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Authors: Kevin Brockmeier
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even awoken. When we got to the stairs, though, all we found were some ink stains. Miss Vincent had been teacher-napped!”
It’s always the same for Kevin, the story gusting alongbefore him with its sails stretched tight, a boat seized by some strange and incredible wind. He relaxes his hold on it for PE, but only reluctantly. The whole time he and Alex Braswell are heaving the big leather boulder of the medicine ball back and forth, its casing scuffed and velveted like a walnut’s, he continues to unravel the mystery’s details. That evening, at home, he returns to his notebook. He assembles a list of suspects from the five students who were away from class when the abduction took place: Tommy Anderson, Chris Pickens, Scott Freeman, Sheila Watts, and Annalise Blair. Each of them, it turns out, was given a hall pass for exactly the same reason: to dispose of a leaky pen.
Aha! Ink! Like the ink in the stairwell!
he thinks. He deduces that Clint Fulkerson must have been drugged with sleeping powder, but when he investigates the filing cabinet in the office for evidence, he uncovers only “some confiscated candy, gum to be precise, and a paddle with a peculiar stain on it.” The case seems hopeless. Then, suddenly, the criminal delivers a note to Kevin’s locker:
If you want to find Miss Vincent
Then I’ll give you just one clue
The letter of where she is at
Has the same letter as you!
You, he thinks.
U! The U Hobby Shop!
And sure enough, that’s where he finds her, bound to a post in the basement. She tells him she was struck from behind, spilling her can of Diet Coke as she fell unconscious. It happened so fast that she cannot identify her assailant—but Kevin can.
The next morning, in chapel, he claims the microphonefrom Coach McAteer and explains everything: how Clint was disabled with tranquilizers to drive Miss Vincent from the classroom, how the pens were sabotaged and the stairwell doctored with ink as a ruse, but how the criminal forgot one crucial piece of evidence: the paddle with its brown splashes of Diet Coke. And whose trademark drink is Diet Coke? Miss Vincent’s. And who uses a paddle? The principal: Mr. McCallum! His villainy is inarguable, and he knows it. In desperation he brandishes a gun, but Kevin disarms him with a karate chop. “The police took Mr. McCallum to jail,” he concludes. “I had succeeded and somehow knew this was only the beginning of my career as a detective.”
There is a sound to finishing a story like the first note of the 3:30 bell. Inside him a great crowd goes pouring into the daylight.
The next morning, after Bible, Ethan returns Kevin’s book, which he has read overnight in a single tremendous chug. He might be the single most efficient person Kevin knows—studying efficiently and falling asleep efficiently, spending his allowance efficiently and borrowing books efficiently. It is one of the five adjectives Kevin would use to describe him to a stranger: Ethan Carpenter is (1) efficient, (2) focused, (3) sarcastic, (4) truthful, and (5) amused. If he were a superhero, he would be Iron Man—or, in the DC Universe, Green Lantern, the real one, Hal Jordan. “This book is awesome,” he says. “When you’re right, you’re right. Just one problem, though: Where’s the unicorn?”
“That’s what
I
thought,” Kevin says.
“I mean, he’s right smack on the cover.”
“I know.”
“We should sue for false advertising.”
“On principle
alone
we should sue.”
“It would be like leaving Jesus out of the Bible—or not Jesus but, you know, Paul. Elijah. Who would be the unicorn in the Bible?”
“Shem.”
Kevin often has to walk clear across CAC between classes. Because there is always the danger of a tardy slip, he carries half a day’s books at once, trading the first set for the second immediately after geography. He tilts his way down the hall, pausing every so often to engineer the weight of his camera bag from one shoulder onto the other.
It’s always the same for Kevin, the story gusting alongbefore him with its sails stretched tight, a boat seized by some strange and incredible wind. He relaxes his hold on it for PE, but only reluctantly. The whole time he and Alex Braswell are heaving the big leather boulder of the medicine ball back and forth, its casing scuffed and velveted like a walnut’s, he continues to unravel the mystery’s details. That evening, at home, he returns to his notebook. He assembles a list of suspects from the five students who were away from class when the abduction took place: Tommy Anderson, Chris Pickens, Scott Freeman, Sheila Watts, and Annalise Blair. Each of them, it turns out, was given a hall pass for exactly the same reason: to dispose of a leaky pen.
Aha! Ink! Like the ink in the stairwell!
he thinks. He deduces that Clint Fulkerson must have been drugged with sleeping powder, but when he investigates the filing cabinet in the office for evidence, he uncovers only “some confiscated candy, gum to be precise, and a paddle with a peculiar stain on it.” The case seems hopeless. Then, suddenly, the criminal delivers a note to Kevin’s locker:
If you want to find Miss Vincent
Then I’ll give you just one clue
The letter of where she is at
Has the same letter as you!
You, he thinks.
U! The U Hobby Shop!
And sure enough, that’s where he finds her, bound to a post in the basement. She tells him she was struck from behind, spilling her can of Diet Coke as she fell unconscious. It happened so fast that she cannot identify her assailant—but Kevin can.
The next morning, in chapel, he claims the microphonefrom Coach McAteer and explains everything: how Clint was disabled with tranquilizers to drive Miss Vincent from the classroom, how the pens were sabotaged and the stairwell doctored with ink as a ruse, but how the criminal forgot one crucial piece of evidence: the paddle with its brown splashes of Diet Coke. And whose trademark drink is Diet Coke? Miss Vincent’s. And who uses a paddle? The principal: Mr. McCallum! His villainy is inarguable, and he knows it. In desperation he brandishes a gun, but Kevin disarms him with a karate chop. “The police took Mr. McCallum to jail,” he concludes. “I had succeeded and somehow knew this was only the beginning of my career as a detective.”
There is a sound to finishing a story like the first note of the 3:30 bell. Inside him a great crowd goes pouring into the daylight.
The next morning, after Bible, Ethan returns Kevin’s book, which he has read overnight in a single tremendous chug. He might be the single most efficient person Kevin knows—studying efficiently and falling asleep efficiently, spending his allowance efficiently and borrowing books efficiently. It is one of the five adjectives Kevin would use to describe him to a stranger: Ethan Carpenter is (1) efficient, (2) focused, (3) sarcastic, (4) truthful, and (5) amused. If he were a superhero, he would be Iron Man—or, in the DC Universe, Green Lantern, the real one, Hal Jordan. “This book is awesome,” he says. “When you’re right, you’re right. Just one problem, though: Where’s the unicorn?”
“That’s what
I
thought,” Kevin says.
“I mean, he’s right smack on the cover.”
“I know.”
“We should sue for false advertising.”
“On principle
alone
we should sue.”
“It would be like leaving Jesus out of the Bible—or not Jesus but, you know, Paul. Elijah. Who would be the unicorn in the Bible?”
“Shem.”
Kevin often has to walk clear across CAC between classes. Because there is always the danger of a tardy slip, he carries half a day’s books at once, trading the first set for the second immediately after geography. He tilts his way down the hall, pausing every so often to engineer the weight of his camera bag from one shoulder onto the other.
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