Minerva Clark Gets a Clue by Karen Karbo Read Free Book Online Page A

up out of my chair and slammed onto the floor, as if I were getting knocked around by an angry ghost. I must have looked like I was spazzing big-time, way worse than when I fell off DDR at Tilt.
    Then Morgan got that funny frown that I knew meant his cell phone was vibrating in his pocket. He flipped it open. “This is Morgan … I’m not sure tonight is good … It’s already, what, nine thirty … I think one of us will be around tomorrow …” He covered the speaker part of the phone with his thumb.
    â€œJordan just got sprung. She wants to come and get her car.”
    â€œI guess she isn’t the hardened criminal we all thought,” said Quills.
    â€œWhat did she
do
?” I asked. I’d forgotten all about poor Jordan getting hauled off to jail. Had that really happened today?
    â€œTell her she can come tomorrow morning,” said Mark Clark.
    I guess I’d have to wait to find out.
    The next day I didn’t have to go to school, in case I suddenly keeled over from having been electrocuted andall. Plus, Mark Clark was going to be the BIC and take me to some special doctor. Plus Charlie was probably going to show up and act all concerned.
    When I woke up I went right to my desk and took out my rebus journal. I wrote:

    Freaky.
    It was kind of lame, but I didn’t care. I liked making up rebuses, and that was all that counted. I still had that strange peaceful feeling, which got a little stranger.
    I looked over and caught a glimpse of myself in the long mirror hanging on the back of my door. The edges of the mirror were covered with glittery stars and snowflakes and happy faces stuck there so I wouldn’t have to look at myself.
    The girl I saw today was tall. She wore a pair of blue flannel pj bottoms with cowboy boots and hats on them and a black Humongous Bag of Cashews T-shirt with a giant cashew on the front that unfortunately looked more like a banana. Her face was square and she had a nice straight nose. She had curly/wavy/straight hair that was an unusual reddish brown.
    I stood up and went straight to the mirror. I looked at my long arms and long feet. I always thought I was a fatGigantor freak show freak, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t fat at all. I wasn’t skinny, but I wasn’t fat. I was okay.
    I checked around inside my head to see if I could find my usual feelings when I looked at myself, the feeling like I wanted to hide under my bed forever. But there was nothing wrong with me, nothing that I could see. My mind felt swept clean of all my usual feelings of self-hatred. Without them, I had nothing to think about. What was with that?
    Downstairs, I heard people talking, Mark Clark and someone else.
    I snuck downstairs. At the bottom of the stairs I looked across the hallway to the computer room, where Mark Clark has two computers set up against the big windows. Outside, fat pink rhododendrons pressed against the glass.
    Mark Clark stood by his desk, his hand on the back of the chair. Behind him I saw a video game on his computer screen. Probably EverQuest. Playing EQ was what Mark Clark did instead of go out on dates. He had that interrupted look he always gets when anyone tries to talk to him when he’s on EQ.
    Jordan and her best friend, Tiffani Hollingsworth, stood in the middle of the room with their backs to the door. Jordan and Tiffani had been best friends since kindergarten. Tiffani was just as pretty as Jordan, butwhere Jordan was tall and fair, Tiffani was short and dark. Her real hair color was semisweet chocolate brown like Liv Tyler from
The Lord of the Rings
, but she dyed it light brown like Jordan’s, and ironed it straight like hers, too.
    They both wore low-rise cords with thick black belts. Tiffani’s trademark accessories were platform sandals, the kind with the heavy wooden soles that weighed about ten tons. The kind that, when they slide off your feet, you sometimes come down on the edge of the platform with