Pun Detectives and the Case of the Kidnapped Kitten! (Part 8)

“Wallace Wade, you imbecile!” Sheldon was furious. And still standing smack in the bushes. “Of course I heard you! Your humiliating me in front of the entire class was more than enough to shake me from my slumber. Do you truly believe I could somehow sleep through the most insulting, infuriating moment of my entire life? How dare you even insinuate the idea?!”

Now might not have been the best time to remind him that since we stood all the way in the back row, I had actually humiliated him behind the entire class, not in front of it.

“Boss,” said Lily, “emotion readings indicate that your friend Sheldon is upset.”

“He’s not my friend. And, uh… what do those threat sensors of yours say now, Lily? Danger?”

Lily thought for a second, and then dipped her chin in a slight affirmative nod. “Maybe, yes.”

“Then it’s time for plan B,” I said, hoping no one would notice there was no plan A. Contingency plans were my specialty. Well, I was planning on making them my specialty, probably, if I remembered to at least. This whole sleuthing thing was hard, dangerous work. Angry cats, vengeful classmates — you never knew who’d be out for your head one day. Having a good backup plan was a must, I’d realized. And that all started here. I’d come up with this bad boy just the other day. Who would’ve guessed that it would come in handy so soon?

I called it Operation Skedaddle.

I took a deep breath. I only had one shot at this. “Look over there!” I lanced a finger as intensely as I could over Sheldon’s shoulder. “Is that a UFO!?”

Sheldon took the bait and spun around.

There, behind him, on the other side of the street was Uniform Fit Optometry. UFO for short. They specialized in one-size-fits-all glasses. Come to think of it, that was probably where Sheldon had gotten his second pair of glasses, and Eliza her second and third. Where else would you find glasses that could fit on top of glasses?

Either way, his spectacles were glued to the sight. For now anyway. “Oh my god, you’re right! It’s UFO!”

Haha! Sucker. That’s right, keep those eyes glued to the prize while we slip away right out from under that steam-spewing nose of yours.

I couldn’t believe it. I’d pulled off the plan, and without a hitch to speak of.

Just one problem: I’d forgotten to give Lily the lodown. That meant she and Black Lightning had been left behind. Even worse, I’d been so caught up with seeing Sheldon fall for the trick, hook, line, and sucker, that I’d forgotten to run myself.

Meaning I’d been left behind too.

Which, of course, was a nice way of saying that I was rooted to the spot like a stupefied lump.

Which meant, when you thought about it, that the plan was actually a total failure.

Sheldon turned back to us in a slow menacing pivot, the worst part of which was the fact that me, Lily, and Black Lightning were still there to pivot to. We were the deer, and Sheldon was the rage-fuelled headlights. God, I had messed this up. To an impressive degree.

“Question, Boss,” said Lily. “Were we supposed to make a break for it just now?”

“N-no. Hahahaha. What makes you say that? Look, we’re currently smack in the middle of a highly elaborate and meticulously conceived plan, and it’s going perfectly so far. No worries at all. Hahahaha.”

“...”

“Ok, maybe ‘perfectly’ isn’t exactly the right word per se.”

I never knew silence could be so accusatory. Did Lily have a built-in lie detector or something? Though I figured she’d hardly need one when it came to me, now or ever. Sadly, I was just like Sheldon. I couldn’t lie to save my life.

I wished I could lie to save my life though, because Sheldon was giving me this unmistakable impression that mine was currently in danger. He was huffing and puffing and fuming, slowly baking into his biggest temper tantrum yet. He didn’t look like he’d just stepped out of an active volcano anymore. He looked like he was an active volcano.

I was prepared for the worst.

In the end though, Sheldon just ended up following me all the way home, traipsing a half step behind me and grilling me with volley after volley of rapidfire literature questions, while also persistently and annoyingly insisting that I’d rue the day I ever dared to out-answer him.

For my part, all I could think was “gimme a break.”

According to Don Quixote, too much reading and too little sleep combined to form the perfect recipe for acting like a nuisance in public. Thanks to Sheldon, I was beginning to believe it. Sheldon shot question after question my way like a busted pitching machine, my own private pop quiz. By the time we parted ways — his place was a little further than mine — his quiz had me just about ready to pop him right in the face. It was just too bad that my fists packed about as much punch as a lacerated Capri-Sun pouch.

I got home, trudged to my room, and deflated onto my bed, a big flop. Not as big a flop as the investigation though. We were no further along in the investigation than when we had started. It had already been almost a week, and Lily and I had nothing to show for it.

I rolled over, trying to suffocate my negative thoughts in a pillowy abyss and simultaneously ignore the figure-less shelf that was staring me down from the corner, practically begging me to repopulate it as soon as possible.

I was trying, ok?

My phone buzzed. I figured it was probably Greg sending me some dumb meme or a stupid link he had found, like usual. Or Evan with yet another DM filled with the latest Cross Crash strats even though he knew I only played for like a week before calling it quits.

When I saw who had actually messaged me, I sat upright.

A minute later, I was out the door and down the street, flattening the heels of shoes I’d been in too big a hurry to do anything but slip on like sandals, still worming my arms into the flapping sleeves of my jacket.

The end of Pun Detectives and the Case of the Kidnapped Kitten! (Part 8)!
To be continued in Part 9!