A Mystical Ticklish Sneak

Carmel eased into her seat, surrounded by the chatter of her classmates. "Hey, Carmel!" her friend Lior gestured as she entered. But before the conversation could start, a chorus of sneezes erupted around them.

"Achoo! Achoo! Achoo!"

Carmel blinked, watching as her friends dabbed their noses with tissues, giggling the way only middle schoolers could while their eyes watered. "Okay, what is going on?" she asked Lior, who was miraculously unaffected.

Lior shrugged. "It's like half the school suddenly caught a cold. Weird, huh?"

Weird was right. Carmel felt her detective spirit tingling. "We need to find out where this started."

More sneezes punctuated her words, and Carmel flinched suddenly worried. "If I don't solve this soon, I might be next!"

Determination twinkled in her eyes as she decided to search for 'case zero'. There was no backing down now. The mystery demanded answers, and Carmel was just curious enough to see it through till the end.

Classroom Clues

As Carmel sat through her math class, the symphony of sneezes continued to punctuate the teacher’s explanations. She noticed, oddly enough, that each sneeze was copied by someone else, like an echo bouncing around the room.

By lunchtime, Carmel's curiosity steered her to the bustling cafeteria. A clatter of trays drew her attention to a new dish at the counter—could that be a cold cata-

catalyst? She shrugged mentally, filing it as a lead.

Later in art class, Carmel sat before a blank page, paintbrush in hand. Mrs. Azulay introduced a project on abstract self-expression. Carmel dipped her brush, letting colors swirl freely. As she painted, she realized that sometimes thinking outside the box could uncover unexpected ideas like how art wasn't always about precision, but feeling.

"Creative thinking," she mused out loud, "could help me solve this sneeze scramble."

The crinkle of the paper towel under her brush awoke something in Carmel—a fresh perspective to pursue the sneezing mystery.