THE FIRST THING I NOTICED WHEN I WOKE UP WAS THE HIPPO squatting on my head. Or at least that’s what I assumed was happening based on the pressure building to a blinding pain between my ears. I took several beats, slowly breathing in and out, willing the hippo to go away before venturing to open my eyes. I slowly blinked one, then the other open, cringing through the pain.
It was dark. A faint glow from somewhere just outside my field of vision was the only light illuminating the area. I realized I was outside, a cool breeze whipping over my bare arms and making me shiver. It smelled faintly of chlorine, making me think I was near a swimming pool. I could hear faint sounds in the distance-crickets, music, the rumble of the freeway.
I blinked a few more times, slowly letting my senses come alive again, and realized I did not, in fact, have a large water mammal on my head, just a really bad headache. I guess being brained from behind will do that to you.
I wriggled my hands and fingers as I tried to get my bearings, and quickly realized I didn’t have much wiggle room at all. My hands were tied together behind my back. Ditto my feet. Whoever had hit me over the head had done a bang-up job of making sure I couldn’t respond in kind.
As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see a metal utility shed in front of me, and the outline of the top of the math building. I was at the school. If I had to guess, near the swim team’s pool.
And the faint glow of light I’d seen was coming from underneath the door of the utility shed. Someone was inside.
I moved left, then right, then realized not only were my hands and feet tied up, but I was tied to something. I craned my head around in the dark, coming up against a starting block. I wriggled back and forth. The bonds at my wrists were some sort of rope, strong and tightly knotted. No way was I going to break them before whoever was in the shed came back. I kicked my legs, twisting, but it was no use. I was stuck there.
And even worse?
The door to the utility shed was slowly opening.
I held my breath, watching as a shadowy figure backlit by the shed emerged. I blinked against the onslaught of light, trying to make out features. But it wasn’t until he shut the door again that I was able to see his face clearly.
I let out a sigh of relief so loud, I swear they heard me all the way in the cafeteria over the blare of the DJ.
“Mr. Tipkins!” I breathed. “Oh, thank God. You’ve got to help me. Someone hit me on the head and dragged me out here and tied me up, and I think they might have killed Sydney, though I’m not sure, but it’s highly possible because I said I was gonna blow the whistle, but I’m not really, ’cause I don’t know who they are, but if you untie me, we can find them, and we will know!”
I paused for breath, taking in a big gulp of chlorine-tinted air, ignoring the pain at the sound of my own voice echoing through my throbbing head.
Mr. Tipkins took a step toward me.
I wriggled, showing him my bound wrists. “Can you see the knots?” I asked.
He nodded slowly. “Yes.”
“Can you get them undone? Do they look too tight?”
“They look very tight,” he responded, his voice flat.
“Well, there must be something in the utility shed sharp enough to cut these. A knife or scissors or something? I’m sure if you just go look…”
But I trailed off as I looked up at his face. It was calm and impassive, definitely not the reaction you’d expect from someone finding a student tied up to a starting block in her homecoming dress.
Realization must have been plain in my eyes as my throbbing brain struggled to put the pieces together, because the corners of his mouth slowly turned upward, curving into a big wicked smile that showed off the coffee stains on his incisors in all their glory.
“You aren’t going to untie me, are you?” I asked.
He shook his head slowly back and forth.
“Because you’re the one who tied me up.”
The grin grew wider as he nodded. “That’s the first smart thing you’ve said, Miss Featherstone.”
Dread hit my stomach in one swift punch. “You hit me over the head.”
He crouched low, coming to eye level. “I did,” he admitted.
“Just like you hit Nicky?”
He shrugged, palms upward.
“And you killed Sydney?”
“Sydney killed herself,” he shot back, anger suddenly flashing through his eyes. “She was stupid and self-absorbed. That’s what led to her downfall.”
“But you’re the one who committed Twittercide.”
He frowned. “What?”
“Death by Twitter?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just pushed her into a pool.”
Part of me did a happy dance that I finally knew who had killed Sydney. The other part of me, the more logical part, told me I was tied up and all alone with a killer who was confessing his crimes. That did not bode well for my future.
I looked past Mr. Tipkins to the school buildings beyond. I could hear the faint sounds of dance music coming from the cafeteria. It was so close, but a million miles away for all the good it did me. There was no way anyone could hear me scream from here. My calls for help would be swallowed up long before they could reach the partygoers, even if they didn’t have top blast music drowning me out.
I was on my own.
With a murderer.
“Why did you kill her?” I asked. Not that finding out was my top priority at the moment. But the more time I could buy, the better chance someone might wander this way. Surely there was some couple at the dance who would go looking for a private corner to make out in, right? Possibly near the pool?
“Why?” Tipkins snorted. “That should be as obvious as any three noncollinear points on a two-dimensional flat surface.”
I blinked at him. “Huh?”
Tipkins scowled. “A plane! God, don’t you kids ever pay attention in class?”
I figured that question was rhetorical at this point.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll spell it out for you. I had to shut Sydney up before she could tell everyone what was going on.”
“And what was going on?” I asked, wriggling against my bonds. There was no way the rope was going to give out, but if I could possibly slip my hand through the loop…
“I should think that would be obvious. I was selling test answers.”
“You!” I shook my head. “But why?” Honestly, I was genuinely curious. It seemed like the last thing a teacher would want.
“Why?” Tipkins repeated, his voice rising. “Why! Do you know how much I make babysitting ignorant brats like you?”
I bit my lip. There was no right answer to this question, was there?
Luckily, I didn’t have to say anything as he continued his rant. “Hardly enough to survive on, that’s how much. I have a PhD. I graduated at the top of my class from Cornell. I’m a damned math genius! And now I spend the majority of my life trying to figure out how to keep texting idiots from stealing test answers.”
“So you decided to give the idiots the answers instead.”
“Sell,” he corrected me. “I’m finally getting what I’m worth. You idiot brats want to go to college? You go through me.”
“So you sold the answers to your own tests?”
Tipkins nodded. “Mine and everyone else’s. It was easy. I had access to anything I wanted in the teachers’ lounge.”
Mental face palm. All our breaking and entering had been for nothing. No wonder the thief hadn’t worried about locks-he had a key all along!
“But why involve Nicky?” I asked, feeling my hand slip a scant quarter inch lower in the bonds. If I could work up enough sweat on my wrists, I might have a chance of slipping free.
“I couldn’t very well risk the exposure of selling them myself, now, could I?” Tipkins answered. “I caught Nicky last year trying to cheat on one of my tests. It was one of the more sophisticated attempts I’d ever seen, I’ll give him that. He had hacked into my email account and found a copy of the test answers that I’d sent to the administration for compliance with state standards. He’d memorized the answers completely, so there was no proof of anything in the classroom at all.”
I wrinkled my forehead. “So how did you catch him?”
Tipkins grinned, satisfaction at outsmarting a teen clear on his face. “I gave a different test that day. At the last minute, the vice principal had told me they hadn’t gotten the go-ahead from the state on the standards yet, and I ended up giving the old test. Nicky got every single question wrong, but I quickly realized why.”
“And you recruited him to work for you?”
Tipkins shrugged. “I simply told him he could either make a small percentage working for me or I would tell the vice principal I’d caught him cheating.”
“So you blackmailed him?”
Tipkins frowned, his eyes going dark again. “Don’t make it sound like he was innocent here. He was a cheater!”
“Just like Sydney?” I asked. My right wrist had gone as far as I could slip it, so I started wriggling my left as Tipkins nodded in agreement.
“Yes. That’s right. Only Nicky was smart. Sydney was a moron. It was like she wanted to get caught. Answers on her fingernails?” he asked, waving his own grubby set in my face. “How obvious can you get? Every student within a three-desk radius saw what she was doing. I had to bust her. How could I not? I had no choice.”
“But weren’t you worried she was going to blow the whistle on you?”
“What whistle? She had no idea who I was.” He paused. “Until you started asking questions.”
I gulped. “Me?” I squeaked out.
He nodded. “As soon as you started nosing around, Sydney did, too. She knew the school board was investigating and realized how badly everyone wanted to know how the answers had gotten out. She bribed Nicky to tell her who was giving him the cheats, then she called me and said that if I didn’t get her reinstated on the homecoming court she was going to tell the administration all about it.”
I nodded. The blackmailer becomes the blackmailee. Nice move. I had to say, it didn’t sound like Sydney was as dumb as Mr. Tipkins had thought after all.
“That’s why she agreed to meet with me?”
Tipkins nodded. “She said if I didn’t get her back on the court, she was going to tell you everything and it would be all over the paper.”
“But you couldn’t let that happen.”
He shook his head slowly back and forth. “No. I had too much of a good thing going. I was finally making good money. I wasn’t going to let some no-brained bimbo take that away from me.”
“So you went to her house?”
He nodded. “After you came to interview me, I realized I couldn’t let her talk to you. So I went to her house. She was in the backyard, tanning of all things! Made suspension look more like a vacation than a punishment to me.”
“And she had her laptop with her?”
He nodded. “Plugged into an outlet. She was on the damned Titter on her laptop.”
“Twitter,” I corrected automatically.
“Whatever. She was too busy on that thing to even listen to me. I tried to tell her I didn’t have the authority to get her back on the homecoming court. I told her I’d pay her off, make it worth her while to keep her mouth shut.”
“But she didn’t go for it?”
“She said all she cared about was being homecoming queen.”
“So you killed her?”
He nodded, an eerie light in his eyes. “It was easy. All I had to do was give her a little shove, and into the pool she went.”
“With her laptop,” I pointed out.
He grinned, showing off those grotesquely stained teeth again.
I shivered, imagining how her last moments must have been. Had she felt the electric shock? Felt the water flowing into her paralyzed lungs? Or had she died instantly, one minute here and the next just… not?
“And now…,” Mr. Tipkins said, taking a step toward me, “it’s time to tie up the last little loose end.”
Oh, fantastic amounts of fluffin’ fudge.