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  For Mr. Wayne Parker, a genius

  It was very God-like, the thing she was doing.

  And that meant it couldn’t be bad, right? If God was good, then anything done in imitation of God was also good. That’s what she reminded herself as she stared into the mascot’s bulging plastic eyes.

  “You know what you have to do,” she said. “Trust your body; follow your mind.”

  There was no reply. The mascot stood motionless under the locker room’s dingy fluorescent lights.

  “Can you hear me?” She snapped her fingers and raised her voice. “Nod if you can hear me.”

  The huge plastic wildcat head slumped forward on its shoulders, apparently nodding.

  “All right, then . . . ,” she said, uncertain how to wrap things up. “Bye.” She gave the mascot a small wave and started walking toward the door. Then she turned back.

  “You know . . . I wish this weren’t the end. Do you believe me when I say that?”

  But instead of waiting for an answer, she turned her eyes away and left.

  Friday

  The football field, 8:55 p.m.

  Gerard Cole was in love with the Montague twins, and not for the same dumb reason as everyone else. Obviously they were hot, their two mind-blowing bodies mirroring the perfection of each other. But they were also the nicest girls at Winship Academy. They were nice to everyone, even Gerard.

  Angie Montague waved to him from the sidelines, where all the cheerleaders were stretching and drinking pink Gatorade. Gerard waved back, aware that a huge dumb grin was probably taking over his whole face. Being a water boy may have lacked prestige, but it more than made up for it in proximity to cheerleaders. In one month Gerard had talked to more girls than he had in his entire life. But the only ones he cared about were the twins.

  They were both on the squad, but Angie was the real cheerleader. Brittany was the mascot. She spent every game stuffed inside an immense wildcat suit. It seemed like a crime to hide such a beautiful person inside an ugly, smelly costume, but Brittany never complained. She actually liked being the mascot. She always said it made her feel like “a big, cuddly stuffed animal.” The twins looked so much alike that this was the only time Gerard could ever tell them apart: Brittany was the one with the enormous, toothy cat head. He didn’t like thinking of them as individuals, though. He was always relieved at the end of the games when Brittany emerged from the mascot suit, unrecognizable from her sister once again.

  Gerard looked around, expecting to find Brittany bouncing around, doing her usual routine. Instead, he saw her on the bench by herself. She was just sitting there, the bulbous wildcat head drooping a little on her shoulders. Gerard squinted, noticing the bulging nose and comically huge eyes, which suddenly didn’t seem so comical. They seemed . . . Gerard didn’t know what. A little weird. He looked around. No one else had noticed Brittany’s uncharacteristic lack of energy. He shrugged to himself and turned his eyes back to Angie—lovely Angie, with her bright smile and white-and-blue pom-poms.

  The pep band, 9:05 p.m.

  The problem wasn’t a lack of mysteries. Mysteries were everywhere, and Benny Flax knew this to be true. The problem was a lack of people who cared.

  Most of the clubs at Winship Academy were stupid and based on either the consolidation of social power (School Spirit Club, the Young Republicans) or the padding of college applications with bogus interests (Nature Club, History of Barbeque Club). Benny had to fulfill the after-school activity requirement somehow, so he’d started his own club, a mystery-solving club that he called, unimaginatively, Mystery Club. He’d always been interested in puzzles and games and documentaries about unsolved crimes. What wasn’t interesting about a mystery? Every day, someone, somewhere, was getting away with something. How did they do it? What really happened? Questions like these consumed him.

  When he’d founded the club, he’d expected to be inundated with inquiries about all the unexplained stuff that happened all the time. Who’s been sending dick pics to my private e-mail? Who stole my lunch card and charged thirty cinnamon rolls? Who wrote SKANKY YANKEE on the new girl’s locker? There was always something weird going on at Winship, but people just accepted the unknowns in their lives; they shrugged and moved on. It wasn’t like in the movies where the detective sits back and desperate people throng him with their problems. Benny had quickly realized that if he wanted to solve life’s mysteries, he’d have to find them himself, and no one would actually thank him for it.

  We sound really awful, Benny thought, trying to sync his flute melody with the severely off-tempo snare drum. Their conductor, Mr. Choi, hadn’t even bothered to show up to the game, which meant the marching band sounded even worse than usual. The frazzled assistant was shouting, “Halftime! Don’t leave your instruments on the ground, please! They’ll get stolen. Right, Scooby?”

  Benny looked up, embarrassed. Were even teachers calling him Scooby now? He hated that nickname. It was infantilizing and undermined the legitimacy of Mystery Club. He gritted his teeth. “Right . . . ,” he managed.

  Last year Shelly Jenner’s French horn had been stolen from the band room. Benny had jumped on the case immediately, not that Shelly had asked him to. In fact, she’d seemed kind of embarrassed by Benny’s interest and said she’d rather just buy a new horn than make a big deal of it. But Benny persisted and ultimately caught the thief—a moronic eighth grader who thought he could melt the horn down to gold. Benny hoped, after this, that people would finally start to take Mystery Club seriously. But the only change was that now everyone called him Scooby-Doo.

  Benny shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d always been, if not quite ostracized, vaguely dismissed by his classmates. He was one of few Jews in a school where 90 percent of the student body were members of FCA, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Most Jews in Atlanta sent their kids to the Jewish Academy or to Pace, which had more diversity and a better reputation for tolerance. But Winship had offered the best scholarship, so Winship was his cross to bear. And while he didn’t particularly covet a place among their popular ranks, being called Scooby-Doo was annoying. People already treated him like a kid because he didn’t have a car; he didn’t need a nickname from a little kids’ cartoon on top of that. Besides, Fred and Velma were the ones who actually solved mysteries on that show. Scooby was just a foolish nuisance who compulsively snacked and freaked out at the slightest provocation.

  The Mystery Club’s loserish reputation wasn’t helped by the fact that the only person to join the club since the disappearing-horn incident was Virginia Leeds—the strangest and most annoying girl in school. Honestly, Benny would have preferred being in a club by himself, but for whatever reason, Virginia seemed determined to solve a mystery. Maybe you should start with the Mysterious Case of Your Annoying Personality, Benny sometimes thought, though he’d never have said it out loud. The key to dismissing someone, Benny knew from years of getting the same treatment, was to act like you couldn’t be bothered to take the time to actually insult them.

  A loud cheer went up from the stadium as the cheerleaders got into formation. They always did the same halftime dance to that eighties song about trying not to ejaculate. Benny began cleaning the head joint of his flute. Then, in the course of several seconds, he sensed the mood of the stadium shifting. The clapping became scattered, and the
cheers turned to murmurs.

  “What’s going on?” someone asked. Benny looked up from his flute. The song continued to blare from the speakers, but the cheerleaders had stopped dancing. They were turning around in circles, looking lost and disorganized. Then he realized why: The mascot was out of control.

  “What’s happening out there?” someone was shouting. Other people were laughing. “The mascot’s on drugs!” The cheerleaders yelled, “Get back in line, Brittany!” But the great wildcat continued to lurch across the field, leading with its heavy plastic head in a zigzagging path. The football coaches stood on the sidelines, debating whether to intervene or stay put.

  Benny stood on the bleachers, observing the scene. At first glance the mascot seemed to be running wildly, with no direction. Benny squinted at the field, focusing on the wildcat’s feet, the way she placed one in front of the other. She’s trying to get somewhere, Benny thought, scanning the football field. There, he realized. She’s heading for the woods.

  He dropped his flute on the ground and set off running.

  The bleachers, 9:05 p.m.

  Virginia Leeds sat in the bleachers, trying to look bored, but not too bored. If she looked too bored, people would look at her and think, If she hates football so much, she should just leave. What she wanted them to think was, Virginia Leeds has a mysterious look on her face. She must be watching this football game for reasons unfathomable to us.

  That was Virginia’s goal for the year: to become unfathomable. But it was hard because she was already fifteen, which felt like too late. She hadn’t been careful with her identity—for years she’d just done what she wanted and said what she wanted, not realizing that her identity was forming in the process. And now it felt like this was her last chance to change it before it became totally permanent.

  Virginia wasn’t stupid; she could see how it had happened. She’d always loved gossip and other people’s business. And the more she dug up about people, the more she wanted to dig, and the more it became this web of information that took over her life. She’d even had a website called Winship Confidential, where she collected rumors and social news items and provided in-depth analysis. But at some point all that gossipmongering had become who she was. Even worse, what had taken Virginia four years to realize was that having a popular blog didn’t necessarily make you a popular person.

  It wasn’t just that people hated her for slamming them on the Internet, it was that people thought she was lame for even caring. Maybe secretly they devoured her website—the Google analytics didn’t lie—but outwardly they acted like they were sick of it. And Virginia truly was sick of it. She was sick of everybody’s stupid business, and sick of herself for being obsessed with it. She needed a change; she needed mystique. So she’d shut down the site and joined Mystery Club. It was literally a club of mystery—what could be more perfect? But so far the club involved less mystique and more sitting around boredly.

  Benny always said the number one secret to solving a mystery was to Be There. “Wherever you go,” he said, “something might happen. Don’t just be a detective—be a witness. Be watching.”

  The main disconnect between him and Virginia was that Benny wanted to solve mysteries, while Virginia just wanted to be part of one. But it was Benny’s club and Benny’s rules. So Virginia sat on the bleachers, trying her best to Be There. Not that it mattered. No one was going to notice her, and nothing mysterious was going to happen. Nothing ever happened at this school.

  Then, out of nowhere, something did.

  She was watching dopey Gerard Cole ogling the cheerleaders when suddenly there was chaos on the field. The cheerleaders were wandering aimlessly. And the mascot was running off, stomping and lurching gracelessly. Then someone else was running too. His neatly combed black hair and dorky maroon turtleneck were unmistakable. It was Benny.

  The woods, 9:12 p.m.

  When something strange happens, particularly in a crowd, the average person will immediately lose the ability to focus their senses. Things that should be obvious become obscured by the disorder of excitement. It all happened so fast, people always say. But it doesn’t have to be this way, Benny knew. Not if your brain can be faster.

  “Following the leader, the leader, the leader!”

  There was pandemonium in the forest. Benny had followed the mascot, the cheerleaders had followed Benny, and the football players had followed the cheerleaders. Someone had begun to sing “Following the Leader,” and soon everyone was singing it. “We’re following the leader wherever he may go!” Benny tromped through the underbrush, eager to get away from the noise. As he moved farther into the woods, the chorus echoed behind him, no longer jolly-sounding, but eerie and distorted. “We’re following the leeeeeeader . . .”

  The mascot was here, Benny was sure of it, but he’d lost her. He spun in circles, looking, listening. But the throng was catching up with him again, engulfing the quiet with their annoying singing.

  Then he saw it: a great, lumbering shadow moving in the darkness toward . . .

  The bridge.

  This section of the river was called the White Bend for a reason. It surged past the school in a great gush, its cold white water frothing over the jutting rocks and cutting a deep, dangerous forty-foot ravine. A one-hundred-year-old footbridge stood tenuously across it, connecting the campus to a black patch of forest on the other side. The bridge wasn’t very safe. The rails were low, and the drop was deadly. It wasn’t a question of drowning—it was breaking your neck and your skull on the massive, slick rocks. Benny remembered some kids getting drunk and falling to their deaths a few years ago. But since they weren’t Winship students, the response had been minimal. Winship was a snobbish old place, not likely to sink a bunch of money into ruining a historic bridge just because some no-name townies couldn’t handle themselves. But this was no townie, it was Brittany Montague—the prize of the school—and Benny stared as she began crossing the bridge, pausing at the center to lean perilously over the rail.

  What is she doing? he thought. She’s going to fall.

  But she didn’t fall. She jumped.

  Benny watched, frozen, as the mascot flipped head over heels and plummeted toward the rushing water. In seconds she was gone.

  The bridge, 9:20 p.m.

  “We’re following the leader wherever he may go!” The throng had swarmed the bridge, singing and yelling. Benny located one of the coaches, the one with the bushy white mustache, and tried to explain what had happened. “It was Brittany! I saw her jump,” he shouted, fighting to be heard above the raucous din.

  “What, son? What? You need to get back to the field. Everyone get back to the field!”

  Benny didn’t know exactly how it happened, but within minutes everyone seemed to have heard. Brittany Montague had jumped off the bridge in her mascot costume. The mood changed instantly. The singing morphed into wails and sobs. Benny found himself crammed against the bridge railing, the crowd swelling dangerously. It’s going to collapse, he thought. He looked down at the gushing river below and felt momentarily dizzy.

  “Benny. Benny!” A hand grabbed his arm. It was Virginia.

  “Virginia. Oh my God. I saw—”

  “I saw it too!” she shouted. “I can’t believe it!”

  Next to them, Angie Montague was leaning over the rail, sobbing. “I dropped my pom-poms!” she cried, reaching toward the watery abyss. “I DROPPED MY POM-POMS!”

  Virginia burst out laughing. Luckily the scene was so chaotic that only Benny noticed. “Stop laughing,” Benny hissed at her. “She’s obviously traumatized.”

  “Well so am I!” Virginia yelled. “I just witnessed a suicide!”

  “I did too,” Benny snapped back, “but I’m managing to not be an imbecile about it.”

  “Sorry, sorry,” Virginia said. “It was a nervous reaction.”

  “There she is!” a girl shrieked behind them, pointing downriver. Benny squinted and saw the mascot floating facedown in the dark water, gliding like
a ghost. It sank, then the water heaved it up again. Then it disappeared around the bend.

  “Christ, let’s get off this bridge!” Virginia shouted.

  They were pinned in on either side by sobbing people. He could hear the coaches yelling at everyone to calm down. Benny craned his neck, trying to see a way out, but the bridge was impossibly crowded.

  “Look,” Virginia said, pointing her finger toward the dark forest.

  “God, somebody’s elbow is digging into my spine.”

  “Benny, look.” She grabbed his jaw and forcibly turned his face.

  “I don’t see anything. Let go of—” Then he saw it. A tiny, tiny speck of red light. At first it looked like a burning cigarette. Then he realized what it was: a camera.

  Somebody is recording this.

  Virginia began elbowing people left and right. She pushed over two sobbing girls, accidentally stepping on one. Benny followed as she wormed her way off the bridge, shoving stupefied football players, brushing past the frantic coaches who continued to scream at everyone to get back to the field. Virginia’s pushiness had always annoyed him, but in this case it was proving useful. There was no way Benny could have elbowed his way off this bridge on his own.

  As soon as they reached the shadowy trees, Benny broke into a sprint.

  “Whoever it is,” Benny shouted back to Virginia, “just tackle them. Can you do that?”

  “Yes,” Virginia answered, though truthfully, she didn’t know. She’d never tackled anyone before.

  But it turned out she didn’t have to. Because when they arrived at the site of the tiny red light, no one was there. It was just a small camera on the ground, recording everything.

  The Boarders, 10:30 p.m.

  Virginia rooted around in the common-room refrigerator, looking for something exotic and interesting to offer Benny. Surely there was a mango in there, or some seaweed or something. But all she could find were reduced-fat cheese slices and some old turkey rolls.