In a shocking twist to goings-on at Bellefonte High, math teacher Mr. Matthew Trumbull’s true passion and side hustle has been discovered. Trumbull, notorious for his disgust of English work infringing upon his math time, has secretly been working as a ghost writer for some of the most well-known novelists of our time. 

It all started when senior Pauline Alterio walked into her second-period Calculus class early…and discovered Trumbull hunched over a two-foot-thick manuscript, lost in its pages.

Trumbull was brought to the darkened principal’s office and questioned about what was going on with a lie detector bought with school funds and typically used on students. Principal Mr. Michael Fedisson played good cop in this tense scenario, and Mr. Trumbull remained silent. 

But then, Vice Principal Mr. Andrew Caruso was brought in. With the threat of having his beloved Promethean board removed from his room if he did not tell the truth, Mr. Trumbull confessed. 

“It is true…I am a writer,” he declared, with tears in his eyes as he revealed the truth he had hidden for so long. 

His confession was met with mixed reactions. 

“I was stupefied and confused. I thought that he loved math…I felt so betrayed to learn that all along, his heart was in a different subject,” one student, who chooses to remain anonymous for their own safety, said through tears. 

But, AP Calculus BC students have long been suspicious of Trumbull, considering the amount of letters involved in what is supposedly math class. 

“I always had a feeling that something was…off about Mr. Trumbull’s teaching. I mean, nobody gets that excited about letters in math,” AP Calculus student Reese Walters explained. 

It all started decades ago, when Trumbull won a contest in which anyone could submit their stories to become a ghostwriter for author R.L Stine, most notably known for his horror fiction, which is aimed towards teenage audiences. 

Trumbull found that he not only enjoyed scaring students with his math problems in the classroom, but also through writing. 

If you are a fan of R.L Stine, it is likely that you have read book #18 in the Fear Street series, titled The Cheater. This follows a girl who, anxious about her math acheivement exam, pays someone to take the test for her…but this has frightening repercussions. 

Yep, that’s the work of Mr. Trumbull. 

“The next time Mr. Trumbull tells me to ‘have integrity’ when taking a test, I will definitely listen to him,” Calculus student AnaLise Uhring exclaimed. 

After a while, Trumbull got bored with writing such low-stakes stories, and turned to a new endeavor: writing adult mystery and thriller novels under the James Patterson name. 

Following the reveal of Mr. Trumbull’s work, ten billion copies of his novels have been sold, making him the richest author in history. The Bellefonte High library request form for these novels has a decades-long waiting list. Mr. Trumbull has been short-listed for the next Pulitzer Prize. With this newfound fame, Mr. Trumbull could become the next Great American Author.