The Black Cylinder

Okay, I know you’re never going to believe this, but it’s the truth. Our teacher dropped dead in the middle of class! It looked like just an accident, but it wasn’t. This was murder. I think I know how it happened. 

It was early on a Tuesday morning with a dreary–that’s a vocab word I think. Mr. Roberts liked vocabulary. It was a dreary sky with a lot of rain and cold coming in through the windows. I sat in my usual seat, about two-thirds back near the sink. It’s not that I was afraid of sitting up front, but I really hated being picked on. The problem is the weirdos sat back here too. A girl in front of me did her make-up in the MacBook camera. No amount of mascara was enough, and she probably should have just brought a paint roller. I rolled my eyes and tried to duck down behind her big head. I hated being on camera. 

Around the room, students approached their tables. It was always funny to notice how many people attempted to buck the school uniform. One boy tried to wear a black button shirt instead of white. Another had his tie backwards. Two girls wore crocs instead of the approved shoes. Looked very stupid to me, but I’ve always hated crocs. Mr. Roberts, a stickler for rules, would normally notice and send them out when they walked in, but today he was occupied. The lines on his forehead suggested he was deep in thought, and he kept staring at his phone. Steam floated up from his ever-present coffee mug. The bell rang.

Alicia, a really nice girl who always showed up first, chatted with Mr. Roberts by his desk when he shut the door. She had this odd habit of saying “period” after every other sentence. I wasn’t sure if she just needed to verbalize the punctuation, or if it was some new TikTok thing. She asked him for something, and he nodded, giving her a MacBook charger. 

“Period, Mr. Roberts,” Alicia said, walking toward the back of the classroom. 

After going over the bell work and taking attendance, Mr. Roberts gave us our assignment. In groups–ugh–we were supposed to write romantic short stories. I googled if I would survive jumping out the window. The first result was a suicide hotline, so maybe the internet didn’t share my sense of humor. Which was worse–working in a group or writing romance? What the hell do we know about romance? Half the guys in here haven’t even started shaving yet! I thought. 

Mr. Roberts answered some questions from the usual know-it-all brown-nosers and then turned us loose. I didn’t move, praying nobody would notice me. I could crap out this stupid story on my own. 

Lorenzo, tall kid who sat in the front for some reason, leaned over Mr. Robert’s desk and said something to him. Lorenzo’s tie brushed against Mr. Roberts’ coffee mug. Our teacher did his usual eye roll of annoyance and allowed Big Renzo to leave the room. 

“Hey?” the kid across the aisle tapped my desk. He was shorter than me and spoke almost as little as I did. “Need a group?” He pointed at the tall lanky kid that always smelled like hot dogs and the short frizzy-haired girl that had to pee every day ten minutes before the bell rang. As far as group members went, these were probably the least annoying. I shrugged and joined their table. 

Speaking of annoying, Matt, better known as Madd Matt started shouting at the front of the classroom. Why he spelled mad with two ds was a question even Mr. Roberts could not answer. 

“What do you mean I got a zero?” He stormed up to Mr. Roberts’ desk. The kid was at least two-hundred and fifty pounds but not even five five so he seemed to just waddle in anger. He waved his hands a lot when he spoke. When he shouted, they moved like propellers.

Mr. Roberts replied in that calm cool way that made students more angry than if he shouted at them. Something about Madd Matt’s chronic absences. 

“But that’s bullcrap, Mr. Rob,” Matt shouted. Clearly he hadn’t discovered an appropriate indoor voice even twenty weeks into the school year. 

Mr. Roberts shrugged, took a sip from his coffee, and rose to circle the room. Madd Matt continued to scowl and mutter at the teacher. I wasn’t sure why Mr. Roberts allowed it to happen, especially when kicking him out would be so much easier. Whatever. I turned back to my group. They actually weren’t even talking to each other, and instead they all worked out of a shared Google doc. Made life easier. Unfortunately, no other group had the idea that writing was supposed to be quiet. And their conversations were over the most boring pedantic–another vocab word–crap ever. 

CRACK! THUD!

The roar of students cut out like someone unplugged them. 

A football player, Vert, jumped up and pointed. “Oh snap! Roberts just ate it!” The class burst into laughter until Leaundra started screaming. She wheeled her chair across the floor. A crimson splotch dripped from the corner of her table. Other girls joined in with the chorus of wails until the door handle started jiggling. The principal, Mrs. Mean, stormed in. 

“What is the meaning o— Oh my God!” She covered her face with her hands. Blood oozed out of Mr. Roberts.

Vert, still standing, managed to stammer, “W-we were working in groups, right, and out of like nowhere, Mr. Roberts eats it, man, smacked the shit outta his head off the desk, and dropped face down in the middle of the aisle.” He pronounced it like all. “We thought it was a joke, right? Like, Mr. Rob does this stuff all the time with jokes and acting and stuff like that. B-but this was for real, man. I mean ma’am.” Vert swayed and steadied himself on the table. 

Mrs. Mean said nothing. She just continued to stare blankly. I think she was in shock. I groaned. I could walk away. Nobody needs me to be Sherlock Holmes. I could stay seated right here. I stood up and put my thumb and index finger next to Mr. Robert’s throat. 

“What on earth are you doing?” Mrs. Mean’s voice trembled in a neutral tone. 

“Mom was an EMT and taught us how to find a pulse as soon as we could move our little fingers,” I said. While his neck was very warm, I couldn’t find the bump. Avoiding the blood from the table, I held up his wrist, but it slumped to the ground. 

No doubt about it. Our English teacher was dead as the desk he hit his head on. Empty brown eyes stared through broken glasses. I grabbed a pen from the nearby girl’s desk and used it to turn his head over. There was a nasty dark red gash through his top right temple. Poking it with the pen, the wound was shallow, barely getting the metal point under the skin. Face cuts and gashes tend to bleed a lot, though. 

“He didn’t die from the hit,” I muttered, letting his head face down again. 

“Please–uh–everyone,” the principal stammered, “I need everyone to please follow me to the gymnasium. Right now.” Nobody moved. “Come on. We do not want to disturb the scene.” Slowly, the students began to walk around the body and out the classroom. I rose to a crouch. “Come on, Jay,” Mrs. Mean called. I bristled. No one but Mom was allowed to call me that. 

I shook my head. “Mrs. Mean, you’re going to want someone to explain to the EMTs or the police or whoever what actually happened in a way that can actually lead to results. No offense to Vert,” I added with a shrug. 

“We have cameras for that sort of thing,” she protested, pointing at the black cylinder in the ceiling above Mr. Roberts’ desk. 

“Right, but they will definitely want a witness account,” I said. 

She chewed her lip, twisting back and forth. It was a little disconcerting to see an authority figure so out of sorts. “How are you so calm?” she asked with a strange light in her eye. 

“It’s not the first dead body I’ve seen,” I said in a low voice, glancing at my English teacher’s back. I squared my shoulders and looked her in the eye. “Something about this is too fishy anyways. Mr. Roberts was in his what? Late twenties? Early thirties? Why would he drop dead?” 

She shrugged and said, “Maybe some kind of sickness?” 

I shook my head. “Mr. Roberts has only missed one day of school this year, and he said that was for a wedding. He looked like he was in the prime of life. No, I don’t think it was a disease per se.” I walked over to his desk. 

Mr. Roberts’ desk was spartan. That’s the third vocab word I’ve used. Maybe his weekly quizzes were actually useful? There was hardly anything there, but it seemed unorganized. Some hall passes stacked in a corner. Four books, one for each of the classes he taught. His black travel mug for some news group. A few pens and a small pile of fruity candy wrappers. The candy made me pause. Normally, Mr. Roberts uses candy for “positive reinforcement” which is fancy teacher speak for doggy treats. But he said he needed to go to the grocery store to get more after our last review game. I should know; I won that day. 

I pulled on the desk drawer. It was jammed. Mr. Roberts often had to yank it multiple times every day when someone asked for a MacBook charger. I pulled harder, and it slid open. A bag full of bright red and pink candy was newly opened. I took one and unwrapped the little square. Looked like normal, tooth-rotting sugar. It was possible that was the source of his demise, but unlikely. 

The police would definitely do some kind of toxicology report where they looked at his body to find out what was in his system. But poison or some kind of allergic reaction seemed likely to be the cause. Steam curled up from his coffee mug. Did someone poison his drink?  The level was lower than the rim, but Mr. Roberts could have just brought less than normal today. It wasn’t like we could smell his breath to find out. 

Okay, so the coffee could have been poisoned. Or he could have had an allergic reaction. Those seem the most likely causes of death, unless his heart just gave out or something. But I didn’t remember him saying he had any kind of allergies. The coffee seemed to be the instrument of his death. Now the only question was who touched it? 

Three students came to his desk this morning: Lorenzo, Alicia, and Madd Matt. Lorenzo seemed the least likely because he sat in front by Roberts’ desk every day, and he left the room immediately after. But he also had the most access to said coffee. Mr. Roberts frequently sat his coffee down and would wait in the hallway. Big Renzo was a maybe. 

Alicia had approached the desk, but she was just asking for a charger. Yes, she arrived before everyone else, so she may have also had access to the coffee, but she and Mr. Roberts usually got along great. Why would she spike his drink? Madam “Period” was probably not the culprit. 

That left Madd Matt with two ds. He was angry because Mr. Roberts gave him a zero. He also probably had a low grade because of his chronic absences. The only way to fail this class was not doing the work. And Madd Matt had a violent temper. 

I walked over to the sink in the back of the class and shared my thoughts with Mrs. Mean. She remained silent as I gave the reasoning behind each of my classmates. I rinsed off my hands and wiped them on a paper towel. “The one thing I don’t understand at all though, is how would a student get ahold of poison?” 

RIIIP!

Mrs. Mean stood on Mr. Roberts’ desk with her back to me. She held a piece of paper in her hands and stuck it against the black cylinder in the ceiling. With her other hand, she taped the paper to the ceiling, blocking off the camera.

My guts sank. Suddenly my mouth was dry like a desert. I licked my lips. “W-what are you doing, Mrs. M-mean?” 

She stepped off the desk and flattened her skirt. Her mouth twitched. She met my gaze. Her blue eyes were cold and dead. 

Oh my God. 

She tapped a long pink nail on the metal coffee mug. Clink. Clink. Clink. She ripped another sheet of paper from Mr. Roberts’ notebook and used it to pick up the cylinder.

“You are quite the detective, Jay.” She walked around the edge of his desk. “Truly impressive deductive skills.” She stepped into the aisle. “Tell me, did Max teach you how to find the clues?” Max was Mr. Roberts’ first name. I couldn’t move and just blinked. “If only you had left with the others.”  

“Y-you?” I backed up against the sink. Her mouth twitched into what should have been a smile. But her eyes remained dead. “But, why? How?” 

She tilted her head toward the body. “One drunken mistake, and Mr. Holier-Than-Thou-Roberts wanted to come clean before he got married. Be honest to his bride-to-be. He said I should be upfront with Mr. Mean.” She shook her head, blonde hair moving from shoulder to shoulder. “Then he set his mug in the lounge while using the bathroom.”

By this point she stood in front of me and grabbed me. Those long nails dug into my shoulder like talons. Mrs. Mean jammed her thumb into the nerve-y spot. Shocking pain rippled throughout my chest down to my pinky. I cried out, and she shoved the coffee mug to my lips. Before I could pull away, I tasted the bitter drink  

“You would have made a great detective.”