Framed by Gordon Korman Read Free Book Online Page A

money. So all we have to do is pretend to be buyers. We send all four of them an anonymous e-mail offering big bucks for the ring. We set up a meeting, and whoever comes must be the guilty one.”
    “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Ben pointed out. “The suspects know us. Whoever comes to the meeting, the minute they spot us, meeting over. They’ll take off and we’ll never be able to prove they had the ring.”
    “I thought of that,” said Griffin. “The meeting has to be at the courthouse where I had my hearing. There’s a metal detector at the front door, and there’s no way a big gold ring is going to make it through without setting off the machine. So the guilty party will have to take the ring out of his pocket and pass it through the X-ray machine. Then we’ve got him.”
    “Or her,” Savannah added.
    Pitch looked surprised. “You know, Griffin, Ialways thought your plans were pretty lamebrained. But this is kind of smart. I mean, it could work.”
    “It better,” said Griffin fervently. “I have less than a month to prove that I’m innocent.”
    I am a serious buyer for the valuable object that has recently come into your possession. If you are interested in making a lot of $$$, meet me under the Blind Justice statue in the lobby of the Cedarville courthouse on Friday at 5:30 p.m. Bring the hardware for a SUPER deal.
    “It’s perfect,” Griffin approved, making shy Melissa blush. “Have you got the e-mail addresses for the four suspects?”
    She nodded, hands caressing the keyboard. “All ready to go. I’m sending it through a dummy server in Malta. There’s no way anybody could trace it. Even a computer expert would take years.” Her finger hovered over the mouse. “Ready?”
    “Let me do it, Melissa.”
    Griffin sent the e-mails himself. It felt important for him to start this plan personally, setting in motion the mechanism that would get him his life back. So far, things had just happened to him. He was a ping-pong ball, bounced around by forceshe had no control over. Now he was fighting back, taking charge. It felt good.
    The hardest part was waiting for Friday. Griffin moved like a zombie through the halls of Jail For Kids. His body may have been in this terrible place, but his mind was lost in the details of Operation Justice: Where should the lookouts be stationed with their walkie-talkies? What were the best vantage points from which a camera might capture the ring as the guilty party revealed it before the metal detector?
    “Hey, Justice — over here!”
    Griffin stood at the end of the cafeteria line, holding his tray at eye level so he could pretend not to notice Sheldon Brickhaus waving him over to a corner table.
    Just keep walking. You don’t see him.
    But it was no use. He could already hear Shank’s size-fourteen construction boots pounding in his direction. Next would come a playful punch that could flatten a bull, or “noogies” from knuckles of steel. It had been the pattern all week. There was no getting away from the guy.
    “What are you, deaf?” Shank grabbed Griffin’s earlobe and yanked.
    Griffin’s tray tilted, and 60 percent of his lunchslid off onto the floor. He joined Shank at his table. What choice did he have? There was no mistaking it — Shank was no ordinary bully like Darren Vader. He was more like a cat playing with a captured mouse, getting maximum enjoyment before killing it. This torturer wasn’t interested in wedgies or shaking you down for lunch money. For him this was sport.
    Shank talked like they were best friends, but pain was never far away, coming in the form of vice-grip handshakes, bone-cracking backslaps, and assorted squeezes, tugs, and pinches. The fact that it didn’t happen very often made it all the more horrible. The anticipation was enough to drive a person crazy.
    Shank was an eighth grader, a year older than Griffin, but they shared five out of seven classes. The middle school kids were kept together as much as