CW: violence, death, child death.
Math has never been my strong suit. Still, I’ve always rather enjoyed logic puzzles (particularly ones like Einstein’s Riddle), and after falling in love with Return of the Obra Dinn last year, I got really into the idea of using puzzles like these to build a narrative—especially a mystery.
I’m unlikely to ever excel at math, but by God, throw me a puzzle and a murder or two, and I will get INVESTED.
The question is, who dies at the end of this story?
Here are the clues:
There are six people in our mystery. There are six items, objectives, roles, secondary roles. Everybody is going to die at some point or another. That’s just what people do.
The second victim dies on Valentine’s Day, a month before the math teacher. She has a crumpled-up jewelry receipt. She is not the first victim (obviously) or the emo goth.
The detective isn’t the emo goth, either; in fact, they sit next to one another in class. Bex says she isn’t fucking emo. Bex says she doesn’t have a pink heart necklace. Bex says she definitely isn’t wearing that necklace hidden underneath her dark shirt—but that’s because she’s a goddamn liar. If Bex says it, you can’t trust it. Also, try to think of the detective as a race, the emo goth as a class—what am I saying, you’ve never played D&D. Never mind. Let’s keep going.
The witness is not the emo goth, the student council treasurer, or the math teacher.
The client is not the drifter, the band geek, or the class fuckup.
The drifter died crossing the road, a month before this story starts. The drifter died only a few minutes before the second victim was murdered. The drifter was a pacifist, maybe, or else had no unfinished business. Unlikely, perhaps—but there’s a lot about the drifter that we’ll just never know. Regardless, she wants nothing. That’s all you get right now.
The murderer despises cinnamon.
The person who does like cinnamon—or at least, did—has a bag of red-hot jellybeans in her back pocket. This person is not the band geek, or a junior high student at all.
The band geek’s name is Gen. Gen has her own Book of Predictions. Gen is a little bit psychic, which is to say that sometimes, she just Knows Things. Gen always gets the answers right, but can’t always show her work. It’s one of the reasons she’s failing math, which is a serious problem. Gen wants to pass math.
The class fuckup wants to stay alive, obviously. Lately, she’s been doing a so-so job of it. On one hand, still alive; on the other, all messed up, not sleeping, barely eating. Long, terrifying claw marks up and down her arms, deep gouges and black bruises she can’t explain, or won’t. The class fuckup has a black heart necklace that she found on the side of the road; also, she can’t drive. Because she’s thirteen. No one who’s thirteen can drive.
The murderer has new car keys. She wants to keep her murders a secret.
The student council treasurer disappeared a month ago. Two hours before that, she and the client exchanged gifts. Now, the client just wants to know what happened. The client hires the detective who sits next to her in class because she’s always investigating weird shit like that. The client has a pink heart necklace that clashes with her general aesthetic. She keeps it hidden beneath her shirt because no one survives junior high by being vulnerable, open, or honest.
The second victim, once honest to a fault, is now mostly rage and unfinished business. The second victim wants revenge, and she wants it right fucking now.
The drifter’s name is Lucy, but only Lucy and the detective know that—Lucy, because the dead remember, and the detective, well. She just Knows Things.
Bex dies after the detective. Meanwhile, Hazel dies last.
Hazel saw the murderer accidentally kill the person with the red-hot jellybeans. Heard it, anyway: the violent screech of brakes, a sudden, terrible thud. Hazel almost fell out of her tree, very startled and a little drunk—but nobody looked up: not the murderer and definitely not the dead woman in the road. And the student council treasurer, she never looked up, either. She never saw that tire iron swinging at her head.
Ariana doesn’t remember dying, exactly. She remembers gasping, scrambling out of the passenger seat. She remembers arguing, pulling out her phone, and then—this sudden pain, this shattering of eggshells, confused, fractured thoughts, all blurry and red. Being dragged backwards, away from her necklace. The clasp, she remembers thinking. Bex. I have to fix it.
Bex, crying, says she doesn’t love Ariana, but remember, anything Bex says is a lie.
Gen knows a few things about ghosts. One, they lash out instinctively—grasping, gouging, clawing—whether the nearest person deserves it or not. Two, when that person does deserve it, the violence is much worse. Three, ghosts can’t stick around without latching onto something. Houses. Graveyards. Jewelry.
The detective interrogates the class fuckup. The class fuckup has a panic attack. She never called the cops because she doesn’t trust cops, because who the hell would believe her, and because she’d been afraid to die. She’s still afraid to die but thinks maybe she deserves to; Ariana must think so, or she wouldn’t be haunting the class fuckup, clawing up her arms. Why would Ariana give a shit that the class fuckup is sorry—but she is sorry, and exhausted, and frightened all the time, and she can’t prove anything because the murderer has new car keys, and the bodies are long gone. The class fuckup, trying to breathe, confesses to the detective—because she so badly wants to live but doesn’t know how, doesn’t know what to do.
But the detective—who you must realize by now has the Book of Predictions—knows exactly what to do, tells the class fuckup it’s not her fault and asks for the black heart necklace. The detective—who you must realize by now doesn’t want revenge, only her goddamn GPA of 3.5—is still happy to help people take revenge, especially when it aligns with her own goals.
Gen begins writing a letter. An extra credit assignment, if you will.
The murderer has a lot of faults, but here’s a big one: she’s a shit teacher, passing only the students that she likes, the ones she believes deserve it. Gen is failing. Bex is failing. Hazel, certainly, is failing. But Ariana? Passing with flying colors. That kid was Going Places. Only her family’s a bit of a mess, so sometimes, the murderer would give her a ride home. Because the murderer liked Ariana. The murderer felt sorry for Ariana. But nobody survives junior high by being honest, and Ariana had already started dialing 911.
The detective writes in the Book of Predictions: Ariana and Lucy’s bodies are eventually discovered. Their souls have already moved on, though. It’s the survivors who are left to heal.
And Bex and Hazel do heal with time, with unlikely friendship and with therapy. They even help the detective on future cases, although Bex says she hates it; Bex says never again.
Also, the detective does pass math once the school hires a new teacher, one who grades fairly, who doesn’t hate students for having the audacity to make mistakes or be themselves. The detective closes Ariana’s case but keeps Lucy’s open—because people are more than how they died, and someone out there must miss her, someone who knows Lucy as a person and not just as “the drifter” or “the person with the red-hot jellybeans.” Someone who knows what Lucy wanted before she could want nothing at all.
And the detective does die, of course. That’s just what people do. But she doesn’t die until several decades after this story is over.
Enclosed in this letter/extra credit assignment is one haunted ass black heart necklace.
But you must realize that by now, Mrs. Miller. You must know exactly who’s about to die.
