It Found Us
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Synopsis
From the author of Scritch Scratch and The Girl in White comes a new spooky mystery about a girl detective who must decode a series of ominous clues tied to a century-old tragedy to find a missing teenager before it's too late…
Twelve-year-old Hazel Woods has always had an unusual knack for sleuthing. Some may call it snooping, but all she really wants is to solve mysteries around town. So, when she not-so-accidentally overhears her brother Den planning to sneak into the cemetery at night for an epic game of hide-and-seek, she decides to secretly tag along. This seems like the perfect opportunity to investigate the claims that the cemetery is haunted.
But the moment the game ends, Hazel realizes something is very, very wrong. From her hiding spot in the bushes, she overhears that her brother's best friend, Everett, is missing. Everyone else was found by the seeker but there's no sign of Everett anywhere. It's as if he just . . . vanished
Hazel and Den are determined to find Everett before it's too late. But as they begin to unravel the terrifying clues that started appearing since that night in the graveyard–eerie whispers that sound like someone counting, the intermittent smell of smoke, and the cold, lost presence that follows them everywhere, she's not sure what they are dealing with. But Everett needs more than search parties and scent-tracking dogs to find him, especially if his disappearance is tied to the history of the cemetery, and the lost, century-old spirits that might still be trapped there . . .
Release date: September 5, 2023
Publisher: Sourcebooks Young Readers
Print pages: 279
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It Found Us
Lindsay Currie
I let my bike fall to the ground and scramble over to the edge of Mr. Andrews’s house. Dusk is approaching, and his lights are out. Everything is quiet, except for the rustle of leaves as a long willowy figure creeps across his yard.
Narrowing my eyes on the mystery person, I notice they’re wearing boots and one of those thick wraparound sweaters with a hood pulled up over their head. A large rectangular bag is slung over one shoulder. They stop and turn toward the house as if double-checking it for something. For what, though? No porch light, no lights shining through the windows… It’s obvious Mr. Andrews isn’t home.
It’s also obvious this person is up to something.
I tuck myself further behind the corner of the house and focus on breathing quietly. It’s hard, since my heart feels like it’s going to explode out of my chest. This is how I always get when I’m sleuthing. It’s kind of like the feeling you get from drinking one too many Cokes or eating a whole bag of Sour Patch Kids. A little bit shaky, a little bit sick, but a whole lot excited. Mysteries are my thing, my skill. Once I hear about one, I can’t let it go until I’ve solved it. I call it having a puzzle brain.
The mystery person suddenly glances in my direction. I pull back until I’m fully hidden and force myself to count to ten before I ease around the corner again. Setting the bag on the ground, the stranger unzips it and pulls something out. A very small, moving something. A dog!
It runs in circles for a moment before stopping so the figure can connect a leash to its collar. Then it does something so hilarious I almost forget I’m hiding and laugh out loud.
It poops. In. Mr. Andrews’s. Yard!
Even though the sun is fading, I can see the little brown blob resting in the center of my neighbor’s perfectly manicured grass. This is what he’s been complaining about for weeks—the “hooligan” who has been sneaking onto his lawn! I grin, thinking about my name for them in my clue journal—the Night Pooper. After weeks of taking notes and sneaking around, I finally caught them in action. Only, I still don’t know who it is.
Creeping forward until I’m not hidden by the house anymore, but behind the bushes instead, I try to get a better look at the sweatered stranger. Just then, the streetlights blink on. Startled, the person picks up the dog and rushes away.
No! I’m so close!
I’m halfway out of the bushes when a car horn shatters the silence. My mouth flops open when I realize it’s not just any horn. It’s a blue minivan horn. My blue minivan. Even through the dim light, I can see Mom’s face in the window. She’s looking from the bike on the ground to me and back to the bike again.
Nonononononono.
Holding one finger up, I refocus on the person in the street. I just need one more minute, one glimpse of their face to crack this mystery wide open!
Mom honks again, and this time, it makes the Night Pooper stop and turn around. Her hood falls back just enough to reveal her face. Mrs. Corkan! She lives around the corner.
Of course, it’s her! Mrs. Corkan and Mr. Andrews share a fence that separates their backyards. I’ve heard them arguing more than once. Mr. Andrews tells her to keep her weeds on her side, and Mrs. Corkan tells him to keep his nose out of her business. Guess she decided the best way to get revenge was with a series of little brown packages.
Gross.
Mom and Mrs. Corkan exchange an awkward wave. Then Mom’s head swivels back toward me, and based on her scrunched-up eyebrows, I know exactly what she’s thinking. Sigh. I have some explaining to do.
I lumber over, pick up my bike, and wheel it into the garage. Mom pulls in just behind me. The second her car door opens, I hold my hands up.
“I can explain.”
Mom crosses both arms over her chest. “You can explain why you were hiding like a burglar in our neighbor’s bushes?”
“Um, yes. I mean, sort of,” I waffle. “Look, Mr. Andrews has been going on and on about the Night Pooper, so—”
“The what?” Mom asks, the edges of her lips turned up into a smile she’s clearly fighting.
I laugh feebly. “The Night Pooper. That’s what I call the person who has been letting their dog um…you know”—I make a circular motion with my hand to show that she should know what I’m talking about. There are only so many times you can say the word poopbefore it gets old—“on Mr. Andrew’s lawn.”
Mom follows me into the house. “Mmmhmm. I’m familiar. But still, Hazel.”
“I know, I know. Sleuthing is okay, meddling is not.” I recite the words I’ve heard so many times before. Problem is, they don’t make sense. No matter how I look at it, I can’t figure out the difference between sleuthing and meddling, except that one of them annoys my parents.
Dad swoops in from the hallway and pulls me into a hug. He smells like…Easter eggs? “Hey there! How’s my little Sherlock doing?”
“Kate Warne,” I respond. “She was the first female detective, so I’d rather be compared to her.”
“Admirable,” Mom says, setting her purse on the counter. “But I still think this might be a good time to have another little chat about your, ahem, hobby.”
“Ahh. Something you guys want to tell me?” Dad asks, giving me one more quick squeeze before stepping back. Unlike Mom, he sounds more curious than irritated.
Wrinkling my nose, I drop my backpack and nudge it into the corner with my foot. Since a good detective asks a lot of questions, I decide to figure out why Dad is stinking up the house. “I’ll give a full confession if you tell me why you smell like that.”
Dad frowns. “Smell? Oh! Do you mean the vinegar? I was cleaning our dishwasher and Google said it’s the best for that.”
No wonder he smells like Easter eggs. When I was little, we used to put vinegar in the water along with the little color tablet.
I laugh. Google tells Dad a lot these days. Mom is an attorney at a law firm here in Forest Park, and because she works so much, Dad stays home. It’s nice having someone here when I get out of school, but something tells me he gets a little lonely when my older brother, Den, and I are at school. Today he smells like vinegar. Two days ago, he singed the hair on his arm trying to toast the top of a crème brûlée. And last week, he decided to paint the bathroom by himself. He really should have hired someone, because it looks striped even though it’s not supposed to be.
Mom says he likes to be busy. I say he needs to find a hobby. Like me! Sleuthing is the perfect extracurricular. And once I convince my parents to let me launch the podcast I have planned—What Hazel Knows—I’ll have even more mysteries to solve! I let my eyes close and imagine listener comments flooding in. They’ll send me their mysteries to solve, and when I get famous, my parents will realize my investigations are more than an annoyance.
“I may or may not have been spying. Just a little.” I hold my thumb and index finger out and just barely apart to show him how little. “But it paid off! I found out that Mrs. Corkan has been letting that little brown mop of hers—”
“Ernie,” Dad says with a smirk.
“Yes, Ernie! Ernie is the one pooping on the lawn,” I say breathlessly, remembering the thrill of the moment when Mrs. Corkan turned around and her hood fell off. I love those moments.
Mom and Dad exchange a look. Uh-oh.
“And what were you planning to do with that information once you got it?” Mom poses. “Keep it to yourself?”
Pffft. Obviously not. The Ernie poop intel is too good to keep to myself. I mean, really.
“That’s what I thought,” Mom says with a sigh. “That’s the problem, Hazel. You’re great at figuring things out. We love that about you. But when you involve yourself in other people’s business, things get problematic.”
Dad is nodding now. Meanwhile, I feel like I’m wilting inside.
“So, you think it’s better to let them keep fighting and never tell Mr. Andrews what I found out? Even anonymously?” I ask.
“We think you need to let other people figure things out for themselves sometimes. Especially when they didn’t ask you to be involved.” Dad lifts my chin so I’m looking in his eyes. They’re warm, crinkled around the edges. “You have a gift, Hazel. You really do. But with great power comes great responsibility.”
He says this last part dramatically as if he’s reading from a superhero movie script. I raise a confused eyebrow.
Dad chuckles. “I mean that you have to learn to control your gift so that you don’t cause chaos everywhere you go.”
My shoulders sag. Mom reels me in for a hug. Even though I’m annoyed and embarrassed, I let her.
“We aren’t trying to be mean, honey. We just don’t want you getting yourself wrapped up in other people’s problems. Take care of yourself! Enjoy being a kid and leave the adult problems to the adults. Okay?”
I nod like I agree, but I don’t. Dog poop on a lawn doesn’t seem like a very adult problem to me. Still, it made Mr. Andrews bananas. If I can help with something like that, why won’t they let me?
Shaking off the question, I force a smile to my face. None of this matters. If I ever want permission to launch my podcast, I need to do what they want me to do. Someday, though, What Hazel Knows will be huge and they’ll take me seriously.
They’ll have to.
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