Computer Clues Read Online Free PDF Page A

yellow pencil in Mrs. Peters’s basement.
    She decided to give her search one more try. “Come back, come back, come back!” she yelled. It seemed as if it must be midnight, but Molly’s little alarm clock showed it was only nine. When she was just about to give up on her ESP, her dad called to her.
    “Molly, are you asleep? Can you come down here a minute?”
    They must know what she had done. Maybe it was her
dad
who had ESP, not Molly. Maybe he knew she had erased those words.
    Molly went downstairs.
    “Molly, one of our files is missing, and we can’t seem to get it back. We have it saved on a backup disk, so it’s not reallylost. But I thought we should talk about being careful not to press the DELETE key in the wrong place when you are using the computer.”
    Then they did know! They did have ESP! But if the words were on this little disk, why were they so worried?
    “I did it!” cried Molly. “I wanted to get all those words off the screen and I pushed the DELETE button by mistake.”
    Her dad frowned. “I’ll show you what to do when that happens,” he said. He turned the laptop on and showed Molly how to press the ESCAPE button and clear the screen without losing any important words.
    “It wasn’t your fault,” said Mrs. Duff. “You can’t learn everything about computers in a few hours.”
    Molly sighed. “I guess not,” she said.
    “We just wanted you to know that wehave the words saved on this disk,” Mr. Duff said. “We know what a worrier you are, and we were afraid you wouldn’t be able to sleep if you thought you had done something wrong.”
    “I’ll be really careful next time,” said Molly, giving her parents a hug and going back to bed.
    As she crawled into bed, she remembered something. Just at the moment she was concentrating the hardest on those lost words, her dad had called her downstairs to tell her about the disk that the words were on. Her concentration had paid off. She did have ESP after all!
    The next morning on the way to school, Mary Beth asked Molly what her report was on.
    “Barns,” said Molly. “And I’m all done with my report.”
    Mary Beth didn’t seem interested inbarns. And she didn’t have any questions to ask Molly about them. She probably thinks they’re boring, thought Molly.
    “Ferris wheels were fun to look up,” said Mary Beth. “Lots of people get sick on them. Especially when they stop at the top.”
    Once they got to school, the girls forgot about computers. School didn’t mix with Pee Wee Scouts. And it wasn’t half as much fun.

CHAPTER
            7
Snail Mail Out—E-mail In
    A fter school the Pee Wees talked about their computer reports again. Some of the Scouts had not started their projects yet, but some of them were finished.
    “There’s piles of stuff about jugglers,” said Rachel. “I could even order tickets on the computer to see a juggler next year at the fair!”
    “Molly’s report is about barns,” said Mary Beth. No one said anything. “And mine is about Ferris wheels.”
    Everyone wanted to hear about Ferris wheels. Molly didn’t need ESP to tell she had a boring subject for her report. Even Ferris wheels were more exciting than barns.
    Roger was pretending to be a fortune-teller. “You will be a race car driver and lose all the races,” he said to Sonny.
    “I will not!” shouted Sonny. “I’ll win them all!”
    “Will not,” said Roger.
    “Will too,” said Sonny. “You don’t know how to tell fortunes. Fortune cookies are better. I had one that said I was going to be really rich.”
    “Hey, I have more talent than a fortune cookie!” said Roger. “I had a teacher in my other school who was a mind reader. She called me a troublemaker and she didn’t even know me yet!”
    “She probably had ESP,” said Molly toMary Beth. “If she could tell that Roger was a troublemaker.”

    The Pee Wees changed the subject and began to talk about their own reports. Rat’s knees! Who wanted to