Sophie the Snoop (2 page)

S
occer was a new thing for Sophie. She had just started playing that year.

She had wanted to do something after school. But she hadn’t been sure what. (Just as long as it wasn’t ballet. Her sister, Hayley, did enough of that for both of them.)

Then Kate told Sophie about soccer. She had played the year before.

So Sophie’s mom signed her up, too.

So far, it was pretty fun, though Sophie thought it would be more fun if her ball didn’t always try
to roll away. At practice, she was always chasing it while everyone else played.

It would also be nice if her feet would listen to her — for once. Did they think it was funny when she tried to kick and missed the ball?

Sophie did not.

What Sophie liked best about soccer were the uniforms. They were the best color — sour-apple green! And the girls on her team were all supernice. Plus Coach Courtney was great. Especially when she said things like “Good job, Sophie! You’re getting better every week!”

That day Coach Courtney said something else, though. Something not as great. That day she said, “Sophie, what’s with all this running on your toes? Do you think you could stop? And that’s a pretty cool hat. But you can’t wear it while you play, you know.”

Oh
.

Actually, maybe those were good things after all. Tiptoe soccer was not easy. And Sophie’s detective hat was making her head sweat a lot.
Plus no matter how many times she pushed it back, it kept sliding down to her nose.

Sophie ran over to the sideline, where the girls kept their soccer bags. They all looked the same and were labeled “Official” — which was pretty cool, Sophie thought.

Sophie picked up her bag and dropped her hat inside. Her magnifying glass was already there. Plus a notebook. And a pencil. Just in case there was a soccer mystery. A snoop had to be ready, after all!

She spotted her water bottle on the grass. She picked it up and took a long sip. Then she slipped it into her bag, pulled the drawstring tight, and ran back onto the field.

To start, the team did some drills. They kicked the ball with both sides of their feet. Then they had dribbling races. (And for the first time, Sophie beat Kate!)

After that, Coach Courtney handed out big, bright orange tank tops to half the girls.

It was time to play a real game!

“Can I be goalie?” Sophie asked. Not because she liked to block the ball, but because then she wouldn’t have to run around as much.

During her time in goal, Sophie only let the ball by twice. That was good for her! Then her turn was over. It was time to run back and forth across the field. Sophie got the ball and took a shot … and
wow
! She scored!

Or — no. She
would
have scored — if she hadn’t shot the ball into her own team’s goal.

“Sorry,” she told her teammates.

She would never be named Sophie the Soccer Star. That was for sure.

Finally — hooray! — Coach Courtney called, “Water break, girls!” But Sophie was too tired to drink. She lay down in the grass and took a giant breath instead.

“Sophie!
Sophie
!” Kate was calling her name.

Sophie looked up and saw Kate pulling a girl named Ana by the hand across the field.

“Tell her, Ana! Tell Sophie what’s wrong!” Kate said.

“It’s my water bottle. I can’t find it anywhere,” Ana said, shrugging.

The Case of the Missing Water Bottle!

Sophie forgot all about being tired. She jumped to her feet. “This sounds like a case for Sophie the Snoop!” she cried.

“See!” Kate grinned. “I told you, Ana.”

Ana nodded at Sophie. “I’m really thirsty! Can you hurry?” she asked.

“I will do my best,” Sophie told her. “There might be witnesses. But first, I need the facts. Where did you last see your water bottle? And did you notice anyone out of the ordinary or
suspicious
around?”

Ana pointed to the sideline. “The last time I saw my water bottle, it was there. And what do you mean by ‘out of the ordinary’? Do you mean like you before, when you were wearing that funny hat?”

Funny? My hat?

Sophie started to shake her head. But speaking of hats, Sophie wasn’t sure if she needed hers to
crack this case. But she did need her notepad and magnifying glass!

Sophie nodded back toward the sideline. “Come on. Follow me.”

She tiptoed — again — as fast as she could across the grass and picked up her bag.

No, wait. That was Kate’s. Sophie picked up another. It was heavier, and it had her name on the side. Perfect. She reached in and pulled out her notepad and a pencil.

She carefully wrote
The Case of the Missing Water Bottle.

Then she looked up at Ana and got ready to list the clues.

“So what does your water bottle look like, exactly?” Sophie asked. “Give me every detail. Don’t leave anything out.”

“Well …” Ana twisted her braids as she thought. “It’s metal.” She paused. “And it’s silver, but not shiny. It’s kind of dull. The top is black. And you twist it off. Oh! And it has two black swooshes on the sides. You know?”

Sophie nodded as she wrote everything down. “Yeah, I think I do. It sounds kind of like my bottle.”

Then Sophie stopped writing.

Hold on
.

That sounded a
lot
like her water bottle. Except for the two-swoosh part. Sophie’s bottle used to have two swooshes, but then the dishwasher washed one off.

Slowly, Sophie bent down. She picked her bag up again, reached in, and felt around.

Whoops
.

Sure enough, there were two bottles inside. Sophie pulled out both. She handed the one with two swooshes to Ana.

Kate raised an arm in triumph. “See! I knew she would find it, Ana!”

“Sorry, Ana,” Sophie said, making a face. “I picked yours up by mistake, I guess.”

Ana smiled. “That’s okay. I’m just glad to have it back.” She took a very short drink. “There’s, uh, not much left.”

Whoops. Again
.

“Yeah … I guess I drank most of it. Sorry about that, too,” Sophie said.

Tweeeet
! Coach Courtney blew her whistle.

“Back on the field, girls!” she yelled.

“Here, Ana, take my bottle.” Sophie traded with Ana and they ran back onto the field.

Sophie was glad that another case was solved, at least. But if someone
else
could be guilty the next time … that would be a nice change!

T
he next day, Sophie’s wish came true. There was a brand-new mystery at school. And Sophie was pretty sure that it did not involve her.

It was the Case of the Missing Ms. Moffly!

Because Sophie’s third-grade class had a substitute.

“Where do you think she is?” some kids whispered as they hung up their coats.

“This is
definitely
a case for Sophie the Snoop!” Sophie declared. Then she whipped out a spy kit she had put together at home. A real spy kit, just like every snoop should own!

Not only did she have her notebook and magnifying glass, now she had little plastic bags for collecting evidence, too. And her mom’s rubber gloves, to make sure she did not mess up any fingerprints. Fingerprints were a great way to find criminals. Everyone knew that. So Sophie also had baby powder and a small paintbrush and a roll of clear tape. She had learned that they could pick up fingerprints (though she hadn’t tried it yet).

Plus she had a juicy lemon — otherwise known as invisible ink! All you had to do was write with the juice. When it dried, you could not see a thing. But if you left the paper in the sun, the message magically appeared.

Finally, she had 3-D glasses from a movie she had seen. They weren’t exactly night-vision goggles. Those would have been the best. But these were better than nothing, she guessed.

But before Sophie could even flip open her notebook to crack her latest case, the substitute spoke up. “Um … good morning, class. If you’re
wondering where Ms. Moffly is, I’m afraid she’s sick today. So I’ll be your substitute. If you all could … um … sit down, please.”

Oh, great
.

Sophie put down her notebook. She plopped her chin into her hands. Why did the sub have to
tell
them that Ms. Moffly was home sick? Sophie
so
could have figured that out, she bet!

The substitute, meanwhile, turned to the board. She wrote her name in big letters that sloped to one side.

“Um … my name is Ms. Steele,” she said. She took a deep breath and turned back around.

Sophie studied her. She looked younger than Ms. Moffly. And she was taller, too. She was not wearing much makeup. Her face was plain and thin. And she sure knew how to spoil mysteries! Sophie would just have to wait for the
next
one to roll around. Oh, well.

Luckily, she had a new mystery to solve pretty soon.

It was the Mystery of What’s Up with Ms. Steele!

Why did she seem so
nervous
?

And why was she so
mean
?

And why did so many things she said sound like questions? What was up with that, anyway?

Sophie had had lots of substitutes before. But none like this.

Of course, Sophie had no problem with the sub telling Toby and Archie to sit down.

And “no gum in school” was a rule Ms. Moffly also had. (Too bad.)

Then there was what Ms. Steele said to Mindy VonBoffmann. Mindy hardly ever got in trouble. She was usually too busy tattling on other kids.

“Um … you there … in the pink shirt. Is that a
phone
in your hand? It looks very nice, but could you please put it away? Um … right now?” Ms. Steele said.

Sophie watched as Mindy looked up, wide-eyed. She
did
have a phone in her hand. It was very pink and very shiny.

“What? This? Oh! Don’t worry, it’s not
real
!” Mindy told the teacher. Then Mindy smiled and
flipped it open. “See? It has lip gloss inside.” She pulled out the antenna brush and dabbed some gloss all around her mouth.

Ooh
! Sophie stared.
A lip-gloss phone! Cool
! She had never seen one of them. She hated wanting things that Mindy had. But sometimes she just had to.

“Um … I’m sorry …,” Ms. Steele said.

Mindy smiled. “Oh, that’s okay.”

“… but you
still
have to put it away,” Ms. Steele continued.

Mindy’s shiny lips fell open. Her eyebrows made a bitter V as she put the phone in her cubby.

Sophie smiled a tiny smile. Yes, that was fine. Definitely. But other things the sub did were not okay.

Like when Ms. Steele saw Ben’s stuffed Tweety Bird and made him put it away. That was so unfair. Ms. Moffly always let him keep it at his desk. It was Ben’s very favorite thing.

And talk about unfair — next the sub told Sophie to take off her detective hat!

“But Ms. Moffly let me wear it yesterday. All day. Except for the Pledge of Allegiance.” Sophie took a breath. “She also lets Ben keep Tweety Bird at his desk,” she added.

“Well …” The sub bit her lip. “Um … I guess I’m not Ms. Moffly?” she said.

Sophie sighed and pulled her hat off. “You don’t have to be a detective to figure
that
out,” she muttered to Kate.

She did not mean for Ms. Steele to hear her. But —
oops
! — she did. And so did the rest of the class. Everyone started laughing. That was when the sub got very red.

“Okay. Okay. That’s enough!” she said. She pointed to Sophie. “Um … you. Sophie? Switch seats with him?”

Sophie watched where she pointed next — at Dean. Her stomach did a backflip. Dean sat next to Toby. That meant now
she
had to sit next to him!

Sophie had not sat next to Toby for more than a second since last year. How would she do it for five hours?

She walked slowly to his table. Then she sat down and scooted her chair as far away from him as she could.

“Solve any mysteries yet today,
Snoop
?” Toby asked. Then he snickered. And burped.

Sophie scooted even farther away. She was
so
glad when it was time for gym and she could get away from him! They played Sharks and Minnows outside.

Or most of them did.

Sophie and Kate mostly stood at the edge of the field and talked about how they could not wait for the day to end.

“You know what we should do?” Sophie said.

“What? Pretend to be sick? And get our moms to take us home?” Kate asked.

Sophie shook her head. “No. When we get back to room ten, we should write each other notes!”

Kate grinned. But then she raised her eyebrow a little bit. “I bet ‘no notes in school’ is a big rule for Ms. Steele,” she said.

“Aha!” Sophie held up one finger. “But I have a lemon!”

Kate looked at her blankly. “I don’t get it,” she said.

Sophie leaned over and whispered, “We can use invisible ink! Lemon juice ink stays invisible until you leave it out in the sun. If Ms. Steele sees the paper, she won’t even know it’s a note.”

“Cool!” Kate nodded. But then she rubbed her chin. “But if we’re inside all day, how are
we
going to read the notes?”

Oh
.

Kate had a good point. She always did.

Suddenly, Mr. Hurley, the gym teacher, hollered at them: “Hey! You minnows! Start swimming, or you’re automatically it!”

Quickly, Kate and Sophie dashed across the field. No sharks caught them.
Phew
! They stopped to catch their breath.

“Hey, I have an idea! Let’s write
code
notes,” Kate said.

Code notes?
Yes
! Sophie clapped her hands.

What a snoopy idea! It was just like invisible ink — except you didn’t need the sun.

“Let’s use the code where numbers stand for the letters,” Sophie suggested.

“You mean one for ‘A’ and two for ‘B,’ like that?” Kate asked.

Sophie nodded. “And we can leave them in a certain spot — like the corner of our desk. Then we give a secret signal so the other person knows to pick it up!”

“Sounds good!” Kate said. “But what kind of secret signal?” she asked.

Sophie shrugged. “How about this?
Whooo
.” She made an owl sound.

“Hmm …” Kate watched the other kids running around, tagging each other. She shook her head. “I don’t know. That might sound kind of weird in the classroom. How about a sneeze?”

Sophie tried it out:
“A-choo!”

“Bless you!” Mr. Hurley hollered over to her. “Now get back in there and swim, swim,
swim
, you two minnows!”

W
hen gym was over, the class went back to room 10. As they walked in, Sophie noticed that Ms. Steele looked nervous, still.

“Um … please get out your spelling books, class?” she said to them.

Sophie went to her cubby to get her book, along with everybody else. Then she started to head back to Toby’s table. She
almost
didn’t even mind it. She was much too busy thinking about what kind of code note to write to Kate. Maybe something about how gross Toby was …

And he’d never know what it said! That was the best part.

Suddenly, a screechy voice rang out. It made Sophie’s ears hurt. It also made her heart leap — all the way up to her throat.

The voice belonged to Mindy. And she was saying, “Someone stole my phone!”