The Body
[Case file: Cole, Ethan Matthew
Case number: 24-1178
Classification: Suspicious Death (Undetermined)
Location: Northbridge High School - Library, East Study Room E-3
Date: October 14
Time Discovered: 3:41 p.m.
Reporting Party: Alex Rivera (Student)
Responding Detectives:
Detective Helen Marrow, Major Crimes
Detective Lucas Grant, Major Crimes
Initial Assessment:
The victim was found deceased in a locked study room after school hours. No visible trauma. Handwritten note recovered. Cause of death pending.
Status: open]
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- October 14th (3:32 P.M.) -
I didn’t realize how quiet the school could get until everyone else had already left.
It wasn’t empty, but the lack of people walking around and chatting made it feel abandoned, like the building itself was listening.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, another missed call from Dad. I didn’t need to check the notifications to know what it said.
Pick up.
Where are you?
Answer now.
Probably followed by something from Mom. A threat, an accusation. My younger brother’s name would come up, like it always did: don’t be like him.
I shoved the thought down, silenced the phone without looking, and pushed the library door open.
The smell hit me first.
The library never smelled like this during the day. It usually reeked of dust, printer toner, and whatever cheap cleaner the custodians used on the floors. But now there was something sharper undeath it, metallic and bitter, clinging to the back of my throat as if I’d bitten my tongue.
I slowed without meaning to.
Study Room E-3 sat at the far end of the east wing, tucked behind a wall of outdated encyclopedias no one touched anymore. The shelves boxed it in, making it feel more hidden than it actually was.
The glass walls were streaked with fingerprints, smudged from weeks of students leaning, waiting, talking.
The light inside was on. Weird. Ethan always turned it off.
I slowed without meaning to. I told myself he was just being irritating again. He liked being in control, always making people come to him.
I adjusted my backpack higher on my shoulder, pointlessly as it slid right back down.
I caught my reflection faintly in the glass of a nearby shelf as I moved–dark hair falling into my eyes, jacket hanging loose like it didn’t quite belong to me, sleeves pushed up unevenly. I looked like I hadn’t decided what kind of person I was supposed to be that day.
He’d texted me just half an hour ago.
Nothing dramatic. Just three words: After school. Library.
That was Ethan. Short. Efficient. Always in control of the conversation, even when he barely spoke.
I stopped outside the door. I knocked once.
“Ethan?” I asked, waiting for a reply.
I knocked again, harder this time. Nothing again. Then, a third and final time, silence.
The handles didn’t budge when I tried to open. It was locked.
A normal person would’ve walked away. But through the glass, I could see him.
Ethan sat crooked in the chair, spine curved forward like he’d fallen asleep mid-thought. One arm rested on the desk, fingers slack. His long black hair, usually kept straight and neat, had slipped forward, the fringe falling into his face.
His glasses were absent and there was a bruise on his left cheekbone. Faint and fresh. That was unlike him; Ethan didn’t get bruises. He didn’t get into fights.
For one stupid second, I almost laughed at this uncharacteristic sight. The scene was almost too unreal to believe.
I unlocked the door. I don’t remember grabbing the nearby keys, though. I just remember the sound of the lock clicking open and the room rushing at me all at once.
The smell hit first. It wasn’t blood. Not rot either. It was something sharp, something chemical. Something bitter and just… wrong.
“Ethan…?” I asked again, louder as I stepped inside.
Study Room E-3 was smaller than it looked through the glass. The room was small, a rectangular space, boxed in transparent walls. There was just barely enough space for a desk, two chairs, and a corkboard stripped down to pinholes. The desk lamp was on, casting a harsh white circle over scattered papers.
My hand landed on the desk to steady myself, and I felt warmth through the wood. His laptop sat there, closed but humming softly.
Ethan Cole sat at the center of it all, still and quiet.
My chest tightened as I stepped closer.
Up close, he looked wrong in ways I couldn’t immediately explain. His posture wasn’t collapsed, more like placed. Like someone had adjusted him after the fact.
His head tilted slightly downward, hair framing his face just enough to hide his eyes.
Ethan was the kind of person who never wasted movement. He spoke as if everything had already been decided before he said it. Like he was always two steps ahead, watching people catch up to conclusions he’d already reached.
Ethan was always in control.
That just made the next thing feel more uncanny.
My eyes dropped to the desk. There was a piece of paper in front of him. Folded once, a part left uncovered. I recognized the handwriting immediately; tight, precise, unmistakably his.
I’m sorry for the mess I made-
I didn’t read the rest.
Next to the note sat a water bottle I’d given him earlier. Clear plastic. Half full. The cap wasn’t screwed on all the way–just slightly off, like he had twisted it absentmindedly and forgotten.
Something scraped behind me.
I flinched, stumbling back into the second chair. It screeched loudly against the tile, too loud, shattering the silence. The sound made my heart spike.
Something had fallen. Ethan’s backpack had tipped over. Folders spilled out across the floor, papers sliding in uneven lines.
A small white object skidded toward me, spinning once before stopping against my shoe. A USB drive.
I started at it. I didn’t move, didn’t breathe.
The label was handwritten: EXCHANGE - R9.
Why was that here? What were the odds?
I crouched automatically, as if my body had already decided before my mind caught up. I told myself I was just picking it up. Just moving it.
If someone else saw it…
If someone else opened it…
I grabbed it. I hastily shoved it into my jacket pocket without unfolding it, without reading it.
That decision would matter later.
Only then did I look at Ethan’s face. Really looked. His eyes were wide open. Not afraid, just… empty.
SECURITY LOG (3:41 P.M.)
[Student reports an unresponsive individual in Library Study Room E-3. Lockdown initiated.]
Later, I’d be told it took nine minutes from when I first entered the east wing to when the school was locked down.
No one asked what happened between those minutes.
I only remember the guard’s face going pale. I only remember the room filling with people and radios and instructions I couldn’t follow, someone taking my arm and guiding me into a chair.
I only remember being told not to touch anything.
But my fingerprints were already everywhere.
- Library — East Wing (4:25 P.M.) -
By the time the detectives arrived, the scene had already started shifting.
Everything was being taken apart. Piece by piece.
Detective Helen Marrow stepped under the tape without hesitation.
She moved like someone who had done this too many times to be surprised by it anymore. Her long black hair fell straight down her back, perfectly contained, not a strand out of place. Dark sunglasses hid her eyes despite the dim lighting, but they didn’t soften her presence.
If anything, they made her feel more distant. Her expression was unreadable. Tired, but not slow. Cold, but not careless.
Behind her, Detective Lucas Grant ducked under the tape with a quieter energy.
Blonde curls, slightly unruly. A face that looked too relaxed for the room he’d just walked into. He scanned everything, not sharply like Marrow, but widely. Taking it all in at once. Where she narrowed, he absorbed.
He followed close behind, already fishing a bag of hard candies from his coat pocket.
“You’re going to rot your teeth,” Marrow scolded as he unwrapped a candy.
He shrugged, unworried, “occupational hazard.”
Inside the study room, their differences became clearer.
Marrow didn’t touch anything. Didn’t crouch. Didn’t move quickly. She stood still and let the room speak first. Eyes moving from the body, to the desk, to the note, to the bottle, to the faint outline in the dust where something had once been.
She noticed the other unusual objects in the room.
- Library Circulation Desk (4:59 P.M.) -
A man handed me a bottle of water. He introduced himself as Detective Grant. I didn’t drink it. I only held it in my hand, clutching it to steady my mind.
“You found Ethan Cole,” he stated. “Could you start from the beginning?”
As I spoke, Grant watched my hands.
And in my pocket, the USB pressed hard against my ribs–silent, invisible, damning.
