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had just finished cramming down his throat. It was so good, probably the best he’d had.

  He thought about the five points he was going to lose on his next assignment. It was a comic strip that he had made with Brent and Julie, two of his greatest friends ever. It was called “Teeny Sean” and was based on an alternate reality in which Sean was at least half his actual size and lived in a thimble. This particular comic strip ended with Sean being mistaken for a gummy bear and eaten by one of the teachers. He felt kind of bad about this one because he didn’t know the teacher very well; it just didn’t seem fair.

  His mind drifted to a girl in his computer art class named Ashley. “She sure is cute” he thought. “I should ask her…”

  His thoughts were lurched back to his poster as he approached his locker. The wall above it looked barer than he remembered. Upon closer inspection his worst fears were realized: His prized Britney Spears poster was gone. Sean was filled with rage and heartbreak. Fighting the tears he scanned the hallways for anyone who looked suspicious. There weren’t many people around, but how long had it been gone?

  “Snap! Anyone could have taken it!” Sean said to himself. “The only thing I can do is make a “missing” poster of some kind and watch every single person in this school.” At that very moment, Sean resolved to find the person who stole his poster and get it back from them.

  “No matter what the cost, no matter the fight, no matter how high up this goes; even if I have to cross the stinky bog I will find it!” He grabbed a notebook, a pen, a sticky note and went to his Creative Writing class.

  “You’re very late, Sean” Mr. Moon said, “That’s five points off your assignment today.”

  “I know” Sean answered, “sorry I’m late.” Sure Sean felt like John Rambo on his way to free every P.O.W. no matter what got in his way, but that didn’t mean he should be rude to the Moon, he probably didn’t do anything to warrant any back talk.

  Sean handed in his comic strip, went to his seat in the back of the room and class went on like nothing happened.

  Brent leaned over and said, “Dude, why are you so late?”

  “It’s gone, Brent. My Britney Spears poster is gone.”

  Brent said nothing for what felt to him like forever. He then broke the silence between them by saying, “You’re going to rampage, aren’t you.”

  Sean said nothing in reply, he just picked up his pen and started writing on the sticky note he grabbed from his locker. He could hear that there was a class happening around him and he tried to convince himself and anyone else who cared that he was paying attention to it, but he wasn’t. In fact he only paid attention once, and although he thought it was awesome, it really had nothing to do with anything in the class.

  The Moon said something to a kid named Jeff. Jeff must have been in his usual douchey mood and said, “Yer Mom.” Without a thought, the Moon replied, “Maybe I am your mom.” Sean laughed out loud turned to Brent and gave him the best high five in the history of awesome high fives. Then he went back to writing on his sticky note.

  Brent couldn’t see what Sean had been writing all class, but he knew it meant business, whatever it was. So, after class, Brent followed Sean to the front of the room to see what he wrote.

  “Mr. Moon, can I borrow four pieces of tape that are about two inches long?” Sean asked.

  Moon nodded and handed him the tape.

  “What did you write?” Brent asked.

  Sean held up the note which in big, dark letters said, “BRING IT BACK!”

  Brent shivered. “That spells business”

  As they left the classroom, Julie started walking with them, “How great was it when the Moon said, ‘Maybe I am your mom’ to Jeff?”

  “The best” Sean said, but his heart wasn’t in it and his thoughts drifted from the conversation. All he could think of was getting his note on the wall and finding his poster.

  Without a good bye, Sean split off from the two and went to tape the note above his locker, just where the poster had been.

  He stood in front of his locker and watched people walk by. Sean did this everyday and between every class, but this time he had a purpose. He needed to find out who stole his poster and he was collecting ideas in his head as to how he’d go about this daunting task.

  Reid stopped at Sean’s locker and said, “Hey, nice sign.”

  “Thanks” Sean answered, “I made it last hour. I’m hoping whoever took the poster will bring it back to me."

  “Yeah… I wonder who took it.” Reid speculated.

  “Well, you know what they say…”

  Reid stopped and thought for a moment. With a small amount of hesitation, he said, “Well, I’m not sure about what ‘they’ say, but isn’t it you and Marcus that say ‘punk is mainstream’?”

  “Well, yeah, but ‘they’ say something about the criminal always returning to the scene of the crime. I think that’s what ‘they’ say anyway.”

  “Yeah” Reid replied, “it is a possibility. ‘They’ do say a lot of stuff.”

  Sean stared at Reid wondering if there was any way he could sound less intelligent and said, “Yeah, well, I just want to bring the person who took it to justice.”

  “Yeah, I want to find him and ‘lay the smack down’. Wait, do ‘they’ say that, too? Maybe ‘they’ took your poster! Who are ‘they’ anyway?”

  Sean shook his head. “I don’t know, dude, but I have to go to Foods.”

  “Alright” Reid said, “I’ll see you later.”

  “Yeah, see ya later.”

  Walking away, Sean made a mark in his notebook by Reid’s name. “It’s funny that he was at my locker right away. Like ‘they’ say, “the criminal always returns to the scene of the crime”. I’ll have to keep my eye on you, Reid.”

  Once classes were over and most everyone had abandoned the halls until morning, Sean searched for his lost possession; first, walking up and down every hallway except for those which were too close to the stinky bog known as the Ag wing. “There’s only a hand full of kids that go down there anyway” he rationalized. He continued to himself, “Furthermore, I don’t even talk to any of them, so why would they steal from me?” his logic was solid.

  He had been up and down every hallway known to student, teacher, and student-teacher only to come up empty handed, and so he had one more option for the day: Garbage Cans. He didn’t like the sound of it, but Sean knew he had to start digging before they were emptied.

  In the first garbage can, Sean found three working pens, a notebook with half its pages blank, and a small stack of black and white photographs that were likely someone’s photography assignment. Sean was probably travelling down a slippery slope towards hoarding trash, but that’s a whole other story. From each garbage can flowed countless treasures. There were love notes, hate notes, magnets, books, Spanish to English flashcards, mystery video tapes which would be very interesting later, and two shallow pinch pots that looked strikingly similar to ash trays. Although Sean was sure that these treasures would bring him joy in the future, he was discouraged by the fact that he wasn’t any closer to finding his poster. He threw his findings in the bottom of his locker and, like his classmates and friends, left the school.

  Fifteen minutes later, he found himself walking into Marcus’ house, which was the epicenter of social gatherings, gossip, music, TV, movies and all-around hanging out.

  “There he is!” Marcus announced, “Showing up like a Donner should.”

  “Speaking of showing up like a Donner,” Julie said “yesterday, your little brother showed up at Erickson’s. We were walking in to get some sodas and he just appeared and he wasn’t wearing shoes. I was like, “Where’s your shoes” and he didn’t say anything. Then when we were leaving I saw him digging in the garbage with his shoeless feet kicking in the air. Then he came out with rollerblades and I was like, ‘That’s why we call him Jebidiah.’”

  “That’s funny and really weird” Sean said as though he was paying any attention, bu
t his mind was consumed with thoughts of his beloved poster. There was no doubt about it; the poster was definitely stolen, but by whom? If ‘they’ were right, and there was no reason to think ‘they’ could ever be wrong, the person would return to his locker. The question remained, would the true criminal return more than anyone else or would he only mosey by every now and then. Sean knew the latter was a possibility, but he would never admit it out loud. The problem with the theory that the person at his locker the most wasn’t necessarily the criminal, was that there would be no way to pinpoint the true criminal, because every kid in the school could just as easily have been the culprit. This was a problem he was not ready to face.

  Sean wasn’t aware of what everyone was talking about; he truly couldn’t even be sure that anyone was talking. Hoping that he wasn’t interrupting an important conversation or a conversation at all, he asked, “Who do you guys think stole my poster?”

  Everyone turned to Sean and stared at him. By their confused expressions, Sean could tell that what he had said was completely off topic and just maybe a little appalling.

  After what seemed to Sean like an eternity,