© 1 July 2025 Levite
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"Yes, ma'am" the gentleman who called me from Riverhead High said when I said I thought I remembered his name, "I was an Assistant Principal when you were here investigating the computer file issue from the history project."
"Oh, yes, thank you for reminding me. What can I do for you today?"
Mister VanBuren chuckled, "you can tell us where the bubble gum is coming from."
He didn't want to go into a lot of detail over the phone, but instead asked if I could come out to the school and he would show me and I could talk to the custodians who were totally at a loss trying to figure out what was going on. They thought somebody was playing a prank, but they couldn't catch them. We set up a meeting for as soon as school was out that day and I spent the rest of the day telling everybody I was going back to high school.
I did routine work until after lunch, then I checked my kit bag just in case it was needed, and then I drove over to the high school.
I had to show my ID three times to get in the building and then to the office because while the class day had officially ended, there were still students there. The office staff paged Mister VanBuren to tell him he had a guest in the office.
And so I waited in the Principal's Office.
When the Principal arrived he had an older lady with him who was the Custodial Supervisor, Mrs. Preston.
She greeted me with a big smile and a nod and said, "I hope you can solve this one for us. I have no idea what's going on."
"I might be able to help, if somebody told me what's happening. All I know so far is that it involves bubble gum."
"I can show you some of it," the lady said, then she got on her own radio and asked Alex to meet us in room 213.
"On my way, it'll be open," Alex answered.
Mr. VanBuren opened the door and nodded to me.
"Lead the way," I answered and gestured through the door.
I'm glad I had the Chief Custodian and Principal to guide me or I would have been lost. While I did remember some of the layout from the tour I'd had a few years ago, the directions to a regular classroom weren't part of that tour. But we got there and Alex was waiting on us.
"I found another one over there," Alex said as we walked in, "same stuff."
Principal VanBuren began the story, "chewing gum isn't banned in the student handbook, we leave it up to individual teachers. But leaving it under the desk is considered bad behavior and can result in disciplinary action if the student is caught doing it."
Mrs. Preston walked over to the desk Alex had indicated and tipped the chair back to see, "This is old, and it wasn't there, what? Two days ago?"
Alex nodded, "We checked every seat in here and there was only the one."
"Is it the same desk that was in here then?" I asked.
"We put a sticker on the bottom of all the desks so we can track what is where..." Mrs. Preston said, "let me check it." Alex turned the chair over and she read the sticker. "213-09. It's supposed to be here, but it should be in the second row."
"The thing is, it wasn't here." Alex said. "And that's old gum."
I went over and looked at the old gum, and agreed, it wasn't only old, it was so old it had started to show surface decay. Something that, if I remembered correctly, took years of air exposure to begin.
"What about the other one?" I asked.
"Same thing," Alex walked over and felt under one desk, then moved up one, "here it is. This stuff just appears, in several different rooms."
I walked over and looked at it. "May I?" I asked and then when he said 'sure' I pried it off the underside of the desktop. "No glue. How do you get old gum to stick to the desk?"
Alex shrugged, "I'm sorry Miss Lady, but who are you?"
I took care of introducing myself to Alex.
Later I followed Alex around with sample bags from my kit and we collected four wads of antique gum that were as uncontaminated as we could get. All looked to be about the same vintage of pink bubblegum. I tagged them with room and seat number. Then I began asking questions.
"Oh, we find fresh gum here and there. You know, regular gum, green, white, and it's usually fresh, and still sticky. Mostly the kids are good about throwing it in the can. But this stuff, we've been coming across it for a couple of years now. Maybe three, four years. You can ask the others."
Then I wanted to know about when were the classrooms open that somebody could sneak in and do it.
"I don't know. Some of them aren't locked after hours, and other are. And it's been found in both."
I thought about it for a minute, "The rooms we went to are all over this side of the school. What classes are over here?"
As it turned out, most of the classes in the areas where the gun had been found were for Sophomores and a few Junior level courses. But while that was a common link, it didn't explain how it was happening.
I collected one more sample that Mrs. Preston assured me hadn't been there the last time they'd checked the room...
"It happens a lot in here, and we've had the hall camera pointed at this door for ages, it's locked and watched and there's no way to get in here to do it."
I looked at the gum in its bag, "and yet they did. I'll see what I can find out."
"Oh, and Miss Detective." Alex said.
I looked at him and he continued.
"They'll even do it when the school is closed over a holiday weekend."
Mrs. Preston agreed, "And we're going to be closed on Monday, some of us will come in to do a few things..."
"Maybe I'll join you."
I talked to Mister Mills at the Medical Examiner's office about the chances of getting any DNA off old chewing gum and he said it sounded like an interesting problem that he'd try to solve.
He looked at what we thought were the three best samples in their evidence bags. "If it had actually been chewed, there's a possibility of cells from inside their mouth being in the gum. And the artificial rubber should protect them, the trick would be getting enough to test." He peered at another piece and shook it in the bag so he could see the other side, "give us a few days, and I'll call you with what we get."
While he did that I inspected three of the other samples under the microscope, and cut them into pieces, and did what chemical testing I could and came to the conclusion that it was synthetic rubber, with some coloring added to it.
Bubble gum.
There was no sign of an adhesive, but the old dry gum won't stick to anything. Even when moistened, this stuff was as inert as it had been when I scrapped it off the desk.
To make it sticky, I had to get a piece of it warm with a lighter, then moisten the gum that was hot to the touch, and then stick it to the bookshelf in the lab. That process took a couple of minutes, and discolored the gum, that now stank. Which didn't speak well to the idea of somebody sneaking into a classroom unnoticed to do it.
Also, when examined later, I could still tell that my test piece of gum, that was still stuck to the bookshelf, had been exposed to heat. Something I didn't see on any of the pieces from the school.
Then I tried to figure out what brand of bubble gum it was. All of the old gum samples I had collected appeared to be the same. They were all about the same size wad, and all were the same shade of pink. There were a couple of brands that answered to that description, and both were available all over the Island in quantities ranging from a single piece up to a 'party bag' that weighed a pound and a half.
So Friday I went back to the school late in the day and got permission to put a couple of my motion capture cameras and a digital recorder in two of the rooms that had been the most involved with the gum prank.
"That way when somebody comes in we'll know who it is," I said to the Principal and the Chief Custodian.
"You think it's somebody with a key to the building?" Mrs. Preston asked.
I nodded, "Yes. I don't know why they'd do it, other than to prove they can, but that's the only explanation I can come up with is some sort of practical joke. And it could be a stunt for the yearbook or something." I looked from one to the other, "I'll see if I can figure it out for you."
"I'll come with you so it's official and nobody can object," Principal VanBuren said after thinking about for a moment.
There was nobody anywhere near rooms 213 and 304 when I put the cameras in them. We both walked around and made sure that they were well concealed. As was the sound activated digital recorder that was all but invisible next to the markers and erasers in the whiteboard tray.
Then we looked around under all the desks to see if there was any new evidence.
"I'll mark it so we know it was already there," I said when he found one. I went over and blackened the top of it with my marker and left it where it was.
I drove by the school on Saturday, and saw that while the athletic field was being used for a track meet, the school itself appeared deserted, so if somebody had a mind to, they could get in through the gym and the locker rooms and go wandering around.
"With a pocketful of old gum," I said softly.
Monday morning I met Mrs. Preston and some of the other custodial staff right where she said they'd be outside the school and she let me in.
I had to wait until one of the other staff let me in the classrooms. The first thing I did was retrieve my equipment, then I went around and checked the desk's for gum.
304 was clear.
213 had two pieces under different desks, that weren't there on Friday.
I took the cameras back to the staff break room and went out and got my laptop. The motion activated cameras had triggered once all weekend, with one taking twelve seconds of video and the other snapping three still photos in sequence, but there wasn't anything in the room to see at first glance. Then I downloaded the audio memory from the recorder, and there was sound there.
You could hear somebody in the room, and it sounded like a girl was singing.
I turned the sound up and listened to it through my headphones and could just recognize the song.
I listened to the recording a couple of times, and then went out on the Web and looked for what I thought it was. I was right about the title, but wrong about the artist. Then I listened to a recording of the pop song from 2004. It was one of the biggest hits of the year by a female artist, and while catchy, the song was a bit annoying, which meant a teenage girl would love it.
With the confirmation that somebody or rather, some thing, had been in the room over the weekend, I went back and ran the video and photos through a process in the software that enhanced the IR and UV light that had been captured. There was a flicker in the video around the nearest gummed desk. Then I listened carefully to the audio that was recorded with the video and could hear some of the same singing, which was a lot clearer on the digital recorder.
Then I ran the same filters on the still images, and only got a trace of a glimmer from around the that desk, but the time stamp was at the same as the video.
And according to the time on the video, the activity was in the early evening.
The video changed the case from a possible trespasser and prankster in the high school to something a bit harder to do anything about.
I thought about it, then called Principal VanBuren's number.
"Yes, sir. I have something, and I think you'll want to see it."
2.
Principal VanBuren sat and watched the video, and listened to the audio, and nodded slowly with a frown. "This has been reported in this part of the school for almost ten years. I've never heard it, but I've been told about things after hours in some of the classrooms. Others have heard a girl singing. It's only been in the last two or three years that we've had the gum show up in some of the same rooms. I thought maybe it was something like this, but, like you, I was expecting a student, or maybe a staff member's prank."
"I'd like to do a bit more of an investigation, see if perhaps we can find out who it is, and why she's here."
"Whatever you need, you'll get."
"Mostly what I need is access to the rooms, and to be left alone."
"The one will be easier to arrange than the other."
The next time I looked in my office email account I had a note from Mister Mills at the Medical Examiner asking me to call him when I got the chance.
"I'd like to say it was excellent detective work on my part, but actually, we got lucky. It'd be easier to show you than tell you, when can you come down here?"
"I'll be there first thing in the morning."
"Perfect, I'll have the coffee on."
I chatted with Mister Mills and a couple of the others from his office over a freshly brewed cup of designer coffee that, when you come down to it, was good, but it was still coffee, and probably not worth the price.
Then, with coffee out of the way, he told me that what I was looking for was in the records room, but we needed to stop by the lab first.
"Like I said, we got lucky. When your samples came in I took them up to the lab and Henry remembered one other time when he'd been asked to test bubble gum." He stopped at the door and looked at me, "And it was the biggest coincidence ever."
"Henry, she's here," Mister Mills announced as we walked into the lab. And, in a moment, a large, slightly balding man with a big smile on his face came around the corner and paid me more compliments in one breath than I'd ever heard before.
"Thank you," then before I could ask he volunteered the information.
"I'd just started when they brought her in. She'd died in the ER but the caseworker asked for a independent full autopsy, and they transferred her here. We found it in her mouth. We had to make sure that, you know, that nothing bad had been added to it, so we tested it."
"Bubble gum?" I asked.
Henry nodded, "Yeah, she was in the emergency room and somebody gave her a piece of bubble gum. But that's not what killed her." He shook his head, "She was fifteen years old, and had been in a car wreck. I couldn't believe she'd lived through it with the injuries she had, and I just went back through the file and," he shook his head again, "she was in awful shape when she arrived in the ER. Pneumothorax, crushed vertebrae, some bad internal hemorrhages, and all, but she made it to the hospital."
"Maybe we should go look at the file," Mister Mills said.
"Yeah, that'd be for the best." I agreed.
Like Henry said, the victim was fifteen years old, a couple of months shy of her sixteenth birthday, and had spent most of her life in foster care. But she loved school, and had asked to stay at Riverhead High even when she had to change homes, and had done so several times in the last few years. According to the interview information from the investigation at the time, the girl had to be stopped from, literally, joining every student group there was at the school. She was on several committees with the student government, and in the yearbook group, and she was part of two different service clubs. She was allowed to stay in the chess club, because she was learning how to play chess while there.
There was also a note attached from a former foster mother. She'd said there were two things the girl had loved the most outside of school: pop songs, and pink bubblegum.
She had been riding home with her caseworker after a special group meeting for foster children after school when the car they were in was hit broadside, with the impact coming just behind the front passenger seat where she was sitting. The fire department cut her out of the car and she was taken to the nearest hospital, barely alive.
The boy in the back seat was killed instantly.
The caseworker was seriously injured, but survived.
In the emergency room, the girl regained consciousness even though she was in extremely critical condition and had been sedated. According to the file, she asked the nurse when she'd be able to go back to school. The nurse didn't have the heart to tell her she wasn't going to go back anytime soon, if ever. Then the patient asked for a piece of bubble gum.
In the interview, the nurse said she knew she shouldn't have done it, but she didn't see the harm in giving her a piece.
"I told her all we had at the nurse's station was sugar free. She said that was OK. I had to put it in her mouth because she couldn't move. She chewed it for a few minutes. Then I noticed her eyes were closed but she was still chewing her gum." The interview transcript continued, "I think she was still chewing it after her heart stopped."
The case was reviewed by the nursing board, and they ruled that comforting a dying patient in that somewhat unusual way was, while unorthodox, allowed.
Mister Mills said he checked the legal side of things. The driver of the other car was also badly injured. He was later convicted of two counts of vehicular manslaughter in the first degree, as well as various forms of assault on the caseworker, not having a driver's license or insurance but having a firearm, several outstanding warrants for other crimes, running a red light, and so on, and is still serving their sentence.
"That's good," I said, "now, tell me about the gum I sent to you."
Henry smiled, "It was the same as we found in her mouth back then. They quit making that brand of sugar free in two thousand seven. Look at the date on the file again."
"October, 2005." I read slowly. "That confirms it," I added, "I've got an EVP from one of the rooms at the school. A young girl singing a song from the previous year."
Mister Mills brought up the yearbook picture of the girl we had just looked at the autopsy pictures of.
Breanna was smiling broadly in the yearbook picture.
And when I enlarged the school photo on the screen, I'm still certain you could see the corner of a pink piece of bubble gum between her teeth.
Breanna hadn't been smiling in the autopsy photo.
3.
The caseworker, Ms Ionia, had retired not long ago, and now lived on the Sound side of the Island in Nassau County. I called her and she agreed to meet me at a place near Hicksville, where I could buy her and her partner lunch.
Eventually, I came to the point.
"Tell me about Breanna and her chewing gum."
Ms Ionia's face went from a slight smile as she told me about their new car a few minutes ago to one of deep sadness that almost made me regret asking the question.
Her partner, Ms Lauren filled in the silence. "Io's told me about her. She had somebody buying her two pound bags of individual pieces of that soft bubble gum from a warehouse club. She said that one of those bags wouldn't even last her a month. And she didn't give a lot of it away. She just loved chewing it that much."
Finally Ms Ionia spoke, "Breanna could almost make a new piece of bubble gum appear by magic. She always had a couple of pieces with her. Even if she didn't have her purse, or her book bag, or even any pockets in her outfit, she'd have some stuck up her sleeve or down her blouse or something. And when you weren't looking, she'd have her gum going."
We all smiled at that image, then I asked, "What kind of music did she like?"
Ms Ionia thought about it for a minute, "I remember. Find the most obnoxious techno beat thing by a young woman on the radio, and by tomorrow Breanna would know the words." She paused, "If you can't tell me, it's OK, but why is the Sheriff's Office looking into her now? It's been twenty years."
"Something's come up that she was involved in at the school, and they asked our office to check out some of the information."
The former caseworker accepted that.
But now I had to go back to the school with the gum problem.
I contacted Principal VanBuren, and then talked to the office staff, I wanted an evening when there was nothing else going on in the building, at all. No student groups, no sports team practice in the gym, no special cleaning crew in the cafeteria, I told them I needed the building clear and clean to do what I needed to do. But not to cancel any events for me, just let me know when it wasn't otherwise busy.
So I had to wait almost three weeks, but then I was given the entire building with most of the rooms unlocked, after four PM on a Monday, to myself, until it reopened for normal school day activities at about six AM on Tuesday.
Mrs. Preston walked out with the last of the teachers and a couple of her cleaning crew and said, "it's all yours. Good luck. I guess." And the door locked behind her.
The rest of the staff, coaches, and everybody else had been asked to stay away from the building for a 'special research project' that needed to be assured of no outside interference.
So now I've gone from "Spirit Investigator" to "Special Research Project". OK, I guess that is a promotion of sorts.
I didn't have two pounds of a famous name brand of bubble gum with me, which I had found out was almost 150 pieces, but I had more than I had probably chewed in my entire life in a bag from the store. I also had my overnight bag, my investigation kit, a large extra topping house special pizza, and enough spare batteries that I probably wouldn't have to buy any for six months. And an actual split ring notebook that was probably older than any student that had been there that day, but I remembered teachers I had carrying something just like it when I was in school somewhere around the time Breanna had been.... and no, I'm not going to say when I was in high school.
When I got to the school I borrowed a library cart and loaded everything onto it, including the pizza, and pushed it in the side door to some amused looks from the few remaining students and staff.
But now, the place was deserted, dark, and eerily quiet as I pushed my cart down the hall from the elevator toward room 213, which had been Breanna's homeroom that year, as well as the room for two of her classes. She'd also had one class in that room the year before, so she had spent a lot of time there.
It would seem she was still spending a lot of time there.
I let the building get still and dark around me while I checked out the teacher's lounge that Mrs. Preston said I was welcome to use. It was open, and empty, and there was just barely room in the fridge for my supper.
Now it was starting to get dark outside, and the school was as quiet as it had ever been as I walked back to room 213.
I got some of my things and left the cart in the hall. Then I went in, leaving the room lights off, but there was plenty of light coming in from outside to see in the room, and did a background sweep, including doing a quick check for 'new gum' with my flashlight.
Mrs. Preston said she had gone with a helper and they checked the whole room earlier that day and didn't find any new gum. So it was ready to go. I bent down and looked under several desks myself, just to make sure. The EMF meter was just as clear as I did a slow sweep of the room.
I went back out and got all of the gear I could carry or stuff in my pockets. Then I walked back in and made a show out of putting things on the teacher's desk and on the bookshelf... and here, and there, in the room. All now running.
Then I sat down and opened my notebook and actually wrote out where I was with the time and date and all. Then I turned to some interior pages I had copied from the yearbook from the 2005 - 2006 school year. I could feel the room settling down around me as I just sat there and looked at the notebook.
"Hello, I'm Miss Elaine, and I'm today's substitute teacher." I said with all the officialness I could muster while still being friendly. "Let me see who's here for class." I looked at the names on the copied pages, "Nadine? Nadine, are you here? ... I have two Julies, Julie Anders and Julie Fitzsimmons." Then I asked if there were a couple of different boys there. And then.
"Breanna. I know you always come to class, Breanna, are you here?"
The digital recorder that was right in front of me on the desk showed that it did pick up a response that I couldn't hear.
"Breanna, are you chewing gum in class again?"
I waited while the recorder showed some sort of reply, then I said "If you do it quietly that's OK." and then I went on, "Rob, where are you?"
And as soon as I said that I saw another response on the recorder.
After a few more names I got out my lesson plan, and began reading to the class about the early history of the Long Island Railroad. It was a couple of pages I just happened to have found in my file drawer from an earlier case, and it already had holes punched in it to fit in my notebook.
After several minutes of the conversion from coal to diesel and then electric locomotives, I happened to notice that it was almost lunchtime. So I mentioned that we'd pick up right there after lunch. Then I asked if anybody had any questions about the Island's primary rail road.
I sat and waited for a moment.
Once again, the recorder indicated that it picked up a sound in the room that wasn't my breathing. Then I dismissed the class and closed my notebook.
Now I baited what I considered my 'Breanna trap'.
In full view of the camera on the bookshelf behind and to one side of the teacher's desk I put out a straight neat row of twelve pieces of bubble gum all with the label facing the same way up.
"I'm going to go to lunch. Breanna, if you need a fresh piece for the next class help yourself. It's not sugar free if you'd like that better."
Then I put a new recorder on the back of the desk next to my notebook, I picked up the recorder that had been in front of me, and went to lunch.
In the staff lounge I looked at the audio trace from the recorder on my laptop. There were responses there.
"...Breanna, are you here?"
"... yes ma'am, here" but she was some distance from the recorder.
"Breanna, are you chewing gum in class again?"
The reply was softer and somewhat shy, " ... sorry..."
Then I had said, "If you do it quietly that's OK. Rob, where are you?"
This reply sounded closer to the recorder, but it was the same voice, "...thank you, ma'am.... Rob's not here."
Now I wished I had picked up the full spectrum camera that was sitting in the back of the room. But maybe it was better off in the room aimed at the bubble gum instead. I got a couple of slices of pizza and then played the recording again.
The voice was the same in all three, and when I compared it to what I had from before, a girl singing a pop song, it appeared to be the same as well.
And as she had answered my question with something that wasn't a rote response to the taking of attendance, telling me that Rob wasn't there. So the activity wasn't purely residual, but maybe it wasn't a full blown intelligent presence either.
4.
I finished my slice of pizza and thought about what to do next.
I knew there were at least two other rooms that Breanna had left gum in. So I let 213 sit as it was, and got another camera and recorder out of my bag and headed for 304 and the room catty corner to it, 307 where she had had other classes that year. Which was before the sophomores and juniors had swapped sections of the school.
I did a sweep of both rooms, then I sat in 304 and taught a lesson about how the county's Sheriff's office had changed over the years. Then I asked if there were any questions.
The digital recorder remained flat. I asked a couple more questions, then moved across the hall. Where I got the same result with a similar lesson plan, but then as I was walking back out into the hallway I heard soft singing.
I held out the recorder and tried to see where it was coming from, and it seemed to originate just outside room 304. But then it faded away and I still didn't get a response in either of the rooms. So after a break in the teacher's lounge, I went back to 213.
I walked in slowly and quietly. The first thing I noticed in the dim light of the room with only the parking lot lights outside shining in the windows was that two of the pieces of gum had been moved slightly.
I had made certain that they were all in a straight line, with the name of the gum on top. The two on the end closest to the door were moved. One was sideways to the others and an inch or so toward the front of the desk, with the name down, the other was way out of line at an angle, almost to the edge of the desk. But they were still there.
I didn't get excited or anything else. I simply sat down at the desk, and with the recorders and cameras still running, simply talked to whoever was in the room.
"Breanna, if you're still here that's OK. And anybody else that's here, that's fine too." I said gently. Then I decided to not introduce myself with my full time job, but maintain the illusion of a substitute teacher. "We don't mind that you're here, and that you feel safe here, and maybe even enjoy being in school. And it's OK if you leave some gum under a desk once in awhile just to remind us that you are still here. And if you want to go to any of the other rooms you're familiar with that's fine too. We just want you to be where you want to be, and feel welcome."
I sat there for a minute and smiled at the gum on the desk. "And if you can take some of this with you, that's OK too. I brought it for you. I heard from Miss Iona that you really like bubble gum. I hope this was the right kind."
Then I sat there for several more minutes. Finally I changed out the cameras and recorders and went back to the teacher's lounge to see what I had.
I happened to glance at the clock in the lounge as I walked in. It was after midnight.
The first thing I did was to get another slice of pizza and a cold drink. Then I set about downloading the images off the cameras and audio from the recorders. Then while I ate I went through the night vision images to see if the camera caught a mouse on the desk pushing pieces of bubble gum around.
The answer to the mouse question was 'no'.
First the piece second from the door end shifted slightly, then a bit more. Then the last piece in the line moved some, and in the next photo it was where I found it.
The first image of the second piece turning had been taken about 22:30, the last piece in line had jostled and then moved at 22:43. The full spectrum showed that same vague glimmer and a slightly out of focus area near the gum, but it was nothing you would call an apparition. And what was worse, it was there as the second from the end piece shifted, but then it wasn't there as the end piece moved more dramatically.
I went back and checked the night vision and now that I knew where the shimmer had been. I enlarged the images and adjusted the contrast and then I could see what was best called a distortion visible near the gum in a couple of the full spectrum images.
Then I downloaded the audio files and looked at the traces. There had been audio activity about the same time.
"She's singing again," I said to myself as I looked at the sounds the occurred about 22:10. Some of the singing was louder, some was a soft hum.
The room went totally silent for just a few minutes around the time when the first piece of gum had been moved with the wavering glimmer nearby. Then you could hear the humming when the second piece moved.
Then. At 22:45:21.
" .... thank you, ma'am."
And the voice was very close to the mic.
I spent the rest of the night wandering around the school, then checking the cameras and recorders.
I worked for awhile in the area that, when Breanna was there, was where the Junior Girls had their lockers, but there had been no record of which locker had been assigned to her. I walked through and asked for her, and left recorders in different places for a while, but I got nothing from her there. Then, as I was looking around I found a locker that was open, so I looked inside it.
The locker was empty, but on the back wall was a sticker.
"Eastern Metal Limited, Model number 28-1. Manufactured, 2017."
Breanna probably didn't recognize her locker because these had been installed a long time after she had been there.
Then when the early staff arrived, I packed up my stuff, and the last two slices of pizza, and left.
Back in my apartment I took a long nap.
Wednesday in the office I went through everything again.
There was no doubt that the gum had, essentially, moved on its own and that the half-there shimmer and out of focus area was in the vicinity when it did, and was not near the teacher's desk otherwise.
I also had recorded evidence that Breanna knew another song. This one was a hit for another female pop star from 2002. That was the voice that had been in the hallway outside room 304. In 213, she had been singing the same song I'd recorded her doing before.
5.
The Sheriff went with me to talk to the Principal and certain other concerned parties. Including Ms Ionia and her friend.
The first thing I did was explain who Breanna had been, when she had been a... well... a living student at the school. And what had happened to her. Which was very emotionally tough to do, and hard for some of those around the table to hear.
Then I went on to the present, and why I thought Breanna was still a student in the school. Including the appearance of the chewing gum, and the recordings of a girl happily singing.
"Her presence is here, in her safe spot. Where she loved to be, and was the only reliable constant in her life at that time. Her presence is somewhat residual, but is, to a degree, intelligent and interactive. But is interactive only to a point. As long as the interaction is in the context of school, and doing school activities, and even school work in the classrooms she used. She can relate to it, and may respond in that way."
Then I played both her answering the roll call, when she volunteered the information about Rob, and my question about the railroad in room 213.
I had asked, "Does anybody have any questions about the Island's railroad?"
" ... will it be ... on the test? ...."
I stopped the recording and looked around the table.
Ms Ionia had tears streaming down her face. "That's her voice. I remember her saying things like that. She was always worried about passing tests and quizzes because that way she could stay in her clubs and groups."
The people around the table were silent. Which I expected as this was totally out of their realm. But the Sheriff had a question, which was why I wanted him to come along.
"Yes, sir."
"Do you think she needs something to enable her to move on?"
I shook my head, "No, sir. I think she has moved on. From what I was told, staff and others didn't hear a girl singing in the building after hours until eight years ago. That was twelve years after the accident. I don't know what was going on with her, or where she was in between. But whatever energy of hers remained here, in our world, eventually returned to the one place she felt secure."
Principal VanBuren's face was unreadable. Then he realized everybody was looking at him. He sighed and then looked at the screen where the line of bubblegum ended with two pieces being moved.
"I don't know what to say. I believe your evidence, Detective. She is here. Breanna. Is still in school. Twenty years after she was killed. And if she is happy here, I don't want to do anything to disrupt that."
Mrs. Preston agreed with him. "If she wants to put gum under a desk once in awhile. We'll just clean it up."
The Sheriff asked another question, "How long do you think she'll stay here?"
I didn't know, so I said, "The spirit activity in the parsonage out in Setauket had been reported for a century. And the same in the 1880s mansion, the family simply lived with it for some eighty years."
"And if the school administration doesn't want to take steps to evict the spirit of the girl..." Somebody else said.
"And we don't," Principal VanBuren answered, "Unless there is some sort of activity that is harmful to our current students. Or the staff. We'll, like you said, simply live with it."
They went around the table, including getting an opinion from one of the teachers that now used room 213 as a shared class space.
"I've always said when we can hear the singing that it's the PA system picking up a radio station," Mrs. Parker said, "Some students will say the station plays that song a lot, and I just agree with them that the station just has a real short play list."
I smiled, "Three songs so far."
"I've known some country stations with not a whole lot more in their rotation between commercials," the Sheriff said and got a much needed laugh from everybody.
"Well." The Sheriff said to me as we stood in the school's parking lot and watched a group of kids board a bus for some sort of after school event.
"Deep subject. Usually dry." I said when he didn't continue.
He chuckled for a moment, "Funny. You missed your true calling." Then he took a deep breath, "What I was going to ask you was... why did she come back here? This isn't, or wasn't, her home. She didn't really spend that much time here when she was a student, she was only a Junior." He turned and watched as a bus from another school unloaded a different bunch of students, all carrying cases and bags. "And it is far from quiet and undisturbed."
"That's why she's here. She felt safe and useful here. As a foster kid she may have felt she was a nuisance. Here, she was on the student government, and volunteered with the group that went around and tutored borderline special needs kids that just needed a bit of help to stay with their class."
The Sheriff was silent for a minute. Then he asked, "Where was she buried?"
"It's in the file. In the county cemetery just off the highway. I'd have to look up the grave location."
"Wanna run out there?"
"I've still got some bubble gum in my bag," I said.
"Let's take her a piece."
"Yes, sir."
-end bubblegum-
[NOTE: The above story were written as adventure fiction, and is to be taken as such. While most of the features of Long Island exist, including a substantial collection of High Schools, the rest of the setting is fictional.
Thank you, Dr. Leftover, TheMediaDesk.com]
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