By Emerald Ayres
Toast was the name of Dad’s rainbow scarab beetle. I say “was” because Toast was found dead on the floor of Dad’s office this morning.
“At least I won’t have to look after it anymore.” Alexa, my older sister and the one who found Toast, looks down at us over a mug of coffee. “You three morons are enough.”
Said like a true teenager. At fourteen, Alexa has decided she is the hottest thing since a curling iron. As if owning said curling iron makes her a superhuman. Shocker—it doesn’t. Superhuman ability isn’t needed to burn off a chunk of your own hair. Her age—not her competency—was why Dad picked her to look after us and Toast while he was away on a weekend work trip. I’m not usually one to criticize my father, but that was a poor choice. Alexa hates bugs.
I, on the other hand, was quite fond of Toast. Which is why the beetle’s sudden death makes me sad. Guilt grows to swallow the feeling as I sense my younger brother side-eying me across the table. Tim turned nine last week. When I dare a glance at him, Tim licks his jam-covered cereal spoon and smirks.
“Candace, you’re the beetle-lover,” Alexa says to me. “Clean it up after breakfast. You can give it a burial or whatever.”
I toss my spoon into my half-eaten bowl of cereal. “Could you care less? He had a name.”
In the booster seat in the chair next to mine, my two-year-old sister, Susy, throws her plastic spoon on the ground. I’d like to think it was in solidarity.
“Toast!” Susy says.
Alexa shrugs and I help Susy off her seat.
“Fine,” I say. “But you two are doing dishes.”
Tim’s groans of protest follow Susy and I down the hallway to Dad’s office. We pass Chuck, the old-man family cat, who sprawls none-too-gracefully in his bed, asleep. I stop to grab a wad of toilet paper from the bathroom.
Dad’s office looks exactly as you’d expect an anthropology professor’s office to look. Every inch of the walls are covered in posters picturing everything from the coolest ancient relics uncovered to the stages of human evolution. His desk is a bit small. Tucked beside his desk is an office chair nearly as old as I am, which probably would’ve been replaced by now if Dad didn’t love rolling around in the thing so much. But the shelves. Dear god, the shelves. They put my teeth collection to shame. Skulls, fossils—you name it —crowd against Dad’s collection of textbooks like an army assembling for battle. Carefully set on its own special shelf is the acrylic beetle container. Empty.
I find Toast’s corpse on the floor.
His body is limbless, detached legs scattered around him in a morbid halo. Carefully, I scoop Toast’s remains into the toilet paper I brought.
The beetle was a gift from one of Dad’s students a few months ago and had become an honorary member of our family. His name was courtesy of Susy, who happened to be holding a slice of jammed toast when Dad asked for name suggestions. The name stuck.
“Can we,” Susy pauses, then continues, “play with Toast?”
“No more Toast,” I say, sitting on the floor.
She sits beside me. Her disappointment is brief, and she starts picking enthusiastically at the carpet fuzz. Guilt presses down harder on me.
I was in Dad’s office last night. Unsupervised, handling Toast as Dad’s strict instruction prohibited. He thinks I’m not gentle enough—which is totally not true! Yeah, there was that one time I got a little too excited checking how Toast’s joints worked. But that was one time. I wasn’t trying to hurt Toast. He’s just so cool. His bones are outside of his body. How the heck do joints work when your bones aren’t normal bones? Perfectly fine, I came to learn. Dad didn’t approve of my methods though. Hence the supervision rule.
It's not that I mind Dad’s supervision. It’s just that Susy is always there with us wanting to hold Toast too— which she isn’t allowed to do yet—and three people crowding around one beetle is too many people. All I wanted was a little one-on-one time with Toast.
Unfortunately, Tim caught me last night. He stuck his stupid face in the room and shouted, “Boo!” before running off. I almost jumped out of my skin. He was supposed to be at his friend Dave’s house playing some awful zombie-killing video game, not prowling around here. I swear, those things are gonna make him crazy someday.
And knowing Tim, he’s gonna tattle on me.
Dad will be gone until tonight. When he gets back, I plan to ask him to take me with him on his next museum trip. I doubt he will if he thinks I murdered his favorite beetle.
I have to prove my innocence.
“We gotta find out who did this,” I say, and stand. “C’mon, Susy.”
I stalk back into the hallway, Susy following, and stop at Chuck. Suspect number one. If determined enough, he could have gotten into the container. He opens one eye and I hold out Toast’s remains.
“Did you do this?” I ask.
Chuck yawns, closing his open eye. Undeterred, I pull Chuck from his bed and hold the beetle bits against his face. He gives me a ‘please stop’ look. Susy laughs.
“What are you doing?” Alexa surveys me from the kitchen doorway.
I try to look professional. “Interrogating a suspect.”
“Chuck is a cat.”
“I know that.”
“Chuck was also locked in the garage last night. I let him back in before breakfast and he’s been asleep since then.”
Tim cranes his head around Alexa and laughs. “Candace is so in trouble.”
“Shut up!” I set Chuck down a little too forcefully.
Susy echoes me. “Shut up!”
Tim smiles. I want nothing more than to wipe it off his face, preferably with the floor. “She was in Dad’s office last night with Toast.”
“So?” Alexa rolls her eyes. “I don’t care.”
“She’s not allowed. Dad doesn’t like her yanking on Toast’s legs.”
“That was one time,” I sputter indignantly, “and I did not yank.”
“What’s Dad gonna think? You were the last one in there.”
Evidently I was not, based on the beetle corpse I didn’t corpsify. “I didn’t kill Toast!”
“Looks like you did,” Tim says. “I’m telling Dad.”
Oh my god, he’s framing me.
The realization slams into me and I gawk at Tim. He’s totally cracked. Those video games have finally made him crazy. He knows what Dad thinks about me handling Toast alone and could have gone in right after I left. I’m the perfect person to pin it on. Framed for beetle murder at the ripe age of twelve. You’ve gotta be kidding me.
I snap out of my shock.
Finger pointed threateningly, I advance on Tim. “I will put peanut butter in all of your socks.” He backs up, immediately fearful. “Don’t you dare, Timothy.”
Tim quickly disappears into the kitchen, followed by Alexa. His flash of fear makes me feel better, but not much. Tim holds my chance at going to the museum hostage.
I clench my fists and see Susy doing the same —hopefully in solidarity again. I look at her a moment longer. I guess, technically, Susy is a suspect. But based on her height alone, inability to leap great distances as Chuck can, and the fact that I’m dead certain Tim is framing me, I declare her innocent.
On to suspect number three.
“I have an idea,” I tell Susy, “and I need your help.”
The bathroom door slams shut behind me as I enter, a Costco-sized jar of Kraft smooth peanut butter tucked under one arm. Tim peers into the bathtub where Susy points, having successfully lured him into the bathroom. Behind them sits the sink, counter, and toilet. A small vanity mirror chair is half-tucked into a space under the counter. Tim looks up at the sound of my entry.
“What were you really doing last night?” I ask.
“I was with Dave.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You can call him and ask.” Tim’s eyes flash to the jar under my arm. “Why do you have that?”
I ignore his question. Calling Dave would be pointless. He’d cover Tim’s obvious lie. “You’re framing me for murdering Toast.”
“No, I’m not. You murdered Toast.”
“You’ve finally gone nuts from those video games, haven’t you?”
“I’m not nuts.” Tim’s eyes dart to the door but I stand in the way. “I liked Toast.”
Slowly, I unscrew the lid of the peanut butter jar. “Toast would say otherwise.” Tim’s eyes shoot to mine. The fear is back. Good. I step closer.
Tim jumps onto the lip of the bathtub. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on.”
“Tell the truth, Timothy.”
“I am.”
I sink my hand wrist-deep into the smooth peanut butter. “You leave me no choice.”
A minute and a lot of struggling later, I have Tim pinned face-up in the bathtub. I smear another handful of peanut butter across his face. “Confess!”
Tim shrieks again.
Peanut butter is everywhere. Streaked across the shower curtains, smeared on the tiled walls of the bathtub, and most importantly—all over Tim. He struggles beneath me. I keep him down. My knees slip against the peanut butter in the tub. Tim is covered in enough of the stuff to get a rhino to confess but his resolve holds. Standing on the bathmat as our gleeful spectator, Susy laughs so hard her face turns completely red.
Feeling a little desperate, I hold my next handful above his eyes. If this doesn’t work, I don’t know what will. “Tell me the truth or you’re getting a peanut butter blindfold.”
“I DIDN’T DO IT!”
Unfortunately, I believe him.
“What is going on?” Alexa’s voice is muffled by the door. When she enters the disaster zone, the look on her face makes me wish I had my camera. “Oh my god.”
I release Tim. He sits up and starts whacking me with his peanut butter-covered arms.
“Why,” Tim demands, his voice loud and thoroughly revolted, “did you cover me in so much peanut butter?”
“Because you suck!” I whack him back. Our arms bat against each other and several globs of peanut butter go flying. “And because I didn’t believe you.”
“Believe me now?”
“Yes!”
We stop hitting each other and retreat to opposite ends of the bathtub. Tim grabs a towel hanging nearby and wipes his face. Susy’s laughter subsides as she catches her breath.
Alexa turns a superhuman look of shock, disgust, and anger on me all at once. “Dad is going to kill me. And then I’m going to kill you. Look at this!”
I ignore Alexa. Only the bathtub is a wreck. It could have been much worse. I clamber out of the bathtub, pulling the empty peanut butter jar with me. Susy scoops some peanut butter off my knee with her hand and eats it, the giggles returning. She eyes the jar.
I squint at Tim. “You still look suspicious.”
Tim squints back. “Your face looks suspicious.”
“I put Toast back in his container after you caught me.”
Susy reaches for the jar in my hands. “I want it.” I set it out of reach on the counter, and her giggling quickly disappears.
“Fine,” Tim says. “But if you didn’t kill Toast, and I didn’t kill Toast,” he gestures wildly, “who did?”
There was only one more suspect.
I turn on Alexa. “What were you doing last night?”
“I was in my room,” Alexa says.
“No, you weren’t,” Tim counters.
“I told you not to go in my room. That’s my space.”
“Dave and I needed batteries, and your clock didn’t need all four.” Tim looks at me. We exchange determined looks. “Alexa did it.”
Alexa scowls. “Oh, come on.”
I point at her. “You hated Toast. Of course you’d kill him.”
“You’re insane,” Alexa says. “I didn’t murder Toast, I was—” She stops herself.
Tim also points at her. “Then what were you doing?”
“I was with Jeremy, okay?”
“Dave’s older brother?” Tim gags. “Gross.”
I would laugh if I didn’t also think this was the grossest thing since cottage cheese. Seriously. Who thought wet cheese was a good idea?
I gag a little.
Alexa flushes. “Dad won’t let me date until I’m sixteen. Please don’t tell him.”
“Or what?” Tim asks, regaining some of his smugness despite the peanut butter stuck in his hair.
Whining, Susy pulls against the vanity chair. “Peanut Butter!”
“Or I’ll tell Dad about the Zombie Slasher 5 game under your mattress,” Alexa says. “What’s that thing rated, eighteen plus?”
Tim scowls. “You’re not supposed to be in my room either!”
“Touché.” Alexa crosses her arms.
Tim is none-too-pleased and neither am I. It appears we’re all innocent. But beetles don’t just spontaneously dislodge all their limbs and die. That’s not science, that’s—
I stop.
Susy pulls out the vanity chair and, with herculean effort, climbs onto it. With her new height, she easily grabs the jar.
“Susy,” I say slowly. “Did you play with Dad’s beetle last night?”
A moment of silence passes.
“Yeah,” Susy says.
“Can you show us?”
The three of us parade into Dad’s office, following Susy’s lead. With another herculean effort, she rolls Dad’s office chair to the shelves, climbs up, opens the beetle container, and sticks her hand inside to pull out a plastic leaf.
Susy looks over her shoulder at us like she just won a medal. “Ta-da!”
I help her down. She sits on the floor and begins enthusiastically picking apart the leaf.
“Mystery solved,” Alexa says dryly. “Our detective can clean up the mess.”
I think of the bathtub and groan.
Tim shakes a fist at me. “I’m telling Dad about the peanut butter.”
“Do that,” I threaten, “and I’ll spill the beans about Zombie Slasher 5.”
“Yeah, well do that and I’ll tell about Jeremy.” Tim shoots a look at Alexa, who steps in.
“Which is why none of us will be telling Dad anything,” she says with superhuman finality.
“Except for who the real culprit is,” I add. We all agree.
I spend the rest of the day purging the bathroom of peanut butter before Dad gets home, considering what I’ve learned.
Alexa has a boyfriend. Yuck.
Tim has an even more violent video game than the ones he already plays. Lovely.
Susy is in serious need of proper beetle-handling etiquette. We’ll have that conversation later.
Most importantly, my innocence has been proven.
Call me Detective Peanut Butter, I guess.
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