Chapter 1: The Principal of Things (Jimmy)

The clock ticked loudly from its place on the wall. With each second that came and went, it seemed to me that it got louder and louder still. By the time the clock’s small hand had rotated around a third time, the tick-tick-ticking of it was absolutely deafening.

Eyes darting back and forth, the corner of my mouth now twitched in time with the ticking, my annoyance and anxiety growing the longer I waited. Every second seemed like an eternity. I tried to distract myself, lose myself in the ornate details of the heavy oak desk. I tried to study how many folds were in the plain and weathered beige curtains that hung limply from the office window.

None of it worked. I felt trapped. Hot. At long last, the inner office door opened and out walked the school principal, Kenneth Krause. Mr. Krause was a tall man, though he never came across as intimidating. He was sharply dressed, but still dressed as if his mother had laid his clothes out for him. Sweater vest worn over a button-up shirt, loafers polished to a shine. The bald spot on top of his head looked a bit darker, more crimson than usual. That was a sure sign that he was annoyed. I should know, I’ve seen it quite a few times before.

“Mr. James,” he said, lowering his thin wire frame glasses until his nose hair and a bad case of rosacea were the only things keeping them on his face. “Do you understand why you're here?”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Instead, I sat up straighter and I met his gaze head on. “I sure do,” I began, rummaging through my overstuffed backpack until I found my official notebook. I pulled out my trusty pen, flipped back the Peace Frog cover, and started to read him the minutes of my investigation.

“2:44pm, the last day of school, Ms. Angelo the math teacher demanded that I take off my clothes. Now I, being a good student and Christian boy -"

Mr. Krause sighed so loudly and heavily that I half expected him to deflate like a popped tire. He sagged, tired indeed, into the ergonomically sound plastic chair behind his desk, the wheel emitting a light squeak under his weight. He gave me a very serious look before he spoke. “Mr. James - "

This time it was me who sighed, as loudly and exaggerated as I could manage, cutting him off immediately. Like he had done to me, only a second ago, undermining my investigation. I locked eyes with him.

“First off, my name is Jimmy. Not James. And I think it’s a little bit crazy that I just exposed a major crime in our midst; exposed it the way that Ms. Angelo wanted to expose my sweet body, and you don’t seem to be taking this seriously. What are you covering up, huh? How high up does this thing go?”

Feeling like my point was not quite made, I picked up one of his finely sharpened pencils from his round wire holder and I snapped it in half for emphasis, dropping one piece on the desk and holding up the other. “I swear Mr. K., I’m going to break this whole story open, like this!” I tried to break the half in my hand into two fourths, but I wasn’t able to do it. After a few grunts of effort, I decided to just chew on his eraser and then drop that half onto the desk as well.

Mr. Krause got to his feet angrily, snatching the rest of his pencils from my reach and locking them in his top drawer. He pushed his glasses back up his nose and took a deep breath, the spot on his head as red as I’d ever seen it. He let out one, then two, then three calming breaths before he spoke. “I have already spoken to Ms. Angelo and she told me that she only asked you to remove your hat." 

I nodded. “A hat is clothing.” 

He grimaced and continued. “You refused, even though you are aware that hats are against school policy. Then, when she asked you for a second time to remove it, you said,” he pulled out a little notebook from his vest pocket and moved his lips slightly as he read, trying to find his place. “You said ‘I don’t take my clothes off at school. Why don’t you take off your shirt since you’re so keen for nudity?’ When she told you that was highly inappropriate, you stated that she only thinks so because her chest is likely hairier than your head. Is this all ringing a bell to you?” Behind us, somewhere down the distant hall, a bell rang, signaling the end of the school day.

I nodded. “Yes, it’s all here in my notes. If you had let me read them like I was trying to earlier I would—” Another sigh cut me off. A long awkward silence followe and I could tell that Mr. Krause was trying his hardest to remain calm. I decided not to push my luck and remained quiet, leaving the rest of my explanation unstated. 

After a time that felt like an eternity, but was probably only a minute or so, he spoke again, deciding to be concise and finally make his point. 

“You know James, sorry, Jimmy, Ms. Angelo isn’t the only reason I called you down here. I wanted to talk to you about next year. You know, when you start high school.” He paused, taking the time to choose his next words carefully. I hated when adults did that. It always meant that they were sure to be chosen incorrectly, and that they would annoy me. “How are you feeling about that? Do you think that you’ll have an easy time fitting in?” 

I clenched my jaw. I didn’t need some old nerd giving me a heart-to-heart, I needed to get the hell out of here. This was the last day of school, I should already be outside and sunburnt. Instead of answering, I just stared ahead, waiting for him to wrap it up. I found my eyes constantly darting back to the clock. I was literally watching my time get wasted, second by second. So far, this was the worst summer ever.

Mr. Krause opened up a manila folder that was just as overly stuffed as my backpack. I noticed that it had my name on the cover. “You have gotten pretty good grades. All of your teachers talk about how, umm, interactive you are during classroom discussions. Lively, I believe one of them called it. You’re a good kid.” He paused and closed his eyes for just a moment, hesitating, as if bracing for something. It was subtle, but I noticed it. “A real good kid. I am only telling you this as someone who wants the best for you, somebody looking out for you. I hope that you can understand that.” After a final pause, he ripped the verbal bandaid off. “You are not a good detective.”

My jaw dropped, opening as wide as a boa constrictor eating its lunch. My heart began to race, beating so loudly that I could actually feel it in my face. Are you kidding me? No way this sweater-vested, bald mama's boy actually said that I wasn’t a good detective. Me?!

Before I could ask him whether he was stupid or just plain insane, because only those options could have explained away his statement, he held up a sweaty palm to silence any response.

“I know that you don’t want to hear that, and I truly wish that I didn’t have to say it. I am a firm believer that anyone who passes through the doors of my school can be anything that they put their mind to. But, as a detective, you have to look at the evidence, don’t you?” He pushed the thick folder across the desk until it rested in front of me. He leaned forward, trying to read my reaction as I opened it, imitating the interrogation room tactics you'd see on a rerun of Monk.

I took the folder begrudgingly and spent a quick moment flipping through the pages, not really reading anything but buying myself some time to respond maturely. Taking my silence and perusal as evidence that I was hearing him out, Mr. Krause continued. “In fifth grade, when Mrs. Yates assigned you to dissect frogs in biology class, you accused her of trying to build a Franken-Frog monster in the teachers lounge. You were so convinced of it that we caught you trying to use your scissors to pick the lock to the lounge.”

His glasses slid down his face again as he leered at me, measuring the effect that his words were having on me. If only he knew. “In sixth grade you convinced half the school that the night janitor was a vampire and the kindergartners got so scared that we fielded phone calls for a week from their parents about nightmares they were all having. In seventh grade, it was an insane little person living in the vents that would steal your lunch, or Mr. Perez the gym teacher trying to build an army of super soldier children because he made you run the mile. All of the time you’re seeing these, these cases as you call them, and you get fixated and obsessive and you end up getting into a lot of trouble.”

I couldn’t hold it in anymore, I was holding back so much that even my eyeballs were vibrating with rage. I lashed out and I slammed my balled fist onto the top of his desk, toppling over a stack of papers he had balanced precariously on the edge of his desk. I couldn’t help smiling inside when I saw how much that annoyed him. I chose my words carefully, professionally. “I understand your concern, Mr. Krause,” I said through clenched teeth, “but you are a principal, not a detective. You don’t know about the crime solving business the way that I do. I’d be glad to trade notes with you sometime if you would like, but you are not being truthful about my success rate as a detective. What about The Case of the Missing Rake? Did I or did I not solve that one?”

Mr. Krause opened his mouth to respond but this time it was me who held a palm up for silence, and surprisingly it worked! I pressed on. “Or how about the fact that I did prove that Mrs. Yates was stealing from the vending machine? Or about the kid in history class who was actually a werewolf?”

 A much bigger fist hit the desk this time; an adult sized one. Mr. Krause, red-faced and fed up, cut my rant short with the blow. The spot on top of his head was so red it was nearly purple. When he spoke again, it wasn’t in the measured way that school officials often spoke, it was as a person who was now just as ready for summer to start as I was. “Firstly, it was you who took the rake in the first place, so that you could comb the kickball field for clues. Secondly, Mrs. Yates is diabetic and her blood sugar was dangerously low, she shook out that Snickers so she could live, okay? So stop accusing her of being a thief. And lastly, that kid was NOT a werewolf, we’ve already been over that a hundred times!”

 “Then how do you explain why he was covered in fur and biting people?”

 “He’s severely bipolar and his family happens to be hairy.”

 “Then why did he get hurt when I hit him with a silver spoon?”

 “Because you threw it at him from two feet away and hit him in the eye! You’re lucky he wasn’t permanently injured, the school barely avoided a lawsuit!”

 I gave up. I wasn’t going to win an argument with someone who couldn’t put two and two together once all the clues were there. That must be why he's not a detective or a math teacher. I glanced up at the clock again. I decided I had reached my limit.

 “It’s officially summer time and you no longer have a legal hold over me. I heard your foolish speech out and I am now politely asking if I can leave. Bear in mind, I can and I will leave anyway.”

 Mr. Krause took a few calming breaths and then nodded. I tried to pick up the folder and take it, it did have my name on it after all, but he snatched it away and locked it in a large metal filing cabinet behind him. I was almost out the door when he spoke one last time. “I’m just trying to say, you made your time here a lot harder than it had to be by looking for crimes everywhere. High school is already tough enough, maybe think about giving it a rest and just making some friends and having a fun time. Crime will always be there in the future.”

 My hand gripped the cool brass knob of the office door. As I turned it, I spun around to face my accuser head on. He met my gaze. “You’re right Mr. Krause, I’m not a good detective.” I looked at the ground a moment, studied my shoes. Let my words sink in. When I looked up again, a small smile of satisfaction was threatening the edges of his mouth. I had him right where I wanted him. “Because I’m a GREAT detective. Have a nice summer.”

 I made sure to slam the door on my way out, hoping that the wind from it would knock a few more of his precious papers to the ground. As soon as the door shut, I smirked. 

School’s out dork, I have crimes to solve.