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tity of the drugs being passed around,” Mr. Blackbourne said. He gestured back toward the music room’s door and proceeded toward it.

I placed my book bag on one of the chairs and met him at the door. He opened it, scanning the hallway.

“What is it?” I asked.

“JH14,” he said. I’d meant where we were going. He touched a finger to the bridge of his glasses as if to adjust them, but they were already perfect on his face. “A brand of synthetics. I believe it’s the same formula North experienced not too long ago.”

“Oh,” I said. A synthetic of what?

“While it could be something else,” he continued, “this is the most likely drug. It fits in with the suggested side effects we’ve seen and it’s currently popular. This particular batch is extremely harmful. We’re probably looking at a few more weeks of incidents. Another Academy team stopped the major distribution, but there were several purchases made and spread out, namely among students.” He stepped out, holding the door for me.

I followed. “Why don’t we just tell people that it’s bad?” I asked. I’d come across the occasional pot smoke in the bathroom of my old high school, but so far here at Ashley Waters, I hadn’t witnessed anyone doing such things. The bathrooms smelled so overwhelmingly of cigarette smoke anyway, that I often didn’t catch anything else. But I was positive no one wanted to end up like the red kid, or like North had been, out of control and crazy.

“It might draw more curiosity,” he said. He released the door and continued down the hallway. “Tell a teenager drugs are bad, and they’ll go check it out and try it.”

I shook my head in disbelief as I walked beside him. It sounded so ridiculous. If we told them how horrible it was, they’d do it anyway?

Mr. Blackbourne nodded at me as if he could read my thoughts and was agreeing with them. “It may cycle through,” he said. “Hopefully without too many more incidents. And since there’s a very limited supply of this particular one, it should fade away.” He paused for a moment and stopped walking. He turned to me. “How are you feeling?” he asked quietly.

“Fine,” I said right away. It was an automatic response, but he stared at me for so long, those steel eyes telling me he wanted a better answer. “We had dinner last night. I got to sleep at a decent hour.”

“Are you still having trouble falling asleep?”

I didn’t know how to answer this question because I didn’t feel like I was having problems with sleeping. “It’s the same as always,” I said. “I’ve never had problems before.”

He tapped gently at the knot of his deep red tie, and then smoothed his palm over the length down toward where the dark gray jacket was buttoned up properly. “Anything of interest happen since this morning?”

I wasn’t exactly sure what he was asking of me. I wasn’t sure why we were in the hallway and talking about this, either. In general, he’d asked me to spill things if it looked like I was troubled, and I usually knew what he wanted to hear. This time, many little things had happened and I was filtering out things he might not find important. Danielle’s gossip? No. My sister acting strangely and wanting to see her mother? No. I settled for something Academy related. “There was someone new following us this morning,” I said. “Did Kota mention?”

He nodded, but there was a small twitch to his eyes and a dip at the corner of his mouth. This wasn’t what he wanted to talk about, but he settled for it. “Are you concerned about it?”

“Of course I am,” I said. Wasn’t he? “Last night one didn’t follow Kota like we thought, so he has to be watching for Nathan, or someone else. Are they changing tactics? They said someone was following you as well.”

“There’s no need to worry about that one,” he said.

“Is it the same person?”

“There’s been one in particular who has been persistent.”

“But you shake him? Mr. Hendricks said they had a hard time following you.”

He nodded slightly. “Unlike Mr. Lee, I’d rather not have unexpected visitors. For various reasons.”

“Academy reasons?” I asked, and then backed my head up, pursing my lips and glancing around to see if anyone was nearby. We were in the main corridor just before the stairs to the second floor. I hadn’t meant for it to slip out.

He cocked his head. “On occasion.”

“Is this part of the reason we’re meeting here now?”

“Mr. Blackbourne,” a familiar voice echoed from down the hallway, and we both turned. Victor approached and waved shortly. His jacket was folded over his arm, leaving just the slacks and the crisp white shirt.

Before I could ask, Mr. Blackbourne pushed his finger toward his lips in a silence motion and then pointed to the stairs.

Victor and I paired up quietly, side by side, following Mr. Blackbourne. We exchanged looks. Victor was asking what this was about as much as I was.

When we got to the second floor, Mr. Blackbourne had us follow him down several hallways until we came across one that was more a V-corner, with a janitor’s door at the far end, and the space on either wall was just lockers. It was a scary looking nook. For this school, being hidden in this hallway probably meant a lot of trouble. Most of these lockers were covered in graffiti. Some were open, or missing the doors altogether.

I stood closer to Victor, feeling his elbow against mine.

Mr. Blackbourne stepped inside the hallway, and any open lockers, he closed again, testing which ones would lock. He pointed to one row of lockers and then looked at Victor. “I want you to stay in this hallway and try to open these lockers.”

“With what?” Victor asked.

“Any way possible,” Mr. Blackbourne said. “Be creative.” He turned to me. “Watch him, and watch the hallway. See if anyone comes by.”

I nodded, but continued to glance between Victor and Mr. Blackbourne. We were trying to break into lockers? Wasn’t I supposed to not be doing Academy work? But then I wasn’t doing the work. I was being the lookout.

Mr. Blackbourne nodded and then left us, looping back down the hallway and disappeared around the corner.

Victor sighed, dropping his book bag to the ground. He passed over his uniform jacket to me. “Hang on to this for me,” he said, and started to roll up his sleeves.

“Why are we doing this?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I imagine he’s trying to figure out how easy it is to break into these lockers. Or how loud you have to be to do it.” He approached a set, picking one out and testing the knob to see if it would open. When it wouldn’t budge, he spun the dial. “I don’t know why we’re doing it now.”

I waited by the end of the hallway intersection, where I could look up and down and see if anyone was coming.

For a while, Victor tried to guess the right numbers to release the locks. After, he pulled out a pocket knife, trying to wedge it between the door and the lock.

Were we even allowed to have pocket knives in school?

I got caught up watching him work. He wasn’t being particularly quiet about it. Mr. Blackbourne hadn’t given us many instructions. I expected Mr. Blackbourne to appear again rather quickly and tell us to change tactics or give us more directions.

I started to get a little cold and hugged the jacket close to my body.

“Put it on if you want,” Victor said as he stabbed the knife at the locker in frustration. He sighed. “These lockers smell.”

I slipped the jacket on and then sniffed the air, noting the chemical cleaners were heavier here, probably because we were close to the janitor’s door, but there was also an underlying smell of decay, dust and a bit of acidic paint. “It’s pretty bad.”

Victor finally managed to open one by wedging the knife just above the lock, and then pushing hard to bend the door. He shoved it far enough the lock popped out. It scraped loud as it did. There was nothing inside, and the door was damaged.

Victor wiped at his brow. “Destroying school property. That’s a detention.”

“Probably wo

rse,” I said. “Now what?”

“He said open these lockers,” Victor said. His fire eyes met mine. “I do it until he says stop.”

“But,” I said, unsure how to put this. I glanced up and down the hallway again, and with no one close by, I slipped close to Victor, standing right behind him as he tried to wedge the knife into another locker. “Why you?”

“Huh?” he asked. His lean muscles in his arms flexed and his fire eyes focused on the locker, a blaze of focus.

“I mean, Luke seems to be the one that knows about breaking into things,” I said. “And Nathan or Silas would be able to physically break into these easier.”

Victor smirked as he worked the knife back and forth, bending the metal. “So I’m stupid and weak?”

“No!”

“Because I’ll have you know, Princess, breaking into these lockers isn’t exactly rocket science. And the metal’s worn. They’ve been broken before.” He pointed to one of the lockers nearby, showing me the scraped paint by the knob.

“Oh,” I said, not understanding his point.

He popped open the second locker, revealing a few old text books and notebooks that looked to have been there for years. “But if he’s asking me to do it, he doesn’t want an expert or someone who can punch a locker and break it with a fist. He wants someone...” He smiled at this. “Normal.”

My fingers smoothed over the material of the jacket across my stomach. I gazed back at the hallway opening, still not hearing anyone coming. “We’re the normal ones?”

He closed the door to the locker. It didn’t shut all the way now that it was broken. “You haven’t noticed?”

“You’re not,” I said. I wasn’t either, but I didn’t want to talk about me. “Not in a bad way. I mean you play the piano.”

“Anyone can play the piano if they practice,” he said. He crouched, working on one of the lower lockers. “I’m not exactly Mozart.”

“You can play Mozart.”

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