two.five

It took less than five minutes for John Watson to become completely re-absorbed in his maths work, at which point Sherlock decided there really was no one else who would take the investigation as seriously as he did. He was annoyed, but not surprised; John was good in spirit, not so much in perseverance. Quite simply, there were few of the other kids who would find Sebastian's strange mystery as engaging as he did, and so he dealt no blame to John, instead leaving him where he was and turning his own focus to the enigma at hand.

Letters. Letters that made no sense, though—there was something else here, he knew there was, something that was missing... he tilted his chair onto its back legs, balancing it carefully so as not to topple backwards and earn a reprimand from Mrs. Hudson as well as chaos in the classroom environment that was already just barely docile enough for him to think properly in. There were letters, scratched onto the eyes of the bank... but only a single phrase. If each character was meant to correspond to others—well, there were practically infinite three-letter words in the English language that it could represent, not even taking into account the other phrases that could be indicated by the then-revealed letters... or perhaps it was none of those at all, but instead a portion of a word, or even a name, Dan, Daniel, Danielle...

Sherlock let out a muffled hiss of frustration, which, thankfully, nobody seemed to notice. There had to be something else he could do. If he couldn't talk to Eddie Van Coon...

...Who else couldn't he talk to?

The thought came to him in a brief flash, and he held onto it tentatively for an instant, aware of how weak it was yet not willing to let it go. If coded letters were necessary to communicate to Eddie... codes were part of something bigger, not just casual interaction between two people—unless those two people were close friends, and someone who was responsible for Eddie staying home from school wouldn't be, most likely, though Sherlock still allowed it as a possibility in a back corner of his mind, suppressed by the larger, more likely idea. It seemed far more plausible on all levels that this was part of a larger scheme, and the mere thought of that was enough to elevate the pulse within his thin wrists, so that each of his breaths was constrained, forced into steadiness.

There was something more going on here, which meant that Eddie Van Coon surely wasn't the only one who had been put in danger by it. There had to be someone else. Someone else who had been sent home...

His eyes, scraping swiftly over the many tousled heads that the room contained, noted two absences: Greg Lestrade and Brian Lukis. Greg, he knew practically without thinking, there wasn't a chance of; he could only be sick, for the boy was so utterly obsessed with crime monitoring in the classroom that he would never be involved in what appeared to be such a dangerous ring, himself. The other, though, Brian Lukis... Brian was more promising. Sherlock's memory fed him the information that he was a chubby, perpetually nervous-looking boy, one who seemed to spend most of his time scribbling things in a journal despite the fact that he still wrote his Rs backwards. Aside from these external attributes, he could think of nothing—a likely candidate, then, if he was mysterious enough to serve as a question mark even to Sherlock Holmes.

It was just as he reached this conclusion that the bell rang, releasing them from the room. Sherlock's thin lips curled into a grin as Mrs. Hudson's voice raised above the rest of the class, calling them together.

"You did a wonderful job today, everyone! I'm very proud of you. Now, tomorrow we're going to do some more work on reading, alright? Remember to bring your books, and we'll see if we can get into chapter three. If any of you dears need your bus number, come right up; I have them all right here. Have a wonderful afternoon, children!"

Checking that John was distracted by trying to finish up his last two maths problems—six and three, Sherlock noted silently, rather irritated by the other boy's apparent inability to comprehend simple addition—he slipped over to the cubbies lining the wall, gravitating not towards his own, but rather that marked with the name of Brian Lukis, distinct with its backwards R. It was empty of a backpack or lunch sack, but a stack of crumpled papers were still arranged inside, unfortunately without the addition of his strange little journal, which Sherlock would have been overjoyed to get his hands on.

The flurry of activity around him was going to brief, he knew. He had to take what chances he had, and not allow the thought of being caught hamper his movements. His hands moved quicker than his doubts, sifting through the stack of papers in as casual of a manner as he could manage. Not for the first time, he found himself feeling quite thankful that Greg was absent, as the overly nosy boy would doubtless be on Sherlock's case if he caught even a whiff of him looking through another boy's things. The rest of them, however, poor ignorant things, were altogether too occupied by their own doings to pay him any mind, and he was able to relax and concentrate properly on the task at hand.

Symbols. Any symbols—his eyes raked down paper after paper, to no avail. Scribbled drawings, a few poorly graded spelling tests, one maths sheet that was ripped down the middle—

There.

There it was—not on any of the papers, but instead scratched into the back of the cubby itself, the letters glaring out in the sharp relief of pale splinters. DAN, gouged into wood with such precision that only an incredibly sharp tool could have done it—unmistakably the same one that had been used on the piggy bank, a knife or other unsafe weapon that should by no means have been kept in school.

Delightful.

John went home ignorant of Sherlock's new lead, and remained immersed in such a lack of knowledge the next morning, when he assumed his usual position beside Sherlock at their table. The dark-haired boy was, if possible, a bit twitchier than usual, with his fingers clasping and unclasping, his curls bouncing with each shift of his coated shoulders, and his eyes, if John wasn't mistaken, flitting obsessively between the seats of Eddie Van Coon and Brian Lukis.

"Are you okay?" he asked, a bit subdued by the maniacal energy.

Sherlock's only response was to raise a single eyebrow, an action that never failed I baffle John; he simply couldn't grasp how it was done.

Mrs. Hudson's voice drew them all together before another inquiry could be mustered, however. "Good morning, students! We're going to have a bit of a change today."

A sea of groans and confusion immediately combated the previously calm air. Mrs. Hudson raised her hand for quiet, and John, whose own lips had been parted in a soft noise of protest, quieted along with the rest of them.

"Now, change is good every once in a while! Though it's very good for you to be working on a schedule—does anyone remember what schedule means?"

A girl that John didn't know raised her hand, stretching until it looked like it hurt.

"Yes, Sarah?" Mrs. Hudson acknowledged.

"It's something that tells you what to do every day," Sarah supplied, her light brown ponytail bobbing with her words. She was smart, John acknowledged with wide eyes. Almost as smart as Sherlock—he couldn't have said what a schedule was.

"That's exactly right, dear. Schedules are very good for us, but it's also good to understand change. So, instead of having morning circle today, we're going to have afternoon circle. For now, we're all going to get into our reading groups. And, since we all like change, we're going to switch those around, too!"

John didn't vocally protest this time, but a slow dryness began to grow under his tongue. His reading group had been with Sherlock, Greg, and Sally—perhaps not the best company, but they were his friends, at least, and they were all smart. He didn't want to be put in one of the groups that didn't know what they were doing until Mrs. Hudson came around... he'd heard there were some kids who couldn't even sound out the word dog. He was no prodigy, himself, but he could at least read most of the words in their books, if he worked hard enough, and he was even starting to be able to write real stories, with some help. If Mrs. Hudson put him with people who didn't know—

His worrying, within instants, proved itself to be without reason. For he had barely allowed the thought out of his mind before she was announcing the groups, and he felt his stomach swerve for a reason entirely different from disappointment when his name was reached.

"...John, you'll be with Sarah. Oh—" Mrs. Hudson's lips pursed. "You're meant to be with Eddie and Brian, as well, but it looks like they're both out sick again... would you rather join another group?"

"No—no, it's okay," John found himself getting out, perhaps just a bit too loudly. He heard a small noise of what might have been annoyance from Sherlock, seated beside him. The dark-haired boy now had his arms folded and his chin high, no longer trembling with that odd excess energy but instead stock-still—yet John didn't notice. He got to work with Sarah! Smart Sarah, who had just answered the question, who knew what... what was the word—schedule, what "schedule" meant. He was excited enough to barely hear the other names as Mrs. Hudson listed them off, and then, once she told them to go find their groups, he was on his feet, hurrying across the room with the plastic cover of his book slipping under his palms, to where Sarah stood behind her desk, blue eyes bright with eagerness and a friendly smile on her face.

"Hi, John!" she greeted. John tried to smile, but found that his face was a bit warm.

"Hi," he said, adjusting his book. There was no reason to be nervous, he reminded himself a bit impatiently. He spent time with Sherlock constantly, and he had to be at least as smart as Sarah seemed. "I, um... I'm probably not as good a reader as you, but—"

"That's okay," she brushed off easily. "I can help you. That's what reading group is for, right?"

"I guess so."

Sarah gestured to the chair beside her, vacated by its previous occupant, who had presumably gone to join their own reading group. John, realizing after the awkward suspension of a full second that he was meant to sit in it, settled down in a rather ungainly stumble, placing his book in front of him and adjusting it carefully to line up with the edge of the desk. The cover, featuring a cartoonish drawing of a floppy-eared dog, stared up at him, and he still felt that strange heat around his face.

"So, you read the first two chapters, right?" Sarah checked.

John was utterly mortified to shake his head. "No, I... I came here from a different class... so I only know the first chapter."

"Oh, that's fine!" she laughed. "The second one's really easy, here." She flipped the book open and turned to the fourth page, where the next chapter began. John hadn't even started it, due to its rather staggering length of six pages; he could get through it, he knew, but it would probably take a long time. As Sarah ran her finger along the edges of the words, however, beginning to pronounce them, a slow confidence began to build inside of him, a gradual understanding that came much more easily when bolstered by the warmth of her friendliness.

He didn't notice Sherlock's icy glare piercing into his shoulder blades for the remainder of reading time, and perhaps that was for the better.