Table of Contents One Club Photo Two Pet Patrol Three Dogs Four Lost Five Tattle Six Sighting Seven More Sightings Eight No Dogs Allowed Nine Queensview Mystery Book Club Ten A Likely Story Eleven Last Assignment Afterword
One Club Photo TREVOR HATED high shelves more than anything So he sighed deeply when he discovered that the book he wanted The Case of the Waylaid Water Gun was sandwiched between other mystery novels on the tallest bookshelf at his school’s library Out of reach He searched for the rolling footstool that the librarian used from time to time He discovered it in the next aisle and pushed it back to his spot where he wedged it against the stack so it wouldn’t move Trevor climbed up and reached No luck He stood on his tippy-toes and reached again Still no luck He stepped down and began to pile books from the lower shelf onto the stool to give himself more height
Big thick books Need some help Trevor recognized the voice a classmate He looked up Way up It was Loyola Louden Loyola Louden the school giant For the past year ever since Trevor had arrived at Queensview Elementary to enroll in grade six the two of them had had a secret unspoken pact Under absolutely no circumstances were they to appear together side by side Ever It wasn’t because they didn’t like each other They actually didn’t know each other all that well As far as Trevor could tell Loyola was a perfectly normal grade-six girl She hung out with a typical group of chatties they talked nonstop about clothes they whispered to each other by holding their hand to the other person’s ear rather than just speaking under their breath like the boys did and when they giggled which was all the time it was typically over nothing To Loyola and her circle of friends everything was a Very Big Deal Trevor hardly paid them any attention But he couldn’t help noticing how Loyola struggled to blend in despite her height Once when the class was handing in assignments by passing their work to the person who sat in front of them
and so on all the way up to the first row Trevor spotted Loyola’s handwriting It was tiny and cramped as if her words wanted to take up as little space as possible on the white page In recent months she had also started slouching Just a bit Especially when she was sitting with the chatties outside of class like during lunch When the giggling became too much and a teacher called out to them to pipe down she would hunch like a Galapagos tortoise pulling into its giant shell Also Trevor had noticed a change in her color choice for clothes She had moved away from the brilliant pinks and oranges that the chatties favored on the days that they didn’t have to wear their school uniforms Now she wore browns and grays and dark greens turning herself into an invisible backdrop for the merry parade of shorter girls surrounding her Then there was her voice She had started speaking in softer tones maybe thinking that doing so somehow made her appear smaller It didn’t Besides her booming laughter gave her away It filled the corners of the room and turned every head within earshot Trevor knew one more thing about Loyola Whenever she met someone for the first time it was the same routine She was asked if she was a basketball player
