Finkleman’s bottom drawer; but Bethesda had carefully copied the whole thing onto page three of her SPDSTAMF spiral notebook.

    It was a secret code. Obviously. But what could it mean?
    It was 8:45 p.m. Special Projects were due first thing Monday morning. Thirty-six hours of mystery-solving time