Snippets of Greatness

Short Story: The Mystery of the Missing Scores

Loosely Based on a True Story.

When I arrived in the band room that Friday  morning, I found it in a state of disarray. The desk and tables in the front of the room held their usual semi-organized clutter, but Mrs. P's office was a different story. All of her books, binders, and folders had been pulled off the shelves and sat in haphazard piles on the floor, along with an upright bass that wasn't so upright anymore, and two of her instruments. Mrs. P herself stood in the midst of it all, digging through a drawer of of one of the filing cabinets. I stood in the doorway, surveying the mess, when she looked up and saw me.
"Good, you're here. Maybe you can help me," she said.
"I can try. What's going on?" I asked.
"You know that one Christmas piece I was going to have Gold Jazz play this year? The one I conducted at my first concert here, four years ago?" She asked. I nodded, and she continued. "I can't find the score for it anywhere. And while I was looking for it, I realized that the scores for all of the jazz tunes from that concert are missing. This is becoming a bit of a contretemps."
I helped her look until the bell rang and I had to go to History. After a particularly boring lesson on the aborigines of Australia, I spotted something in the hallway on the way to Health class. An unfamiliar boy wearing all black was shuffling down the hall with his head down. What caught my attention, though, was the bunch of paper protruding from his backpack. As I got closer, I realized that it looked suspiciously like... A conductor's score. Just then, the kid turned around and noticed that his backpack was open. He zipped it closed and took off down the hall as the two-minute warning bell rang.
I spent the rest of the morning cogitating how I was going to get those scores from that kid, whoever he was. I couldn't be sure that the papers were actually scores, though, so I continued to help Mrs. P and Maria (Mrs. P's teacher's assistant) search for them during free period.
"Are you sure they're not still in the auditorium somewhere?" Maria said from her precarious position atop the illogical step stool with wheels.
"After four years? I seriously doubt it," Mrs. P said. Maria shrugged and continued rooting through the boxes on top the the storage cabinet.
Suddenly, Mrs. P gasped. Maria and I turned and saw that she was holding a folder that looked just like the ones she always kept her scores in. It even said "Jazz Conductor" on it in her handwriting. We all held our breath as she opened it, but the chorus of seraphs in my head was silenced when we found it empty.
Free period ended soon after that. Fourth hour passed uneventfully, there was a pep rally at the end of the day which turned out to be quite the ballyhoo, and then Mrs. P, Maria, and I headed back to the band room to continue the hunt for the missing scores.
When we got there, the door was open.
"That's strange, I thought I locked it," Mrs. P said. We entered, and heard someone rummaging around in the music library. Without hesitation, the three of us bolted across the room to apprehend the culprit.
When we reached the doorway, we found the same kid I had seen in the hallway earlier, holding the score for "Riverdance." His backpack was on the floor, filled with more scores, and the terrified expression on his face was priceless.
Mrs. P stepped forward.
"I'm going to give you thirty seconds to tell me who you are and what you're doing in my band room, stealing my scores."
The thief glanced around nervously, looking for an escape. When he saw none, he said in a trembling voice,
"I d-don't go to school here. The band director at m-my school sent me here to s-steal your s-scores because he's jealous of all the great music you have. But you can have it all back, just p-please don't report me to the administration!"
Mrs. P shook her head.
"I'm sorry, I can't just let this go. I don't know how you got here or how you managed to get away with this for this long, but it ends now."
I stepped in and took the "Riverdance" score away from him while Maria emptied all of the other scores out of his backpack, and then we all escorted him to the office, where our administration took care of sending him back to where he belonged. We returned to the band room triumphant, celebrating the fact that the mystery of the missing scores had been solved.