Framed

The team assembles at the courthouse just before 5 pm on Friday. Everyone takes a position to watch the entrances and wait for a suspect to arrive. Griffin is confounded when, one by one, all four of the potential thieves show up. First Darren, then Celia, and then Tony go through the metal detector without setting it off. Griffin remains concealed by the metal detector with a cell phone camera. When Dr. Egan arrives, he sets off the metal detector. Griffin leans forward with the camera to see what caused the alarm to sound. At the same time, Dr. Egan and Judge Koretsky recognize Griffin and call out his name.

The judge summons Griffin’s mother and the three meet in her office, where she tells Griffin he is now under house arrest. On the way home, he argues with his mother, saying there is no other way to clear his name and that he is innocent. She replies, “You’re innocent of stealing the ring. […] But this foolishness today? You’re 110 percent guilty” (85). Griffin believes that his future is now out of his hands.

In the middle school cafeteria, Griffin’s posse gathers for lunch. They talk about how unfair it is that Griffin is under house arrest and at JFK. They blame Dr. Egan, whom they believe is the thief. They say they must do something to help their friend.

The next day at school, Griffin is downhearted, ignoring all Shank’s usual jabs. He feels that his friends have abandoned him. When he finds himself alone and bored that afternoon in his room, he hears something scratching at his bedroom window. He finds Cleo, Savannah’s monkey, outside. She has a note under her collar telling Griffin to come to the basement. There he finds his friends, who climb through the window and tell him that they have made a plan called Operation Stakeout. The purpose of the plan is to watch Dr. Egan’s house, which is right across the street from Savannah’s house. Griffin is overcome with emotion that they would do this for him.

Griffin watches on a split-screen laptop as the posse gathers in the command center, which is Savannah’s attic. They wait until the Egans—husband, wife, eleven-year-old daughter, and three-year-old son—leave to take their regular evening walk. Pitch scrambles to put two cameras in trees focused on different parts of the house and to lower a microphone down the chimney. Then Ben climbs into the wood box on the front porch, from which vantage point he is supposed to report when the Egans come home. However, he falls asleep in the wood box; his ferret is eating bugs and does not wake him. When the Egans return, Pitch is trapped on their roof.

Ben wakes to the voice of Pitch over the walkie-talkie telling him that the Egans, who are coming home early because it’s raining, are near the porch. He and Pitch freeze as the family passes. Ben notices 11-year-old daughter Lindsay, whom he finds quite pretty: “She has freckles—you can’t see them from a distance” (106). Prepared for such a contingency, Savannah tells Luther to bark, covering the retreat of Ben and Pitch to the command center.

In gym class at JFK, Griffin is so consumed with Operation Stakeout that he pays no attention to people hitting him with the dodgeball. Shank remarks after the game that it is clear that Griffin is different from the other kids at JFK. Griffin wonders why Shank is the only person who recognizes he doesn’t belong there.

Hoping to make contact with Lindsay Egan and find out what she knows about the missing ring, Logan tries to get her attention as they both ride scooters on Honeybee Street. When he decides he needs a bold move to get her attention more dramatically, he jumps the curb and lands hard in a thorny bush. Lindsay takes him into her kitchen to treat his injuries. There he sees a blue jewelry box in the kitchen and postulates that the Super Bowl ring is inside. He leaves when Dr. Egan enters the house.

After pretending to ride his scooter up and down the street for 45 minutes, Logan goes up to Savannah’s attic to tell the posse he believes he knows where the ring is. He describes the jewelry box in the kitchen. They decide the best course of action is for Logan to try to get a look in the box the following afternoon. He agrees, saying Lindsay likes to plant spring flowers and that he can offer to help her. Griffin assigns Ben the task of researching planting bulbs so Logan can seem to be an experienced gardener.

After school the following day, Logan goes to Cedarville Elementary School to wait for Lindsay. They walk to her home together to plant spring bulbs. As they work in the yard, Logan realizes the information Ben gave him about planting bulbs was entirely wrong and that Ben was trying to make him look foolish. Logan excuses himself to use the restroom and goes into the kitchen, where he meets Lindsay’s mother and thus cannot look inside the jewelry box. When he returns to Lindsay, she promises to help him learn everything about planting bulbs, then she goes inside the house. As soon as she does, Ben leaps out of the wood box and confronts Logan about being in love with Lindsay. Luthor begins to bark, a signal that Dr. Egan is coming home. Back in the command center, Logan and Ben get into a fight over Lindsay. They destroy the command center as they struggle. Griffin listens over the computer and asks what’s happening. Everyone hears Dr. Egan say he is going to take the box to the jewelry store.