Pun Detectives and the Case of the Missing Music! (Part 14)

I awoke to the smell of smoke.

Where there was smoke, there was fire. Or in this case, someone liable to burn me just as much.

She was leaning against the window on the far wall. Without saying anything, she took one last long drag and stamped her cigarette into the cardboard table, right next to the one from the other day and the wad of gum, neither of which I had even bothered cleaning up. My eyes narrowed instinctively, crusty with sleep crud. She really had to stop smoking in here. I really had to stop letting her. She folded a bright red stick of gum into her mouth and got to smacking.

“Snacking on gum again?” I asked Striking Eyes. I had meant to say “smacking’ but was still half asleep and it came out wrong.

“Are you mentally impaired or something? I don’t eat gum. It’s to take care of the smell.” She was looking at me with an expression that, if I had to guess, I’d say was an even mix of pity, derision, fear, loathing, anger, distaste, ire, contempt, and disgust. So pretty much how most people looked at me.

“Wait, don’t tell me,” I said. “You’re here to apologize for all the nasty things you said about me the other—”

“As if.”

The two white cylinders rose out of an ashen smear on the table like miniature smokestacks.

“I just came to have a cigarette,” she said with a sigh that told me she wished that I had just stayed asleep. “This is basically the best place at school to smoke. No teachers. And no one else either. No one ever comes here.”

I guess me and Lily and Greg and Evan were no one in her eyes then. Not that the other three had been in the habit of showing their faces here lately.

“Plus,” she added, “it's awful outside right now.”

That was when I noticed how heavy the rain had turned. It was only afternoon, but outside was as black as night. A torrent hammered the windows.

“I’m stuck for now. Until the rain stops at least. So get up.”

“Huh?”

“Get up. I want to sit down.”

Ah. She wanted to sit, but not next to me. Rude. But whatever. I needed to stretch my legs anyway, so I complied. As soon as I was off the couch, she was on it, fiddling with her phone. I leaned against a window and watched the rain fall.

“So,” I said after a long silence that probably only I thought was awkward, “what’s going on in the marching band?” As much as I wanted to forget about the case, I couldn’t resist asking.

When she didn’t respond I thought she was going to ignore me and keep playing with her phone, but after a second she said, “You mean with the violins? Nothing. We still don’t have our instruments obviously. Some of the other girls were talking about getting new ones. There’s no other way at this point. No thanks to you.”

She went back to clacking at her phone. I didn’t think she’d keep talking, but then, after another second, she said, “Yeah, none of us can play for now, so we’re just watching. This is just like middle school orchestra, back when my E string snapped. I couldn't play for a week.”

“Really?” That was a shocker. I had never even considered that a violin string could snap. Though now that she mentioned it, it was obvious that that was always a possibility. “What happened?”

“Oh, I’d just bring my violin home a lot at the time. To practice. And I wasn’t storing it properly. Violins have to be stored right. You can’t just do whatever you want or things will go wrong. You have to take care of them. Well I wasn’t, and next thing I knew, my E string snapped. I learned my lesson though. Now I always take perfect care of my violin. When it isn’t stolen, that is.”

“E string?”

“Oh, I guess you wouldn’t know, huh? It’s the thinnest string on the violin. The one that makes the highest notes. And only violins have one. The other string instruments in an orchestra don’t.”

“What do you mean?”

I figured she would get upset at such a noobish question, but she didn’t. It looked like she was having fun talking about this. “You know, like the viola and the cello? Those are the three string instruments in our marching band by the way, because of course our music teacher is dumb enough to have string players march. Anyway, like I was saying, the three string instruments are the violin, the viola, and the cello. Well out of all of those, only the violin has an E string. The viola and the cello have C, G, D, and A strings, but the violin has the strings G, D, A, and E. The violin is smaller and higher than the other two instruments, and so it replaces the low C string with the high-pitched E string. And because the E string is the highest of all, it’s also the thinnest. That’s why it’s the easiest string to break. Get it?”

Nope. “Yep.”

I thought I got the general idea though. Basically, what she was saying was that the violin had a different set of strings from the other instruments and that was part of why it had a higher pitch. In that sense, the violin’s strings were unique.

“Oh yeah, the double bass has an E string too now that I think about it. But we don’t have any bass players here. Just violin, viola, and cello.”

The second she was done with her explanation, she started playing with her phone again, and the silence resumed. I stared out the window into the dark. It was interesting that the strings on the violin differed in that way. I couldn’t help but think that that might somehow be a clue to solving the case.

But there was no point in straining my brain about it anymore. Even if there were any dots left to connect, my brain was too addled to be the brain to do it.

This was the last day, I decided. I would stop coming here from now on. And then, there would be no one left. No Greg. No Evan. No Lily. And no me. My chest felt weird. Painful and empty and sharp, like someone was slotting a coin right into the center of it. We were never real detectives to begin with. I would just have to tell grandpa that it was over, that I’d failed. I’d walk — no, barge — right into the principal’s office and tell him straight up, and that would be the end of it. Maybe Lily would be there when I did. Maybe I’d even be able to say something to her if I tried. But even if I could, I didn’t know what I’d say. No, letting it all end without a word was for the better. If there was one thing I took away from all of this, I hoped it would be to keep my big mouth shut most of the time.

By the time the rain died down and the clouds started to part, Striking Eyes was gone. I was the only one left. Once I left too, everything would be over.

I paced back and forth. Breathed in deep, letting the dust tingle my nostrils, dry my throat. Sat on the couch, crossed my arms, jogged my leg up and down. Tried to leave. Had my hand wrapped around the doorknob more than once.

But something was holding me back.

I deliberated for a minute. Then for another. Then for another and another and another without coming to a decision. Then, all at once, after all that deliberating, I made my decision in under 10 seconds.

I knew what I was going to do.

It was a stupid idea. Completely, totally stupid.

And that was why I had to do it.

Why I had to try at least.

Because even if it was stupid idea, if I let it all end without even trying it, I knew I would always regret it.

This was the last task for Wallace Wade, BORED.

The end of Pun Detectives and the Case of the Missing Music (Part 14)!
To be continued in Part 15!