The Case of the Magnetic Rocket Fuel

By Cindy Cipriano

Their last time-travelling mishap still fresh in their minds, Grace and Jack are on edge about what might happen next. Grace’s memories of her solo trip to the future are never far away. When the future begins to seep out into the present, they must stick to the rules or risk the consequences.

They set themselves the task of finding out more about the mysterious ink, ending up in the past in a mysterious science lab. Could their new discovery also shed some light onto their mysterious friends at 21BUT22?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vulpine Press
• Release date: Jun 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781912701230

Cindy Cipriano

Cindy Cipriano lives in North Carolina with her husband, son, and their twenty-seven pets.Not really.Just three dogs who think they are children and three cats who think they are raccoons. It only seems as if they make twenty-seven. When Cindy isn't writing, she enjoys spending time with her family and the avoidance of cooking.Fading, The Fading Series Book One, (Clean Teen Publishing) releases in 2018. This is the first in a three-four book series in which seventeen-year-old Leath Elliott wonders if the new boy in town is literally the boy of her dreams.Cindy's Miller's Island Mysteries series is described as innovative in blending science and fantasy. Eighth graders, Grace and Jack, travel through time solving mysterious science events. Miller's Island Mysteries #1 The Case of the Toxic River (Vulpine Press) released in August 2017. MIMS #1 is the first in an eleven-book series.Cindy's first novel, The Circle, Book One of The Sidhe (2013), won the 2014 Moonbeam Children's Book Silver Award for Pre-Teen Fiction – Fantasy. Other titles in the series include The Choice, Book Two of The Sidhe (2015), and The Lost, Book Three of The Sidhe (2017). Look for The Secret, Book Four of The Sidhe to release in May 2018. The series follows Calum, Laurel, and Hagen from middle through high school as they first rescue Calum's kidnapped cousin, and then save the Otherworld from dark Sidhe. This series is published by Odyssey Books.Cindy's article, Level Up Intrinsic Motivation, was published in the JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY LEADERSHIP in 2016 and two of her short stories were published in the Children's anthology, Doorway to Adventure (2010).

Book preview

Miller’s Island Mysteries

Book 3

The Case of

The Magnetic Rocket Fuel

Cindy Cipriano

Grayscale

Copyright © Cindy Cipriano 2018

Miller’s Island Mysteries Book 3: The Case of The Magnetic Rocket Fuel

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission from the publisher.

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 any person or persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Published by Vulpine Press in the United Kingdom in 2018

ISBN 978-1-912701-23-0

Cover by Paige Selby-Green

www.vulpine-press.com

Also in the Miller’s Island Mysteries series:

Book 1: The Case of The Toxic River

Book 2: The Case of The Mysterious Future

For Harper Reagan

Chapter One

Life

It’s been two days since Jack and I agreed upon the rules for time travel and I can’t stop thinking about how I should already break one of them. If I could just tip Jack off about our future, about how we barely speak to one another and how he dislikes me so much. But, I know I can’t. It’s just plain wrong, telling someone about their future. We aren’t some fake fortune-teller. We’re the real deal. Or at least for this moment, I am.

I traveled three years into the future and I know how it all turns out. One moment I was an eighth-grade student, the next, a junior in high school, with no clue about what happened during the years in between. No idea why my connection to Jack broke, splitting us apart.

I comfort myself with the knowledge that since I already know what’s going to happen, it’s entirely in my power to prevent our breakup. I’ll do everything I can to be sure things don’t turn out that way again as we relive those years. Beginning now with our present, eighth-grade selves at Miller’s Island Middle School. I’m going to pay a lot of attention to Jack’s and my relationship and keep things from going south again.

Too much thinking, I think, then smile.

I need a break. I’m sitting in English class during our self-selected reading time. I’m supposed to be reading the novel in my hands, but in the last twenty minutes, I haven’t turned the first page. I notice the media center pass waving at me from its place on a cup-hook, hanging crookedly on the bulletin board. This means the pass is fair game.

I raise my hand.

Yes, Grace? asks Mr. Abbott.

May I please go to the media center to get a new book? I ask.

Finished with that one? asks Mr. Abbott.

Just realized I already read it. That’s almost the truth since it’s very similar to another title I read two years ago.

Go ahead, says Mr. Abbott.

I grab my book bag and snag the pass off the hook. My boots on the hardwood floors echo and bounce through the empty hallway. It’s my first and last year at MIMS and already I know I’ll miss this ninety-two-year-old building when I move on to high school next year.

When I get to the media center, I set my bag on the checkout desk and slide my novel through the narrow slot near the top of the desk. I listen, feeling satisfaction as it thumps into the collection bin. A quick glance around the room tells me that I’m alone. MIMS is a small school. We don’t have a media specialist, but all the kids are trained on how to check out books. Office helpers come through the media center at different times during the day and reshelf returned books. I come here myself as often as I can just to breathe in the history of this building.

And to snoop. Of course!

I begin looking around the room in full stealth-mode now, hoping to discover any previously overlooked mysteries. Instead, I find myself taking an inventory of the mysteries I’ve already uncovered. My eyes find the 3 x 3 ft, sky-blue door on the back wall. Not only is the door unusually small, it has no door knob or pull rope. As I think about it now, it seems more like an access panel of some sort. I haven’t checked it out because it’s a good twenty feet off the floor, accessible only by ladder. I walk between the fiction stacks toward a similar door on the floor. I think the high door must lead to an attic and the low one to the cellar. I know I’ll confirm both destinations one day.

The only non-fiction stack is also the last remaining original bookshelf. It’s made of oak and stained with the oil of thousands of hands as their fingers skimmed along the shelf. I love reading non-fiction for two reasons: One, real life is more fascinating than fantasy. Trust me. I’m a time traveler. And two, this non-fiction selection includes a large stock of natural oddities titles. I’m searching for a book I’d noticed before when a dark glint catches my eye.

I move closer to the end of the second row and push aside a thin paperback field guide on clouds. Nearly falling out of a keyhole is a small but ornate key that can’t be more than an inch in length. The bow of the key is a flattened, almost-oval shape and made of thin intersecting lines of metal. It’s the perfect size for my thumb.

I slide the key the rest of the way out and peer into the keyhole. Nothing but blackness. MIMS is clearly a weird old building. I mean how many schools have pristine bomb shelters in their cellars? Trap doors behind their stages? Mysterious panels twenty feet in the air? But, a key to a wall safe, or whatever, in the middle of a book shelf in the media center? That’s strange even for MIMS.

This wasn’t always a media center, I think.

I look to the front of the room where suffocating black velvet curtains hide secrets of an almost century-old stage. At one time, this was a community theater. But when the student population grew large enough to demand a media center, the audience section was shortened to accommodate bookshelves.

Maybe the reason this is the only oak bookshelf is because it wasn’t always a bookshelf.

I set the key on a white-topped counter and take a few pictures with my cell. I take more when I return the key to its home. I’m about to walk away when I realize I’ve missed the obvious. I reach out and gently turn the key and I’m rewarded with the most delicate of clicks. There’s no handle, nothing for me to pull on to open the door. Maybe it’s further down the door, hidden behind other books.

I pull several books off the shelf, careful not to get them out of order, and search. Nothing. I even look for the edges of what must be the door. Nothing there either.

Who would put a keyhole leading nowhere into a wall? I think in exasperation.

That’s an awful lot of books there, missy.

I don’t even have to turn around to know I’ve been busted. By Jackson. Again. Jackson’s the MIMS’s maintenance man. He’s also the mayor of Miller’s Island.

I quickly shove the titles I’m holding in my hands directly in front of the keyhole and key and begin returning the other books to their places.

Having trouble deciding. They all look good, I say, shoving the rest of the books back onto the shelf.

I’m sure they do, says Jackson. But students can only checkout one book. You got to finish that ’un and bring it back before you can check out another. It’s hard to focus, really focus on more than one thing at a time.

I think that might explain why it seems to take forever for anything to be replaced or repaired in this building. But, in his defense, the building is ancient and so is Jackson. For the first time, I think this might be something I can use to my advantage.

How long have you worked here, Mr. Jackson? I ask in what I hope is an innocent enough sounding voice.

Mr. Jackson? he repeats and gives a rough chuckle. Ain’t nobody calls me that.

Sorry, I say quickly. I thought Jackson was your last name.

’Tis, says Jackson. But no one calls me mister. He hands me a book from the table and I return it to the shelf. I been here goin’ on fifty years now.

Fifty? That’s about half the lifespan of this place. But, I’ll take what I can get. Was MIMS always a school? I ask.

Now that’s a question, all right, says Jackson. He scratches his chin and his eyes travel past me to the wall where the key is now hidden behind a tall, thick book on native trees. No. This weren’t always a school.

What was it before?

Lot’s ah things, says Jackson. This part here was the town theater. Way before the movies, folk used to come here and watch plays. Nearly all the outbuildings were used for a mess ah things before this became a school. The storage barn on the east side of campus was a real barn, used to hold half-dozen horses. The shed next to it was a blacksmith’s cabin. Jackson’s quiet a moment, lost in thought. Things sure do change when you’re not looking. He hands me the last book just as the bell rings. Speaking of changing, you’d bess get to your next class.

And there’s the Jackson I’ve come to know and love. The one who’s forever herding me off to class. I retrieve my book bag and head toward the door. When I turn back, Jackson looks up at me curiously.

Thanks, I say.

Jackson gives me a crooked smile. Anytime, missy.

I head to science class where Jack’s already at our pod. I hesitate, taking a moment to watch him as he unpacks his book bag. Sometimes I forget just how gorgeous he is. Here we are in early December and Jack looks no less