The Mystery of the Mad Science Teacher

by Marty Chan

“I’ll bet if you give her bike back, she’ll give you your game back.”

  “If I have your game,” Trina corrected me.

  He fell on his knees and put his hands together. “Don’t destroy the game. I’ll do anything you want. Just name it. Please.”

  “Where’s my bike, Eric?”

  He hung his head. “I don’t know.”

  “She’ll bust your game,” Remi said.

  Eric looked up, his eyes filling with tears. “I swear, Trina. I didn’t touch your bike.”

  She wasn’t ready to back down. She pulled her backpack off her shoulder and threw it on the ground in front of him. Then she raised her foot over the pack.

  “Your game’s in there. Where’s my bike?”

  “I told you I don’t know.”

  Trina stomped the backpack. Eric screamed and pushed Trina’s foot away, while he grabbed the pack. He opened it and dumped the contents out. Scribblers fell out along with a pencil case and two textbooks. But there was no video game.

  “I thought you said my PSP was in the backpack,” Eric said.

  She shook her head. “I never took your game.”

  I nodded. “The backpack thing was a lie.”

  “You jerks,” Eric said, climbing to his feet.

  “What about my bike?” she asked.

  “I hope whoever took it throws it under your dad’s car,” Eric said as he ran away.

  “You didn’t fall for that act, did you?” Trina asked.

  “He would have admitted he stole it before you stomped on the backpack,” I said.

  “I know I would have if you were gonna stomp on my game,” Remi added.

  Her shoulders slumped as the truth settled in. Her bike was gone and so was our only lead. Remi patted her back to console her. My stomach churned and I wanted to throw up, but I pushed the “down” button on my vomit elevator.

  “What do we do now?” Remi asked.

  The mystery was starting to grow. First Trina’s bike was stolen. Now Eric’s game was missing. We were dealing with more than a simple thief.

  I told my friends my theory. “I think a kleptomaniac is taking everything.”

  “A clip toe what?” Remi said.

  “Hel-lo, kleptomaniac,” Trina said. “A crazy thief.”

  She had it right. I remembered the definition by breaking the word in two. On a television cop show, I had heard the police actors call a thief “Klepto.” Maniac reminded me of Mr. E and the Asylum House. A “kleptomaniac” was a crazy person who couldn’t stop stealing.

  The school bell rang, signalling the end of lunch hour. Very few of the students headed straight into the building. Mr. E’s talk about Pavlov’s dogs had worked on everyone.

  “Maybe this kelp-toe-maniac can steal my homework,” Remi said.

  “Klep, not kelp,” I said.

  “It’s not a guy who steals seaweed,” Trina said, snickering.

  “I don’t have to help, you know,” Remi said.

  “Don’t you mean kelp?” she teased. “Silly.”

  She smacked him on the shoulder. He blushed. An insult and a slap on the arm. Things were getting serious between the two of them.

  “We have to make a list,” I said, cutting off the lovebird chatter and pulling out my detective’s notebook, “of people in the school who might be kleptomaniacs.”

  Remi blurted, “Jacques and Jean. Definitely.”

  The Boissonault brothers. Twin towers of trouble. Everyone was afraid of getting on the wrong side of the French fiends. I wanted to say they were the kind of guys who grabbed what they wanted rather than stole, but I jotted their names in the notebook.

  Trina declared, “Samantha McNally is my main suspect.”

  They were best friends before the summer holidays. Inseparable like spit sisters, except they swapped clothes instead of saliva. They were never apart before, but something must have happened over the summer.

  “I thought you two were friends,” Remi said. “She didn’t invite me to her pool party.”

  “That doesn’t make her a thief,” I said.

  “Put her on the list.”

  I wrote Samantha’s name in the notebook.

  “Who else?” Remi asked.

  Silence. We had run out of suspects. We agreed to follow everyone after school. Remi headed to the French side of the building while I walked with Trina to the English side.

  “Let me use your notebook,” she said. “I’ll write down everything Samantha does.”

  “I’ll give you your own notebook. I have a spare book in my locker,” I said.

  In the hall, I dialled my lock combination. The lock was sticky, but after a few pulls, it opened. When I looked inside the locker, however, I noticed something was wrong. My stuff had been rearranged. Textbooks were opened and my pencil case was spilled open. My lime-green scribbler, the one with all my secret notes and doodles of Toronto Maple Leafs emblems and Trina hearts, was missing.

  SEVEN

  I was sure I’d fastened my lock and checked it twice. How could anyone get into my locker without knowing the combination? I smacked my head, punishing myself for failing to check the lock three times.

  “Are you sure your notebook isn’t in there?” Trina asked. “Let me look.”

  The last thing I wanted was for anyone, especially Trina, to see my secret love doodles. I waved her off.

  “Who has the lockers beside you? Maybe one of them broke in.”

  “Zack is here,” I said, tapping the locker to the right of me.

  The kids nicknamed him the Lint, because he was always trying to hang out with the popular boys, who I nicknamed the Hoppers, because they spent so much time practising bunny hops on their mountain bikes in the parking lot. They’d try to shake him off, but he stuck to them like lint. I could imagine Zack using the bike and video game to try to score points to get some face time with the Hoppers.

  “I think we should put him on the list,” I suggested.

  “Who’s on the other side?”

  “Samantha.”

  Trina raised an eyebrow. I could pretty well guess what she was thinking.

  “We’d better get to class,” I said. “Maybe we’ll catch the kleptomaniac with the book in his desk.”

  “Or her desk.”

  In the classroom kids were clustered in small groups. Our teacher wasn’t there, which meant no one was in charge and we could act like it was recess inside the school. The athletic kids arm wrestled each other. A couple of kids sat quietly at their desks reading. A few girls tried to feed the class hamster. The Hoppers talked near Mr. E’s desk while Zack hovered nearby.

  Trina locked on to Samantha, who was taking charge of feeding the hamster. She adjusted her gold glasses and straightened her bright blue blouse, which looked exactly like the blouse Trina wore yesterday. She had stolen Trina’s fashion sense.

  “I’ll talk to her,” she said. “See if you can get anything out of Zack.”

  I headed toward the Lint, who sat on the edge of Mr. E’s desk, trying to join a conversation about Robot Rampage.

  “I like Rocky Robot,” he said, trying to jump into the conversation. “He’s going to be the champion.”

  None of the Hoppers answered him. They moved away from the teacher’s desk and continued talking about other robots and their weapons of metal destruction. The Lint tried to follow them, but I cut him off.

  “I like Rocky Robot, too,” I lied. If I could get on his good side, he might slip up and give me some vital information.

  “Yeah, he’s really cool, because he has mallets for arms and he can bonk the other robots on the head and smash them flat like pancakes. Sometimes I wish I had mallets for arms.”

  “Cool,” I said.

  “I’d be like smash, smash, smash, smash.”

  Zack swung his arms up and down like mallets and accidentally knocked over Mr. E’s space shuttle model, which fell into his half-opened desk drawer.

  “I’ll get it,” I said, reaching into the drawe
r.

  As I picked up the model I noticed a smooth black pencil case inside the drawer.

  “What are you doing?” Mr. E shouted from behind me.

  I froze with my hand on the model. Zack pointed at me.

  “He did it.”

  I turned around, but Mr. E wasn’t looking at me. He was talking to Ida in the doorway. She was holding a chocolate bar.

  “You can’t eat candy any time you feel like it,” he said. “Not when class is about to start.”

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “When you’re in this class, you live by my rules.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to be in your class any more.”

  She was going to be in a world of trouble for talking back to the teacher, but Mr. E did nothing except scratch his beard.

  “You don’t have a choice,” he said. “You have to be careful. Of all people, you should know better.”

  She tossed the chocolate bar at him and stomped to her desk, pulling up the collar of her leather jacket. Mr. E watched her go and shook his head. No detention. No punishment. No lecture. I wondered if he was scared of Ida. I certainly was.

  Our teacher barked at everyone, “Get to your desks.”

  Everyone scrambled to their seats. Mr. E took a deep breath and paced around the front of the classroom. His white hair bounced up and down as he walked. He took a few deep breaths, closed his eyes for a second and waited.

  Finally, he opened his eyes and spoke. “Who is the strongest student in the whole school?”

  Every Hopper shot his hand up, along with most of the guys in class. I kept my hand down. Trina raised her hand and waved, catching Mr. E’s attention.

  “Trina Brewster, do you think you’re stronger than these strapping young gentlemen?” He waved at the eager boys stretching their hands up to the ceiling.

  “Stronger smelling, maybe,” Eric joked.

  “Hel-lo, Mr. E wasn’t talking to you.”

  “She’s right, Eric. You should wait until I ask you to speak before you say anything.”

  “Sorry.”

  Weird. Mr. E lectured Eric for speaking out of turn, but Ida got away with talking back. I noted this in my detective’s notebook. Why didn’t the thief take this book instead of my secret green scribbler?

  Mr. E held up two small red and white bars that looked like packs of gum.

  “This will separate the strong from the weak. All you have to do is hold the two bars together so that their ends touch. Who wants to test their strength?”

  “Me,” Eric said, getting up from his seat. He flexed his biceps like a wrestler about to step into the ring.

  Mr. E handed him the bars and Eric moved the red ends together, but the bars did not touch. His eyes widened with surprise, but he wasn’t about to give up. He set his feet wider, rolled his shoulders, and took a deep breath. Then he pushed the red ends of the bars together. Again, they wouldn’t meet. Everyone started to laugh.

  Eric said, “Shut up. I’m concentrating.”

  He tried again and failed. The kids laughed even louder.

  Mr. E waved everyone to be quiet as he took the bars away from the grunting Eric. “That’s enough.

  Who’s next?”

  The Hoppers did not raise their hands. No one was eager to look like a wimp. But Trina wasn’t scared. She raised her hand.

  Mr. E smiled and handed the bars to her. Instead of pushing the red ends together, she flipped the bars around and tried to push the white ends together.

  “It’s a trick,” she explained. “But I figured it out.”

  She pushed the bars together, but they didn’t touch. She couldn’t make the white ends touch no matter how hard she pushed. The bars slipped past each other, but the ends never touched.

  Everyone laughed. She turned beet red. She handed the bars back to Mr. E and joined Eric on the side.

  “Who else wants to try?”

  Judging by how everyone was staring down at their desks, I imagined that Mr. E would have had better luck asking for volunteers to clean out the hamster cage.

  “No one? That’s okay. You were half right about this being a trick, Trina.” He flipped one of the bars and pushed the red end toward the white end. The bars clicked together. He let go of one bar and the two magnets held together.

  “How did you do that?” Samantha asked. “That’s so cool.”

  “What are they?” Zack asked, his eyes wide with curiosity.

  Mr. E pulled the magnets apart. “Have you ever heard the saying ‘opposites attract’?”

  Samantha put her hand up. “That’s about people falling in love.”

  The boys snickered.

  She continued, “My mom says that two people who have nothing in common will usually end up together. She said that’s why my aunt and uncle broke up. It was because they were too alike. Dad said they broke up because Uncle Simon had a wandering eye. Do you know what that means?”

  “Let’s stick with your mom’s explanation. If magnets are too much the same, they won’t like each other. But if they’re opposites, they go together just like this.”

  Mr. E snapped the magnets together again.

  “But they look exactly alike,” Zack pointed out.

  “You’re right. But here’s the trick. Every magnet has a positive pole, which some people call the south pole.” He tapped the red end of one magnet. “And every magnet also has a negative pole. What do you think it’s called?”

  “North pole?” I answered.

  Mr. E tapped the magnet’s white end. “Very good, Marty. Now science lovers, and that means you too Eric, you’re going to do some magnet magic. I want you to make a magnet float in mid-air.”

  “This isn’t Hogwarts,” Eric joked. “We’re not wizards.”

  Our teacher smiled. “Good thing for you, or else I’d turn you into a moth.”

  Everyone laughed. Mr. E stepped behind his desk and pulled out a box of supplies. He held up a Styrofoam board and some pencils.

  “You have to use your science minds today. All you have are two magnets, this Styrofoam board and four pencils. That’s all you need to make a magnet float in the air. It’s pretty simple to figure out, but if you have trouble here’s a clue. Think about the bull riders at the Rainmaker Rodeo. If you remember where they start, you’ll be able to make the magnets float. Break into groups of four.”

  Trina got up, grabbed my wrist and led me toward Samantha. This was our chance to get close to the prime suspect. Ida shambled over and made up the last of the foursome. Trina took charge. She set the Styrofoam board on top of her desk.

  Samantha suggested, “Maybe we should put it upside down in case Mr. E put magnets on the one side.”

  “No,” Trina barked. “Leave the board the way it is. Marty, go sharpen the pencils. I know exactly what to do.”

  I wondered if she wanted to make up for the fact that she hadn’t figured out the magnet trick earlier. As I walked past the station beside us, Zack jammed the eraser end of a pencil up his nose. His Hopper team members moved away as he reached for a second pencil.

  “Take the pencil out of your nose,” Mr. E ordered Zack.

  “I think it’s stuck.”

  “Come to my desk.”

  Everyone tried to make the magnets float. Some tried to jam the magnets into the Styrofoam boards. Hannah stacked one of the magnets on a teeter-totter of pencils. She launched it into the air. No one had any luck keeping the magnets afloat. I headed back to my station with the sharpened pencils. Ida was the centre of attention in our group. She held one of the magnets over Samantha’s watch.

  “That’s a fluke,” Samantha said.

  “Hold still,” Ida ordered.

  Samantha tried to pull her arm away, but Ida held on to her by the sleeve of her blue blouse.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Trina looked up at me. “Look at what the magnet is doing to Samantha’s watch.”

  Under the glass face, the watch’s second hand jittered ba
ckwards and forwards.

  “Can a magnet screw up other things?” I asked.

  “If it’s powerful enough, it probably could,” Trina said.

  Samantha piped up. “But the thing has to be metal.”

  “How do you know?” Trina asked.

  Samantha grabbed the magnet from Ida and placed it on her coiled scribbler. The magnet didn’t stick to the cover, until she slid it across to the metal coil. Then it clicked and didn’t budge.

  “Any idea how to make the magnet float?” Ida said, now bored.

  “Can I have the magnet?” I asked.

  She handed it over, while I picked the other one up from the desk. I laid them both on top of the white board along with the four newly sharpened pencils. I thought about Mr. E’s clue. I remembered watching bull riders at the Rainmaker Rodeo in St. Albert. The cowboy climbed on the back of a bull inside a tiny corral, and he hung on until the gate opened and the bucking bull blasted out of the cramped wooden pen.

  “I think I know how to do it,” I said.

  I picked up a pencil and stabbed it into the white board. Then, stabbing in the other three pencils, I made my own magnet corral. Once I’d built my fence, I placed one magnet between the pencil fence posts. The fit was tight and I had to squeeze the magnets between the pencils.

  “That’s it?” Ida said, sneering. “I could have done that.”

  Trina picked up the other magnet. “I think I know what’s next.”

  Beside her, Samantha kept checking her watch. “I think my watch is running backwards now.”

  Trina lowered the magnet toward the other bar, matching up colour to colour so that the red ends and the white ends were aligned. About halfway into the pencil corral, she stopped. She pulled her hand away and the top magnet floated in mid air just a hair above the bottom one, like a rider about to be bucked off his bull. I clapped. Samantha cheered. Ida yawned.

  Mr. E walked to our station, wiping his fingers with a tissue – probably getting rid of Zack’s booger. “Excellent job. I have four budding scientists,” he said.

  “Whoopee,” Ida said, but it didn’t sound like she meant it. “Aren’t we so brilliant.”

  “Outside, young lady. We need to talk. Right now.”

  Everyone went “oooo,” as Mr. E escorted Ida outside the classroom. She must have pushed our teacher too far.