Middle Grade Mystery / Spy / Detective
Date Published: 04-28-2022
Publisher: Fitzroy Books / Regal House
Things don’t usually come to a screeching halt at the RAT, also known as
Ridgewood Arts & Technical School, Ridgewood City’s most prestigious
progressive institution. But that’s what happens when Headmistress Hardaway
interrupts class and announces, “A scandal has rocked the fundraising
committee!” Everyone is a suspect and Hunter Jackson, student council
special investigator, vows to root out the student who’s heartless enough to
steal donation money. He’s not alone. Ridgewood Roar news editor, Anthony
Ravello, and the rogue, indie-press pioneer, Liberty Lennon, plan to do some
journalistic digging of their own in a race against each other to scoop the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to their faithful
readers…or at least their versions of it. With the truth getting murkier by
the day, students at the RAT gobble up news bytes and wash them down with
locker-side gossip as they try to unmask the classmate responsible for the
missing funds.
EXCERPT
NewRecording_473
APR 1 4:04p
Id: RebeLiberty76
Hi Liberty. It’s me! Liberty Lennon. Your best friend in the whole, wide world. Your most trusted friend in the whole, wide world. Your ONLY friend in the whole, wide world. <mumbling> Geez, that’s sad. Let me start over…
Ahem. My dearest audio diary, it’s me again. No name necessary. Ok, it’s Liberty. It’s also April Fool’s Day and the fools were on full display at the RAT. That has nothing to do with April Fool’s Day, actually. It’s like that every day at that place. It’s mostly the boys, but the girls are pretty foolish themselves. It’s like all they care about is quantum physics and Princeton University and keynote addresses, so they forget how to be in eighth grade. Like really just be in eighth grade and worry about the problems that face us in an eighth grade classroom, like chewed-up gum under the science lab tables that stick to a brand new skirt you may or may not have fashioned out of an old shower curtain. I’m just saying. Or even if these fools took their faces out from behind blank canvases for a few seconds and thought about how they could help poor kids here in Ridgewood City instead of searching for problems all over the world. There are plenty of them here if they just took the time to look with their actual eyes instead of through someone else’s who just happens to want them to buy something…Wait…I’m way off track again. Let me start over…
Ahem. Dearest audio diary. It’s me. Yet again. Here’s a list of things I need to remember for my article. One. Ms. Hardaway sure seemed to look like a person who’d been robbed. I’m not sure what you look like after you get robbed. I’ve never been held up or anything. One time when Dad and I were living on the base in Arizona, a homeless man asked us for change and Dad gave him a five-dollar bill, but I wouldn’t call that robbery or anything. But I’m pretty sure if it had been robbery I would have had deep wrinkles on my forehead like Ms. Hardaway did at the assembly. She told us over a thousand bucks just got up and walked out of the ticket booth on its own, but what she really meant–and this is Point Two–is that it was stolen. That’s right, stolen. I think most of the students at the assembly would have agreed, and if all of the shouting and name-calling that took place was any indication, they did.
Point Three…totally random, but I’m really starting to get sick of that Tony Ravello kid. He acted like my best friend these past two years since I crashed the whole RAT party and I thought we actually got along pretty well. We talked about writing a lot. I guess that’s all we had, but it could have been worse. He could have talked about professional wrestling all day like Lenny Grback did back at my old school in Yuma. Anyway, the first chance Ravello sees to jab a meat cleaver in my back he goes and does it. Like I don’t know he had something to do with this mess and that slimy Trent Millsdale is at the heart of it all. I don’t know what they did, but I plan to find out. You know, before they find out about me. But we can talk about that later. For now, let’s focus on Trent and Tony. And how do I know they had something to do with this mess? Well, I’m glad you asked, Ms. Lennon. I can’t say that either. Or I’m not willing to say. Or maybe I’m a little too scared to say. It doesn’t matter, because when Trent and Tony see my first issue of The Rebel Yell they’re gonna drop dead right there in their stupid, swivel chairs. Hey, that rhymes. Kind of. Well, I AM a poet so I guess I know it….That was dumb. I should start this recording over again, but it’s getting kind of ridiculous so I’ll just keep going.
What’s going to surprise the heck out of Tony Ravello and make him stop slouching and stand up straight for once and maybe stop worrying about the tuck-line between his dress shirt and his belt, or the precise razor length of his Boy Scout haircut is that first minute–right after I get back from Grandpa Joe’s printing shop with a stack of my new indie newszine and start passing them out to everyone at school. Those April fools will never read Tony’s work again! They’ll also never know a thing about what Tony thought he saw me looking at during the assembly. Cause I wasn’t looking at a thing. And no one will ever know about it except me and you…and since you’re me then, well, we don’t have much to worry about. My first article for the Yell will do the rest of my talking.
About the Author
Frank Morelli is the author of the young adult novels On the Way to
Birdland (2021) and No Sad Songs (2018), a YALSA Quick Picks for Reluctant
Readers nominee and winner of an American Fiction Award for best coming of
age story. His fiction and essays have been featured in various publications
including The Saturday Evening Post, Cobalt Review, Philadelphia Stories,
and Highlights Magazine. A Philadelphia native, Morelli now resides in High
Point, NC with a brilliant illustrator and his fur babies.
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