“Well, there’s no turning back,” I thought as I closed the door of my mother’s plug-in Prius. “It’s a Friday, what can go wrong?” I rushed inside Sunnyside Elementary School and into Room 21 with my DS, just when the bell rang. “Class, let’s get settled,” Mrs. Chen called. “Everybody get your math homework from yesterday.” While everybody took their red pens and homework out, Mrs. Chen turned to look at me. “Stacy Anderson, tell us the answer for number 1, please.” Did she just call me? I froze in embarrassment and felt my classmates’ beady little eyes burn into me.
    

“Can anybody help Stacy?” she asked as I frantically searched in my homework folder.
    

“I can,” Melissa Williams (my best friend) called. “The answer to number one is 296.”
    

I nodded a silent “thanks” in her way. Mrs. Chen looked at the answer key and said, "Very good, Melissa. Stacy, please remember to finish your homework on time. If this keeps happening, I'll have to e-mail your parents.” I cringed, knowing that my classmates were staring at me again.

It was recess. As Mrs. Chen opened the door, I hurried to greet Melissa and play another daily game of four-square. I was about to serve until I heard a familiar voice that called my name.
    

“Hey, Stacy! Come here!” Zoey Greene called.
    

“Uh-oh,” I thought as I gave the ball to Melissa. Zoey is a whole new level compared to me. She loiters with her group of friends who call themselves the CCPs from Dork Diaries. Melissa told me that they are thieves who ask to trade cheap stuff like pencils for something valuable or something that they like including electronics by threatening to spread rumors if they refuse.
    

“Hi Zoey,” I said as I walked over.
    

“Do you have your DS with you today?”
    

“Ummm… how do you know?” Zoey ignored my question.
    

“Would you like to temporarily trade your DS for something wonderful like… a pack of pop-up stickers?”
    

Right away I knew that we were going to get into trouble, but I decided to accept because she’s only going to borrow it.
    

“Ok, fine. But you have to give it back next Monday, ok?” I declared.
    

“Great! Here.” She shoved a pack of Hello Kitty pop-up stickers in my face. I took it, walked over to my backpack, and grabbed my DS. When I gave it to her, she flounced back to her friends without saying a “thank you”. While watching her, I pondered, “What have I done?”.

When I came to school on Monday, I headed straight to Zoey so she can give my DS back. When I found her, she was with her CCP crew-- gossiping and giggling as usual. When I walked up to her, she tried to ignore me. Uh oh.
    

“Where’s my DS?” I asked.
    

Zoey bluffed, “What do you mean?”.
    

“Remember the trade? Do you have it with you?”
    

“I don’t remember that happening.”
    

“Zoey, what are you doing?!” the CCP crew spat.
    

“I need to talk to this fool about… some private family issues,” Zoey smiled uncomfortably. “She’s my family friend.”
    

After hours of glaring suspiciously, they said, “Fine. We’ll leave you here,” and sashayed away. When they were gone Zoey replied,
    

“I was playing with my-- I mean-- your DS on the playground, and when my
friends came, I stuffed it in my backpack and joined them. I think it slipped out
of my backpack…”.
    

And that’s why we have zippers!” I retorted.
    

“Sorry,” She shrugged. “I’ll help you look.”
    

Fuming, I answered, “Great.”
I rushed back to Room 21 so I can tell Melissa about it, but she wasn’t there. 

When it was recess, Zoey and I sprinted towards the playground, eager to find the lost DS. In the end, we couldn’t find it, even though we looked everywhere. We circled around the playground seven times, trashed the Lost and Found bins, and searched almost the whole school!
    

“Should we ask the principal?” Zoey questioned.
In my mind, I was like, “NO! NO WAY HOZAY!” but I just admitted,
    

”I don’t think we should. If we chose to, we would get into EVEN MORE trouble”.

Even though I knew that doing this was the best thing, I still felt horrible about hiding all of this from my parents. I needed to think of a solution, or else I would have to kiss my DS and my reputation towards my parents goodbye!

     At lunch, Zoey and I had a meeting behind a massive oak tree near the border of the school.
     “So what’s the plan?” asked Zoey.
     “We are going to sneak inside the principal’s office,” I announced.
     “REALLY?”
I told her all about my solution. Basically, we were going to get inside Mr. Addison’s office so we could check the surveillance cameras.
     “The only problem is how we’re going to get in!” I finished.
We thought about it for a moment.
     “We could trick the secretaries into thinking that somebody was hurt…” Zoey mused.
     “That’s a great idea!”
Suddenly, a frightening image of an angry Mr. Addison took over my brain and I fretted,
     “What if we can’t find out how to use the surveillance cameras? What if Mr. Addison catches us? What if… ” Zoey stared at me and confirmed,
    

”We can do this! Let’s just get this over with.".

Zoey was right-- I also wanted this to end too, but it was so hard to accept the fact that we were going to figure this out without getting caught. I was still pretty sure that we were going to get into trouble- but instead, I pushed all of this away. I quickly cheered up and stated,”Operation: Find Who Took the DS is now a go!”.

In order to get inside the office, Zoey’s good friend Chelsea was going to pretend that she was hurt with the help of the whole CCP crew (they’re really good at drama). Then, I would tell the secretaries that there was an emergency- somebody was bleeding and that they should go check. Once they hurry out of the office, Zoey and I would sneak in and do our work.     

     As Zoey drizzled Chelsea with tomato juice, she mumbled, ”Eww. Why am I even doing this?”.
    

“Remember?” Zoey said. “I need to go inside the principal’s office so I can get something. I’ll give all of you guys some candy after this.“

She drew some purplish-blue blobs on her legs and arms to represent bruises.
     “This doesn’t really look realistic,” a girl named Savannah admitted.
     “Whatever!”

Once we were done, we took our places. Chelsea started to scream and wail, which was the signal for me to go. I ran inside the office and met the three secretaries. “HELP! Somebody’s severely bruised and we need you guys to check on her immediately! She’s bleeding! You need to go!” I blubbered. The ladies looked shocked. I thought, why aren’t they moving? All we could hear was the wind blowing outside. “Is this some kind of joke?” asked Nancy Harber, who was one of the secretaries. “NO WAY! REALLY?!” I exclaimed. Then they went crazy and hurried out the door. When they left, Zoey came and we rushed inside the principal’s office.

Once we got inside, I realized that it was really disorganized. There were books everywhere. The table was piled with sheets of papers too messy to read.             
    

“Here’s his computer,” Zoey said. I came over, noticing that he left his computer on and logged in.
     “He’s really absent-minded,” I answered and scrunched my nose at the putrid smell of a moldy cheeseburger inside his desk. “There must be a way on how we can use the surveillance cameras.”
Of course, his computer’s desktop was filled with files and photos.
     “Is it this?” Zoey asked. There was an icon of a camera. Underneath, it said: “Q-See surveillance systems”.
     “That’s it!” I whisper-exclaimed and clicked on the icon. It bounced a few times and opened up to show a sign in page with the username already filled in.
     “Darn it,” Zoey groaned. “How would we find out his password?”
     “We look around, of course!”
     “I’m too lazy. Besides, this place is a mess!”
     “It’s not that bad. I bet it’s better than getting beaten by some very angry parents!”
     “Fine, but if I accidentally get my hands on some ugly rotten tuna fish salad, it’ll be your fault,” Zoey huffed.
After two minutes of searching, I was the one who found a post-it note that had the Q-See password scribbled on it.
     “Where did you find it?” Zoey inquired.
     “Next to the moldy cheeseburger,” I answered.
     She made a face. “Ick.”

While we were typing in the password, we heard some heavy shoes clomping and stomping and getting closer. It’s none other than Mr. Addison. Oh no! “Hide!” I whisper-shouted. Zoey rushed towards the curtains while I dove behind a potted plant. I cringed at the sound of the door creaking as Mr. Addison walked inside. “Ah, I forgot my phone and my glasses. What’s wrong with me?” he muttered under his breath. He didn’t seem to notice that his computer was on or paid attention to the open drawers. Instead, he just walked right out, clueless toward what’s happening. Once Mr. Addison left his office, we crawled out of our hiding places. “Let’s get back to work.” I walked towards the computer. We logged in using the post-it note, and then searched for the camera filming the playground.
    

“Wow, I’ve never noticed that there were 17 cameras that are on campus,” I admitted.
    

“Well, at least there aren’t 100 of them. If there were, we could’ve taken forever to find this specific camera.”
    

“True.”

Zoey clicked on the camera icon 12, which filmed the playground site.
    

“OMG, there’s Sasha!” Zoey squealed.
I sighed. We rewinded the tape so that it was Friday when the accident happened.
    

“There I am,” Zoey said. “And there’s the DS. When my friends came, I got up and dropped the DS while walking towards them. Now we’re leaving… “
    

“Wait a minute,” I told her. Just then, a figure showed up on the screen, taking the DS and running away. I stared, not believing what just happened. I rewinded and played again and again. Who was the person who stole my DS? Melissa Williams!

I can’t believe that Melissa took my DS. It seemed very unlikely because she was definitely not the type of person who would. In order to get to the bottom of all of this, I planned to confront her before school. As soon as I saw Melissa come in through the school gates, I ran as fast as I could to reach her.
    

“MELISSA! How could you! I thought you were my best friend!”
     “What do you mean?”
     “You stole my DS!”
     “I didn’t steal your DS! I-- ”
     “YES YOU DID! NOW YOU’RE LYING!”
By now I was shouting. Everybody looked at us as if we were insane.
    

“I DIDN’T! I SWEAR!” Melissa yelled back.
    

“I WAS PLANNING TO GIVE IT BACK TO YOU ON MONDAY, BUT I HAPPENED TO GET THE STOMACH FLU. SINCE I WAS ABSENT THEN, I'M GIVING IT TO YOU RIGHT NOW!!”

I blinked a few times in confusion as all my anger washed away.
     “Really?”
     “Yeah! I think it was you who left it on the playground.”
     “No, that was Zoey. But, how did you know it was mine?”
     “I overheard Zoey talking about it.”
     “I’m so sorry about blaming you when you were helping me the whole time,” I murmured.
     “It’s ok! Here,” Melissa said as she handed the lost DS.

I took it, then hugged it tight.
    

“Don’t judge.”
We all giggled, and my DS lived happily ever after.