Guy Langman, Crime Scene Procrastinator Read Online Free

too pretty to like forensics. Maybe that’s a stupid generalization. I don’t like making generalizations. “People who make generalizations are idiots,” my dad used to say. “Generally speaking.” That’s gotta go in the book.
    The presence of the others makes more sense. What I know about Maureen is what everybody knows: that she was a total overachieving honor-roll-and-science-camp-type girl who recently underwent a Goth transformation that isn’t fooling anyone. Over one long President’s Day weekend she went away dressed in jeans and a cable-knit sweater and came back the following Tuesday in an all-black uniform featuring pants with about a thousand zippers and makeup that would easily gain her employment as an extra in a zombie movie (
Revenge of the Goth Nerds!
). She still seemssort of sunny a lot of the time, so it’s just confusing. And her pants must take a really long time to get on in the morning …
    TK—does he even have a real name? Everyone calls him TK. What can we say about him? Style-wise, first of all, he cuts his own hair. The result is fascinatingly uneven, and pretty much bald in spots. Anoop and I have theorized that TK probably invented some sort of electric scissors or robot barber that he is testing on himself. He also seems to bathe infrequently, and with little attention to detail. We have something of a metrosexual epidemic at Berry Ridge. Most dudes (besides me, the hard-core nerds, and a few choice others who keep it slackerish) are all model six-packy, primped and fancy. They always look like they just walked off a billboard trying to sell you a four-hundred-dollar pair of jeans. Not TK. TK dresses like he’s about to punch his time card at an auto garage—full-on jumpsuits or grease-smeared jeans from the “stonewashed” age. He is also one of the prime peanut butter smugglers, having invented a variety of weird contraptions to sneak the banned legume into the caf.
    Those eccentricities aside, TK does seem to be some sort of a genius, with skills in a variety of subjects. According to Anoop, who jealously tracks the other smart kids like a star athlete might check the stats on the opposing teams, TK is annoyingly well-rounded. He gets A-pluses in every class. In History he is able to wake from a class nap (TK is always tired) and instantly talk at length about the Sino-Japanese War of 1937. Who else even knows what “Sino” means? He is in AP Math, whizzed through Calc, and is also skilled in Gym and Shop class. He made a samurai sword out of wood! And he can run, jump, and throw with the best of the jocks. These latter qualities are what frosts Anoop’s assthe most. TK is like those guys on weird cable shows who have PhDs but also are good at building a bomb out of a toilet paper roll and preparing a crawfish soufflé.
    I once asked TK why he was so tired. “Up late again,” he said.
    “Doing what?” I asked.
    “Research” was all he would say. Research into what? Ingenious peanut-smuggling devices? Robo-beauticians?
    “Are you going to try to get Raquel to be your partner? You totally should,” Anoop says.
    I haven’t been paying attention and didn’t realize that Mr. Zant was assigning an exercise that requires a partner.
    “That seems like a big step,” I say. “I haven’t actually even talked to her yet.”
    Anoop wrinkles his eyebrows at me. “Not like a sex partner, Romeo,” he says. “For the fingerprint exercise.” Blank look.
    He sighs and explains. We’re supposed to examine paper printouts of fingerprints. This will allow us to “become acquainted with the concept of ridges.”
    Alas, I move too slowly, and Raquel quickly pairs off with Hairston, of all people. She holds two of the high-powered magnifying lenses up to her face. She already has big, beautiful golden brown eyes. They are the color of a well-toasted marshmallow and just as warm and gooey. Magnified through the glass of the lenses, just the sight of them makes my heart hurt.