The Tennis Trophy Mystery by David A. Adler

CHAPTER ONE
    “Something smells really bad,” Cam Jansen whispered.
    “We’re in gym,” Cam’s friend Eric Shelton told her. “It always smells bad here.”
    “It’s not a gym smell,” Cam said. “It’s worse.
    Cam and Eric were standing on their spots. Mr. Day, their gym teacher, was checking attendance.
    “I saw Danny get off the bus this morning,” Mr. Day said. “I wonder why he didn’t come to gym.”
    “Here I am.”
    “Danny is not on his spot,” Mr. Day said quietly, and made a mark in his book. “And if he’s not on his spot, he’s absent.”
    “I am on my spot,” Danny said, and quickly moved.
    “Oh, there you are,” Mr. Day said.
    Mr. Day closed his marking book. He unlocked his office door and put the book away. Then he came out with his hands over his head. “Hands up,” he called out. “Reach for the sky.”
    Everyone in the class reached up and stretched.
    “Hands together. Feet apart.”
    The children put their hands together and moved their feet apart.
    “Now,” Mr. Day told the class. “Do jumping jacks.”
    Cam and her classmates jumped again and again. They jumped first with their feet apart and their hands together above their heads. Then they jumped and moved their feet together and their hands to their sides.

    Most of the children jumped on their spots. Danny didn’t. Each time he jumped, he bumped into someone else.
    “Hey, watch out!” Eric said.
    “Ow!” Cam told Danny. “You landed on my foot.”
    “Jump quietly!” Mr. Day called out.
    Cam and Eric tried to be quiet. But Danny kept bumping into them.
    “Ow again!” Cam said, and fell to the floor. “That’s the second time you landed on my foot.”
    Eric and Danny stopped jumping. “Are you okay?” they asked Cam.
    “Why are you talking? Why aren’t you jumping? Don’t you know the rules in this gym?” Mr. Day asked the three children.
    “I do,” Cam, Eric, and Danny said.
    “Danny, read rule seven aloud.”
    Both boys turned to face the large sign on the wall of the gym. Cam didn’t turn to face the sign.
    “When you enter this room,” Danny read from the sign, “go directly to your assigned spot. Remain there for attendance and exercises.”
    “Eric, read rule eleven aloud.”
    “Exercise time is not play time.”
    “Turn around,” Mr. Day told Cam. “Face the sign and read rule fourteen aloud.”
    “I don’t need to see the sign,” Cam said. “I can read it from the picture of the sign I have in my head.”
    People say Cam has a photographic memory. They mean Cam’s mind takes pictures of whatever she sees. Whenever she wants to remember something, she just looks at the picture stored in her head.
    Cam closed her eyes and said, “Click!”

    Whenever Cam wants to remember something, she says, “Click!”
    “My mind is like a camera,” Cam says, “and cameras go click !”
    “Rule fourteen,” Cam said with her eyes still closed. “This gym is a place for quiet exercise and play. A quiet gym is a safe gym.”
    Cam’s real name is Jennifer Jansen. But when people found out about her amazing memory, they called her “The Camera.” Soon “The Camera” was shortened to “Cam.”
    “While the class plays volleyball,” Mr. Day told Cam, Eric, and Danny, “you will stand against the wall in the corner opposite the sign. You will study the sign. Maybe then you’ll remember the rules.”
    “Cam remembers the rules,” Eric whispered as they walked slowly to the side of the gym. “She remembers everything.”
    “What’s that?” Mr. Day asked. “What did you say?”
    “Nothing,” Eric answered.
    Mr. Day divided the class into two teams. He set one team on each side of the net. He stood on the side of the court.
    “It’s worse here,” Cam whispered.
    “What is?” Eric and Danny asked.
    “The smell,” Cam answered. “It’s worse here. I think it’s coming from Mr. Day’s office.”

CHAPTER TWO
    “Pass the ball forward,” Mr. Day told children in the back