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but not." She wanted to put her own foot in her mouth if he wasn't going to do it for her.

Mr. Fletcher stroked his snow white beard. "No one's said anything to me if they've lost their phone."

Helen was already halfway out the door. "Okay. Well, I gotta go. Thanks! Bye!"

A laugh that seemed to shake the very earth followed her down the hallway towards the office. Mr. Fletcher was not her alien. He was definitely a wizard or something, but not an alien. Helen was down to her last suspect; Mrs. Remick. She had not completely ruled out Mrs. Leeming and Ms. Miller, but Mrs. Remick had always been the most suspicious of all because of her mind controlling ring. The light to the principal's office was still on when Helen reached the cluster of offices in the front of the building, but everyone else she was used to seeing in the cramped, little rooms had gone home already.

"Mrs. Remick!" Helen called out. She and her principal went way back, but thankfully Helen had managed to cut her weekly visits when her imagination ran away with her down to visits just every other week. Helen hurried back to the principal's office. "Mrs. Remick?"

The lights were on but no one was home. Helen chewed the side of her cheek and decided to check behind the tremendous mahogany desk anyway, just in case.

"Miss Bradbury, what are you doing in my office?"

Helen jumped at the sound of her principal's voice. She felt her cheeks and ears burn. "Oh, hi, Mrs. Remick. How are you?" She frowned upon seeing Ms. Miller behind the principal. Her English teacher still sparkled and shimmered but with a lot more gold coloring than Helen remembered. "Ms. Miller. Hi again." Helen could feel their eyes on her, driving her back towards the wall with an invisible force. This whole experience was going on file in her collection of the strange happenings at her middle school. "So I was just leaving. I thought maybe I left my mittens here last week."

"Not so fast." Mrs. Remick twisted the large green ring on her finger. "I've heard you've found something."

The ring was pointed towards her now, and Helen found herself reaching into her pocket and wrapping her fingers around the device without remembering wanting to do that. Helen squared her shoulders and stopped herself from taking the device from her pocket.

She looked passed her principal to Ms. Miller. "I did find something, but I'll only give it to its owner." Helen lifted her chin proudly and honestly could not stop the smugly triumphant smile from crossing her face when Ms. Miller wiped at the sweat beading up on her forehead. It disturbed the glitter and revealed more gold. Snowflakes were blue, silver and white. No one put gold glitter on a snowflake. "And I believe I know who it is." Helen took the device from her pocket and passed it to eagerly twitching fingers.

CLUES: gigantic height, weird experiments, soft clicking sound, mind control ring, glitter, and an alien communication device

Helen's school certainly has some interesting teachers. In this mystery, she looked at all the oddities as a clue, but her answer lay in something that seemed normal at the time. Ms. Miller had rubbed off some of her makeup which hid her metallic colored skin under a normal human tone, so when Helen startled her, Ms. Miller covered herself in glitter in hopes that the junior detective would over look the golden hue of her skin. Helen did overlook it at first, but upon seeing Ms. Miller again, Helen noticed that the gold was actually her skin and not glitter, and she deduced that the device belonged to her English teacher.

Learn more about this author, Joanna Berezny.
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