Ian turned red.

  “The statues were moved,” continued Friday. “They are not in their original location. To explore the original location would require scuba gear.”

  “I can scuba dive,” argued Ian.

  “I’m sure you can,” said Friday. “But do you have access to a time machine? You’d need one if what you said is true, because Julius Caesar was long dead when Rome took control of Egypt. It was Octavius Caesar who commanded the Roman forces at that time. Anyone who has ever seen the play Antony and Cleopatra could tell you that.”

  “Old Roman currency must have still been in circulation,” protested Ian.

  “Fair enough,” said Friday. “But you made one more crucial error.” She got up from her desk and walked over to confront Ian.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Ian guardedly.

  “This,” said Friday. She licked her thumb and ran it down the side of Ian’s face.

  “Ewww,” chorused the class.

  Ian flinched.

  Friday turned around and showed the class her thumb. It was as brown as leather.

  “He is wearing fake tan,” said Friday. “A very good fake tan, except for one small detail. In the photo you’re wearing your watch on your left wrist, and holding the coin up to the left side of your face, next to your eye with the scar above it. But here you are in real life, with the watch tan line on your left wrist. But your scar is, and always has been, over your right eye. You faked the photographs digitally, then put on a fake tan to lend credibility to your story. But you forgot to allow for the mirroring of the image.”

  Everyone in the class glanced from the photo to Ian and back several times. Friday was clearly correct.

  “She’s right,” concluded Mr. Braithwaite.

  “I hate you,” seethed Ian. He threw the coin at Friday and stormed out of the room.

  The whole class erupted into frenzied speculation.

  Except for Friday. She was contemplative as she picked up the old coin.

  “Oh dear,” said Melanie. “You’ve embarrassed him. This is going to drive an even bigger wedge in your relationship.”

  “There is more to this than meets the eye,” said Friday.

  “He was cheating on a history assignment,” said Melanie. “We’ve all done that. Or, well, I would have if I’d had the energy.”

  “But he did it so badly, with such slipshod research,” said Friday. “That’s not like Ian. He’s very bright. He enjoys being devious. He normally takes delight in getting all the little details right. This charade was a rush job. His mind is on other things. And where was he last week? He clearly wasn’t on an archaeological dig in Egypt. This whole debacle is curious indeed.”

  Chapter

  20

  Something Spooky

  Several days later, Friday and Melanie were fast asleep in bed. Well, Friday’s conscious was asleep while her unconscious was being coached in Russian. Friday found if she listened to language tapes as she slept, after a few months her brain would teach itself to be bilingual (actually, multilingual—she had forced several languages into her brain over the years). Anyway, it was the middle of the night when their sleep was interrupted by a duo of high-pitched screaming.

  “Waaaaaagggghhhhh!” screamed the voices.

  Friday immediately leaped out of bed. “What was that?”

  “Was it me?” asked Melanie. “Sometimes I wake up screaming when I remember that I have a math assignment due.”

  “No, it was definitely someone downstairs,” said Friday as she hurriedly put on her dressing gown. “Come on, let’s see what it was.”

  The girls went out into the corridor and discovered a couple of dozen equally curious students investigating the noise. Down in the lobby were two panting seventh-grade boys who looked like they’d had the living daylights scared out of them.

  “Let’s interrogate them,” said Friday.

  Friday and Melanie were making their way through the crowd when Mr. Franklin, the dormitory supervisor, burst into the lobby. Everyone sniggered. Mr. Franklin was usually a model of propriety, so to see him in his dressing gown and slippers, no matter how respectable the dressing gown and slippers were, was comical.

  “What is the meaning of this?” demanded Mr. Franklin. “What are you two boys doing out of bed and screaming at this ridiculous hour?”

  “We were in the swamp!” said Benny.

  “And we saw the beast!” exclaimed Fred.

  No one laughed, even though it was a bizarre statement. Fred said it with such sincerity everyone could tell he wasn’t joking.

  “Don’t be farcical,” said Mr. Franklin. “There’s no such thing as the beast.”

  “But we saw one,” declared Benny. “It growled at us. It had huge teeth, hair everywhere. It was awful.”

  “An awful cliché,” muttered Friday.

  “You didn’t see it,” said Fred defensively. “If you did, you’d be screaming, too.”

  “What were you doing at the swamp anyway?” asked Mr. Franklin. “You know if a classmate throws your belongings in the swamp, you are meant to report it to the school secretary and she will arrange for a member of the maintenance staff to fetch it for you.”

  “We were buying a phone,” said Fred.

  “But phones aren’t allowed,” said Melanie.

  “That’s why we were buying it in the middle of the night,” said Benny.

  “This is ridiculous fiddle-faddle,” said Mr. Franklin as he moved toward the front door. “Both of you report to the Headmaster’s office at eight tomorrow morning. Right now, all of you should go to bed.” Mr. Franklin reached out to lock the door, but he was knocked backward when Ian Wainscott stumbled in, panting. He slammed the door and locked it himself. His face was as white as a sheet.

  “What were you doing outside at this hour?” demanded Mr. Franklin.

  “He was the one who was going to sell us the phone,” said Fred.

  “Thanks for your discretion, boys,” Ian said sarcastically. “I categorically deny it all. I was outside because I heard two young boys screaming and I was concerned.”

  “Huh, a likely story,” said Friday.

  “All right, you can see the Headmaster in the morning, too. Now everyone get to bed,” said Mr. Franklin.

  No one moved. They were all burning with curiosity. And the boys who had been outside clearly wanted to tell everybody about it.

  “Off to bed, or I shall leave the door wide open and let the wild hairy ape-man in,” threatened Mr. Franklin.

  All the children scuttled back to their rooms.

  * * *

  “You don’t think there really is a wild ape-man in the swamp?” asked Melanie as she lay in bed with the blankets tucked up to her chin.

  Friday was sitting up in bed, sucking a lollipop, as her brain whizzed like a computer hard drive processing all the various possibilities. “No,” said Friday, “because they don’t exist. But it is very intriguing. So many variables, so many possibilities.”

  “I suppose we’d better go back to sleep,” said Melanie.

  “Oh, there’s no chance of that,” said Friday. “This is all way too fascinating. I’ll sleep tomorrow in math instead.”

  Chapter

  21

  The Plot Thickens

  Friday did not get a chance to quiz Benny or Fred the next day. They weren’t at breakfast, and by the end of first period, word had spread around the school that they had both been suspended for a week for being on the grounds after lights-out. Also, Benny’s father wanted to send him to Switzerland for therapy because he claimed he was suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, which could only be cured by a week of skiing.

  The only witness to the ape-man’s attack who remained was Ian Wainscott. He’d been let off because his story was so convincing. Good-looking people are so much more convincing when they lie.

  Friday had developed a healthy dislike for Ian based on the enormous dislike he clearly showed for her. But her curiosity overcame her natural sense of self-preservation (not her greatest instinct at the best of times) when she saw him on her way to history class.

  “Ian,” called Friday as she stepped out of the flow of foot traffic.

  Ian turned and sneered at her. “What do you want?”

  Friday ignored the unpleasantries. “I want to ask you a few questions.”

  “What a surprise,” said Ian. “The girl detective wants to stick her nose in where it doesn’t belong.”

  “What happened last night?” asked Friday, again ignoring his provocation.

  Ian leaned forward so that he was right in Friday’s face, then said with barely controlled anger, “None of your business.” He turned and walked away.

  “Were you playing pranks again?” Friday called after him.

  Ian just ignored her. Friday watched him go.

  “You’re falling even more in love with him, aren’t you?” said Melanie.

  “What?” said Friday.

  “When people bicker like that in movies, it’s always because they are secretly in love with each other and they’re trying to fight it,” said Melanie.

  “I’m not secretly in love with Ian Wainscott,” said Friday.

  “Okay,” said Melanie. “But the people in movies never realize they are secretly in love either.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Friday. She was barely paying attention because her mind was preoccupied with beasts, swamps, and what Ian could possibly be up to.

  “Come on,” said Melanie. “We’d better hurry up or we’ll be really late for biology. And I don’t want to be sent to the Headmaster’s office, because on Tuesday, Miss Harrow always has new birds in her aviary.”

  “You’re birdbrained,” said Friday grumpily.

  “My mother often tells me the same thing,” said Melanie. “But if I had a brain the size of a grain of rice and I could fly, I think I’d be happy with that.”

  The girls trudged off to class.

  Chapter

  22

  More Screaming

  That night the girls went to sleep as usual. Melanie dreamed about being a bird or a butterfly or some other pretty thing that flitted about. Friday lay in a semidormant state, her half-conscious brain processing all the information it had input during the course of the day. Beasts in swamps and frighteningly good-looking boys with anger management issues were so much more interesting than coursework. And apparently several schoolgirls agreed with Friday’s sentiments entirely, because at 2:17 a.m. exactly the entire school was again awoken by screaming.

  “There’s someone screaming in the hall again,” said Friday.

  “Maybe they can’t decide what to wear tomorrow,” said Melanie sleepily.

  “Come on, let’s investigate,” said Friday. “I can make out five voices this time. And they sound like girls.” Friday was hurrying to put her slippers and robe on.

  “The boys yesterday sounded like girls when they were screaming,” said Melanie.

  “Yes,” agreed Friday. “Their pitch was just as high. But when girls scream like that it sounds different. It goes on and on. You can tell they are enjoying themselves.”

  Friday and Melanie bustled down to the entrance lobby, and Friday was proved correct. A crowd had gathered around five hysterical girls who were clearly having a wonderful time being scared out of their wits (not that they had a lot of wits to start with) because they could barely keep the grins off their faces.

  Mr. Franklin burst out of his room. “What is the meaning of this?!” This time he was wearing a tracksuit. He’d had the good sense to go to bed wearing outdoor clothes after the embarrassment of letting half the student body see his pajamas the night before.

  “We saw the swamp yeti!” announced Trea breathlessly.

  Observing Trea’s wide eyes and gushing tone, Friday reflected that in days gone by she would have been slapped in the face for hysteria.

  “What were you doing out on the grounds?” demanded Mr. Franklin.

  “Looking for the man-beast,” admitted another girl, and then they all giggled. Whatever genuine fear they’d suffered had now ebbed away in the security of the dormitory building, and the whole experience was now just good fun.

  “Why on earth would you go out into the swamp in the middle of the night, looking for a wild beast?” asked Mr. Franklin. Being a sixty-year-old man, the complexities of a teenage girl’s mind were beyond him.

  “Because rugged, untamed men are cute,” said Trea.

  Now lots of girls giggled.

  “There is a subsection of literature that depicts teenage werewolves and foundlings raised by apes as objects of romantic aspiration,” Friday told Mr. Franklin helpfully.

  Mr. Franklin glared at Friday, then the other girls. He had thought he’d seen it all as a teacher. But every year the children seemed to become sillier in ways that he never could have imagined.

  “All of you, go to bed,” snapped Mr. Franklin. “You five,” he said to Trea and her four friends, “and you”—he pointed at Friday—“report to the Headmaster’s office at eight tomorrow morning.”

  “What did I do?” protested Friday.

  “You’re too clever for your own good,” said Mr. Franklin.

  “Scholarship girl,” said Trea spitefully as they all turned and went to bed, already mentally planning the splendid week Friday would have at home while under suspension.

  Chapter

  23

  Back in the Headmaster’s Office

  The next morning Friday and the other five girls were sitting on the bench outside the Headmaster’s office. The Headmaster kept them waiting. Friday wondered if he was hiding around the corner and peeking to see if they would stay sitting there. He eventually appeared, bustling along the corridor and looking grumpy as usual.

  “You again,” he said to Friday as he walked past on the way to his office. He pushed the door open and turned to the gigglers. “You five, come in,” he said sternly, which of course made them giggle. “You, wait,” he said, glaring at Friday. Friday was delighted to oblige. Sitting outside the Headmaster’s office was getting her out of woodwork. And as she had already taught herself fine woodworking skills from watching YouTube clips, she didn’t feel that learning how to make a bookend would teach her very much.

  Friday listened to the Headmaster telling the other girls off. She couldn’t hear the words he was using because the school had thick walls, but she could hear his tone. It was a low, rumbling monotone. He’s trying to bore them to death, suspected Friday. But the monotone gradually grew louder and louder until the Headmaster started shouting. The shouting came in staccato bursts. Friday could catch the occasional word: words like “ashamed” and “disappointed” as well as adjectives like “abysmal,” “irresponsible,” and “pathetic.” He wound it up with a few hard thumps on the desk. She heard footsteps across the floor, and then the door swung open and Friday could see the Headmaster standing angrily in the doorway of his office as the five girls, now totally deflated, emerged sobbing and red-eyed. They were so consumed by their own self-pity that they didn’t even look at Friday as they walked past.

  “You, in here,” ordered the Headmaster, pointing his finger at Friday. Friday felt uncharacteristic discomfort and trepidation. The Headmaster clearly had his blood up. He was on a roll with doling out punishment.

  She walked quietly into his office. There was a chair in front of his desk, but she knew it was a trick and she should not sit in it unless invited to.

  The Headmaster walked behind his desk and stood next to his chair. He glared at Friday, then sat down. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  “Nothing,” said Friday.

  “Really?” said the Headmaster. “How uncharacteristic. I thought you had an opinion on every topic. Mr. Franklin claims you were making wisecracks last night.”

  “I think he misunderstood me,” said Friday. “It was late. I was only trying to be helpful and provide a factual background.”

  “You are too helpful for your own good,” said the Headmaster darkly.

  Friday frowned. She felt this was a profoundly flawed and illogical statement. But using what was for her a rare flash of insight into human nature, she judged that now was not the time to point that out.

  Friday looked at the Headmaster and he glared back at her.

  “So tell me, since you’re the smarty-pants, what is going on down at the swamp?” asked the Headmaster.

  “I don’t know!” said Friday. She was surprised by the question.

  “Really? I thought you had the answers to everything,” said the Headmaster.

  “No,” admitted Friday. “It only seems that way because I do know a lot more than the average eleven-year-old. I know a lot more than most adults as well.”

  The Headmaster sighed. “But apparently you don’t know when to keep quiet.”

  “I think I have been thrown off balance by the subculture of this school,” said Friday. “I was very good at being quiet before. I could go weeks without talking to anyone. But here, people keep asking me provocative rhetorical questions. And I’ve never been very good at picking up on when a question is rhetorical. I know it’s something you’re supposed to be able to gauge from watching facial expressions and listening to voice tone, but that is something I have not been able to teach myself from a book.”

  The Headmaster sighed again and rubbed his head. He didn’t actually have a headache yet, but it was only quarter past eight in the morning and he was sure he would have one by the end of the day.

  “I have suspended seven students in two days,” said the Headmaster. “There are only 278 students in the school. At this rate there will be none left by the end of the month.”

  “Actually, if you graphed the trend and it continued on the same arc,” said Friday, “we’d all be gone in four days. Because you suspended five students today and two yesterday. Five is two times two and a half. Five times two and a half is twelve and a half, but we’ll round that down to twelve. Twelve times two and a half is thirty. Thirty times two and a half is seventy-five, and seventy-five times two and a half is 187.5. Add all those numbers together, and the entire student body would be gone by next Monday. Sooner if the extra time available on the weekend allowed the students to be more active.”