Minerva Clark Gets a Clue
Read Minerva Clark Gets a Clue Online
Authors: Karen Karbo
For Fiona,
perfect just the way she is
Praise for
Minerva Clark Gets a Clue
Minerva Clark Gets a Clue
“[A] cleverly tangled whodunit. Minerva will quite easily win fans
who will hope that another mystery needs her attention.”
â
Publishers Weekly
“Interspersed with Minerva's amusing revelations is an entertaining
mystery with engaging characters and a positive theme.” â
SLJ
“Minerva is wonderfulâa likable, well-developed personality. Her
droll, engaging narrative ⦠speaks to concerns about self-image and
fitting in that will strike a chord with many readers.”
âBooklist
“What make[s] this book spark are its wonderful characters⦠. A
fun-filled novel that combines sibling relationships and teenage
self-consciousness with mystery and adventure.”
âTeenreads.com
“Especially good is Minerva's increasing self-esteem, which should
resonate with young girls⦠. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.”
â
I Love a Mystery
“Karbo has found a witty, wonderful heroine in Minerva Clark, the
best kid detective to come along since Samantha Keyes.”
âThe Buffalo News
“Karbo's innovative, good-natured satire of adolescent girl behavior
shines when portraying Minerva's quirky but affectionate home life.”
â
The Horn Book Magazine
THE WORST DAY OF MY LIFE
began at the video arcade. It was a teacher-planning day, so there was no school. I didn't want to go to Tilt, but Quills wanted me to go with him, so I said yes. It was before my accident, when I said yes a lot, even when I wanted to say no.
I have three older brothers. Each one is two years, two months, and two days younger than the one before him. Weird, huh? Quills was twenty-two and was on the verge of graduating from college. He was the BIC that day, the Brother-in-Charge.
The worst day of my life was also the longest day of my life, but isn't that how it always works?
Quills had the day off from Kinko's, where he worked making sure the good people of the world got their flyers
Xeroxed, but he's really the bass guitarist for the band Humongous Bag of Cashews. He's not famous yet, but one day he will be. In the meantime, he dyes his hair crayon yellow and says things like “the good people of the world,” which is how famous people talk. His real name is Michael.
I so did not want to go to Tilt. I secretly thought it was stupid and boring. And because it was next to the movie theater, it always smelled like stale popcorn and bath-room cleaner. At Tilt I would do nothing but stand there and watch Quills and his best friend, Toc, who was meeting us there, play Police 911 and Star Trek Voyager for about eight hundred hours.
I could have just said I wanted to stay home and work on my book of rebuses (here's my new one:
Too wise am I. Get it?) and play with my ferret, Jupiter, but if it got around school that I wanted to stay home instead of go to Tilt, people like Hannah McAdams, who was supposed to be my best friend, would call me a freak show loser.
Hannah and I have known each other since Little Acorns Preschool, when we had both loved digging in the dirt with teaspoons in search of buried treasure. One time we found a Susan B. Anthony dollar, which I still
have, and once we found an old piece of tire we were convinced was an Indian arrowhead. Hannah was the first person not in my family to spend the night at my house and the first girl who was allowed to go on vacation with us one year to a dude ranch in California, where she fell off an old pale yellow palomino named Popcorn that was just standing there nibbling on some grass. Once, in third grade, it looked as if we would not be best friends anymoreâa girl named Summer Walters slept over at Hannah's house more than I didâbut then Summer moved to Florida when her mother got transferred.
Hannah says she never called me a freak show loser, but I have the note from Julia, another girl in the seventh grade, to prove she did. If you believe Julia. Which maybe you shouldn't. I don't know.
Anyway, if it got out that I secretly thought Tilt was stupid and boring, and if you believe that Hannah
did
call me a freak show loser, she would probably call me a double freak show loser, and I would probably run to the girls' room and cry, and then a rumor would start that I was bulimic, and then people would say double freak show loser doesn't even
begin
to describe what's wrong with Minerva Clark, because how could I be bulimic and still have fat legs?
So I put on my favorite too-big khaki pants and my
favorite red Vans hoodie and crawled into the backseat of the Electric Matador, a metallic-blue car from the 1970s that was hideously old and ugly. To make matters worse, Quills had a pair of bullhorns strapped to the front. I didn't know why Quills couldn't have a normal beige Honda that people didn't stare at.
The backseat was full of old music magazines and computer parts and empty Mountain Dew cans. It was like the nest of some big weird bird. I liked to sit in the backseat, even if no one was up front, so I could duck if I saw anybody I knew.
On the way to Tilt, Quills passed me his cell phone so I could call my friend Reggie. Reggie and I have known each other even longer than Hannah and I have known each other. We've known each other since whatever people are before they're actual babies, because Reggie's mom and my mom took prenatal water aerobics together at the YMCA. Even though Hannah McAdams is my official best friend, Reggie is my secret best friend. Because he's a boy he obviously can't be my official best friend. Sometimes I really hate seventh grade.
“Hey, Reg, it's me. Wanna meet me at Tilt? Quills and me are headed there now.”
“My mom wants me to go shoe shopping. I'd rather chew on a lightbulb,” he said.
“And then mash the leftovers into your eyes,” I said. We said stuff like this all the time. I would never suggest that Hannah McAdams mash a broken lightbulb into her eyes.
“I got ahold of my bro's Boston Tea Party report,” said Reggie. “We can recycle it for Hazelnut's class.” Hazelnut was Ms. Hazelton, our social studies teacher.
“Didn't your brother have Hazelnut, too?” I asked.
“About a hundred years ago.”
“I don't know,” I said. That morning I was still the kind of girl who didn't like to get in trouble, who didn't like anything that drew attention to herself.
“I'll flashy thing her and she won't remember.”
Reggie was a huge fan of the movie
Men in Black
. Or, as one of our favorite rebuses went:
BLmenACK
Reggie spent a lot of time on the Internet trying to find our if the technology to make the memory eraser really existed. He wanted to use it to erase the memories of everyone who thought he was a pathetic geek instead of the cool geek he wanted to be.
Reggie was already at Tilt when Quills and I arrived. He was eating a soft pretzel. Reggie had thick brown hair that sometimes got bigger than mine and really long
eyelashes. Ladies stopped Reggie on the street sometimes and told him how lucky he was, having eyelashes like that. Like every other boy in my class, he was about two feet tall. I towered over Reggie. I was Gigantor next to him. Even though I didn't think he was hot or anything, it was still depressing.
Reggie raised his pretzel in salute.
We went inside. Quills scooted over and grabbed an empty game before anyone else nabbed it. Quills's best friend, Toc, stood in front of one of the change machines against the wall. He wore his black hair in a tiny ponytail high on top of his head, like someone in an old Japanese painting, and in the summer he painted his toenails blue. Toc was the lead singer and founding member of Humongous Bag of Cashews. Toc stood for The Original Cashew, but his real name was Brad. Last year, in sixth grade, when one of our spelling words was “flamboyant,” I wrote, “My brother's friend Toc is flamboyant.”
“Incoming nefarious activity,” Toc announced loudly.
I pretended I knew what that meant. Probably something a little creepy, knowing Toc.
He handed Reggie and me each a five-dollar bill, except the paper felt funny and ordinary, not crinkly and important. I didn't need to look close to know the bill was a color Xerox.
“You gotta make sure you use this one,” said Toc. He stood in front of the last machine in the row.
“Why?” said Reggie, turning the bill over in his hand.
“Said nefarious activity only works on old machines. The new ones got special high-tech sensors or something.”
Toc took the fake bill he'd given me and slid it into the machine. It clanked twice, then spat out some coins, filling the tiny metal cup beneath its plastic flap with quarters.
“Sweet!” said Reggie.
I remembered then that Reggie liked to call Toc a poseur. Secretly, I think Reggie thought Toc was cool. Toc had a motorcycle and a Fender guitar.
“Isn't that illegal or something?” I asked.
“Not âor something.' It's totally illegal,” he said. He collected the quarters, stuck out his tongue, bugged out his dark eyes, and strolled off to find Quills. Toc was so irritating. I didn't know how Quills could be best friends with him. Probably they dug in the dirt together in preschool.
Reggie was staring over my shoulder at something. I turned to follow his gaze and saw the arcade game I despised more than any other: Dance Dance Revolution.
Crap.
I wasn't supposed to say that word, even though it wasn't a true swear word.
A feeling of doom came over me. Reggie love love
loved
DDR. I'd forgotten Tilt had one. Had I remembered, I'd have stayed home and worked on my rebuses and let everyone and his brother think I was a double freak show loser.
Two guys with wispy mustaches were already on the dance pad, stomping around like madmen. The techno music blared, and the pink and blue arrows blinked on the metal dance pad. Reggie watched the arrow on the screen. He tapped his foot and played air drums. I should have made a beeline to the exit.
Sometimes I am so lame.
Reggie saw the look on my face.
