The Troubleseekers and the Knotted Conspiracy

CHAPTER 5: LIZY

"You can't do—"

"If you think you can tell me what I can and can't do as your father in a situation like this, then a grounding is far, far overdue," her father said. "I can continue to tighten down, if you'd like. I could pull you out of school and send you to your aunt in Detroit and let you sample the no-maj world a bit, perhaps?" Her aunt had been disgraced when she attempted to embezzle from the First National Wizarding Bank and her wand had been snapped and she had been sent packing into the no-maj world.

Tears were streaming down Lizy's cheeks. To this moment, she had prided herself on understanding her father. She believed she knew him, through and through. He was doughy and shy and squeamish due to a sensitive disposition. He was a sweet man who just wanted to study and let words pass beneath his eyes and to conduct magical experimentation and have a black lab and take it for walks. He even indulged in the odd game of chess now and then, but always defaulted. His chess pieces hated him. So did his students, who ran up one side of him and back down the other and didn't like his grades, his teaching style, or anything about him. Lizy stood up for him, Lizy punished students when her father couldn't or wouldn't for their disrespect.

And now this?

"Yes, sir, that's understood," she said.

Lizy left his office and cried herself to sleep, angry at herself for losing her dad's trust and for getting herself into this stupid, knotted situation at all.

***

"Harsh," Sterling had said as she bit into her apple. Lizy nodded. Bridgette was toying with her food, building an igloo of raviolis and then scraping sauce onto the top like red snow. She never ate much but seemed to like playing with her food.

"My parents grounded me once," Bridgette said. "After I broke the fish tank to try to teach the fish to fly. But I liked being home doing chores too much so they ended the punishment early."

"You liked being home and doing chores?" Claire said with a frown. Bridgette shrugged but didn't say anything else.

Lizy rested her chin on her hands and looked up at the faculty table. Her father sat alone, eating his lunch and reading the newspaper. Lizy looked back at her tray of untouched chicken nuggets and salad. The one consolation to all of this was that her father hadn't forbade Lizy from sitting with any of her friends, so long as they all sat together at the Horned Serpent table. She hadn't seen Thalia in what felt like weeks, already over her weirdness, and Isadora was still manning her chocolate booth.

"So," Sterling said, picking the stem out of her apple. "You got caught snooping. Did you find anything?"

"Oh, that's what started all of this?" Claire said with a crooked smile. "You snooped in Folks's office and you got caught?" Lizy rolled her eyes and sighed.

"Yeah, and it's what my dad's most angry about," she said. "And it was all for nothing, really. I mean, there was a letter from Chet Gadgow on the All-Stars team, saying the camp would be a great idea and he knew a good place in Florida to have it. But we knew about that already."

"So, he's feeling good, confident," Claire said. She shook her head.

"Where in Florida?" Bridgette asked.

"Next to your grammie's house," Sterling said. She leaned in. "But that's not important. Did you see anything with Society symbols?"

"No! I already told you, I didn't see anything. I also sat behind the tapestry for like thirty minutes, and nothing happened. Except Folks picked his nose once." The girls all made faces. Lizy threw up her hands. "This is all just so stupid. So dumb. And everyone gets to go have fun this weekend and I am stuck doing nothing to help with this or even anything fun!"