Chapter 12

Shaggy arrived at school to find Mr. Deedle waiting for him at the front entrance. "Good morning, Norville. Follow me, please.

Shaggy dutifully followed the vice principal, past Mrs. Stanford-who Shaggy had a hard time looking at without thinking of the cheerleader costume of the previous night—and into his office. The principal closed the door and took his seat behind the desk.

"Well, Norville, your mother called and told us that she would not be signing a tardy slip, so this will be an unexcused tardy. Three unexcused tardy counts as an unexcused absence and an unexcused absence is three days in-school suspension. A second unexcused absence is another three day in-school suspension. And a third is a full three-day suspension. After that, all options are on the table, including expulsion. Do you understand this process?"

"Yes sir. I won't be late again."

"I hope that's true, Norville. But remember that I have your file from Plainsville Middle School. You made that same promise there many times. How did that go?"

"Not well."

"And judging by the obvious odor of marijuana on you right now, your mother's level of frustration on the phone, the fact that you have already been to my and Mr. Grimes' offices twice, and the fact that you have been arrested and charged with a theft on school property within the first nine days of classes does not bode well."

"Those charges were dropped!"

"That doesn't make you innocent, does it? It just means that the Blakes have a soft spot for you and sent a high-powered lawyer to get you off on a technicality. That is not the same thing at all. And Annie's money is still missing and the Sadler's still need it for her medical treatment. Just because you are not in jail does not mean that the efforts to find out who stole the money are going to stop. On the contrary, the School Board and the Sheriff's Department have committed every resource to finding the culprit and making sure they get caught. There will be no deals. They will go to jail."

"That's not me, Mr. Deedle. I didn't steal anything."

"The evidence suggests otherwise."

"Why didn't they go the GoFundMe route instead of cash?"

"Don't blame the victim, Norville. A professional fundraising group was vetted and hired by Mr. Grimes, personally, to work with Mr. Marcus in coordinating the fundraising effort. They were going to pick the money up on Monday morning, count it, and disburse it to Annie Sadler's family. The fault is all on the perpetrator. ALL of the fault." Mr. Deedle stared down at Shaggy.

Shaggy mustered up what little courage he didn't have. "That's not me."

"Time will tell." He glanced at his computer screen. "I believe that you have Shop Class with Mr. Marcus next. Hurry, or you will be late. And we're counting your tardies."

Shaggy almost kept the mental image of Mrs. Stanford's cheerleading outfit out of his mind as he rushed from the office and to the shop class just as the bell rang. There was a seat open next to Fred which he took. Fred ignored him.

Mr. Marcus started the class with a question. "How many of you have a parent that is in the trades?"

Shaggy didn't know what that meant so his hand stayed down. Fred's hand went up as did those of about a quarter of the students in the room.

Mr. Marcus continued, "For those of you not familiar with the term, the trades are those occupations that are part of the building construction industry. Carpenter is a trade. Plumber is a trade. Electrician is a trade. I, personally, am a journeyman electrician and a proud member of the local IBEW which is the electrician's union."

A question came from the middle of the room. "Then why are you teaching? Wouldn't you make more money as an electrician?"

The teacher's pause was a long one before he finally smiled. "I had to choose between something I love—teaching—and something that was more lucrative—being an electrician. I chose teaching."

Fred's hand went up.

"Yes, Fred."

"What's the difference between high voltage and low voltage?"

"That actually depends on who you are talking to and what you are talking about. If you're talking to a household electrician, they may refer to low voltage as anything under 50 volts and high voltage as household voltage which is usually in the 100 to 240 volt range. But if you're talking to someone who works at a power plant or on power transmission lines, then high voltage is voltage above 1,000 volts and they call between 50 and 1,000 volts medium voltage."

Fred followed up. "What sort of things use low voltage?"

"Small devices or systems composed of small devices."

"Like a fire alarm system or a security system?"

Another pause. "Yes. Those systems usually step down from household voltage to either 24 volts or 12 volts."

Fred smiled. "Neat. Thanks."

xXx

As usual, Velma was taking the first half of her lunch break in the physics lab when Mrs. Rustor, the physics teacher came in.

"Hello Velma, fancy meeting you here when you should be resting and grabbing some lunch."

Velma tried a fake smile. It felt funny on her face, and she couldn't hold it. It probably looked awful. She needed to practice more in the mirror and develop some muscle memory. "I find working on lab experiments to be soothing."

"To each their own." The teacher sat at her desk to try and get some papers graded so she would have less to do at her home tonight.

"Mrs. Rustor, you told me that your area of interest was electricity and magnetics. What did you like about it?"

Mrs. Rustor held in a silent sigh. Apparently, no papers were going to get graded. "Electricity is simple and yet incomprehensible. It is elegant but can be heavy-handed and can get away from you. At the heart of it is the fact that, if you put a wire into a magnetic field, then you get and electric current. Or if you run an electric current through a wire, you get a magnetic field. If you ask someone 'why' this happens, you will get a long-winded speech with lots of technical words that boils down to 'I don't know'. But it always works, and it always works the same way. You can rely on it."

"So, if I learn the physics of electricity, then I can understand any electrical system."

"Certainly. You just have to understand the different devices and component parts within the system."

"You can do that?"

"I like to think so."

"That's really interesting. I love physics."

The teacher smiled. "It kind of shows."

Velma gathered up her things and made her way to the lunchroom where she saw Daphne sitting with her friends and Fred sitting with the jocks. Oddly, Shaggy wasn't sitting with the stoners. He was alone. Which seemed like a good idea. Her fellow geeks and nerds were already finishing their meal and were probably talking about some boring computer game and all of the other tables were full. The closest she could come to being by herself was to sit at the table with Shaggy. So be it.

At least they had the fact that they were under suspicion for theft in common. Maybe he didn't want to talk either.

She went thought the line and probably got too many carbohydrates but it wasn't like she was going to be running for homecoming queen. Then she marched over to Shaggy's table and sat down. She looked down at her tray and said nothing.

He looked up. "Hey."

"Hey." Maybe if she started eating, he wouldn't talk, or, better yet, leave.

No such luck. "I had kind of a crappy morning. How about you?"

She had just shoved a forkful of potatoes into her mouth and the loud gulp it took to force them down would not have been considered feminine by her mother. "It's been about normal. So, pretty crappy."

This struck him as funny and he smiled but then he got serious. "Mr. Marcus, the shop teacher, is an electrician. Fred asked him about low voltage systems." Shaggy said the words as if they were foreign to him. Which they were.

"The school's security system is a low voltage system. What did Mr. Marcus say?"

"Not much. But he seemed to know a lot about them."

"That's interesting. I talked to my physics teacher about electricity today. She said that she could understand pretty much any electrical system."

"So, that makes two people who would know how to put a magnet up against a switch thingy."

"At least two. I figured it out in two hours."

"But you're you."

She felt offended. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Uh-h-h-h-h-h… it means you're, like, really smart and can figure things out easier than other people."

That explanation eased her paranoia. "Everybody has the internet."

"But not everybody has your brain."

Velma's mother had taught her that agreeing with such statements was immodest—even though they were true.