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Grade
7

“You don't have to do this!” I shouted down the alley ready to pursue them, but they came out of the shadows with a gun pointed at me.

“Yes, yes I do.” The bang resounded throughout the alleyway and suddenly I was falling. The world seemed to slow down, sirens blaring, flashes of red and blue lights appeared before my eyes.

The last thing I remember was when the paramedics came and wheeled me away to the ambulance, and I thought to myself, “Where did I go wrong?”

 

It started of an ordinary day at the police station, typing away at my desk when over the PA I heard, “Would Diana Wong please come to the conference room?”

I started to get up from my chair when my best friend in the force Kathy Lee grabbed my wrist and said, “Lucky! You already have a job!”

I shrugged and replied, “I guess.”

I was walking to the conference room when a senior officer I didn't know spit on my shoe and whispered in my ear, “You Orientals should stick with your math.”

His words stung like a knife in my side, but I held my head high so he wouldn't know. I joined the police force to make a difference, not to conform with society's views of Asians. We aren't all mathematicians.

 

I opened the door to the conference room and was met with the cold stares of my superior officers. The air was so thick I was nearly suffocating.

One of them coughed and said, “Diana, the reason you have been picked is that you might know the victim in this case.”

“Victim? What kind of case is this exactly, Sir?” I asked quietly, dreading the answer.

“A homicide,” and a picture flashed on the screen and my breath stopped. On the screen was my old Chinese teacher. It took all the strength in my body not to collapse right there.

“She worked at a school you used to go to,” he continued. I wanted him to stop talking, each word like another cut on my body, but I knew I had a job to do.

“Are you up to the task?” he asked staring at me intently.

“Yes Sir!” my head held high, I walked out of the room ready to prove myself to the world.

 

I pulled up to the school and got out of my car when the coroner ran out of the school towards me.

“Hey! I'm Carl, the coroner for this case,” he said, slightly out of breath.

“Ok, I’m Diana,” I replied nonchalantly, already walking to the doors of the school.

“Cool, well nice tohey wait up!” Carl started to frantically run after me, but I was already inside the school.

“Man, this place really brings back memories,” I said to no one in particular. It had been years since I had last been here, running around with my friends, playing games, and getting scolded by our teacher. I stopped that thought right there. I had to keep calm, not think about her, it was too much for me to handle. We walked into the auditorium and I saw something that shattered my heart. There was my teacher, Trixie Fong, dead on the floor, a bullet wound straight through her heart.

 

“Well, here’s the body,” Carl said, without any emotion.

That hurt a bit, just the way he said it.

“So when did she die?” I asked Carl so quietly that I would have thought he didn't hear me, but he responded.

“We don't know exactly, but we can approximate the time of death to be around 11:30 PM,” said Carl.

My next thought was, “Who found the body?”

Carl said in an instant, “It was found by the principal, Ms. Cropper.”

I remembered Ms. Cropper. She hated our Chinese school for no reason other than that we were there at night, but I was snapped out of my thoughts when I noticed a very interesting fact about my teacher’s corpse.

“Where is all the blood?” I asked Carl, trying to avoid looking directly at my old teacher, since it made me sick to my stomach.

“We found minute traces of the victim’s blood on the custodian’s equipment,” he said.

I was about to ask Carl another question when Ms. Cropper burst onto the scene.

“Hey! How is the investigation going?” she asked in her high and far too squeaky voice.

“Fine, really, but could you please leave the crime scene?” I asked.

She just stood there not moving, with her unwavering smile plastered on her face. In all honesty, she always had creeped me out.

 

“Oh! I just thought I would tip you off on who I think the killer is,” she said like it was the most normal thing in the world.

“What! Who!” I almost yelled but resisted the urge to.

“Oh I think it's Mr. Rogers the custodian because of the lack of blood,” Ms. Cropper said while checking her nails. I almost agreed with her when I remembered something about the school that could give us solid evidence against the perp.

“Why don't we check the cameras on the doors?” I asked Ms. Cropper, when she replied far too quickly for my liking.

“We don't have to do that!” I could see the beads of sweat rolling down her face. She was being very suspicious, so I pushed the idea.

“Yes, let’s see the footage from the cameras,” I expected so many things, but Ms. Cropper pulling out a gun and pointing it at me was not one.

“It's too late now, I'll have to shoot you now,” her hand quivering so much she pulled the trigger by accident.

The shot missed me, but I heard Carl scream out in pain. when I looked back at him I saw his leg, it was bleeding profusely and then I heard Ms. Cropper running for the door.

“I need backup following the perp and an ambulance at Nature’s Path elementary school now!” I shouted into my walkie talkie while taking off for the door.

 

I was tailing Ms. Cropper’s car when she took a sharp left turn and I almost crashed into someone else's car and barely was able to pursue her. I saw her run down an alley and I got out of my car to follow her.

“You don't have to do this!” I shouted down the alley ready to pursue her, but Ms. Cropper came out of the shadows with a gun pointed at me and said

“Yes, yes I do”.

The bang resounded throughout the alleyway and suddenly I was falling. The world seemed to slow down, sirens blaring, flashes of red and blue lights appeared before my eyes. The last thing I remember was when the paramedics came and wheeled me away to the ambulance, and I thought to myself, Where did I go wrong?”