Free Swiped by Michele Bossley Page B

around,” she reasoned. “He probably kept them.”
    â€œRobyn, just because you don’t like the guy, you can’t accuse him of stealing,” I said.
    â€œWell, somebody’s stealing,” Nick put in. “My stomach will vouch for that.”

chapter two
    â€œRobyn, this is dumb,” I complained.
    â€œDo you want to keep your lunch or not?” Robyn answered, shoving three large jingle bells inside my lunch bag. She stapled it shut. As I took it, the motion set the bells jangling.
    â€œI feel like Santa Claus,” I said.
    â€œLook, if you’d leave your lunch in your locker like everyone else, it wouldn’t get stolen so often,” Robyn said. My lunch haddisappeared four times now.
    â€œIf I left my lunch in my locker, I couldn’t eat it anyway. Who wants to eat sandwiches that smell like rotten sneakers?” My locker partner must have had the same running shoes since dinosaurs roamed the earth. Anything left in our locker for longer than ten minutes smelled like stinky feet, which was why I carried most of my stuff around with me, including my lunch.
    I had to admit that Robyn’s idea worked. I still had my lunch at noon, although I’d endured a lot of strange looks and a few ho-ho-ho’s.
    We still had two days of detention left. Today was Thursday, and Ms. Beaudry had made us march straight to the library at noon to do homework for the last three days—no talking, no goofing around. We were allowed to go to the cafeteria to eat during the last fifteen minutes of lunch, when everyone else was finished.
    But today our librarian, Mrs. Pringle, was taking over. She’d said yesterday that she had a special project she needed help with.Since our school was a new elementary and junior high, we didn’t have many books in our collection, and we needed a ton—everything from picturebooks to young adult novels. A bunch of books had been donated to the school, and our job was to help Mrs. Pringle sort through the new material during detention. That was fine with me—anything to get away from Ms. Beaudry’s prison-guard stare.
    In the library, I put my binder and lunch bag on a table with the other lunches and took a seat beside Nick and Robyn.
    â€œAll right, kids,” Mrs. Pringle said. “I’m not sure what we have here. A lot of these books are discards from other schools, and some are from schools that have closed. We need to go through them to see what we can use.” She opened the cover of a book and showed us where the copyright date was. “Anything older than fifteen years should go in a separate pile, and I’ll check it.”
    â€œDoes that mean if a book is more than fifteen years old, you won’t keep it?” I asked.
    â€œNo, Trevor,” Mrs. Pringle said. “But I need to see what kind of book it is. If it’s reference, we might need something more current. There are lots of terrific books that are more than fifteen years old!” She held up an old hardcover copy of
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
as an example. “For instance, this book was written more than fifty years ago, but it’s always been a favorite. I know our elementary students will love it.” Mrs. Pringle put the book down on the library cart. “Let’s get started.”
    Nick, Robyn and I started working through the nearest box. Most of the books were out-of-date textbooks or encyclopedias from the eighties.
    â€œWhy weren’t these books given away ages ago?” Robyn wanted to know, brushing dust off her hands.
    â€œWho knows?” I said. “Probably no one got around to it.”
    â€œThis box is hopeless,” Robyn said. “There’s nothing in here we can use.” She flipped the pages of an ancient math text in disgust.
    I reached into the box and pulled out a huge science book, noticing a second book wedged inside the tattered book jacket. “Hey,