Chapter 4:

The Birth of the Great Pun Detective! (Part 4)

Pun Detectives!


God bless indoor plumbing.

Anyone who ever said they wanted to live in the distant past, or out in the woods, away from civilization? They were a liar and a chump. Thank god for bathrooms.

Plus, public stalls made a great safe haven from the rest of the world when you needed them to.

And boy did I need the one I wound up in to.

Having fled the cafeteria on instinct alone, I realized once the rush of embarrassment wore off that I had no idea where I was going.

Out in the hallways, people were looking at me. Noticing that I was making a sight of myself, I slowed to a walk. The halls were filled with kids who didn’t have a clue just how big a fool I’d made of myself in the cafeteria, but given the uproar of laughter I had just left behind, it was only a matter of time before my five minutes of shame. Though with my luck, it was likelier to be five weeks. Or five months. Maybe even the entire rest of the year.

Hell, the video was probably already online.

Tenth grade was off to a spectacular start.

I wanted to be alone for a while. Forever, actually, if I could help it. So I went to the Old Building, usually deserted at lunch aside from all the kids who came there to blow smoke out the windows, and went into a second-floor bathroom, locking myself into the furthest stall, where I had time to sit and catch my breath and wait for my heart to stop jackhammering the inside of my chest cavity.

That’s when it began to sink in just how much of a coward I really was. I couldn’t even ask a girl out for god’s sake. Not to mention the sheer fact that I was a total idiot for getting suckered into the situation in the first place. At this rate, I was practically guaranteed to go down in history for being the biggest buffoon ever to set foot in this school. Boy, was I dumb. That was it. I could never go back, I decided. Never let that maid see me again, never show my face in that cafeteria ever again.

“Well,” I said to myself, “at least it can’t get any worse, right?” I hung my head in defeat. That was when I noticed a dark patch, warm and sticky and — I sniffed the air against my better judgment — worst of all pungent, slowly encircling my thigh, seeping into a dark ring on my pants leg. Turned out I had forgotten to close the lid before I sat on the old throne. And whoever had been in here last apparently had even worse aim than maid girl.

Fantastic. And now it’s worse. On the bright side, at least I got to eat something: my words. I had only managed a few bites at lunch before royally embarrassing myself, so I was hungry.

I heard the whine of the bathroom door as it swiveled open. Someone was coming in. Who could it have been? This part of the Old Building was usually deserted at lunch, except for whoever had left the pleasant surprise that was currently seeping into my pants. I hadn’t seen anyone else out in the hall who could’ve been coming in after me.

Then, the sound of boots. A whole stampede of them it seemed like, drumming the tile all at once, in unison. The marching band? I thought stupidly. I knew they practiced in some pretty weird places, but this was a little much, didn’t they think?

The sound subsided when the gap between my stall door and the floor filled in with leather whose stench I could smell, shiny, polished mirrors darker than black. The boots in question.

Then came the knock, rapid and startling, like the snarl of an angry dog.

And then the voice.

A voice that changed everything.

“FPI, open up!”

I froze.

Then again: “FPI, open up! We know you’re in there, Wallace Wade.”

I was sinking.

I felt like a hot water bottle with a stab wound, leaking, deflating, and growing cold fast.

I knew this feeling. It could only mean one thing.

The worst thing possible.

Why now? Of all times, why now?

The voice refused to relent. “FPI, open up! Come out of the stall and put your hands behind your head, Wallace Wade.”

The voice was coming from right outside the door, but it reached me now as if from the end of a long, dark tunnel, tinny and hollow, the shape of words without any substance. I could hardly make out what it was saying anymore. Just that it had the razor glint of an axe, and it was my head on the chopping block. Knock after knock after knock machinegunned the door, explosions of sound growing more distant by the second.

It was coming.

And it was not good news.

Oh god, I thought, in what I knew were my final conscious moments. Not now. Why now?

Could this day get any worse?

I remembered what Greg had said earlier. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, guess what? Everything that could possibly go wrong was going wronger than anyone thought it could possibly go. Explain that one, Greg.

You see, I had a tendency. A tendency that I wasn’t proud of. One I couldn’t control, one that would kick in whenever I was nervous enough, or worried enough, or scared enough. One time it kicked in after I ate that four-and-a-half-week-old egg salad, but I was pretty sure that was just a fluke.

And it was happening now.

All the warmth that had left my body returned in a flash. I felt sick, like I wanted to hurl. I probably would have, and all over myself too, if I had eaten any more than a few bites at lunch.

As the edges of my vision blurred, dimmed, and finally darkened, I swallowed. I could taste the dry in my throat. Would whoever was outside the door cut that knocking out already? What had they called themselves? The FP… something or the other?

I was beyond being able to remember anything now.

My head felt like a box of jigsaw puzzle pieces, rattly and light. It was always like that. The moments right before were always the worst. When I could tell it was going to happen but couldn’t do a thing to stop it.

I was…

I was…

The end of The Birth of the Great Pun Detective! (Part 4)!
To be continued in
Part 5!