Dinosaur Boy by Cory Putman Oakes

Sylvie’s problem?
    I looked at Elliot across the table. He was chewing. Chewing and looking worriedly at Sylvie.
    â€œSo…your dad doesn’t let you eat candy?” I ventured.
    Sylvie looked up at me. For a moment, her eyes looked filled with hurt. I was just starting to get seriously concerned that she was about to cry when she blinked. And suddenly she was back to normal again.
    â€œDad has a thing about sugar,” she said, reaching for a chip.
    â€œAnd he’s still on his business trip?” I prodded.
    â€œYep,” Sylvie said flatly. Swallowing her chip, she opened her notebook and held a pen poised over the empty first page. “Focus, boys. We’re here to work.”
    â€œOh, sorry, yeah,” Elliot said, pushing some enchiladas aside to grab another plate. “Let’s try this one next. What is this? Then we can start on the—”
    â€œNo,” Sylvie snapped at him. “We’re not here to talk about food. We’re here to talk about what is happening at our school.”
    â€œOh.” Elliot looked disappointed.
    â€œHere is what we know,” Sylvie said, leaning forward importantly. “Eight kids have been kicked out of school—”
    â€œTen,” I interrupted. Justin Thomas and Gabrielle Clark had been sent to Principal Mathis’s office that morning, after they both yelled “feeding time” and threw sandwich meat at me. I could only assume that had been Allan’s idea.
    â€œOK, ten,” Sylvie amended, writing all of the names down in her notebook. “Ten kids have been expelled, and no one has heard from them since. We have visual confirmation that at least one of them is no longer living—”
    â€œNow hold on—” Elliot interrupted.
    â€œIn his house ,” Sylvie added, interrupting him back. “No longer living in his house . Under suspicious circumstances that would lead a reasonable person to believe that something out of the ordinary has happened to him.”
    â€œThat sounds about right,” I agreed, as Mrs. Juarez returned holding a large bowl of salad.
    I winced as my injured tail thumped with involuntary delight.
    Mrs. Juarez placed the salad in front of me, along with two other smaller dishes.
    â€œThis one is salsa,” she said, pointing to the first one, which was full of chunky bits of tomato and onion. “And this one,” she said, pointing to the second one, a rich-looking brown sauce, “is molé.”
    â€œMolé?” Elliot asked, his mouth full again. “What is that?”
    â€œA Mexican sauce, made from chilies, spices, nuts, chocolate, and a few other things,” Mrs. Juarez answered.
    â€œChocolate?” Elliot exclaimed. “That’s awesome!”
    â€œYou can’t taste it,” Sylvie said sulkily.
    Mrs. Juarez frowned at her daughter.
    â€œYou can if you’re paying attention, Sylvie. Let your friends make up their own minds.”
    Mrs. Juarez squeezed my shoulder as she straightened up.
    â€œI thought it might go nicely with your salad, Sawyer. You must get tired of plain greens all of the time. And Elliot, the same sauce is on the molé poblano. That’s the dish on your left.”
    â€œCool!” Elliot said, exchanging his scraped-clean plate for the one Mrs. Juarez had pointed out. It was a giant stuffed green pepper drizzled with the brown mystery sauce.
    â€œThanks,” I said, and gave my small dish of molé an experimental sniff. It smelled…warm. Which sounds weird, but it really did. Warm, like spices and nuts. I poured it over the top of my salad.
    Mrs. Juarez returned to the kitchen, and we returned to our conversation.
    â€œI really don’t think that Parker is dead,” Elliot offered, as he disemboweled the poblano with a knife. “If anything like that had happened to him, or to any of the others, we would have heard about it. Remember Gwen Carmichael?”
    I