Benji and the Spelling Bee

Nadine had been preparing for the inter-school spelling bee since September.

Not because she had been told she was competing — that announcement had come in January. But because Nadine Brown prepared for things, and she had seen the spelling bee on the school calendar in September, and she had started then, because that was how you approached something worth doing properly.

She knew words in four categories: words that were spelled exactly as they sounded, which were the easy ones; words where the sound gave you no information at all, which were the hard ones; words where you knew the root and the root helped you, which were the satisfying ones; and words that were simply going to require memorisation, which she had put on a list and was working through one page per week.

She was ready.

She was also, by the Thursday before the Saturday competition, suspicious.

Benji had been at the school office on Wednesday when the sealed envelope arrived from the district education office. The envelope contained the official word list for Saturday’s competition — sealed, not to be opened until the event. Miss Henry had signed for it and placed it in her desk drawer.

Benji was outside Miss Henry’s office on Thursday morning when Nadine arrived.

“The envelope,” she said.

He looked at the door.

“Something happened to the envelope.”

He looked at her.

“Or something is going to happen to the envelope.”

He looked at the door again.

She went to find Omar and Clevie.

“How would you know the envelope was tampered with?” Clevie said. “It’s sealed.”

“He smells what’s on it,” Nadine said. “If someone touched it — handled it, opened it and resealed it — the smell is different.”

“Can dogs smell that?”

“Benji can smell things we can’t. He found the bicarbonate of soda on Miss Miriam’s prep table. He found the cash under the stones. He found money in a fishing cooler.” She looked at Clevie. “He smelled something on that envelope.”

“If someone opened the list,” Omar said, “and copied it, and gave it to a competitor—”

“That’s cheating,” Clevie said, with the specific weight of someone who was occasionally casual about rules but took sport and competition very seriously.

“Yes,” Nadine said.

“Who would have access to the envelope between the post and Miss Henry’s desk?”

“The office secretary opens post. Three students help with office errands on rotation. And anyone in the corridor between seven and seven-thirty when the post arrives.”

“That’s a lot of people,” Clevie said.

“It’s not that many,” Omar said. “We can narrow it. Who had time and access and would have reason to want to help a specific competitor?”

“Or harm Cliffside’s competitor,” Nadine said. “Which is me.”

They went to Miss Henry.

They went to her not with an accusation but with a request: could she check whether the envelope seal was intact?

Miss Henry was a principal. She could tell the difference between children pursuing something legitimate and children pursuing something personal. She took the envelope from her drawer and examined it with the careful attention of an experienced administrator.

The seal had been re-glued.

Not poorly. But you could see, if you knew what you were looking for, the slight difference in the glue’s edge. Someone had opened it, resealed it, and the resealing was almost right.

“Almost,” Miss Henry said.

“Yes,” Omar said.

“When was the post collected this week?”

“Wednesday. Seven-fifteen.”

“The rotation for office errands this week,” she said.

She had the rotation. Three names. Wednesday morning was one student: a boy named Fitzroy from Standard Six who was representing a different school — not Cliffside, not any Cliffside competitor. A school across town that had won the spelling bee twice.

Not Fitzroy himself, then. Someone connected to Fitzroy.

Miss Henry made a call.

Fitzroy’s older sister had taken a photo of the word list on Wednesday morning while Fitzroy was in class and she was waiting for him in the corridor and the envelope had been left momentarily in the in-tray. She had texted it to the coach of her school’s team. She had not thought of it as cheating. She had thought of it as helping.

Miss Henry thought of it differently.

The district education office was notified. The word list was changed overnight — the office confirmed they had a backup list for exactly this situation. Saturday’s competition ran on a fresh set of words that nobody had seen.

Nadine, who had prepared since September and knew words in four categories, came second.

She had not known the leaked list. She had not needed to.

First place went to a girl from a school on the north of Kingston who, after the event, Nadine spoke to for twenty minutes about etymology, and they agreed that the most interesting category of word was the one where the root helped you.

“You should have won,” Clevie told Nadine on the bus home.

“Second is not a loss,” she said.

“You prepared since September.”

“And it made me better. Whether I won or not.” She looked at the window. “The girl who won was better today. I’ll be better at the next one.”

Clevie found this frustrating to argue with.

“You’re very reasonable,” he said.

“I know,” she said.

Benji, in the seat beside her, did not comment on the result. He had done his part on Thursday. The rest had been hers.