Aiden’s Science Bridge Was Destroyed and Mason’s Shoe Seemed to Prove He Did It — Then the Classroom Camera Showed Who Planted the Evidence
Chapter 4 — The Paper Hidden Inside the Bridge
Everyone looked toward the scattered pieces.
Ms. Carter pointed beneath the radiator.
A small folded piece of paper had slid across the floor when the bridge collapsed.
Aiden frowned.
“That’s not mine.”
Mason retrieved it.
The paper was old.
Yellow around the edges.
It had apparently been tucked inside one of the hollow wooden towers.
Aiden stared.
He built the model using several thin pieces of wood from an old workshop box that belonged to his grandfather, Samuel Reed.
Samuel had died two years earlier.
He had been a civil engineer.
More importantly to Aiden…
he was the person who first taught him how bridges worked.
Aiden unfolded the paper.
It was not a note.
It was a hand-drawn bridge sketch.
Across the top:
RIVER WALK PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE — CONCEPT B.
At the bottom:
S. REED / M. ALVAREZ — 1987.
Ms. Carter looked surprised.
“Your grandfather designed this?”
Aiden shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
But the sketch looked familiar.
Very familiar.
Then Mason realized why.
“That’s your model.”
Aiden compared the drawing to the broken bridge.
The curved upper supports.
The narrow deck.
The diagonal braces.
Nearly identical.
“I copied Grandpa’s practice drawing,” Aiden said.
He had found an unlabeled sketch in Samuel’s old notebook and used it as inspiration.
He never knew it represented a real project.
Ms. Carter pointed toward the second name.
M. ALVAREZ.
“Who’s that?”
Aiden didn’t know.
Then Ms. Carter looked toward the classroom window.
In the distance, beyond the school athletic field, stood Riverton’s old pedestrian bridge.
The same bridge students crossed every day from the eastern neighborhood.
Its design looked remarkably similar.
