Trojan Horse Trouble

By Verity Weaver and Courtney Huddleston

Today is the grandest of all sixth-grade days at Marcy G. Middleton Middle School: the Great Ancient Greece Extravaganza. So far, it’s a herculean success, with kids wrapped in bedsheets performing onstage, a backdrop of Mount Olympus standing tall, and a giant cardboard Trojan horse ready to roll. But when the mighty stallion makes its debut onstage, Spartans are left speechless by the Great Trojan . . . Chicken?

How, exactly, was the horse transformed? Did a competitive set designer or rival baseball team vandalize it? Perhaps the high school theater teacher introduced this challenge to test the students’ acting skills. Or maybe this is all just a bad dream . . .

Crack open a What Happened? book to investigate a preposterous mystery from four different perspectives. See what the witnesses gets right . . . and what they get hilariously wrong. Bet you'll never guess what really happened!

• Language: English
• Publisher: North Star Editions
• Release date: Jan 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781631634253

Book preview

Trojan Horse Trouble © 2020 by North Star Editions, Mendota Heights, MN 55120. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including internet usage, without written permission from the copyright owner, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Book design by Jake Slavik

Illustrations by Courtney Huddleston

Design Elements: Shutterstock Images

Published in the United States by Jolly Fish Press, an imprint of North Star Editions, Inc.

First Edition

First Printing, 2020

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data (pending)

978-1-63163-424-6 (paperback)

978-1-63163-423-9 (hardcover)

Jolly Fish Press

North Star Editions, Inc.

2297 Waters Drive

Mendota Heights, MN 55120

www.jollyfishpress.com

Printed in the United States of America

Chapter 1

It's All Greek to Me

Tuesday, March 20, 8:19 a.m.

It was going to take a lot more than an unexpected shower (actually a major downpour, but whatever) to dampen the kids’ spirits in Mr. Liddy’s sixth grade homeroom. Not today, torrential rain. Not today. After four weeks of researching, writing, sewing, gluing, crafting, rehearsing, and preparing, the annual Great Ancient Greece Extravaganza had finally arrived. Greek Day, as everybody besides Mr. Liddy called it, was pretty awesome. And nothing, not even sideways rain, was going to drown out the excitement.

For the last ten years, on the third Tuesday of every March, sixth graders at Marcy G. Middleton came to school ready for battle. Well, not real battle. But still, it was epic. For one entire day, at least from first bell at 8:17 a.m. to dismissal at 2:46 p.m., and for a couple of hours that night, one hundred and forty-four sixth graders, especially the twenty-nine kids in Mr. Liddy’s homeroom, would travel back in time to live like the ancient Greeks.

Believe it or not, Marcy G. Middleton students were eager (okay fine, maybe not eager, but at least they agreed) to trade their torn-up jeans for togas; pass on pizza for lunch and opt for figs, olives, and feta cheese; and be more into philosophers than their Facechat accounts. Kids were thrilled (okay fine, maybe not thrilled, but at least willing) to ditch their computers, cell phones, and video games for a day in the life of one of the world’s earliest civilizations, circa 1200 B.C.

Each year on Greek Day, students made their history books come alive. They looked like ancient Greeks, dressed in belted, bunched bedsheets, leafy-branch crowns, and strappy faux-leather sandals. They sounded like ancient Greeks, saying Khaire! (KI-ee-reh) for Hello! And they played like ancient Greeks, competing in original Olympic-style games. They threw javelins made of pool noodles. They flung colorful Frisbees for the discus toss. They zoomed around on tricycles for chariot races.

They even ate like ancient Greeks, with lunch sacks filled with fresh vegetables and fruit, entire loaves of bread, and different types of cheeses. Instead of eating mac and cheese and corndogs in the cafeteria, on Greek Day students went to homeroom classes, pushed desks out of the way, and lounged on the floor pulling apart food with their bare hands.

Yes, Greek Day was pretty awesome. But it didn’t end when Marcy G. Middleton got out at 2:46 p.m. Just a few hours later, Greek Day turned into Greek Night. That evening, kids would come back to school with parents, siblings, relatives, and friends to watch each homeroom class present its own show onstage.

On this particular Greek Day, this rainy, windy, stormy third Tuesday in March, as the tardy bell rang through the halls of Marcy G. and another deluge started to pour, students continued to scramble out of cars in the crowded drop-off zone. Windshield wipers swished frantically on minivans. Loose homework papers flew in the air, snatched by gusts of heavy wind. Kids bebopped their way through a hectic maze of puddles, out-of-control umbrellas, and Principal Peters ready for rain in his tall, rubber boots.

By the time they made their way to Mr. Liddy’s class in their wet sandals and drenched bedsheets, the sixth graders looked like a bunch of soggy sandwiches. Kids in soaked cloaks (chitons, as the Greeks called them) threw drippy backpacks by their desks and took a seat.

Ling Chen was already at her desk. Perky, prepared, and totally ready to go. Ling, set designer for Greek Day, wasn’t going to let a little thing like other people’s tardiness keep her from making sure everything was ready. Well, to be honest, Ling didn’t want everything to simply be ready. Ling was going for perfection.

She and her dad had been working tirelessly for the last four weeks on set design and props. Pandora’s box, a gift from Zeus according to Greek mythology, was made out of real pine. Mount Olympus, cut out of oversized pieces of plywood, looked divine. Hercules’s pillars, the ones that held up the sky as the ancient Greeks told it, were created from poster board that had been rolled and duct-taped together into round columns.

But the highlight, the icing on Ling’s ancient Greek cake, was the horse from the Trojan War, created from a refrigerator box and painted majestically (and repainted . . . and repainted . . . and then painted again).

The box, laid on its side, made the body of the horse. The back end was left open so that a couple of kids could hide inside during the performance, following the mythological story precisely. The horse’s head was cut from another piece of heavy cardboard—its neck, head, and ears the perfect profile of a stallion—and staple-gunned to the front end. Its legs were painted on, a mound of brown yarn made up its mane, and the tail was created from heavy rope. The Trojan Horse was truly a masterpiece and would make its debut at the end of Mr. Liddy’s class performance.

As she sat at her desk flipping through the pages on her clipboard, sheet after sheet of notes, to-do lists, checklists, and miscellaneous loose ends, Ling couldn’t help wondering, Why is everyone