The Missing Page: Opening a Story and Keeping Events in Order

The Missing Page

1On the last Friday of the school year, Ms. Abernathy's fourth graders were making a class scrapbook. Every student had one page to fill with something they wanted to remember. Marisol Vega, who loved to draw, sketched the class goldfish. Her best friend, Theo Park, who carried his camera everywhere, printed photos from the spring field day.

2By lunch, twenty-three pages were finished and stacked on the reading table. Ms. Abernathy counted them twice. "We should have twenty-four," she said with a frown. Someone's page was missing. Marisol felt worried, because the scrapbook was supposed to be finished that afternoon.

3Marisol and Theo offered to search. First they checked under the reading table, where they found only a broken crayon. Next they looked in the recycling bin, in case the page had been thrown away by mistake. Theo even lifted the rug by the door, but he found only a paper clip. The page was not there either.

4Then Theo remembered something. Before lunch, the window had been open, and a breeze had sent a few papers sliding across the floor. The two friends got down on their knees and peeked behind the bookshelf by the window. There, covered in dust, was a page with a drawing of a soccer ball and the name Ravi printed across the top. Theo sneezed twice from the dust.

5Ravi, the newest student in the class, grinned when they handed it to him. "I thought my page was gone for good," he said. Ms. Abernathy brushed off the dust, and the class glued the last page into the scrapbook just before the bell rang.