by Marty Chan
I looked at him as if he had just sprouted a second head.
“Say what?!” Trina exclaimed.
From the back of the library, the librarian shushed us. Her beady eyes peered at us from over a stack of books on her counter. I pointed at Trina and the librarian shook her head. When she turned away, Trina smacked me on the arm. I let out a silent scream.
Remi whispered, “Marty, don’t tell me that she hurt you with the punch.”
“Hel-lo, you’d be crying if I hit you,” Trina said.
He shook his head. “Doubt it, monkey butt.”
“Hel-lo, you’d be calling for your mommy.”
“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “Say that again.”
“Monkey butt?” he whispered.
Trina scowled. “Hel-lo, he was talking about what I said.”
“No,” I said. “I mean, yes.”
“Monkey butt?” he asked.
“Hel-lo, he doesn’t need to hear that again.”
“Yes, I do.”
Trina raised a questioning eyebrow at me, while Remi scratched his head.
“Remi, you always call people ‘monkey butt’, and Trina, when someone says something you think is dumb, you start your sentences with ‘hel-lo.’ Don’t you guys get it?”
They shook their heads.
“Maybe the cyber bully has a word or a phrase he uses, like monkey butt or hel-lo. If we look through the messages, we might find a clue to the cyber bully.”
“Not a bad idea,” Remi said.
“You’re smarter than you look,” Trina joked.
We waited for the teens to finish their games. I checked the clock and inched closer. The teens smelled funky, like B.O., even though they were all just sitting at the computers. I winced and moved away, hoping the librarian would kick them off for stinking up the place.
“What’s your password?” she asked.
“G . . . R . . . the number eight . . . B . . . O . . . I.”
“Great boy? I thought it’d be Momma Bear,” Remi quipped.
I wasn’t in the mood to laugh. Trina logged into my inbox. The headers filled the entire computer screen. The cyber bully had sent fifty-five nasty messages. Trina clicked on the second email, which read:
“You smell like rotten bananas.”
I stepped back from my partners and secretly took a whiff of my armpits. No funky smell. I shook my head. I couldn’t believe that one nasty note could make me doubt myself. The terrible thing about the emails was that the messages were permanent. If a bully told me the same thing at school, I’d only have to hear it once, maybe twice. The stain of his hurtful words might stick to me like dry-erase marker, but I’d be able to clear it away eventually. The hateful words in my email were as fresh as the first time I read the message. Sure, I could delete the message, but there were another fifty-four messages ready to take its place.
“Open the next one,” I said, gnashing my teeth.
Remi tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Let me and Trina do this.”
She agreed. “The messages might get worse.”
“I’m okay,” I said. “Check the email address. Maybe that’ll give us a clue.”
Remi sat down beside Trina and scanned the monitor. All the emails were coming from a user named ‘ayedanosbst’. Trina grabbed a scrap of paper beside the computer and jotted the name.
“Keep going through the messages, Remi,” she said. Then she got up and stretched. “I need some space to think. Come with me, Marty.”
I shook my head. “I want to see the rest of them.”
“I wasn’t asking.” She grabbed my arm and pulled me to a corner of the library, where the librarian was pushing a cart of books to a bookcase. She raised an eyebrow at the two of us, then pulled a pencil out the bun of hair at the back of her head and scribbled something on a card.
“Maybe there’s a clue in the name,” Trina suggested, holding up her slip of paper.
“It looks like gibberish.”
“It might be an abbreviation.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Most computer abbreviations are short. Like ‘RT’ for retweet or ‘LOL‘ for laugh out loud. This is too long to be an abbreviation.”
“Well, it has to mean something. Do you want to help me decipher this name?”
The one thing I was good at was breaking up words to find their meanings. Usually, the words were real and not a random collection of letters. Trina put her thumb over the word, hiding parts of the letters. The only words she could make were “aye” and “dan”.
“Does that mean anything to you?” she asked.
“We’re looking for a guy named Dan who might be a sailor,” I offered.
“Maybe it’s like a personalized license plate where you can make a message with the letters.”
“Or, maybe the guy’s cat walked over the keyboard when he made up his user name.”
Trina rolled her eyes and placed the scrap paper on one of the book shelves. She covered up the first half of the word. ‘Bst’ meant nothing to me, but Trina wrote down the letters, leaving a space between the ‘b’ and the ‘st’.
“What if we put a letter between those?” Trina wrote the letter ‘e’ so that the word became ‘best’.
I shrugged. “Dan is the best at being a sailor?”
The hawk-eyed librarian peered between the books on the shelf and whispered, “The library is no place for passing love notes.”
I blushed. “We’re not. I mean, we were . . . but not any more.”
Trina’s face also turned a bright pink. We were saved when Remi called out, “Done.”
Trina slipped away, abandoning the note. I followed, glad to get away from the librarian’s watchful eyes.
“What did you find?” Trina asked.
“The cyber bully used one strange word all the time.”
“What?” I asked.
“Well, it makes no sense, but he ‘maxi-means’ a lot of things. Every third email, the cyber bully writes ‘I maxi-mean it.’”
“That’s a good start,” Trina said.
I agreed. “We should check if Samantha’s messages have the same word.”
Trina logged on to Samantha’s email. She clicked on the inbox folder and all Samantha’s messages scrolled up on the screen. There were 1,476.
“This is going to take a while,” Trina said, as she clicked on the first email.
“Is there any way we can just look for the emails from the cyber bully?” Remi asked.
She nodded. “We just have to search for emails from the address. What was it again?”
“Hold on. I’ll get it.” I headed back to the bookshelf and reached for the paper, but the pencil had rolled over it and covered part of the word. Everything became crystal clear when I read the part of the name that was uncovered — “Ayeda”.
I knew the identity of the cyber bully. I headed back to my friends with the paper.
“Guys, I know who the cyber bully is. Look at the first part of the name.”
Remi scratched his head. “Yeah? So?”
“Say it aloud,” I said.
Trina did. “I . . . da. Ida.” Her eyes popped wide open with recognition as she read the rest of the name aloud. “Ida . . . no . . . nose . . . best. Ida knows best. It’s Ida Eisengram.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ida was the thief our detective team had caught last year. She was the daughter of my old grade five teacher, Mr. Eisengram, and a whiz at all things scientific, but she was also the grumpiest, meanest, toughest kid in all of grade six. Even Eric and Nathan knew to stay out of her way. She definitely fit the profile of a bully. Trina had a theory that Samantha might have snitched on Ida during her tattletale phase at the start of the year. She had ratted out Nathan Black for bringing nunchuks to school, Eric Johnson for cheating, and Mikayla Jackson for hacking into the school computers.
The next morning, Trina looked for Samantha to find out what she did to anger Ida, while Remi and I headed to our prime sus
pect. Ida sat by herself at the far end of the schoolyard. She had positioned herself far away from her dad, who was on supervision. Mr. Eisengram was the centre of attention of the grade five students who adored him because he let them call him Mr. E. His bright white hair, neatly-pressed brown suit, and neon-green tie lit up the schoolyard like the moon on a dark night. His daughter was the exact opposite with her dyed black hair, scruffy jeans, ratty black hoodie and get-off-my-planet attitude.
Beside me, Remi was beaming ear to ear. Of all our detective work, interrogation was his favourite, especially the good-cop, bad-cop routine. We were going to be the bad cops. Trina was going to play good cop and coax a confession out of Ida. She lurked by the fence, waiting for the chance to swoop in.
As we drew nearer, I whispered to Remi, “Would you like to do the honours, sir?”
He grinned as if he had just found out his parents won the lottery. “Why, thank you, sir. I would love to, sir.”
Before he could take another step, Ida spotted us and bolted. I sprang into action and sprinted after her. She pulled further ahead of me as I huffed and puffed along the fence. If we were vehicles, she was a Ferrari and I was a little red wagon with only three wheels. There was no way I was going to catch her. On the other hand, Remi was a Porsche. He blew past me. Ida continued along the fence, dodging past bushes and little kids. At one point, I thought she was going to get help from her dad, but as soon as she saw him, she veered to the left and headed around the other side of the school. She slowed when she spotted Nathan showing Kennedy and Eric his black belt. Remi snagged the back of her hoodie and hauled her back.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked.
“Let go before you rip the material,” she demanded.
Nathan and his bunch looked our way, but I waved them off. “It’s . . . it’s . . . okay,” I wheezed. “Nothing to see here.”
Remi grabbed Ida’s arm. “Why did you run from us?”
“I didn’t like the smell of you,” she said.
“Do I smell like rotten bananas?” I asked.
Ida scrunched her face up. “No. You smell more like a lapdog. Both of you.”
“What are you talking about?” Remi said.
“Don’t play stupid. I saw you guys talking to Samantha yesterday.”
“So you were spying on us,” I accused.
“Oh come on, it was plain as the big nose on Remi’s face that she’s trying to get you guys to do her dirty work for her.”
Remi went on the offensive. “We know you’re cyber bullying her.”
“What? You’re serious? Is that what she told you? She’s lying.”
“Yeah, right,” I said. “We know about the messages. Why are you picking on Samantha? Did she snitch you out? Did she look at you the wrong way? I figure someone like you doesn’t need much of a reason, eh?”
“You want the truth? If the devil coached basketball, Samantha would be his star player. She’s the one who’s been bullying me.”
“I also saw the emails you sent me, Ida,” I accused. “You gonna say that she sent those too.”
Her mouth dropped open. “What emails?”
“You get straight A’s in every subject, so you don’t get to play stupid now.”
She shook her head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. What emails?”
Remi stepped in. “Things will go easier if you talk to us now than if you talk to The Rake. We know you sent all those emails.”
“I don’t know what emails Marty got, but if you want to see the messages Samantha sent me, you’re more than welcome to read them. I have them all right here.” Ida reached behind herself and pulled her cell phone from her back pocket. She turned it on and called up her emails. There were nasty notes telling Ida she was a teacher’s pet and a snob. Some told her to go play in traffic or take a short jump off a tall cliff. None of the messages were kind. The sender name was “SamanthaSays.”
Was this a case of tit-for-tat? Had we landed in the middle of a schoolyard feud? I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew we had to get to the bottom of it all. “We need to talk to Samantha.”
Ida nodded. “I’d love to say a few things to her.”
We marched across the field to the school, where Trina was waiting for us. She informed us that Samantha didn’t remember snitching on Ida, while I filled her in about the new messages. Trina cast a cautious look in Ida’s direction.
“Are you sure they’re from Samantha? Maybe Ida is faking it.” Trina spoke loud enough for Ida to hear.
“That’s what we’re going to find out,” Remi said.
We confronted Samantha by her locker about the emails and she denied everything. The two girls glared at each other like two boxers facing off against each other in a boxing ring. Remi stepped in between them before they could go at each other.
“She’s the cyber bully,” Samantha accused. “Tell the principal about her.”
Ida shot back. “And he’ll suspend you as soon as he sees your emails.”
“I didn’t send you any messages,” Samantha protested.
“Your user name is SamanthaSays, isn’t it?” Remi asked.
“Yes, but those aren’t my emails,” Samantha said through gritted teeth. “Ida’s the cyber bully.”
“She’s lying,” Ida accused. “I have the proof in my inbox.”
“So do I.”
“You’re the one who’s bullying me.”
“Pick on a teacher’s daughter? Do you think I’m an idiot?”
“Samantha’s got a point,” Trina pointed out. “If you’re going to pick on someone like that, you’d probably want to do it in a way that she’d never find out. Why would she use her own email account?”
“Wait a minute,” Ida said. “You think she’s smart enough to do that, but I’m not?”
Remi stepped between the pair. “No one’s saying that.”
“I don’t even know Ida’s email address,” Samantha said.
“I don’t know your address either,” Ida shot back.
He waved the girls back. “One of you did it.”
“Unless what we have is false evidence,” Trina suggested.
“What’s that?” my friend asked.
The first time I heard the phrase was on a cop show. The police had found proof that was fake and nearly arrested the wrong woman for a crime. I always thought the phrase was weird because evidence was supposed to be a fact. How could something real be false? The two words were opposites.
Ms. Nolan said writers sometimes butted two opposite words together to create an oxymoron, which was basically nonsense that made sense. I remembered the definition by the last half of the word, “moron”. Two words with opposite meanings pushed together would sound moronic or silly. How could Kennedy Anderson be a butt head when his two body parts were at opposite ends? How could a Ninja turtle be fast if it was a turtle? How could wrestlers step into a circle when it had four corners? In this case, how could the emails be false evidence?
“Was there any weird word Samantha used in emails, Ida?” I asked.
“No. I don’t know.”
“Did you see the word ‘maxi-mean’?” Remi prompted.
Ida shifted her eyes back as she mentally reviewed the messages. Then she looked at us. “Yes, now that I think of it. There were a couple of times I saw that.”
“Interesting,” Trina said.
“What’s so interesting?” Ida asked.
I explained. “Two different people wouldn’t use the same odd word in their emails. The cyber bully who wrote the messages is the same person. And if the emails are coming from both your accounts, then it must mean the cyber bully knows how to log on to your account.”
“Impossible,” Samantha said. “I haven’t given out my password to anyone . . . except you guys.”
Ida shook her head. “The only person who knows my password is Ms. Nolan, and she keeps it on her computer with all the other passwords.”
A piece of the p
uzzle fell into place for me. “Okay, if the passwords are on the computer, maybe the bully hacked in. Know anyone who did that lately?”
All at once, everyone exclaimed, “Mikayla.”
We would have set the world’s record for jinx punches, but I didn’t think this was the right time to start smacking people in the arm. Samantha and Ida wanted to confront Mikayla right away, but Remi held them back.
“We don’t know for sure she’s the one. This is a theory,” I said, “and we have to get proof before we confront anyone.”
Samantha calmed down, but Ida ranted, “I’m going to tell her that her eyes are too close together and her breath reeks of rotten cabbage. I’m going to tell her she dresses like a disaster victim. I’m going to tell her that the reason she has no friends is because she picks her nose and eats her snot and no one wants to be near the slime zone.”
“You can’t go to her yet,” Trina said.
“Trina’s right,” I said. “If Mikayla is the cyber bully and she knows you’re onto her, she’ll erase the evidence. You won’t be able to prove a thing and she’ll get away with it. We want to stop her. Let us deal with the cyber bully.”
Remi nodded. “Let the professionals handle this.”
Trina touched Ida’s shoulder. “I don’t know what she wrote about you, but I’m going to make sure the cyber bully gets what she deserves, but only if we get the right person.”
Samantha backed her up. “If it weren’t for them, we’d still be hating each other, Ida. Let’s give them time to get to the bottom of this.”
She reluctantly agreed. “Fine, but I get first crack at her when you solve the case.”
“Okay,” I said. “Now let us do our job.”
The pair walked down the hall, leaving our team to sort out the next steps of the case.
“So, how are we going to do this?” Remi asked.
Trina and I looked at each other. I was hoping she knew, and I think she was hoping I had the solution. We said nothing for a few minutes.
Finally, he piped up. “Well, why don’t we spy on her when she’s on the computer?”
“Hel-lo, I think she’ll notice us peeking over her shoulder,” Trina said.
