Mr. Blue

The next day. Arney and Angelica walk to Reef’s house. Albert is already waiting there.

-“Oh, here is Albert, early as usual. ALBERT!” Angelica yells from afar.”

-“Good morning!” He yells back with similar hype but not as loudly.

They get closer. Just when they reach close enough to high five Albert, Reef walks out the door.

They all look at him.

Reef looks confident, smiling casually. -“Good morning.” He says.

-“Good morning.” Angelica replies.

-“Let’s go.” Albert says.

They walk to school.

As they enter and the class starts, their homeroom teacher updates them that the cleaning will continue with a new strategy. Now all of the school will travel together. They will clean at the end of each school day.

The rest of the class goes normally. Reef doesn’t listen. He thinks of what to do.

“After trashing once, because of the velocity - the patrol robots are always on high alert. If I go missing too many times when we go in groups - I draw attention. If I always stay behind - I draw attention. If I go back to the area after faking going home - I risk being identified mid-way.” He keeps mind storming.

“When Sophie blamed Angelica, I tried to ‘throw myself... Under the bus’ I believe is the expression, as an easier target to show her it couldn’t be Angelica, but also to plant in her mind the idea that it probably wasn’t me as well. When I made sure the teacher doesn’t suspect her - I showed her good faith as a bait to trust me. This means the teacher currently doesn’t suspect anyone specific, while the students slowly stop caring for who it could even be. That’s a good thing. The fact that other schools won’t share similar cleaning territories with us since our school was the only one that actually participated - means they are already aware it is someone from our school, the teacher whining about it, wishing for the culprit to stop proves it too.”

Angelica looks at him. He notices and smiles to her. In his mind he is still thinking: “Had they found some sort of evidence, they would have already arrested me, so I doubt the cameras I didn’t destroy caught anything important. Could the robots scan physical evidence like a hair? Couldn’t just a hair belong to anyone? They would definitely know who it belongs to, but their problem is that anyone’s hair can be found there without being the culprit, so it’s not an issue of integrity of the evidence, but rather of relevance.”

He scratches his head, looking at the rest of the class, at the teacher and at his friends.

“Is my only option to wait until they all leave? How can I stay at the scene without being suspicious? Should I just stop? What if it’s not the entire school that cleans, but just our class because they are suspicious of me or of our class in general and they want to lure the culprit. If I stop now wouldn’t it confirm their suspicion that it’s someone from this class? Yes. In fact, if I get a hold of such an information as ‘different classes clean at different times’ - they would know such a strategy would give me, the culprit, a better time to act since it could frame someone else, although I would never do that. In the case of someone else getting blamed instead - I may actually have to confess if I can’t shake their suspicions of that someone. Cleaning together with the entire school is the correct answer on their part. And it’s probably really what they plan on doing.”

Reef has a hard time making his mind about the best course of action.

“I think... That until they change their strategy... I don’t have much choice but to stop temporarily, because right now there is no better option.”

The class ends. The friends gather around for break time until the next class.

-“I have art class after this.” Angelica says. “I really miss... I just can’t believe that...”

-“That they fired him after standing up for Crysty.” Albert says. “Isn’t that right, Reef?”

-“Yes. That’s right.” Reef answers.

Albert came up with that comment fast. Almost as if he was trying to avoid letting Reef comment about it first. There’s a bit of an awkward silence.

-“He was the best teacher I ever had.” Reef says. “After everything that happened he refused to continue with classes normally unless they undo the sponsorship but the principal did not comply and even fired him.”

-“Wait, is that what happened? He didn’t teach me, but I did wonder what happened to him.” Arney says.

-“I really miss him.” Angelica says, looking sad. “Well, I have to go and prepare for class.” She tries to force the mood back to normal. “See you later guys!”

The break is about to end and so the rest of them go to their own classes. The school day continues as usual. Reef has already subscribed to go under the radar by stopping for a while.

The school day ends and the students gather to go out cleaning. It’s still pretty early and the sun still shines brightly. The teacher takes the reins and leads the students area by area. They clean really fast since they are an entire school, working like an armada. Every now and then, students play while cleaning, trying to make it interesting. Whether it’s trying to score to the trash can or a creative orchestra of different sounds made from striking different objects, or even hitting random objects just to fidget - the students come up with mostly the same methods in order to pass time better.

Angelica looks around to see if she can spot any trash and she accidently bumps into a trash can and falls down. This trash can wasn’t attached properly and it falls easily, littering the entire area next to it. One of the A.I robots comes on high alert and immediately scans the litter, it then shows 10,540,000$ on it’s screen. It then moves towards Angelica to scan her too.

Reef panics and thinks to himself: “The Robot shows my accumulated fine! It may think Angelica is the culprit for everything now!”

He then runs towards a pipe that is attached to a building, already aware of how to break those easily. He kicks it multiple times, breaking it, then he grabs the pipe. He runs towards the robot that is about to scan Angelica and smashes it to bits, hitting it repeatedly, over and over and over and over, full of anger, slowing down eventually, looking around him, he notices all the other students staring right at him.

He looks at the beaten up robot. Then at Angelica, laying on the ground, covering her mouth, frightened. He smiles to her. He then looks down with a lesser smile, realizing what just happened.

-“Reef...” Albert says, mildly patting Arney’s shoulder, who can’t believe his eyes.

-“I had a feeling it was you.” Says a figure from behind him.

Reef turns around and sees Mr. Blue.