The Mystery of the Cyber Bully

by Marty Chan

  “I’m sorry to hear about the cyber bully, Samantha,” I said.

  “I want you to make him stop. I want you to work for me.”

  “You want to hire us?” I asked.

  Trina smiled and nodded.

  “How much?” Remi said.

  Samantha stiffened. “Trina, you said they’d do it for the experience.”

  “I’ll talk to them,” Trina said.

  But as our partner turned to us, I heard a rustling noise coming from the bushes behind Samantha. Someone was watching us.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I was the only one who noticed the movement. Trina was too busy consoling Samantha, and Remi was shaking his head at me.

  “No way we’re going to help a thief,” he said.

  “If you want me to pay, I will,” Samantha pleaded.

  “I got fired because of you,” Remi accused.

  “Please help me. You’re my last hope.”

  I tried to signal Remi to look to the bushes, but he was more interested in making Samantha feel bad. The spy could hear everything we said, and I was pretty sure this had to be the cyber bully. I inched toward the bushes as if I were sneaking up on a feral cat, pretending not to notice anything was there.

  “No money,” Remi said. “I want my job back.”

  “She can’t get you that,” Trina said.

  “Maybe we should talk this over, Remi,” I said. “Over here.”

  “Hang on a sec.”

  “I’m sure she can do something else, right Samantha?” Trina said.

  “No, it’s this or nothing. Get my old job back, and we’ll take your case,” Remi said.

  Samantha rubbed her arm, nervously. “Are you sure that’s the only way?”

  “Yes. Right, Marty?”

  I turned from the bushes, trying to be as casual as I could so I didn’t tip off the spy. As I sauntered toward the gang, I tried to wink at Remi.

  “Something in your eye?” Samantha asked.

  “Yeah, I think some dirt blew in it,” I said as I twitched my head toward the bushes.

  Remi caught my move. He winked back at me.

  “Now what’s wrong with Remi’s eye?” she asked.

  “Um . . . dirt blew in it,” he said.

  “But there’s no wind.”

  “That’s because the shed is blocking it from you,” I explained, winking at Trina.

  “Are you two trying to pick me up?” Samantha asked.

  Trina jumped in, picking up on the signal. “Forget them. I’ll solve this case myself. We don’t need them. Marty, Remi, you two can go.”

  “Fine, we will.” I said. “Let’s go, Remi.”

  We turned around and headed toward the bushes. I angled to the left, while Remi moved to the right. There was no movement from the foliage. Had the spy caught wind of us? No time to waste: “Move, move, move!”

  He ran to the bushes, while I headed toward the other escape route. Trina charged after us, leaving a puzzled Samantha by the shed. Remi and I rounded the bushes, but there was no one there.

  “Did you get him?” Trina asked.

  “Nope. He’s gone,” I yelled.

  “What’s going on?” Samantha demanded.

  I explained, “I thought I saw a spy behind the bushes.”

  “Are you sure you saw something, Marty?” she asked.

  Trina raised her eyebrow at me. “Well, are you?”

  Remi answered for me. “Found some footprints here. They look fresh.”

  “Check the schoolyard!” I ordered my partners.

  “The spy couldn’t be that far away.”

  Trina didn’t have to be told twice. She sprinted to the schoolyard, while Remi and I followed. Samantha took up the rearguard and poked me in the back.

  “Do you think it was the cyber bully?” she asked.

  I nodded as I scanned the field. Mikayla sneered at a group of grade four kids playing tag. Nathan was showing a karate move to a confused Kennedy, who panted from the exertion of holding up one leg in a kick stance. Eric Johnson jogged away from the shed toward a couple of grade six girls who were seated on the field texting each other. Ida Eisengram, the grade five teacher’s daughter and my arch nemesis, brushed something from her jean-jacket sleeve. The spy could have been any one of them. I motioned my partners to head back to the shed.

  Samantha scratched under her wristband as she watched us come back. “Well, do you know who was spying on us?”

  I shook my head. “But we have a list of suspects.”

  “Looks like you just hired yourself some detectives,” Remi said.

  Trina patted my shoulder. “We have a case.”

  “Remi, check out the treads of the footprints,” I suggested. “It’s a good lead.”

  “On it.”

  “What should I do?” Samantha asked.

  “Confess to my dad and get Remi his job back.”

  She chewed her lower lip and glowered at me from behind her lopsided bangs.

  “That’s the price. Take it or leave it.”

  After school, Samantha came to the store to confess. She stood between Mom and Dad with her head hung low. It was like the final scene of a cop show where the criminal was finally caught but in this real-life scene, I was going to see the sentencing and the punishment. Samantha fidgeted from foot to foot as she waited for Dad to say something. Her confession had been met with stony silence. Dad eyed the ancient bottle of nail polish. He rolled his eyes at Mom, who was scooping out the remains of ice cream with a dill pickle. She could have rested the tub of ice cream on the beach ball that was now her pregnant belly.

  “We should call the police,” Dad said as he rubbed his balding head.

  Samantha’s eyes bulged. Her mouth opened, but no words came out. She was a first-time thief about to get a harsh sentence normally meant for hardened criminals, and I was her reluctant defence attorney coming to the rescue.

  “She came in and confessed,” I argued. “You gave the last two shoplifters a break.”

  “We need to teach the kids a lesson,” he said.

  “I’m sure she’s sorry. Isn’t that right, Samantha?”

  She finally found her voice. “Yea . . . yea . . . yeah. M . . . m . . . my mom was furious with me. She was too embarrassed to come, but she told me I had to return the bottle and apologize for what I did. I promise I’ll never steal from your store again. I’m so, so, so, so, so, so, very sorry.”

  Mom shook her head, the pickle now dangling from her lips like a mouldy cigar. Her curly, black hair looked like a nest of snakes hissing at Samantha. “Sorry, not good enough. Too many of you bad kids stealing all the time.”

  “Mom, she’s a friend,” I jumped in.

  The Medusa hair seemed to hiss at me. “What kind of friend?”

  “Um . . . ah . . . a friend at school,” I said.

  “A girlfriend?” Mom chomped the pickle in half.

  Samantha and I both shouted “No way.”

  Samantha added, “He likes Trina.”

  “Not any more.”

  Dad folded his arms and let out a snort of disgust. “Marty, your friends should know better than to steal from you.”

  Samantha said, “I’m really, really, really, very, very, sorry.”

  “Don’t talk to my son,” Mom said. “She no good for you, Marty.”

  “We’re just friends,” I said.

  “Too young for girls,” Mom muttered.

  “Mr. Chan, Mrs. Chan, I’ll make it up to you. Don’t call the police. Please.”

  Dad stroked the stubble on his chin as he eyed Samantha, who was on the verge of tears. “You work in store for a month to make up for what you did.”

  “Yes sir,” Samantha said, wiping her eyes.

  “And you pay for the nail polish,” he added.

  “I will.”

  Mom’s eyes narrowed as she scrutinized Samantha.

  “Does that mean Remi can get his job back?” I asked.

  Dad shook his head.

>   “Why not?”

  “She work for free,” he replied. “Now get her to mop the floor.”

  “Come on, I’ll show you where the bucket is,” I said. He would give Remi his old job back but only if I convinced my friend to take a drastic cut in pay.

  I leaned close and whispered, “You got off easy.”

  Too close for my mom’s liking. “She not here to play.”

  “I’ll work hard, Mrs. Chan.”

  Mom finished the rest of the pickle and said nothing. She looked at Dad, who shrugged. “Marty, you show your friend where the mop is.”

  I smiled. “This way, Samantha.” I said.

  We headed to the back of the store. As we walked, I thought I heard snakes hissing. Mom was following us, sucking air through her pursed lips. She locked in on the back of Samantha’s head like a missile ready to launch on its target. I picked up the pace. In the storage area, I hauled out the mop bucket and showed Samantha how to fill it with water.

  “You guys better solve the case fast,” she whispered.

  “No talking,” barked Mom.

  I filled the bucket. The sooner I set Samantha up at the store, the sooner I could join Trina and Remi. They were supposed to check Samantha’s YouTube video and email at the Bouvier Public Library while I finished my chores. Now that I had to train Samantha under Mom’s supervision I’d never get out. Mom coiled around us like a boa constrictor. I glanced at Samantha, who looked like a scared rabbit caught in the crushing grip. Sometimes it was better to be a mongoose than a rabbit.

  I leaned closer to Samantha. “Your hair smells nice,” I said.

  Mom barked, “Too close.”

  “I’m showing her how to mop the floor,” I said. I picked up the mop and invited Samantha between my arms so that I could show her how to swish the mop head. She wouldn’t step into my arms, so I had to move toward her.

  “What are you doing?” she asked as I put my arms around her.

  “Trust me,” I whispered, then I said loud enough for Mom to hear. “Put your hands on the mop handle and let me guide you.”

  “Enough!” With cobra speed, she moved in and snatched the mop away from Samantha and me. “I teach her. You go.”

  “But there’s so much she has to learn,” I protested.

  “I do it.”

  “Fine,” I said, feigning disappointment. “Can I go to the library to study?”

  “Yes, you go away. Don’t come back until this gwai mui is gone,” Mom said.

  She called Samantha the white girl, but the way she said it sounded more like an insult than a fact. I knew she was going to sink her fangs into Samantha and extract any information about how she felt about me. I was glad to get out of the viper’s nest. Samantha looked at me with big eyes, silently pleading for help. I felt sorry for her, but not enough to stick around.

  Trina and Remi were huddled around one of three computer stations in the Bouvier Library. A teenaged boy sat at the other computer, playing an online zombie game. He wore headphones that were plugged into the computer tower and he seemed to really be into shooting the undead shambling around the monitor.

  On the other side, an old woman squinted at the monitor of the third computer. The town library’s computers were more fun than the school’s computers. Here, kids could sign up for time to play popular online games or surf the internet. That was probably the reason there were two teenagers waiting their turn for the computers. The teens flashed me dirty looks as I joined my partners.

  On the screen was a website advertisement for spy equipment.

  “What’s this about?” I asked. “You’re supposed to be working on the case.”

  Remi motioned me to keep quiet as he glanced at the hawk-nosed librarian glaring in our direction. She lifted a finger and pointed at the “Silence is Golden” sign next to her counter.

  “The librarian’s cranky today,” he explained as he nodded to the teen with headphones. “He had the volume on full blast and didn’t know it.”

  I whispered, “What are you looking at?”

  Trina smiled. “We thought we should get real equipment for our detective work.”

  She pointed at a page of wireless lapel microphones that could be hidden under a shirt. There was a pen camera that could sit in a pocket and capture everything through a tiny lens on the cap. I even saw a bug that looked like a bug with an ad that read, “Be a fly on the wall”. Remi scrolled down the screen and stopped at a remote-controlled surveillance tank with a video camera mounted on the turret.

  “Oh, man, this is what we need,” he said. “We can pretty well spy on anyone with this baby.”

  “Hel-lo, did you see the price?” Trina asked.

  Remi wouldn’t give up. “We could pool our savings. And when I get my job back at the store, I’ll be able to cough up some extra money.”

  “Yeah, about that, Remi . . . ”

  My friend turned back to the screen and pointed at the spy tank. “Don’t you think this would be the coolest gadget?”

  While the tank would be good for detective work only, it could also be used to track the prairie dogs by Remi’s trailer home.

  “How much do you have now?” I asked Remi.

  “I can cover about half,” he said. “How about you?”

  “I have ten bucks,” I said.

  “Ten bucks?!”

  Trina clamped her hand over Remi’s mouth and glanced at the counter, where the librarian and the waiting teens glared at us.

  Remi asked, “Why so little? After all the work you do in the store.”

  “My parents don’t pay me. Dad says that I work so I can have food on the table and a roof over my head.”

  Trina chuckled. “My dad’s always telling me the same thing.”

  “Come on, guys,” Remi said. “Do you want to be serious detectives or not? Oh, cool, it comes in blue too.”

  “I think Remi might be right. The website says the mike can pick up a whisper. It has everything we need,” I argued.

  Trina shook her head. “We can’t afford the tank. Ooo, how about this?”

  She clicked on the image of a teddy bear Stuffy Spy. Remi and I groaned. The teenagers coughed in our direction.

  One complained, “They’re not even using the computer. When is their time up?”

  Trina shot back, “We booked it for twenty minutes. We still have five minutes left.”

  The librarian cleared her throat. “Not if you continue talking. In fact, it doesn’t even look like you’re using the computer.”

  “We’re using it,” I said. “I have to check my email.”

  I pushed my friend out of the seat, sat at the computer, and called up my email program. At least we looked like we were doing something at the computer. I cracked a smile at the cranky teens as I typed in my password and waited for the program to load.

  “We can afford the Stuffy Spy,” Trina said.

  “I can also afford to buy broccoli, but you don’t see me buying it,” Remi said. “Marty, ask your parents for the money to get the tank.”

  “Actually, I think you might have to take a pay cut at the store . . . ”

  “What?!”

  The librarian swooped down on us. “Your time is up.”

  “We still have two minutes,” Trina argued.

  “Hurry up!” one of the teens yelled.

  “Back of the line for yelling in the library,” the librarian shouted. Apparently, she was allowed to yell, but we weren’t. “As for you three, your time is up. Now.”

  “I have to shut down my email,” I said.

  When I looked at the monitor, my mouth dropped open. The inbox was full. Most days, I was lucky to get one email and usually it was from some banker from a far-away country offering me a hundred-million dollars, if only I would give him all my personal information. These emails were definitely not from that friendly and desperate banker. The subject heading of the first message read:

  “Slanty-eyed, ching-chong is nothing more than a dilly ding-d
ong.”

  This nasty note was the first of many.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The email lingered like the bitter aftertaste of cough syrup. I tried to fill my mind with happier images like playing road hockey with Remi or the smell of Trina’s hair, but nothing washed away the hateful words I had just read. They made me feel confused, angry, ashamed and guilty. Most of all, I felt helpless against the cyber bully, because he hid behind a fake email address, which gave me no chance to answer his cruel words.

  I wanted to see the rest of the messages, but at the same time I didn’t want to look. It was like picking at scabs that I knew would only get worse if I touched them. Still, I couldn’t resist. I moused the cursor over the next header.

  “You don’t have to read the messages, Marty,” Trina said.

  “Yeah, this guy’s a monkey butt,” Remi added.

  “Why would they write this about me?” I asked. “I never did anything to anyone, did I?”

  “You did nothing wrong,” Trina declared. “Think of the emails as clues that point to the cyber bully.”

  Remi said, “I don’t think he wants us to find him. A real bully wants to take on the wimps. That’s how he can prove he’s tough. This guy doesn’t want to come out in the open, because he knows he doesn’t have the muscle to back up the mouth.”

  I shook my head, “He knows Principal Henday will kick him out of school if he gets caught. This guy’s smart.”

  “A bully is not smart,” Trina argued. “They’re dumb. Always.”

  I wrote my name on the computer sign up sheet and took my place in line. At the computers, three teens wearing headphones played video games. They looked like they were going to use every second of their time.

  “We’ll find him, Marty,” Remi said.

  “We don’t even know what he looks like. All we have to go on is what he wrote.”

  “Let’s look at the messages,” Trina suggested.

  Remi rubbed his chin. “I bet this guy’s a scrawny peewee. A real bully would write something like, ‘On Tuesday, I’m going to pound you into hamburger’, or ‘On Thursday, you’re going to be deader than chopped wood’.”