Drip . . . drip . . . drip . . .
Chirp! Chirp! With her super hearing, Roxy heard lots of usual school sounds. She heard water dripping from the art room sink. She heard a cricket chirping in one of the kindergarten rooms. But she also heard something unexpected. It was a deep voice coming from under the school.
"Work! Work! Work!" growled the voice. "Move faster!"
"That's Mr. Sweeps!" gasped Roxy. "I knew I shouldn't trust him!"
Roxy ran down the stairs to the basement. She came to a pair of locked doors.
Roxy stared hard at the doors. Lasers shot out from her eyes.
Whiz-hoo!
The doors blew apart, and Roxy ran through the opening.
The basement was empty. Roxy glanced around and spotted a trapdoor. She rushed over and opened it. Roxy jumped down, landing in a large cavern.
There, Roxy saw all the students hard at work. Some were chipping away at the rock walls with pickaxes. Others were pushing wheelbarrows.
"Is this a mine?" Roxy wondered. She looked around some more. She saw one student pull something sparkly from the wall.
"Whoa!" gasped Roxy. "This is a diamond mine!"
The students were all wearing the star buttons from Mr. Sweeps. Nobody looked at Rocket Girl. They were all too busy working.
"This is totally weird," Roxy said to herself.
She saw Terrell. "What's going on here?" Roxy called to him.
Terrell didn't answer. He didn't even look at her.
"He's hypnotized!" Roxy realized. "Everybody is. It's because of those star buttons."
Suddenly Jack and Mara sneaked up from behind and grabbed Roxy. She thought about fighting them off. But Roxy knew that wasn't a good idea. She didn't want to hurt her friends.
Mr. Sweeps appeared. "Thought you could stop me, did you?" he said. Roxy noticed he was wearing a glowing, star-shaped ring.
"What's going on down here?" Roxy demanded.
"There are lots of diamonds here under your school," said Mr. Sweeps. "And I want them! I hypnotized your teachers and made them leave town. Then I hypnotized your schoolmates so they could mine the diamonds."
Mr. Sweeps let out a cackle. "I am going to be rich!"
"You'll never get away with this!" said Roxy.
Mr. Sweeps grinned. "Oh yes. I will!" He looked at Jack and Mara. "Bring the prisoner this way!"