Read Online The History Mystery by Ana María Machado - Free Book Online Page A

‘What if it’s not that at all?’
    â€˜What do you mean?’ asked Sonia. ‘Not what?’
    â€˜Do you have a better suggestion?’ said Pedro.
    â€˜No,’ said Matt. ‘I can’t say I have a suggestion or that it’s any better than your ideas. But I just keep thinking it may not be a hacker or a criminal or anything like that. Maybe it’s just a cry for help. Like this is someone who needs help and has been gradually trying to gain our confidence, to make friends with us.’
    â€˜Yeah, right, so they can use us later!’ said Sonia.
    â€˜I don’t think so,’ said Matt. ‘I don’t see any sign of that. I think this person is trying to get to know us so that he or she can open up and tell us what they want. I honestly don’t see them using us. In fact, I think it’s the other way round – we’re the ones who used that first message to get a good grade on the history paper.
    â€˜And by the way, we’d definitely lose that grade in a second if we went around telling people that the famous project that got all those compliments from Mr Costa wasn’t done by us, but was actually plagiarised from Nefertiti or somebody else who sent us everything ready-made and full of details.’
    Silence.
    â€˜See, I read these messages quite differently,’ Matt went on. ‘I mean, I do agree with all that stuff you two wrote in your list: it’s someone who’s proud of knowing how to read and write, who has lived in different places and through different times and all that. But I also see someone who is polite, who apologises for butting in, who treats us with respect.And it’s someone who’s really hooked on this idea of how important it is to study.’
    â€˜That’s right,’ Sonia agreed.
    â€˜But it’s also someone who’s trying to communicate,’ Matt said. ‘Desperately trying, actually, in any way and over a long time. Someone who sends one message after another. Someone who says they are suffering, who needs to be set free from some kind of a sentence. Someone who hopes that we can give them a little help. And what is our response? We couldn’t care less. Or worse: we think they’re a criminal.’
    Silence again.
    Pedro and Sonia hadn’t seen things from that angle. They remained quiet, thinking. Since thoughts don’t make noise, there was no sound to be heard.
    The person who finally spoke was Carol. They had all forgotten she was there. She was usually very nosy, but on this occasion she’d really been trying to control herself and not ask too many questions, so she wouldn’t get kicked out by the older kids.
    It was Carol, though, who summed up the situation, saying, ‘Cool! It’s a bit like a message in a bottle, like you see in cartoons, floating in the middle of the waves until it reaches a beach and someone opens it. And we are the ones opening it, right?’
    What if this were true?

8 – Model What?
    They managed to make an appointment with Colin for the following day, in his office. They would stop by in the afternoon, they’d said, all three of them, because Matt was constantly stuck to the other two now.
    Sonia thanked her lucky stars that she had managed at least to get rid of Carol, who loved Colin and had tried to tag along with the group. But that would have been a bit much. She wasn’t in their class and Sonia felt that having one sister hanging around this meeting was more than enough.
    That was Andrea, of course, who worked with Colin. Andrea greeted the three kids with a complaint that none of them understood: ‘You can’t manage to arrive on time even for important meetings, huh?’ she said as soon as they arrived. And then she was gone, disappearing through the door, leaving the others in the waiting room outside the office.
    They couldn’t imagine what she was talking about. They weren’t late. In