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Firecracker Jones Is On The Case
by Christopher Klim
Chapter
1
Gone
Vanished! My best friend Ted disappeared
over Halloween weekend, and that’s no ghost story. Thursday, we were waxing
car windows with soap, and Monday, he didn’t show up at school. By the end of
the first week, everyone was talking about it. Ted was set to be the next
state record holder for touchdowns in a single season. A kid like that
doesn’t just vanish into thin air, but vanish he did.
The students at Crater Valley High School kept asking me what
happened. They figured I knew something but wasn’t saying. This was most
likely because I kept to myself. A few kids even blamed me for Ted’s absence.
They pointed their fingers and whispered by their lockers. They gave me the
look that people used on criminals and guys with big zits on the tips of
their noses.
To make things worse, none of the grownups offered any help. One
teacher actually asked me if I  knew what was up. This freaked me out, big time. Like I said,
people didn’t usually look my way, unless I tripped over a chair leg or fell
asleep in class. Except for a few teachers, most people wouldn’t have cared
if I stretched out in the corridor and daydreamed all day long.
Three weeks later, I sat in Principle Shapp’s office. Students
called it the dungeon. It had wood-paneled walls, green leather chairs, and a
small oval meeting table with a jar of candy in the center. It was designed
to make you sit and sit and sit, even get comfortable, until you cracked
under the pressure and talked.
Today, the focus was on me, but I studied Principal Shapp
instead. He had dark gray hair and a beard that I swore was almost green,
like the bottom of an old sneaker that was left in the rain all summer. Have
you ever noticed that a man’s beard doesn’t match the color of the hair on
his head? It seems like a good reason to never grow one.
Principal Shapp leaned forward in his chair. His beard was
perfect for St. Patrick’s Day, except this was November. “This has to stop,”
he said.
I started to think about Ted again. I’d asked Mom several times
to find his new address. How could he just pick up and leave town? My brain
worked overtime as usual. I needed to solve the biggest mystery in my life so
far, but that was what got me in trouble in the first place—thinking.
“Are you paying attention?” Mr. Shapp asked.
“Yes,” I replied. Paying attention was another issue for me at
school. I was what they called ADHS—Attention Deficit Hearing Sensitive. I
disliked the label. It sounded like I was dumb, but I used my brain every
second of the day. I just didn’t think what they wanted me to think all of the
time. They called it an attention problem. I considered it to be an issue of
privacy and personal choice.
“Are you getting enough sleep?” Mr. Shapp asked.
What could I say? I’d dozed off in algebra and slid from my
chair. I was bored, not tired. I bet he didn’t want to hear me say that.
“What are you thinking about?” Mr. Shapp asked.
There it was, an adult’s favorite question. So I gave Mr. Shapp
my new favorite answer. “I was thinking about Ted.”
“Ted?”
“You know, Ted Packard—went to school here and played football.”
“Oh.” Mr. Shapp sat back in his big principal’s chair. It was
the largest chair in the room and probably the whole school, as if we didn’t
already understand the relationship: he big boss, we little students.
“Remember Ted Packard?” I was a wise guy sometimes. I knew it
didn’t help me.
“Yes, I remember him.” Mr. Shapp gave me a sly look, like he
knew what had happened to Ted.
“Where did he go?”
“He was a friend of yours.”
“Best friend,” I said.
Wait a minute. I know what you’re thinking. You wonder how I
became best friends with the coolest kid at Crater Valley High. Let me start
from the beginning.
First of all, my name is Firecracker Jones. I was born on the
Fourth of July. Mom said I popped onto the scene like I was late for the
party. That was how I got my nickname, Firecracker. I was always crashing
into a room—bang!—and knocking stuff over by accident.
My friends call me “F.” Ted was the first person who used my
initial as a name, but teachers were good about using it too. My real name is
Francis. That’s right, Francis Jones. That’s the last time I’m going to
mention it, and you better keep it safe. If I find out you told anyone, well,
let’s just say that there may be things that you don’t want anyone to know
about you, and I’ll discover them. I’m real good at discovering secret
information.
Anyway, Ted, Chub, and I lived out by the crater on the edge of
town. Not many people lived on the  cliffs, so the three of us were fast friends. Ted was a year
older, a sophomore at CVH. He didn’t mind that I was taller, a bit of a geek,
and always thinking about how things worked. Ted didn’t want to know how
things worked, only that they worked when he wanted them to, like shooting a
BB gun or swinging a bat. He was a natural at sports. He ran like a rabbit
and handled any ball like a pro. We played a lot of wall ball together. He
was the best ever.
When the lunch bell sounded, Principal Shapp released me from
the dungeon. I promised that I’d get more sleep and not show up in his office
for a while. Apparently, Mr. Shapp liked algebra and believed that I should
stay awake in class. Also, falling off furniture was not appropriate
behavior, and I agreed with him. Everyone knew the first rule of the dungeon:
you must agree to everything or suffer the consequences.
In the hall outside the cafeteria, I saw my buddy Chub. Chub was
short for Oliver Chubinski. Ted had nicknamed him too, and Chub approved. He
used to go along with anything that Ted said.
At the moment, Chub walked beside Lana Samborn. He wasn’t
walking with her, just near her. I doubt she knew Chub’s name. Lana was the
cutest freshman in perhaps the history of CVH, and she was popular. I never
understood the fuss over being popular, but whenever Ted walked the halls, a
gang formed around him like bees on a hive.
“Hey, Chub.” I noticed Lana looking at me. My gothic getup was
nothing like her bright yellow dress. I usually wore dark clothes. They were
versatile. I could crawl around on my knees, wipe my hands off on my pants,
and not look dirty. A girl in English class once asked me about my style, and
I said that I dressed for the weather.
Chub met me near the soda machines where the lunch line began,
and Lana stopped too. This was an interesting development.
“Hello, Mr. F.” Lana had long brown hair and sparkly blue eyes,
like the best gems in my rock collection, the kind that glowed at night. “Is
your name F, as in E-f-f, or just the letter F?”
She poked fun of me, but standing there, my stomach felt weird.
Usually Lana pretended like it was me who had disappeared from CVH.
“My friends call me F,” I said in a deep voice. I listened to
how dumb I sounded, like a goofball comic book hero. My name is Batman, I
thought, but my friends call me Bat.
“I better stick with Mr. F for now,” she said.
I shrugged my shoulders. Chub shuffled his feet. He wore a
multi-colored striped shirt, and his arms hung by his sides like plump
hotdogs—the kind that cost an extra dollar at the Winnie-Mart.
“So when’s Ted coming back?” Lana asked.
“Is he coming back?” Chub asked.
I stared at Chub. Chub was there the day that the moving truck
left the Packard house. He knew as much as I did. Why was he asking me? Did
he think I came to a dramatic conclusion while falling off my desk in algebra
class?
“It seems permanent,” I said.
“Doesn’t he phone you?” Lana twisted her hair in her finger.
“Send a postcard or anything?”
“No.” I’d tried to get his phone number off the Internet, but it
was impossible. It seemed as if one million Packard families lived in the
U.S.A., not to mention Canada or far-off countries like France.
“I thought you were friends.”
I thought so too, but there was no explaining it, because no one
could explain it to me. Ted had vanished without leaving a note, and our
heads filled with the worse possible ideas.
Chub feared that grownups had run out of food and started eating
kids. Food was an essential part of Chub’s life, but I joked. I said, if
grownups started eating kids, he’d likely be the first to go. He’d already be
stuck between two giant slices of bread.
I don’t know if the joke made Chub feel better, but my idea
about Ted’s absence was much worse than cannibal parents running loose in
town. It was simple. Perhaps Ted no longer cared about us.
“I don’t know what happened,” I admitted. “He just left, packed
up, and moved out with his folks.”
“Wow,” Lana said. “Did you try to find him?”
Benny Margolis interrupted us. “Yeah, did ya find him?” He
smacked me on the back, hard enough to make me drop my algebra textbook. It
flew from my arms and nearly crushed Lana’s toes.
“So did ya?” Benny was a senior and a big teammate of Ted’s. He
was actually huge. He had Chub’s appetite, although food went to all the
right places on his body. If Benny were a piece of candy, he’d be a
super-sized chocolate bar on the top shelf at the Winnie-Mart. Chub was more
like a butterscotch candy,  tightly wrapped at both ends with a bulge in the middle.
I retrieved my book, Algebra Made Easy, from the floor. I
thought for a moment, why not Algebra Made Interesting or even Algebra
Made Funny? Was that too much to ask from a math textbook?
Benny, Lana, and Chub waited for me to tell them more about Ted
Packard. Benny was annoying because he asked the same question every day,
almost threatening, but Chub bothered me more. He knew that I didn’t know
anything else. Sometimes that kid drove me nuts.
“I-I’m working on it.” Right there, I invented the phrase that
eventually made me famous at CVH and throughout greater New Jersey. It was
the first time that people heard my nickname out loud in school. Lana was
either impressed or frightened by what I was about to say, perhaps both.
“Firecracker Jones is on the case,” I blurted.
That’s right, my friends call me F.
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