THE MYSTERY OF THE BROWN BANANA

     “What’s that stuff seeping out of your lunch bag?”  Vicki asked.

Janey glanced down and discovered a brownish-black goo puddling beside her brown lunch bag.

     “I don’t know.  Maybe my juice box sprang a leak?”

She opened the bag, pulled out her juice box and examined it carefully.

     “Nope, this looks fine.  So does my sandwich.  The only thing left is my banana.”

She gasped and stared at Vicki, her eyes widening with fear.

     “I can’t bear to look.  You do it.”

Vicki leaned over and peered into the bag.

     “Yep, it’s your banana all right.  It looks like the monster guts we made for our Halloween haunted house last year.  Sorry Janey, do you want my apple instead?  I only took a few bites.”

     “No thanks,” Janey sighed and shook her head in disbelief.  “I don’t understand it.  Why would my Mom pack a brown banana in my lunch?  I know we had yellow ones.  I ate one for a snack last night.”

     She spent the rest of the school day trying to figure out what she had done wrong to deserve a brown banana in her lunch bag.

     “Are you angry with me Mom?”  Janey asked while stirring the spaghetti sauce for dinner.

     “No, why?”

     “You packed a brown banana in my lunch.”

     “No, I didn’t.”  She pointed to an enormous basket of bright yellow bananas.  “I packed you one of those.”

     Now Janey was really confused.  If her Mom packed a yellow banana like always, how did it get so brown?  That night she could hardly sleep, tossing and turning like a tornado.  She dreamt that an army of brown bananas were chasing her through a forest, except the trees weren’t trees, they were brown bananas.  She woke up with a start.

     “I’ve got to solve the mystery of the brown banana before it kills me!”

     The next morning she hurried downstairs to pack her lunch, picking the biggest yellow banana from the bunch.  She was so preoccupied thinking about her banana that she misspelled two words on her spelling test.  Finally the bell rang.  Janey grabbed her lunch bag and reached in for her precious banana.  She quickly jerked her hand out again.  Her fingers were covered with brown banana mush.

     “I don’t believe it!  It happened again.”

     Every day for a week Janey discovered a brown banana in her lunch bag.  She was running out of ideas.  Wrapping it in foil didn’t work; neither did putting it on top of her juice box instead of beside it.  She had to solve the mystery soon.  Her brown banana nightmares were becoming unbearable.  Last night she dreamt she was captured by the brown banana army and held hostage in a pit of banana mush.  It was so disgusting she almost threw up in bed.  Luckily, Super Yellow Banana Man swooped down from the sky to save her before she was completely sucked into the pit.  She was going crazy.  No, she was going bananas!

     She rummaged through her closet and found a cardboard shoebox.

     “What’s the box for?”  Her Mom asked in the morning.

     “My banana.”

     Janey placed a yellow banana in the box, taped the lid closed and cradled it in her arms like a baby.

     “This will keep you safe.  I promise.”

     When she retrieved the box at lunch she noticed that the tape had been ripped.  She tore off the lid and discovered her beautiful yellow banana had been replaced with a rotten brown one.  She was furious.

     “Someone’s been swiping my bananas and I’m going to find out who”

     “How?”  Vicki asked.

     “I have just the plan, wait until tomorrow.”

The next day Janey opened her lunch bag and found another brown banana.  She stood up and walked to the front of the lunch room.

     “Anyone who has a banana in their lunch, please place it on your desk immediately.”

She marched up and down the lunch room isles like a drill sergeant surveying her troops.  She stopped in front of Tim’s desk and picked up his bright yellow banana.

     “Is this your banana?”

     “Yes,” he answered trying not to smile.

     “Liar, it’s my banana.  See at the very bottom of the peel, I wrote my name.”  Janey crossed her arms in triumph.

     “Sorry,” said Tim.  “I love bananas and you always have the best ones for lunch and I was jealous, so I started switching my rotten brown ones for your yellow ones.  I won’t do it again.”

     That night with the mystery of the brown banana solved, Janey slept like peacefully and when she packed her lunch the next day, she took two big yellow bananas, one for her and one for Tim.  She couldn’t let a fellow banana lover suffer like she had.

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