I've been reading Joe Meno's The Boy Detective Fails. It's pretty sweet.
It is none other than Effie Mumford, age eleven, an adolescent, female, and very awkward-looking. What you must know about Effie is that she has won the local, state, and national science fair for the past three years. Also, she is hopelessly in love with amateur rocketry. Additionally, she is an interminable social pariah, a long-suffering possessor of many, many unstoppable runny noses, a silent victim of reoccurring eye infections, and a future prize-winning neurobiologist. One last important fact about Effie Mumford: She does not like to be touched. Not by anyone, not ever.
As per her usual routine, Effie is dressed wildly inappropriately, in her white and purple winter jacket, which she wears year round, well into the hottest months of summer, white scarf around her neck, fur-lined hood pulled up, entirely covering her small head.
......
It is the school library where Effie Mumford goes to hide during lunch period. She does not eat at school. She is too afraid someone will take advantage of her while her mouth is open and that she will eat an item from her lunch which has somehow been poisoned. Poisoning someone does not require much imagination and she believes that, if given the opportunity, her classmates would surely take it.
It is later in the school day that she realizes today is the day of the science fair. She has nothing prepared. Her experiment having been ruined by the death of her rabbit, she walks about the small, terribly arranged exhibits - past a display for a rocket-car of the future, past a papier-mache model of a volcano, past a bumpy bust describing the science of phrenology - to Parker Lane's prize-winning presentation, entitled, "How Water Totally Becomes Ice." Effie Mumford stops and stares, dumfounded, glaring at the horrible Magic-Markered illustrations, the torn and oddly pasted National Geographic pages, and worse, a rectangular ice cube tray from which Parker, grinning, offers samples.
Effie Mumford's small hands turn red, as does her face; what is so bothersome is the knowledge that she could have easily won if she had only tried again. It is this knowledge that makes her cry - not for the murder of her bunny, not about the enduring, pervasive insults, not because of her terrible, taped-together glasses. It is knowing that she could have done better than all of this and did not, which forces the small, shiny tears from her eyes. She has allowed herself, once again, to be defeated by mediocrity, and it is this thought - the apparent triumph of the uninspired and average - that truly makes her angry. Out of both rage and frustration, she purposefully knocks over Parker Lane's poorly assembled display, the poster boards crashing to the gymnasium as Effie runs away.
.......
At the Convocation of Evil, the schedule of events reads:
9:00-9:30: Welcome with coffee and assorted muffins and bagels
9:30-10:30: Break-out groups:
- Crime as Your Career: Investing for the Future
- Kidnapping: More Hassle Than It's Worth?
- High-Grade Explosives from Everyday Chemicals
10:30-11:30: Featured Presentation: A Century of Madmen
11:30-12:00: Featured Panel: To Wear a Mask?
12:00-1:00: Lunch
1:00-2:00: Officers and Sub-Committee Elections
2:00-3:00: Featured Guest: Senator Jonah Klee (R-Texas)
3:00-4:00: Closing Remarks: "Our Evil Architectural Plans"
......
The boy detective has never kissed a girl. Shhh - it is a secret. It make him feel very bad.
......
The boy detective enters the small silver office building and sneaks past a snoring guard into a waiting elevator. When the elevator doors open, he can hear the sound of a vacuum running. He follows the sound and slowly sneaks around the corner of a small green cubicle and finds the lady in pink, now in a pink cleaning smock, leaning over a small white vacuum, running it back and forth, dancing to her headphones, shouting along loudly. It is impossible not to smile, seeing her: eyes closed, feet tapping in place, yelling louder than the vacuum cleaner.
In a moment, the lady stops vacuuming and begins dancing with a tall silver coat rack. One of its rungs holds a suit jacket, which is swying back and forth in time. Then the lady grabs a handful of files and tosses them up in the air. Finding a chair, she sits and spins around, pounding her feet on the top of the desks. Like that, she has climbed up on a conference table and, her face all red and nearly out of breath, she slides down the table, scattering an enormous pile of recyclable paper.
If somehow, through science or magic, we could discern an X-ray of Billy's heart just then, it would look like a lovely, perfectly shaped balloon - the kind sold on Valentine's Day in the comical rounded heart shape - growing larger and larger, filling his chest, his eyes, expanding to the size of the room, as the lady swings her hair around, still dancing.
