Page 59 of For Your Own Good
Agree with heart attack. She was totally unhealthy.
I liked her. I’m sorry she’s gone.
OMG this is SO SAD. WHAT IS HAPPENING?
Calm down, people die every day.
At our school, they do.
Those are the students who think Sonia’s death was natural. Another group is convinced it wasn’t. Teddy participates in this conversation.
Is it possible we’ve had TWO murders at Belmont?
I mean, what if someone did kill her?
If it’s poison, it has to be arsenic or cyanide.
Um, there’s like a million poisons in the world. Not two.
WHYWOULD ANYONE POISON MRS.B?
Right?? I can think of at least ten other teachers that would be murdered before her.
But what if it is? My parents are gonna lose it.
We’ll know soon if we’re right.
If it’s a murder, the media is going to blow up.
Is this going to affect my college applications?
Oh shit, I didn’t even think of that.
My parents will totally sue if it hurts my college chances.
You can’t sue for that.
How do you know?
My dad is a judge.
If you didn’t commit the murder, it’s not going to hurt your chances.
Jesus Christ, let’s all calm down until we know for sure.
Teddy scrolls through the comments, adding his own to egg them on. It doesn’t take long for one of them to see the obvious.
Guys, what if she was poisoned? Like with the same thing that killed Courtney’s mom?
Boomgoes the dynamite.
THE COFFEE PODSwere the flaw in Teddy’s original plan. He’d realized that after a lot of reflection and a hard, honest look at what had happened. It was all about the pods.
The faculty all had their favorite flavors, so on a normal day it was almost guaranteed the right person would drink the right pod. The day of Sonia’s party wasn’t normal, though, which ruined everything. Coffee pods were just too impersonal.
When he began working on his plan to save Courtney, he was forced to rethink the method. Trying to put something in the coffee after it was brewed seemed impossible. No way to do that without getting caught. He also couldn’t put it in the sweetener, the sugar, or the milk without potentially affecting the wrong person.
A real conundrum. A puzzle. And Teddy likes puzzles. Good ones, at least. Not the kind that insult his intelligence.
