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Chapter 1 continued...

"OK," said XL, "I see that you don't want to go skating. But I don't want to play board games, and if you don't change your mind, then I won't change mine either."

"So, what else could we do?" asked Beeba.

They sat for another minute without talking. Then Beeba said, "I guess I'll go home. You can go skating if you want, by yourself."

"O.K." said XL. "We'll get together again some other time."

"Bye," said Beeba, as he walked out the door.

After Beeba left, XL sat around for a while, reading a comic book. After a while, he grabbed his skates, put on his coat and boots, and departed for the nearby skating area.

When he arrived it was late in the afternoon. The skating area was a frozen pond, surrounded by evergreen trees, with a couple of trees sticking through the ice. There was a warm-up shed beside the pond. Several people were skating.

XL went into the shed to put on his skates. Once the heavy wooden door closed behind him, there was only was dim light in the shed, coming from two small windows on one side. He sat on a bench to put on his skates, leaving his boots underneath. As he was putting on his skates, he noticed that someone had left a cell phone on the bench. There were no boots under the bench near the phone, so it seemed unlikely that the owner of the phone had left it there while skating. Probably it was lost.

After XL finished putting on his skates, he went outside, taking the phone with him. "Hey," he yelled to the few people who were skating, "has anybody lost a cell phone?" They turned to look at him as they skated by, but none stopped. Evidently it wasn't theirs.

XL skated around the pond a few times, going fast. After a few minutes he was all warmed up, and in fact he felt too hot in his winter clothes. "O.K." he said to himself, "I got my exercise. But I'm not having much fun, so I might as well leave. Besides, the sun will soon set. It is almost 5 PM."

When XL went into the shed, he sat on the bench and began to take off his skates. He stopped a moment to look at the phone. It was turned on still. He touched the screen, and it asked for the code to unlock it.

"I wonder how I will figure out whose phone this is?" he thought.

Copyright Arthur de Leyssac, 2017. All rights reserved.