Snack Time

I knew she was trouble the moment I saw her walk up to my lunch table. She had long black hair, braces, and a couple pimples on her face. Her eyes were dark brown like a dog’s turd, which made sense, because brown was statistically the most common eye color– nearly eighty percent of the world has them. I read that in a textbook. But that wasn't the reason I knew she was trouble. It was because she was a seventh grader. I try not to deal with seventh graders. They lack the maturity and depth of eighth graders while simultaneously presenting more complex issues than sixth graders. They say the biggest blunder is getting involved with a land war in Asia, but the second biggest blunder is getting tangled up with the affairs of a seventh grader. It’ll only be trouble for you, I can guarantee that.

“What do you want?” I asked her. “My time is valuable, you know.”

“I’m Sophie,” she said.

“Alright. I’m Steven. But I assume you already know that, if you’re coming up to me.”

I poured her a shot of milk straight from the half-pint carton, and another one for myself. It was reduced fat chocolate, the good stuff. Down the hatch. It slipped into the darkness of my throat like me last summer when I fell down a water slide. She drank hers, too.

“What can I do for you?” I said.

“There’s been a theft in the lunchroom. Actually, multiple thefts. Haven’t you heard about it?”

“Nope. What kind of theft? Some snot-nosed kid had his mechanical pencil stolen? What exactly are we talking about here?”

“Food theft. A bunch of students have been getting their food stolen. It’s happened to me.”

Now this was getting interesting. Maybe I was wrong. Students getting their lunches stolen? Multiple thefts, no less. This was something I wasn’t expecting.

“When?”

“Everyday for the past week. My food was taken yesterday. I’m an office assistant in first period. It was sometime then.”

Of course she was an office assistant. Always getting nosed up in other people’s business.

“I heard Jake Cole had his food stolen again today,” she said. “He had a KitKat in his lunchbox. Those don’t come cheap.”

I knew they didn’t, because I had associates who sold candy out of their lockers in the hallways. If you knew where to look, of course. Tough luck, getting a KitKat taken.

“What can I say? My condolences, but I don’t know what you want me to do about it.”

“You could be next, you know.”

“I buy school lunch. Look, Sophie. I’ve got enough on my hands already– finals are coming up, the semesters ending, and now this whole theft thing. I’m sorry, I can’t do anything for you.”

I knew what I had to say, but it still hurt to say it. I wanted to help her, of course, to help all of them, but more than that, I wanted to find out where this whole thing led to. But as I said before, I don’t get involved with seventh graders. It’ll only end up making your day worse.

“We’ll make it worth your time. We’re all pitching in some lunch money. Fifty bucks is in it for you.”

Fifty bucks. Now that was a lot of money. That was what, a hundred credits at the arcade? I could live a while with that money. But of course, it wasn’t really the money that tempted me. It was the case. It was this mystery snack robber, who stole bags of chips from right under kids nose’s, who took KitKats straight from lunch boxes. The money was really just an excuse, a way to justify breaking my cardinal rule. I knew I shouldn't, but I just couldn’t help it. I was a moth, and this case was a candle– I was attracted to it, but if I came too close, I knew I’d get burnt. Then I would pay for it with my wings.

The words were out of my mouth faster than a .38 slug shot from the barrel of a snub-nose. “I’ll do it,” I said.

“Great! I’ll get the money to you by this afternoon.”

As she left, I could feel an uneasiness in my gut, as if I’d eaten too much ice cream after a big meal. Maybe this case was too big for me. After all, my previous cases had been small, local affairs. I’d never dealt with something on this scale before. Like an actress in a Quentin Tarantino movie, I was going to have to get my feet wet.

The Springfield Middle School cafeteria was a slum of wickedness and vice. I could smell the sin reeking from the very walls of the place, condensed like water vapor on the surfaces. Many of the walls were covered with posters featuring cartoon broccoli saying slogans like “Make Healthy Choices!”. It felt like being in an insane asylum.

The first person I needed to talk to was Jake Cole. I hugged the right wall and made my way to the far back. I was scanning the tables when I almost bumped into a small crowd of people. They were watching a worker in a grey shirt set up one of the new vending machines. The school had ordered eight of them to be put around the halls as part of their “healthy eating” initiative. It was big news; the student paper had even done a piece on it. Bunch of sheep, I thought, watching the school put up this junk.

I saw him sitting with a couple of friends at a table near the bathrooms. Jake was a tall guy, red hair and skinny, kind of looked like a whittled carrot. I took a seat next to him. He didn’t look surprised to see me.

“Steven, right? Sophie talk to you yet?”

“Just met with her,” I said. “So I hear you got your lunch stolen?”

“Nah, not the whole lunch. The bastards just got to the snacks. My sandwich is still there.”

“Wait. You’re telling me they only took the snacks? Why would anyone do that?”

“I dunno, man. Look for yourself.”

He held up his lunchbox to show me. His sandwich was there, a perfectly fine turkey wrap. It looked delicious and it was also completely untouched. The rest of the box was empty.

“Where was your lunchbox when the theft occurred?”

“Well, it was sometime between second and fourth period. My lunchbox was in my locker the whole time. When I came to grab my food during lunchtime, my snacks were gone.”

I thanked him and left. As I walked out of the cafeteria, I could feel the eyes of the cartoon broccoli on the posters watching me.

There was only one other student in the waiting room besides me, and he didn’t look like he wanted to be there any more than I did. The receptionist barely even looked at me when I walked in the front office. I really didn’t want to come here, but I knew I didn’t have a choice. Whoever the thief was, he had access to the lockers. Theoretically, you could pick them, but that would be impractical for the scale the thefts were conducted on. The only person with the master key was the janitor, and by extension, the school. Maybe they would know if one of their keys had gone missing.

“Steven Sawyer,” the receptionist said. “vice principal Johnson is waiting for you in his office.”

I walked down the hall and went into his office. The vice principal himself was a balding, middle aged man with thinning hair around his head. He looked like what you would get if you took the average of every suburban middle school vice principal in America.

“What can I do for you today?” he said.

“I just wanted to bring a series of thefts to your attention.” I said. “Lately, a lot of students have been reporting stolen food. You know, chips and candy, that kind of thing. A few had their snacks stolen straight from their lockers. You wouldn’t happen to have any keys go missing recently, would you?”

“Not that I know of. I assure you, if any keys had gone missing, we would know about it. Anything else?”

“What about the cameras in the hallways? Maybe those could be of help. Could I check those?”

“I’m afraid not. Those are reserved for office personnel only. Now, if that's all, I have other matters to attend to.”

“What about the thefts? Students are getting robbed.” I said.

“It’s terrible. Quite terrible indeed, to have candy taken from a child. Of course, on the bright side, they no longer have to eat that junk anymore, do they? But we promise we’ll look into it.”

The vice principal wasn’t going to be of any more help. Not that he had been of any in the first place, but I had talked to enough teachers to know that this was the most words I would be getting out of him. I got up from my chair and started to leave. I was halfway out the door when he spoke again.

“And Steven,” he called. “Why don’t you focus on your studies first? Finals are coming up, and I doubt they’ll be easy. We don’t want you getting held back, do we?” He smiled.

I stood outside the office looking like a monkey in a zoo. Like Stevie Wonder at an art gallery, I had no idea what I was supposed to do. The meeting with the prick was less than useless, and I still hadn’t figured out how the thief had gotten the lockers open. A student couldn’t have gotten his hands on the keys. When they weren’t on the janitor, they were stored in the closet which was in the office. Any student going there would have to get past the receptionist. And certainly no one there would talk to me. It was a dead end. I would have to tell Sophie I couldn’t do it.

I had to find her now. Maybe she would ask for her money back. Hopefully not. And where was that girl anyways? Did she mention what classes she had? She had said she was an office assistant in the first period, didn’t she? That meant she would be with the receptionist in the morning.

It hit me like a migraine after pulling an all-nighter for an exam. All I needed to do was to ask her to keep an eye on the janitor's closet. See if there was anyone going inside who didn’t look like the janitor. It would have to wait until tomorrow, of course. First period had already passed. I didn’t know where she was now, but I sent her an email to meet me after school.

She was waiting for me in the commons area when the last bell rang. She was wearing the same clothes she had been wearing when I first saw her, which made sense because it was still the same day.

“Hey Steven,” she said. “Any new leads?”

“I got something, but I need your help. You work in the office right?”

“That’s right. First period.”

“I talked to Jake who said his food was taken from his locker. The thief must have gotten their hands on the keys from the janitor’s closest. Do you mind keeping an eye on the closest while you work?”

“Sure thing. I’ll call you if I see anything.”

She scribbled her number down on a piece of paper and gave it to me. I took it and went home.

The next day, I skipped first period and spent the hour walking around. I paced the hallways and monitored the lockers, but there were thousands of them in the whole school. It could happen at any one of them. I saw nothing. At 8:50 my phone was still silent. First period would end in ten minutes, and then Sophie would have to wait until tomorrow for another chance. My belly was growling like a woodchipper. I had missed breakfast that morning and I was going to pay for it. I went to the cafeteria to get something from the newly installed vending machines. The worker was gone, and I saw with dismay that all the options were “healthy” alternatives. Dried fruit, protein bars. I got a bag of oven baked chips anyways because my stomach was already reaching into my mouth to pull the bits of food out from between my teeth.

I was just beginning to open the bag of chips when my phone rang. It was Sophie.

“I saw someone go into the closest,” she said. “When he came out, the keys were hanging out of his pocket. If you’re fast, you might be able to catch him.”

“Thanks a bunch,” I said.

I hung up and raced to the office. By the time I got there, I could see someone leaving. The keys were right where Sophie said they’d be, and not only that, the man seemed familiar. He was wearing a grey shirt. It was the worker I saw yesterday, the one who had installed the vending machine.

The bell rang, the doors of the classrooms opened, kids came rushing out. Still, I followed him through the crowd of people. Through the streams of students going to their classes, there was no way he’d be able to spot me. By the time second period started, I had followed him to the other side of the school. He stood in the same spot for a few minutes, presumably waiting for any stragglers to leave. Then he looked around before crouching down and unlocking one of the lockers with the keys. I watched all this from behind a staircase. He rummaged inside the locker, and produced two candy bars, stuffing them inside a bag.

For the next thirty minutes, I followed him as he systemically hit nearly every corner in the school. I counted at least three dozen lockers. He was wiping the students clean. By the time he finished, his bag was bulging and he looked like evil Santa.

He started heading back to the office. I made sure to keep a couple of meters between us, hiding out in the bathroom a few times just to make sure he didn’t spot me. On the side of the hallway across from the main office, there was a door with a small sign that read “maintenance room”. He made sure no one was watching and went in. I waited a minute before doing the same.

Behind the door was a dark hallway. I could hear voices and see light at the end of it. I crept closer. When I got to the end, I pressed myself up against the wall and peaked out from behind the corner.

There were four people standing around in the room. In the center, was a gargantuan pile of snacks. Chips, candy, soda. If you could buy it at a gas station, it was there. One of the people was the worker in the grey. The other was vice principal Johnson. They were talking to each other.

“Vending machine sales are exploding,” vice principal Johnson said. “The commons machine is already empty, not three days after installation. Which lockers did you hit?”

“All of them on your list,” the grey shirt man said.

“Excellent. By the time the week is over, I suspect we will have shifted the entire student body over to our healthy alternatives.”

I couldn’t believe it. The thief wasn’t a student. It was the whole damn school. The rot had penetrated like cancer into the very brain of the institution itself. I felt like God himself had drunk me up with a swig of bourbon before pissing me back out.

I made my mistake about three minutes later, when I knocked my foot against the wall. The vice principal’s eyes shot to the hallway. I ducked behind the corner but it was too late.

“Looks like we have an uninvited visitor,” he said. “Steven, isn’t it? Seems you didn’t take my advice about studying to heart.”

I walked out to face him.

“You’ve been stealing everybody’s snacks?”

He smiled again. “You ever notice all that crap you students eat? It’s disgusting. I’m doing you guys a service.”

“Not doing it for the money?” I asked.

“Well, that too. Do you have any idea how much money it takes to run a school? We can finally bring the art program back with all this funding from the vending machine sales. After I’ve bought myself a new Mercedes, of course.”

“I’ll talk to the school board.”

“No one will believe you. You can go out there and say whatever you want. Now get out of here.”

And he was right. It was preposterous to think that the school would be literally stealing candy from children. But it was true, and I had seen it myself. I had no choice but to leave.

I went and saw Sophie again after school and told her what I saw.

“I can’t even report the thieves to the school,” I said. “Because the thieves are the school. Vice principal Johnson, that bastard. He was robbing us blind the whole time.”

“Can’t you spread the word?” she said.

“You think anybody would believe me?”

“I do.”

“That doesn’t matter. They’re going to get away with it, you know. All of them. They’re going to continue doing this, and even if they stop, they won’t face any punishments. It’s the whole school, for god sake.”

“Summer’s in two weeks. Maybe we could just try to enjoy our vacation like normal people. Try not to get caught up in this whole thing.”

Sophie leaned in close to my face and looked me in the eye. I looked back at her glumly.

“Forget it, Steven,” she said. “It’s middle school.”