Trophy
07 May 2021Today’s prompt: “A straight-A high-school student is caught stealing something at school by a teacher.”
It was a good year at St. Augustine. For most staff and students, this was because the football team was looking to take state for the 8th year in a row. For Douglas McKee, literature teacher and debate coach, it was because Deja Jones had finally agreed to join the debate team.
Deja was one of the sharpest students he’d had in years. She could run rings around her opponents logically and managed to bend the arcane debate rule system to her advantage. And she had a fire in her belly that was a thing to behold. When she made an impassioned case for reparations at the regional semifinals, Doug could have sworn the judges’ mouths were hanging open in astonishment.
Doug was willing to bet there would be a topic on policing at the finals. He hoped they would get the BLM side, but knew Deja could successfully argue either, even if one of them was distasteful to her.
It was about 8:00. Doug had stayed late to grade some papers and was just walking toward the parking lot when he heard something down the hallway to the main entrance.
He turned the corner. There, in front of the trophy case, was Deja. A pair of bolt cutters and a broken lock were on the ground next to her, and she was lifting a large trophy cup out of the cabinet.
“Deja? What are you doing?” Doug asked.
“Mr. McKee!” Deja dropped the cup. Your ashes spilled out.
“What is this?”
“I can’t tell you.”
Doug looked uncomfortable. “You know I’m going to have to report this.”
“Okay.” Deja paused. “Are you sure you want to do that?”
“Look, I don’t want to have to get you in trouble for stealing.”
“I don’t think stealing is what you need to be worried about here, Mr. McKee,” Deja said. “What you ought to worry about is who those cremains are, and how they got into that cup.”
“Those are cremains?” Doug asked uncertainly.
“They are.”
“How do you know that?”
“For the same reason I knew they were here. And I can’t tell you that. Now. Think about how they got there. Who has access to this cabinet?”
“The principal. And the head coach.”
“So who could have put the ashes in there?”
“The principal or the head coach.”
“Exactly. Are either of those people you would feel comfortable accusing of doing something untoward with human remains?”
Doug breathed in deeply. The principal could fire him. And Coach Henderson was one of the most popular members of the community, thanks to the football team’s winning streak. Making outlandish accusations about the coach putting human remains in a trophy cabinet would probably not go well for him. And Deja’s question of whose cremains these were made him wonder about his own safety if he revealed to either of the men that he knew too much.
“Not especially,” he said.
“All right. Now I’m just going to get these ashes out of here for now. This weekend I’ll take a trip out of town and spread them someplace nice.” Deja emptied the remaining ashes from the trophy cup into a gallon Ziplock bag, and then placed the cup back in the cabinet and began sweeping up the ashes on the floor with some paper towels from her pocket.
“What about the lock?” Doug asked.
“I brought a new one,” Deja said, fishing the new padlock – in the same style as the old one, and still in its packaging – out of her pocket. “Hopefully they won’t try to get in right away since none of their keys will fit it. Hopefully they’ll just figure they lost the key and call a locksmith.”
“Here. Give me the key,” Doug heard himself say. Deja gave him a quizzical look. “It’s going to be suspicious if they’re both missing a copy of the key. But I can probably sneak this into one of their desk drawers. Maybe even onto their key ring if I get lucky.”
Deja opened the lock’s packaging and handed the key to Doug. She returned to sweeping up the ash.
Doug started to leave, but turned back after a few steps. “Deja?”
“Hmmm?” she said.
“I’m sure it goes without saying that we say nothing about this from this moment on.”
“Of course.”
St. Augustine’s football team lost the rest of the games in their season. But the debate team won regionals.