The grime of this school gets everywhere. My favorite "Can You Dig It?" shirt with the front-end loader. This shirt used to be freshly-washed, new...and now? There's no escaping it - once you're here, you get dirty, regardless of whether you want to or not. It's everywhere, too - not just your hands, but under your nails. Good luck scrubbing those.
The face in the mirror stares back at me. It was clean, once, too. Five years has taken a toll on me. Where's the fat-faced baby in the sailor outfit that beams at the camera on the picture over the fireplace?
Time has changed me. School has changed me. I am not who I once was. I came to this place like a god-damned pencil, candy-pink eraser, end untouched...and then life grabbed me by the middle and jammed me into the sharpener until everything soft was scraped away and I emerged, dark and pointy.
I step down from the stool, dry my hands and face on a brown paper towel, throw it in the wastebasket, and open the door that connects the bathroom to the main class area.
It takes me longer than it should to realize what's going on: it's not story time, but all the kids are standing in front of the circle-time rug, staring down. My heart starts going like the hind legs of the Finneys' rabbit when we chase it around the living room, a trapped animal looking for escape.
I picked a hell of a time to use the bathroom.
Miss Kimmel is lying on the floor, the red blossoming out from under her like a twisted pair of angel wings. "Maroon," I think, but I'm not sure if I mean the color or what an idiot I am for having left her alone.
Maroon.
My mind is racing like a Matchbox car down the plastic track my uncle built in his basement as I turn and walk over to my table. The construction-paper butterfly has Jake written on it in the impeccable penmanship of someone who has been teaching handwriting for years. Had been, I correct myself. Up until somebody decided to do arts and crafts with her throat. Even from the distance I was standing, I could tell the cuts weren't made by any kind of safety scissors. Somebody had bought - or stolen - a pair of street scissors and brought it into class.
I reach into the storage area underneath the table and my hand closes around something cold and hard. I affix it to my t-shirt, just next to the boom of the construction vehicle, and stalk back to the front of the room.
"Excuse me," I say, 15 pairs of eyes fix on me. I scan them - each of them wide-eyed, full of fear and wonder. But one of those faces is as genuine as the plastic coins in my Fisher-Price cash register.
"As you've all seen, Miss Kimmel is dead. And whoever did it is in this room. As Classroom Sheriff, I'd like to ask everybody to go back to their seats."
I give them all a meaningful look before I continue: "It's time for Show and Tell."
It's amazing how long you can spend with somebody and never really know them. We're most of the way through the school year and the stuff and just about every table I visit has a surprise. It's like Christmas, but every present is socks.
The Ziploc baggie in Mikey Pinter's desk looks innocent enough at first glance. Even after I get it open and start going through it, it takes me a second to figure out what I'm looking at. First come the drawings of faces - faces that look familiar. Then it comes to me: they're characters from Guess Who? Then there's a half-dozen of the Sorry! cards from the game of the same name. The whipped cream on top of the banana split, though, is a complete set of the special cards from Candyland, with multiple copies of the cupcake for good measure.
"J-, J-, Jake, you, you gotta understand," Mikey stammers. "I got a gerbil...my mom and dad said I gotta take care of 'em. I only ever use these against bad kids, right? The kind that play with your toys without asking and never listen to grown-ups. That's not so bad, is it?"
I look Mikey over, and then let the cards slip from my hands. "Oops," I say. He hits the floor faster than a baby's cereal bowl and starts scooping them back together.
A few tables down we have Melody Boschetti. Seems like she must uses paste for nail polish - because she's got the stickiest fingers in the whole room. Somehow, she wound up with Danny Finkle's fidget spinner, the nice colored pencil set that Aaron Jones has been missing since October, and enough scrunchies to keep her hair in pigtails until high school. I get Danny and Aaron their stuff back before moving on.
Timmy Jenkins has an envelope with MIKL MUNNY written on it. Problem is, everyone in the cafeteria knows that Timmy Jenkins has that thing where you can't drink milk. So what's he doing with an envelope stuffed full of Roosevelts? I'm puzzling over this during the next few checks - until I get to Jamie Burr's seat.
Behind a bunch of board books, she's got a "pencil box." I can feel her eyes digging into me like a toddler in a sandbox as I open the lid. Well, well, well. Now we know where those fancy leggings she's always wearing come from. Turns out, little Jamie's got herself a nice little side business hooking kids on the good stuff: Stratch 'n' Sniffs. She leans in and whispers, "How 'bout I give you a 'You're Grape' and you forget what you saw here? I could be good to you, Jake, you know - berry good."
"You're nuts, Jamie - and I think I just might be allergic to nuts." I click the lid shut and tuck it under my arm. She gives a little squeak but says nothing.
The mood in the room is changing. I'm not halfway through and I've already found enough skeletons to decorate the whole school for the Halloween Carnival. I see Tammy Hawk lean over and whisper to Jessica Thomas, who looks at me and nods. A few of the kids in the back of the room fold their arms across their chests, their eyes like gravel.
I'm starting to feel like the caterpillar in that story: it's clear I've bitten off way more than I can chew. But there's no time for tummy aches; I need to find out what happened to Miss Kimmel. But I'd better be smart about this or I might end up being put on time out...permanently.
While looking at the stuff from Frankie Benson's table, inspiration hits me like a super ball to the head. She's got an unwrapped crayon with clear bite marks and a wad of band-aids the size of my fist. Used band-aids.
I look up at the hulking form of Frankie. I had always figured she was a few swings short of a playground, but I had no idea it was this bad. Which, in this case, is very good.
"Frankie," I say, "How would you like to be a deputy?"
She stares at me in silence. I'm just about to repeat myself when a smile begins to show up on her face.
She nods.
I just might make it out of this... I think, and move on to the next table.
Submitted December 12, 2018 at 01:36AM by adlaiking https://ift.tt/2rwpGIJ
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