“I know you think you can’t tell me what’s going on. Why Nehemiah got jumped. Why folks are giving you the stink eye. Perhaps you know a bit more about the . . . situation than you let on.” He halts just long enough to see if I betray myself with a reaction before pressing on. “I know things have been tense in this place lately, but not everyone is against you. You need to know you have people you can talk to. You have caring folks around you. Mrs. Fitzgerald. Your mom.”

“You?”

“Let’s not get crazy now.” Mr. Blackmon closes his notebook and fiddles with his water bottle. “But even if you can’t trust anyone grown, you do have something else going for you.”

“What’s that?”

“You’re smart. Try and hide it all you want behind being cool or bored, but you are. So be smarter than your problem. Whatever, or whoever, it is. If they’re bigger, don’t come at them direct. Outmaneuver them.”

“And if they’re smarter?”

“Use your weakness as a strength. And don’t let them see you coming at all.”

With everything that’s gone down, I’m so deep in my feels I can’t think straight. But I have to if I’m going to solve this. Moms got me into reading Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins books. I’ve started a list of guiding principles: think objectively and follow the evidence; think creatively and about every possibility; and never fall in love with your favorite theory. They help me begin to sift through the puzzle pieces so that they make sense:

• Marcel probably knows who did it but enjoys watching my head spin too much to say anything. A gun isn’t her kind of play. It risks her getting her hands dirty.

• I don’t care what Marcel insinuates, I can’t see Nehemiah, Twon, or Rodrigo doing this.

• Pierce is a wild card, but this doesn’t seem like a move he’d make.

• RaShawn has a motive, a couple in fact. He might have been wanting to settle up with Nehemiah. Either that or wanting to fend off or even take over Marcel’s operations.

• Which leaves Kutter. This is right in his wheelhouse. Especially if he wants to take his menace routine to the next level.

It’s already Wednesday and I can’t help but think that I’m still missing a key piece of the puzzle. I could use a witness of some sort.

The stress must be getting to me. I have a headache that feels like construction workers ripping up my skull with jackhammers, so I stop by the nurse’s office to grab an aspirin. I wait behind the counter walling off Mrs. Carson from the students. Mrs. Fitzgerald enters from the rear shadowed by a set of parents whose faces are somewhere between worried and angry. She holds the door to her office open to let the parents go in first. Rather than locked-in lasers, her eyes have a faraway look to them. She moves like all her muscles are sore. With a deep inhale and slow exhale, she closes the door behind her.