Note: This is my latest failed contest entry. The feedback on the story, however, was excellent. I overexplain. Alyssa Case should have been a member of the faculty. The police would investigated the boys’ deaths so Jody needs a rationale for being engaged. These aren’t major hurdles but they’re enough to warrant a ‘fail’ rather than a ‘pass’ to the next heat. Fair enough.

At six o’clock in the morning, Jody Scott sat huddled on the roof of Benjamin Banneker Technical High School’s administration building reading the draft of a biology term paper. The STEM-based school, nestled in a wooded glen, taught a student body of highly motivated students. Jody loved early mornings in most woods but not these. The wind in this area’s microclimate was brisk, raw, and constant and she struggled with the loose sheets of paper on her lap.

A standard high school term paper, it began with the specifics of toxoplasma gondii and its lifecycle within warm-blooded animals. On page two, however, it devolved into a horror story. T. gondii replicated in cats – wild, feral, and domesticated. The eggs were transmitted in fecal matter to mice and birds who fed off the feces and continued the cycle through cats feeding off their prey.

Anyone who was fond of cats would be horrified, but the path to mice and birds was the same path to pigs and sheep, and fruits and vegetables. Jody felt queasy as she realized the center of the non-cat path contained humans who cared for the animals, grew the food, and prepared and consumed it.

The story ended with two placeholders. One for neurological disorders and the other for transmission mechanisms.

The breeze riffled the papers as Jody considered what she’d read. She remembered something she heard about parasites affecting specific areas of the brain. That first placeholder implied this particular parasite might be one of them. She heard the trap door to the roof open.

Turning her attention to it, Jody watched her cousin climb through the opening and close the door. Alyssa Case’s pale hair was pulled back in a ponytail and her hiker wear, though trendy, was designed for function not form. She trotted to Jody’s corner of the roof and hunkered down below the knee wall.

“What do you think?” Alyssa tapped the papers with her index finger.

“I’m worried about the salad I might eat for lunch,” said Jody. “But, I don’t think that’s why you gave this to me.”

“No,” said Alyssa, “it’s not. I think it’s why Jack and Tyrone died.”

“You think this paper is the reason they died?”

“No, not the paper. That parasite. My friend, the one who wrote the paper? He said the parasite is crazy weird. It’s everywhere. It makes you sick but sometimes it doesn’t. He said it causes behavioral anomalies. Maybe the thing is wind-borne. Maybe Jack and Tyrone were infected. Maybe the parasite made them crazy or something.”

Jody laughed.

“That’s a lot of maybes.

“Jody! It’s not funny.”

“You’re right, it’s not.”

“So what do we do?”

“First, we understand the facts. Jack Holden was found below his parent’s hillside home. Tyrone Ellis’s body was found floating in the lake below the waterfall where his backpack was found. Both sets of injuries were consistent with falling, or jumping, from a great height. No alcohol or drugs were found in their systems. The school psychologist has documentation saying both of them were under intense academic pressure.”

“But, the parasite?”

“Is outweighed by stress. It can do strange things to the mind. They may have killed themselves.”

#

Jody walked into the woodland that surrounded the campus, her day pack strapped to her back. She left Alyssa adamant that her two friends were sick; that any evidence of mental illness was actually evidence of a brain-altering parasite. Jody suggested she ask the paper’s author how an area without a lot of cats could have a cat-related disease. If the kids were under the control of a parasite when they died, they had to have gotten it from somewhere.

Her nondescript, completely forgettable appearance made her good at her job. She was the primary undercover officer reporting directly to the county sheriff. This was the first time she was working out in the open.

Jody thought about the facts she’d withheld from Alyssa. The school’s counseling staff kept detailed notes on the mental health of all Banneker students. Jack was athletic and outgoing. Tyrone was a driven perfectionist. Despite their personality differences, both boys dealt with academic pressure by indulging in risky behaviors. That was the reason Jody was here.

She stood in the clearing below the Holden home. The wind was lighter here and she could smell the trees and dirt around her. She pulled out her cell phone and keyed in a number. Her boss, the county sheriff, picked up on the second ring. Jody briefed him on the paper.

“So, a parasite?” he asked.

“Yeah. A mind-altering parasite.”

“Really?”

“It’s a TBD item, but, yeah.”

“I’ll ask the medical examiner what he knows.”

“Okay.”

“So what’s next?”

“I’m below the Holden house. You realize the ‘hillside’ is actually a sheer rock wall?”

“Yeah. Be careful.”

“Right.”

They disconnected and Jody walked to the rock wall, took off her backpack, and exchanged her hiking boots for a pair of climbing shoes. She secured her backpack using the waist and chest straps and searched for evidence of a climb.

Jim Holden reported that Jack learned to climb as a Boy Scout. The troop camped frequently and Jack loved bouldering. He joked about climbing up the back hill because it was a shortcut. Finding his body at the bottom of that hill was a shock.

Jody found a good spot that looked like it had been used before and began climbing. Ten feet off the ground, she stopped. The face was sheer and she could go no further without climbing gear. She slowly returned to her starting point.

Jack Holden wasn’t trying to climb the wall. Forensics hadn’t found any rope so he wasn’t rappelling down it either. She changed out her shoes and called her boss.

“It’s not climbable without major gear. I need to talk to Mr. Holden.”

“Okay. He’s not home but I’ll get an ETA on him and let you know. Listen, I called the M.E. and he said he’d heard about your parasite. He’s going to get back to me.”

“Okay. I’m going to see where Tyrone died,” Jody said. They disconnected and she headed to the falls.

The path she took split into two clearly marked trails: Falls and Pool. She went left to the falls, the sound of running water clearly ahead. The trail meandered further left before it veered right. When she arrived at the narrow river, she was well behind its drop-off point.

She walked down the path to a promontory overlooking the punchbowl. Jody knew, from the official report, that this was where Tyrone’s backpack was found. She watched the descending water, mesmerized by the clouds and mist tossed by the breeze. She leaned forward.

Jody felt something grip her right elbow. She jolted and spun to her right. She lost her footing and corkscrewed out of control, falling toward the rushing water on her left. The grip on her elbow tightened and she felt the front of her jacket stretch tight. Her body snapped toward a tall man pulling her away from the ledge.

“Ohmigosh, ohmigosh, are you okay? I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he dithered at her as he continued to grip her elbow and her jacket while she found her footing.

“I’m okay,” she said. “It’s okay, you can let go now.”

The man let her go and stepped away to give her space, holding both hands up in front of him. Jody took a breath and looked him over.

#

“You’re Mr. Ellis,” she said. “Tyrone’s dad.”

“Yes, and you’re the investigator Jim Holden called me about. I didn’t mean to spring myself on you. But, when you leaned forward, well, I thought you were going over.”

“I let myself get hypnotized by the water. Stupid of me.”

“No, it’s easy to do. My son used to come here a lot with his friends when he was younger. They swam in the pool when it was hot.”

“It could have been dangerous, what with the falls and all. Did they ever jump in from up here?”

Ellis squeezed his eyes shut. He rubbed the heels of his hands against his eyes and looked at the falling water.

“Back then, I always came to watch them, staying out of sight, understanding boys do crazy things in the spirit of adventure. Did they jump? Yeah, but from down below. Never from up here.”

“Did they want to? He and his friends?”

“Of course.”

“Would that be why he came that day?”

“To jump?” Ellis’s eyes moved toward her, then away. “The school notified me of some of the stuff he’d been doing. I tried talking to him. He said he was just blowing off steam. But, afterward, he was moodier – withdrawn one minute and outgoing the next. I was worried but I couldn’t follow him around like I did when he was younger.”

“His moodiness. Were there signs of depression?”

Ellis stared at his feet. When he looked up, tears glistened.

“More like he’d regressed to being 13 again. You know, hormone moody? But, the crazy stuff had stopped. I was relieved.”

Jody looked at the falling water. She looked at Ellis.

“Thanks for talking to me.”

“I don’t know that I helped much.”

She smiled at him and shrugged.

“Food for thought,” she said.

He nodded. They stepped off the rock and separated.

Jody continued down the path to the pool below. The water crashing into the catch basin obliterated all other sounds. Mesmerizing at the top of the falls, and deafening at the bottom, she thought. Talk about nature’s bipolar disorder. She stopped dead in her tracks and thought about behavioral anomalies.

When she came out of her thoughts, Jody realized she’d walked back up the path to the top of the falls and was headed back toward the Holden house. She hoped he was home.

Jim Holden answered the door.

“Ms. Scott? Good timing.”

“Mostly luck, sir,” she answered. “I’m sorry to disturb you but I have a question. I saw signs that someone, I assume Jack, tried to climb the rock face from the bottom but didn’t get very far. We know no rope was found but did anyone look to see if Jack tried to climb down the back hill?”

“There’s a warning fence at the bottom of the yard where it slopes away from level,” he said. “Jack hadn’t moved beyond bouldering. If your assumption is correct and he tried to climb up the wall and failed, why would he try to go down?”

“Did anyone check to see if an attempt had been made?”

“I’m telling you, going over that fence would be reckless. Jack wasn’t reckless,” Holden insisted.

“Reckless is just another form of risky, isn’t it?”

Jody saw anger flare up in his eyes and braced for a tongue-lashing. Instead, his jaw dropped and he stared over her head.

“The school report,” he said, connecting the dots. “But why would he do it?”

He closed his eyes.

“You should check,” he said.

Jody went out to the fence to wait for the forensics team. It wasn’t a privacy fence, more like the warning track in a baseball stadium. Enough to tell you there was imminent danger, but not enough to save you if you ignored it. Once forensics was on-site and setting up their safety gear, she called the sheriff and told him what she’d found.

“So you’re telling me Tyrone committed suicide but Jack was just stupid?” he asked.

“It’s a credible interpretation. But, we need more evidence,” she said. “What happened to push both boys over their respective edges? Did you talk to the medical examiner?”

“Yeah. In a nutshell, there’s a lot of research on T. gondii. There are links, associations, and correlations. Whichever noun you use helps you know how strong the relationship is between two things.”

“Like?”

“The relationship between the parasite and certain mental illnesses.”

“And certain behaviors?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Can he test for it?”

“Yeah.”

“Can he test Jack and Tyrone?”

“He hasn’t released the bodies yet so maybe. Depends on whether the parasite lives after the host dies.”

“You know something?” asked Jody.

“What?”

“This is a lousy mystery if we can’t solve it.”

“True. But for Mother Nature, it’s not a mystery, it’s a comedy and the joke’s on us.”

#

Jody elbowed on her office lights, walked to her desk, and put her coffee and her briefcase down. She hung her jacket on the visitor’s chair and looked at her inbox. A file folder rested on top of a fat envelope. The folder was a standard department issue. The envelope bore the return address of her cousin, Alyssa Case.

In the folder was the lab report on the bloodwork of Tyrone Ellis and Jack Holden. The results were inconclusive. The M.E. would conduct further tests.

Jody opened the envelope. Enclosed was the completed term paper on parasites. Alyssa penned a note attached to the first page. On it was a single exclamation point. Jody read the paper, drank her coffee, and smiled. She got up to go see her boss.

His secretary wasn’t in yet so she knocked on the door and entered when the voice on the other side of the door told her to.

“Hey, boss,” she said. “I got a term paper in my mail today.”

He looked up.

“Yeah, what did it say?”

“Pretty much confirmed what the M.E. said but the author included an interesting paragraph.”

The sheriff sat back and watched her as she opened the sheaf of papers to a sticky note near the end.

“The author’s conjecture that T. gondii is a novel wind-borne parasite has not been fully tested. However, there is no evidence to support an experiment to either prove or disprove this question.”

“So, there’s no proof either way,” said the sheriff.

“Yet.”

“We won’t know how they got it.”

“True. Maybe they got it from someone’s pet cat,” Jody mused.

“Or pigs or goats? Maybe food or dirt.”

“And it went viral in both of them but we’ll never know why.”

“Mother Nature’s big joke,” said the sheriff.

“Some joke,” Jody muttered.