I don’t know of any other profession that would ask you to spend your lunch duct- taped to cinder blocks, but there I was, spread-eagled against the cafeteria wall, red and black tape holding me in place. I had to close my eyes to keep from getting dizzy. Two feet doesn’t sound like much until your feet are dangling that far above the ground. The cafeteria echoed with hoots and claps as I remembered the day Joey and Justin came to me with the idea.

“That is the worst fundraiser idea I’ve ever heard,” I had told them. I leaned back in the office chair behind my cluttered desk and stared at the two of them. Joey, the taller, chunkier one, shrugged to settle the weight of his backpack into a more comfortable position. His sidekick, Justin, just stood, his head twitching randomly to get the long hair hanging from a center part over his eyes out of the way.

“It’s for the kids.” Justin spread his hands and widened his eyes.

It was all for the kids; spreading seats out to create social distancing in the classrooms, trying to teach to the students in seats and the kids on the Google Meet at the same time, extending deadlines. In the year since the pandemic started, teachers had stretched themselves until all the elasticity they had was gone, and yet again, here was something slightly dangerous teachers would be asked to do “for the kids”.

“Come on, Miss Murphy. It’s gonna raise a bunch of money,” Joey said. “And you know the drama department can always use money.”

“Kids are going to pay money to stick a teacher up on the wall of the cafeteria with duct tape?”

Joey nodded. “They’ll vote with their money. We put a jar for each teacher on the counter in the front office. Then everybody will put money in the jar for the teacher they want to see duct taped to the wall, and when we count the money, our drama officers will tape the victim — I mean, the winner — to the wall during lunch one day.”

“And who do you think would agree to this adventure?”

“Well, we know Benson would do it.” Joey looked at his sidekick for confirmation. “And we talked to Christensen and James.”

“I’d like to see Plummer up there,” said Justin.

“Did he agree? I can’t imagine him agreeing to let students get that close to him,” I said, surprised Joey and Justin had talked Plummer into the wacky adventure. Plummer had his sense of humor removed before he began teaching.

“We haven’t talked to him,“ Joey said, “but we would get a lot of money if everyone thought they could vote him up.”

Justin nodded, then twitched again to get the recalcitrant hair out of his eyes.

“So it’s a thing? We can do the thing and duct tape you to the wall?” Joey asked.

“Me? I’m not one of the choices. You haven’t talked to Plummer about this, and you haven’t talked to me about being taped up there like a bug on a sample board so I’m out.”

“Come on, Murphy. We’d do it for you.”

I sighed.

“Okay, put me on the ballot. If you can get the others to tell me personally that they want to be a part of your shenanigans, I’ll get the board approval for the fundraiser and we’ll do it.”

Joey high-fived Justin and they left my room.

Our officers decorated a bucket for each teacher and placed them on the counter in the front office. After school on Friday, we pulled the containers, counted the money, and swore each other to secrecy over the weekend. On my way out of the school, I checked in with Lenore Roland, the woman who had been my mentor teacher five years ago when I began teaching at Quanah High School.

Entering Lenore’s room calmed me. My classroom had stacks of papers, piles of scripts, and mounds of props for our latest show. The mess worked for me, but the confusion, combined with the enormous energy that the speech and theater kids generated, kept my adrenaline pumping. Lenore’s room was calm, neatly organized, and a sensory vacation.

“Does it ever get loud in here?” I asked.

“Only when you arrive,” she said drily.

“The results are in for the tape a teacher to the wall contest.”

“And you won,” Lenore said.

“Well, yeah, but how did you know?”

“I keep my ear to the ground.” Lenore rarely grinned, so the slow smile that spread across her face delighted me. “Joey and Justin were determined you’d be the one against the wall.”

The itchy tape startled me back to reality. The hand on the clock had barely moved. I hadn’t had a conversation about how I was going to be unstuck from the wall and the tile below me looked awfully hard. Maybe there should be some padding? I took a deep breath and closed my eyes to wait out the sentence.

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Rapier Wit, A Regina Murphy Mystery #1
Genre: Cozy
Release: March 2021
Purchase Link

When an extra body turns up backstage, Quanah High School’s production of Romeo and Juliet is in trouble. Small-town high school teacher Regina Murphy has to stop directing and muster up her amateur sleuthing skills to find out who killed stern math teacher Robert Slayton, an ex-military man whose classroom demeanor has made him the center of conflicts with students, parents, and other faculty.

Against the advice of Sheriff Mac Snyder, Reggie balances her day job initiating students into the mysteries of the dangling participle, explaining why stage right is the audience’s left, and confronting plagiarists to protect her students and make sure the curtain goes up on time.

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Meet the author
Jennifer Oakley Denslow is an educator and author. When she isn’t using every spare second to pen her latest novel, she can be found coaching her debate team and working with young actors to create the emotional experiences for which theater was created. She lives in northeast Oklahoma with her husband in a house with over 5,000 books, none of which both of them want to read.

All comments are welcomed.