“Okay, Vince, are you ready?” I asked.
“When aren’t I? Seriously, Mac. We always ask each other if we’re ready and we always are.”
“Good point.”
“Quiet down! This is detention not social hour,” Mr. Daniels said from behind his computer.
Mr. Daniels had been the detention warden for as long as anyone could remember. He always just sat behind his computer playing games or maybe doing stuff we didn’t even want to know about, rarely even looking up at the kids sitting in detention. And he would generally yell at us every fifteen minutes to quiet down but never actually handed out any more punishment. That bit about “social hour” was his signature line. He’d yell that exact same line to a room filled with nothing but silence and a few sleeping eighth graders. Everybody had figured out long ago that Mr. Daniels didn’t really pay any attention to us at all.
“Anyways,” I continued in a voice just above a whisper, “who was the last Cub to hit for the cycle?”
Vince scoffed. “Are you insulting me?”
“Whatever, it’s not that easy.”
Vince gave me a look that said, Yes it is.
“Even my grandma could get this one, and she thinks that baseball is some sort of satanic ritual invented in 1812 by Communist kangaroos to help an alien tribe of sea creatures called Trout Mask Replicas build the ancient pyramids.”
I tried desperately to hold in my laughter.
“It was Mark Grace, beloved first-baseman-turned-Diamondback traitor,” he said.
I nodded reluctantly.
“You’ll never—” Something at the door caught Vince’s eye.
I spun around in my desk, and there she was: Trixie Von Parkway. Otherwise known as the dark-haired girl who’d come to see me in my office yesterday and who’d made fun of me with her friends in the cafeteria today. Obviously Trixie wasn’t her real name, but I hadn’t gotten around to having Tyrell find out what it really was just yet.
She slithered into the room, looking as poisonous as ever, and handed Mr. Daniels her detention slip.
He glanced at it and grunted. “Have a seat and work on homework quietly. This is detention not social hour.”
The dark-haired girl moved past me without any kind of acknowledgment and sat right behind us. We turned around and stared at her as she dug through her backpack and removed a notebook. Then her eyes met ours.
“Hey, you two freaks got a problem?” she said.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, and turned around.
Vince followed suit. We glanced at each other and shrugged.
“Oh, wait. It’s just you,” she said. “I didn’t recognize you.”
I turned around again. “What do you mean, ‘just me’?”
“I thought you were just two guys with ridiculous crushes on me or something, that’s all.”
My face grew hot.
“So about my problem. Have you two done anything yet besides whine about calories all day? Oh, wait, obviously not, being that I’m in detention right now,” she said.
“Kjelson put you here?”
“What do you think? Do you think I’m normally in detention? That I’m a bad girl? Is that what you think?” She seemed to be getting dangerously close to tears and anger all at once. She was possibly the scariest person I’d ever met—about as calm and predictable as a city-leveling tornado.
“No, no. I just thought . . .” I started to apologize.
Then she started laughing. “You should see your face. I’m just kidding around with you, Mac.”
I tried to laugh with her. Vince had no problems laughing at me either. I glared at him and he just laughed even harder.
“Quiet down! This is detention not social hour,” Mr. Daniels yelled.
“Wow, he just gave the three forty-five warning at three forty-four,” Vince said. “He’s ahead of schedule.”
Trixie giggled madly at this.
For the first time ever I wanted Vince to stop talking, but I honestly couldn’t tell you why; it had been a pretty funny thing to say.
“Seriously, though, when are you going to get Kjelson off my back? This is my fourth day of detention in a row because of him. I didn’t even do anything wrong at all today. He just gave me detention.”
“You had to have done something,” I said. “Teachers can’t just give out detention for no reason.”
She scoffed at me like I was an idiot. “Oh no? Then why am I here? I swear, I was just sitting in class taking notes. I think maybe my pencil broke or something and made a noise because suddenly he was like, ‘Trixie, no talking!’ And I was shocked, so I didn’t really say anything. I just kind of sighed. Then he was like, ‘That’s it! Detention again, young lady!’ So I was like, ‘But I didn’t do anything!’ You know? Because I hadn’t. But he got all red in the face and was sputtering like a dying motorcycle and said, ‘Okay, that’s two days of detention!’ So I started to protest, but he was just on a roll, you know? He started screaming, ‘I’m tired of your attitude! Another outburst and you are out of here for good!’ So what was I to do? I need to pass that class to graduate and go on to high school. So I shut up and took my detention.”
That sounded pretty horrible, but it also didn’t sound like Kjelson at all.
“That kind of reminds me of this one time that my grandma wouldn’t stop cursing in church,” Vince said. I groaned. He had a Grandma story for everything. “We were like, ‘Grandma, you have to be quiet. We’ll get kicked out.’ But she just went on ranting and raving, with every other word being a swearword, about how her Lucky Charms had been mocking her during breakfast. But the best part is that she didn’t even have Lucky Charms that morning. She had, like, waffles with hand lotion on them or something. Anyways, she didn’t stop, so we got kicked out.” He laughed. “How many people do you know who got kicked out of church?”
Instead of getting annoyed at how pointless his story was like I thought she would, Trixie actually laughed. She and Vince were cracking up together.
“Quiet down,” Mr. Daniels barked. “This is detention not social hour!”
That was just like Vince, too. Always telling lame stories when there were more pressing issues. Sometimes I wished he could just not tell a Grandma story for once. But I still had to admit that most of the time I found them pretty funny. Even this one was pretty funny.
“Well, anyways, we’re working on it for you,” I said over their laughter. “It takes time to get to teachers; it’s only been two days. Rome wasn’t burned down in a day, you know.”
“Gosh, you are a cutie,” she said.
I blushed. “What . . .”
Vince nudged me. “It goes, ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day,’ Mac.”
I blushed even more, and I turned around to keep her from seeing. I actually couldn’t stand this. I didn’t remember ever feeling this embarrassed. Ever.
Vince and Trixie shared a laugh while I regrouped.
“We’ll actually be working on your problem right after detention today,” Vince said to her.
“Good. I seriously cannot wait to get that succubus Mr. Kjelson off my back.”
I turned to Vince with a raised eyebrow. He was always my go-to guy when people said something that didn’t make sense. But to my surprise he just grinned and shrugged.
“What if he’s still around?” Vince asked.
“He won’t be,” I said as we moved down the empty hallway toward Mr. Kjelson’s classroom. “He’s probably still at baseball tryouts in the gym, remember?”
We weren’t old enough to have Mr. Kjelson as a teacher, but we’d found his classroom location on the school’s website. I still was convinced that as a Cubs fan there was no way he could be as evil as Trixie made him out to be, but I’d also learned a long time ago never to trust someone’s appearance entirely.
I took out the key I’d gotten from the janitor earlier that day. The janitor was a cool guy, even for an adult. We had an understanding, so he was always helpful when I needed access to something inside the school.
We were several feet from the classroom door when I was proved wrong about Kjelson not being there.
The door flew open, and Mr. Kjelson burst into the hallway. Why wasn’t he at practice?
My gut told me to dive for cover, but we were in a school hallway and there was nowhere to go. So I stood there, frozen, like a small critter about to get flattened all over a stretch of asphalt. Vince didn’t move either.
But it didn’t matter. Mr. Kjelson turned away from us immediately and barreled down the hallway in the opposite direction. His classroom door slowly eased back toward the frame and then right at the end slammed shut with a loud double thud.
Vince and I looked at each other.
“Why was he in such a hurry?” he said.
I shrugged and said, “Did you see what he was carrying?”
Vince nodded slowly.
We watched Mr. Kjelson reach the end of the hallway and turn left. He was walking so fast he was nearly running. In his left hand he held a large wire cage with at least two small furry animals inside. Neither appeared to be moving.
Vince and I turned to each other, nodded, and ran as quietly as we could after Mr. Kjelson. We needed to find out where he was going and what he was planning on doing to those animals.
We tracked him all the way out to the parking lot, making sure to stay about twenty yards behind him at all times. I didn’t know if that was too close or too far—Tyrell was my tailing expert; I wasn’t used to fieldwork. A few times I thought for sure Mr. Kjelson would turn around and spot us and then that’d be it, but he never did. In fact, he was moving so fast that we had to jog to keep up.
When we got outside, Vince and I ducked behind a few bushes and watched as Kjelson went to his car. It was a small orange thing from at least the time of the dinosaurs, possibly older. But it did have a large Cubs sticker on the back. He opened the trunk and struggled to get the cage inside. The whole time he looked around so often that his head practically spun on his neck like a top. I’d never seen a teacher act so nervous before.
Then he got into his car and drove off.
Vince and I looked at each other from behind the bushes.
“Well, shall we head back to his classroom, then?” he asked.
“Um, yeah.”
I was dying now more than ever to see what we could find.
The only person we saw in the halls on our way back was the janitor. He gave a brief nod of his head, and that was that. The janitor never asked questions. Which was perfect for me, because I didn’t really like questions all that much.
Mr. Kjelson’s classroom looked like any other science teacher’s classroom. It had ten long, rectangular lab tables with shiny black tops and a small sink in the middle of each. The room was neat and orderly, and the teacher’s desk was cleared of everything except for a computer and a little cup with pens and pencils inside of it.
“So what are we looking for?” Vince asked.
I shrugged. “Let’s check out his desk.”
He nodded. We moved around behind Mr. K.’s desk. I pulled at the top drawer, but it didn’t budge. I tried a few of the others while Vince tried the drawers on the other side. None of them would open.
“Locked,” I said.
“Where’s Joe Blanton when you need him?”
I gave Vince a look.
“What?” he said. “Everyone knows that he can open locks with a single touch.”
“Right, Vince, whatever. Joe Blanton couldn’t open a lock if he had the key and the lock was already unlocked anyway.”
“Numbers don’t lie, Mac,” Vince said, once again referring to Blanton’s career 4.23 ERA or whatever pedestrian number it really was.
“We don’t have time for this now,” I said, but I also laughed. “What about that?” I pointed at the door behind Kjelson’s desk. His office probably was behind it.
“Will that key get you into his office?” Vince asked.
“I don’t know. I think so.”
“Well, let’s find out already.”
I nodded, and we approached the door.
The key slid into the doorknob easily. As if it belonged. Behind the door I thought I heard desperate squeaking from several animals. Vince tensed next to me.
“Hurry up, Mac!”
I started turning the key, and then a voice behind us just about caused me to pee all over my favorite jeans.
“What exactly is going on here?”
I slid the key out and pocketed it as quickly as I could before turning around.
Mr. Kjelson stood a few feet away, leaning against a lab table with his arms crossed over his chest. His voice was clear and crisp, kind of like the sound of biting into an apple. He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head forward.
“Christian and Vince, were you trying to pick the lock to my office?” he asked.
“No, sorry, Coach. We were . . . I heard sounds coming from back there. They sounded like rats or something; we were just trying to find out what they were,” I said desperately. “What are you doing here anyway? Aren’t you supposed to be at practice?”
Vince nodded.
“It ended early today. But shouldn’t I be asking you the same thing?” he said. “You didn’t even show up at all today.”
Vince and I looked at each other.
“We were actually meaning to talk to you about that,” I said. “See, we got detention; that’s why we missed. And we’ll be late tomorrow, too, also because of detention. But I swear we’ll be there on time every time after that, Coach. And we’ll play even harder. We’ll make up for it.”
“Fair enough.” Mr. Kjelson nodded and examined us carefully. “You asked about noises coming from in there. Well, I put all the animals in my office every night because somebody has been stealing them,” he said. “You guys know anything about that?”
It was more of an accusation than an actual question. But I decided to play along.
“Why would we want to steal lab animals?” I asked.
He shrugged. “You tell me.”
I shrugged back.
“Okay, so if you aren’t here for that, then can you possibly explain to me what you are doing in here and how you got in? I mean, you guys aren’t even old enough to be in one of my classes, and you just said that you thought I was at practice, so it couldn’t have been to come and tell me why you weren’t there today. So where does that leave us?”
I glanced at Vince because I was fresh out of believable lies that could fit this situation. Plus, it’s hard to think when you’re panicking as much as I was right then. If Mr. Kjelson went to the Administration with this, and there was no reason not to, then Dr. George would really be on our cases. And he might even find out about my arrangement with the janitor. We’d be finished. Not only that, but this wasn’t exactly helping our case to make the baseball team.
“The door was already open,” Vince started.
Mr. Kjelson looked skeptical. “They lock automatically every time they close.”
“It was ajar, not just unlocked,” Vince countered.
Mr. Kjelson frowned.
Vince took a deep breath.
“Okay, here’s what happened. We stayed after school because we got detention for trespassing in the kitchen earlier today. So Mac and I finished detention and we’re wandering the halls, and you know, we’re basically arguing about Joe Blanton and what matters more in baseball, numbers or intangibles, like always. Anyway, somehow the SMARTs came up because since Georgie, er, I mean Dr. George mentioned them yesterday, kids have been pretty concerned. Even teachers seem concerned. I heard from this one kid that his teacher, like, freaked out in class today, and after ranting about the SMARTs for several hours, he took off his shoes and socks and was pacing throughout the classroom talking about how the floor wasn’t fit for his feet to walk on and also something about an alpaca, which I guess is some sort of rabid llama, that was trying to eat him in his dream last night or something.
“Anyways, so we were debating how good old Joe Blanton would do on such a test and I was saying that of course he would pass with flying colors. That he could pass the test in under two minutes even if you cut off his arms and only gave him a T-bone steak to write with. Basically, the only way he would fail is if he played for the Cubs, since the Cubs can’t really win at anything. And Mac here was arguing that Blanton could never pass, not even if he was given the answer sheet while he took the test, not even if they let Joe write the test himself! Even then he’d score like negative fourteen percent, which is so bad that it isn’t even mathematically possible.
“So this is where it gets really bizarre, right? So we’re walking and talking, and then I swear I saw Joe Blanton himself turn the corner and head this way. I kid you not. I could have sworn it was him. It was this tall, sort of portly dude with a nasty-awesome beard, and he was wearing pinstripes. So naturally we followed him. Except the hallway was empty, and then suddenly Christian here notices that your door is open, and we’re like, ‘Hey! Might as well take a peek and see if whatever teacher’s classroom this is has any extra information on the SMARTs.’ So we came on in with the idea of looking for SMART stuff, and then we heard some animal noises coming from your office and . . . here we are.”
Vince panted beside me.
You see now why this guy was my right-hand man?
Mr. Kjelson didn’t say a word. He just stood there, one arm still folded over his chest, the other reaching up and rubbing his chin lightly. He studied Vince. He studied us. His face was blank, as if he were in a trance.
The silence was practically exploding all around us like grenades it was so tense.
Then Mr. Kjelson did the last thing I ever expected him to do.
He laughed. He laughed until his face was red and tears were streaming down his face all over the floor, and he was slapping his leg over and over again. Okay, maybe it wasn’t like that, but he did laugh pretty hard.
Vince and I glanced at each other, not sure what to do.
“Oh, that’s too good, really,” Mr. Kjelson said as he started calming down. “Okay, for that little bit of entertainment, I’m going to let you guys off with a warning. This time. But you may want to consider how serious this sort of thing is before doing it again. Because there are some teachers here who would probably try to suspend or even expel you for breaking into classrooms. Okay?”
“Really? We can just go?” I said.
“I can always reconsider if you’d like,” Mr. Kjelson said.
“No, no. That’s okay. Sorry for snooping, sir. We’ll just go now, then.”
Vince and I started inching toward the door.
I couldn’t believe that we actually might get out of this scot-free. This wasn’t exactly what I’d been expecting from Mr. Kjelson. It didn’t match up at all with the story that the dark-haired girl had told us just an hour earlier. Something was up. Trixie had been lying to me for some reason—the question was why?
“So can you guys tell me what you were really doing here, or is it something I probably don’t even want to know?” Mr. Kjelson said as we got to the door.
I turned around, shrugged, and pointed at Vince. “It was like he said: we really were just curious about the SMARTs.”
Mr. Kjelson nodded, and then a weird look came over his face, as if he’d hoped that part was actually a lie. Of course it was, but I don’t think he knew that. I think he believed the part of the story that involved us looking for SMART information. Which seemed weird. . . . Was he just disappointed that we might have been trying to cheat? It felt like there was more to it than that.
“Okay, then, off with you. I’ll see you guys tomorrow at tryouts,” Kjelson said with a grin returning to his face. It was either the grin of the coolest guy alive or the grin of the devil himself. But I didn’t stick around to get a second look. We basically sprinted the whole way through the halls and out the school’s west door.
“That was close,” Vince said once we were a good block from the school.
“Yeah, what was that all about? He was really cool about the whole thing.”
Vince nodded. “No kidding. He was . . . I don’t know. It’s almost like he was too nice, though. No way any teacher is that cool of a person. No way.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Too nice. But . . . he is a Cubs fan.”
Vince considered this. It was all just too confusing. We walked on and shook our heads for a while, letting our brains digest what had just happened.
“We need to look into this. We need to talk to some of his students and find out what’s going on with this guy. And we possibly need to talk to Trixie again, too. There’s something not right about this,” I said.
“About Kjelson or about Trixie’s story?”
“I don’t know. Both, maybe. I mean, did you catch the weird way he reacted when we said we were just curious about the SMARTs? Either way, I know one thing: I intend to find out.”