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I slip into the women’s locker room, my school bag knocking against my thigh as I trail down a row of lockers. Stopping at eighty-one, I plant my hand on the steel of Mace’s locker—black, like ours. A combination padlock secures it.
A shower runs down the hall to my left, but I look around, not seeing or hearing anyone else.
I don’t waste time. Jamming the straight end of the crowbar through the loop of the lock, I throw all of my weight and muscle into it, yanking and prying, until the locker door pops open. But not because I broke the lock. The whole damn latch busted.Whoops.
It falls to the ground, and I drop the crowbar, grabbing my jacket hanging inside.
I give it a shake, holding it up and seeing that it’s entirely unharmed. She made a very good show of putting it in her locker yesterday.
Slipping it on, I catch sight of pictures taped to the inside of the door. One of her flanked by two guys dressed in military fatigues. Another of a woman with a baby in one arm and a cigarette in the other hand. She stands on a porch, in the midst of people in lawn chairs around her. The woman doesn’t look much older than Mace is now.
I close the door, best I can, and leave the rest. There’s no way to hide what I’ve done. I won’t try.
I start to leave but notice Codi coming out of the shower, wrapping a towel around her body. I quickly jump down another aisle before she sees me.
I leave the locker room, suspicion climbing up my skin.She could have sports before school, but something tells me this is the only place she has to shower.
I’ve never heard her speak, but everyone seems to care about her a lot.
The hallways are still empty except for a janitor installing a tarp over the broken window to my left. I turn and start to pass my first class, but I see Mr. Bastien holding a packet of stapled papers and reading from it as he writes on the whiteboard.
I was going to head back outside for a bit, but I stop in the doorway, noticing the empty classroom.
“I thought the clocks didn’t fall back for another couple of weeks.” I joke. “Am I early?”
He turns his head. “It’s Ditch Day.”
He says that as if I should know what he’s talking about.
“Ditch Day?”
He twists around, tossing his papers on his desk. “It’s a Rivalry Week thing. Most of the school ditches,” he tells me. Then he smiles to himself. “Nobody told you, did they?”
I arch a brow and walk in, taking a seat at my desk. “But the teachers still come?”
“In case students show up.” He leans down, working his mouse and looking at his laptop. “It’s still technically a school day, and we are their care while their parents work, after all.”
I take in his jeans and a tan and blue plaid button-down. His sleeves are rolled up. His forearms are tan and thick, like he didn’t always have a desk job.
“You went to high school here?” I ask.
He was insulted by my comments on Monday. At first, I assumed he was defensive of his students, but I don’t think many people are willing to move into Weston. Most are just stuck staying.
He nods. “About twenty-five years ago.”
Before the storm. The flooding. Her.
He was here when the town thrived.
I remove my bag and set it on the floor. “Was the rivalry the same back then?”
He scoffs. “No. Not everyone had a cell phone. There weren’t cameras everywhere. No Internet in every house to spread news like a fire, and no social media to wrangle a posse.” He looks at me, and I can see the happiness as he remembers. “You didn’t go to jail for anything, and the only consequence was someone dying. It wasa lotworse.”
Sounds exciting.
“Did you do anything you’d go to jail for if someone had caught it on camera?” I inquire.
He shoots me a look, and I’m shocked to hear him say, “Yes. You?”
