The Mystery of the Missing Everything

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The funny thing about clues is, if you don’t know you’re solving a mystery, then they’re not clues. They’re just… stuff.

So when the random piece of plastic poked Bethesda Fielding in the foot as she walked into school on that clear and cloudless Tuesday morning in September, she didn’t gasp and shout “Aha!” Neither did she stroke her chin and say “very interesting—very interesting indeed.” Bethesda wasn’t in detective mode. She didn’t know there was a mystery to be solved. Not yet.

It was, by all appearances, an entirely ordinary day. Bethesda woke to her Three Ducks Quacking alarm clock; she got dressed and plucked her glasses from the bedside table; she wrangled her reddish-tannish hair into twin butterfly barrettes; she tumbled downstairs to the kitchen for breakfast… everything exactly the same as always.

Bethesda biked to school along the regular route: Left down Chesterton, soft right on Dunwiddie, a long easy downhill glide, feet off the pedals, until the final right onto Friedman Street. Bethesda listened to her iPod while she biked, bopping her head to this cool D.C. pop band, Title Tracks, that her friend Tenny Boyer had gotten her into over the summer. After chaining up her bike, Bethesda paused by the big gnarled oak tree that stood guard by the front doors of Mary Todd Lincoln Middle School, and gave it a friendly pat for luck.

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