JW01. Under Locker and Key Page 6

  THE REST OF THE DAY, though busy, was normal until sixth period, the eighth grade’s lunchtime. Becca had told me she could get me out of class so we could initiate phase one, but frankly, I didn’t trust her to come through. So I was surprised when she showed up as I was figuring out the value of x, and more than a little annoyed when she began to talk.

  “Principal McDuff sent me for . . . Jeremy Wilderson?” she asked, letting her voice jump up at the end like she didn’t know who I was. Like anyone would buy that. “He wants to see him in his office right now.”

  The whispering started. Although no one openly discussed my work except in dire circumstances like this crime wave, most students knew what I did and what Becca did. This would hit the rumor mill as soon as class ended and students could text again. The troublemakers were already at it, their hands flying under the desks.

  Ms. Manuel looked concerned. “What is this about?”

  Becca shrugged and smiled. “I don’t know; he wouldn’t tell me. But he did say it might take a while.”

  Ms. Manuel turned to me. “Jeremy, take your backpack and go with Becca.”

  I did as she said while the whispering crescendoed behind me. (“Crescendoed” . . . like it? Music class.) I could feel my face turning red.

  “What was that?” I asked as soon as Becca and I were alone in the halls. “Couldn’t you have done anything—anything at all—to not make me look guilty?” With the rash of break-ins and my reputation, I wouldn’t have been surprised if my math class had already decided to print up WANTED: JEREMY WILDERSON posters.

  “You are guilty, Wilderson,” Becca said. “Is it wrong of me to want the rest of the school to see that?”

  “It is when it means we might not stop Mark. Or do you want him to get away?”

  Becca sighed. “If I did, do you think I’d be working with you?”

  “Point taken.” But I still didn’t trust her. While she spoke about the school’s rule book like it had floated down to Scottsville on a golden cloud, she bent those rules when it suited her. For all I knew, she’d break her promise as soon as the key was back where it belonged.

  “How long do we have?” Becca asked.

  “I can crack his locker in ten minutes, and after that it’s easy. You know what you have to do?”

  “Do all your thieving partners need constant reminders on how to do their jobs?”

  “Okay, no need to get snarky. Do whatever you want. Just keep him away for twenty minutes.”

  “Don’t let the teachers catch you.”

  I put my hand on my heart. “Why, Miss Mills, I didn’t know you cared.”

  She gave me an ice-cold death stare. “If you get caught, it makes me look bad because I got you out of class.” Becca left toward the hall outside the cafeteria.

  I shook my head and crept toward the eighth-grade hallway. Class hours aren’t the best time to be working. Teachers do their rounds, kids go to the bathroom to ditch class and sometimes to actually use the bathroom, and once in a while classes get out early, all of which can be awkward when you’re kneeling in front of a locker that isn’t yours with your ear pressed against the metal.

  I didn’t see anyone as I walked down the eighth-grade hallway. I knew roughly where Mark’s locker was from confronting him the day before, but I also may have dared Hack to pull up the list of student locker numbers during Mr. Gumby’s third-period computer class. Mark’s was 823.

  Before beginning work on the locker, I closed my eyes and listened for footsteps, doors opening and closing, anything that might cause trouble. Nothing. Good.

  Middle school lockers have a keyhole as well as the standard combination lock, for the infamous master key. I could have picked it, but my picks might have left marks on the keyhole, and with the master key being hot, I couldn’t risk it. So I went for old-fashioned code-breaking.

  I placed my ear against the locker door and spun the lock, listening for the sweet spot where the acoustics were just right to hear the contact points click.

  All school combination locks have three numbers, making them three-wheel locks. To crack the lock, I’d need to line up the wheels just right, in the right order, to allow a metal bar called a fence to drop and open the lock. I parked the wheels at zero and slowly, carefully, spun the dial forward to the right, listening as the numbers passed one by one. My eyes were closed; anyone who wanted to sneak up on me would have the perfect chance to do it.

  A click. A few numbers later, another. I kept turning until I heard the contact points click six times total, for the left and right of the three numbers. Every time it clicked, I opened my eyes and made a note of which number it landed on. Then I parked the wheels three before zero and did it again, counting the clicks and aligning the numbers.

  This was going to take forever. After a few minutes, I had my numbers: seven, twelve, and forty-two. But in what order? The clicks couldn’t tell me that; they just let me know where the notches on the wheels were. I’d blown through too much time; I still needed to search the locker before Becca came back. How long did I have? Ten minutes? Five?

  I entered the numbers in the order I found them and pulled on the door. No go. I tried them backward and still didn’t get it. How many other combinations were there? I didn’t have time to try them all out.

  Fine. If I couldn’t manipulate the lock, I might still manipulate the safe. Most Scottsville Middle lockers had a trick, and I knew it. I hoped Mark’s wasn’t an exception. I pounded the top corners of the door and kicked the latch beside the lock. The door swung open with a clang and a red water balloon catapulted at my face.

  “Whoa! What the . . . ?”

  Although my head dodged, my hand sprung to action. Moving like a video game character, I reached for the balloon as it passed my face, scooped it out of the air before it could hit the floor, then cushioned the impact by dropping my hand for a short distance with the projectile.

  Saved. My hand hung inches from the hard floor, which would likely have broken the tight skin of the balloon and splattered liquid all over me and the hall, leaving puddles of proof that someone had broken into the locker.

  I lifted the balloon to eye level and examined it. The liquid inside wasn’t water; it was too thick. Paint, maybe? Good thing Rick and I were the annual champs of the Wilderson Fourth of July Family Picnic water-balloon toss.

  The inside of the locker held the catapult rig, a cardboard contraption connected to the locker door by a string. When the door opened, the catapult would fire at whoever stood there. Did I mention the trap was rigged so it would work best on a very short person?

  “Clever, Mark,” I muttered. “But no cigar.”

  I have no idea what that expression means either.

  I admit, I felt a little giddy at that point. I had cracked the locker—in record time, I might add—and dodged a trap that would have marked me as a locker-breaking thief for all the teachers to see. I was flying high.

  So, of course, that would be the moment I heard footsteps from around the corner.

  My heart kicked my lungs, but I calmed myself down. The steps were far away; I could still do this.

  Putting the water balloon beside the catapult, I started with Mark’s jacket, pulling out the pockets as fast as I could. Nothing. I even felt the lining to see if the creep had sewn the key there for safekeeping. Which, in hindsight, doesn’t make sense. Trapped in a lining, the key would be too hard to access.

  At the bottom of the locker, books and papers were stacked haphazardly. I pushed through them, leaning them up against the side as I went. I even flipped through the pages of the books. Nothing. Nada. Zip.

  The footsteps rounded the corner, and I froze. A girl, an eighth grader I’d never worked for or against, ignored me as she went to the water fountain beside the girls’ bathroom across the hall from Mark’s locker, drank, and left. I sighed. I had a little more time.

  Mark wasn’t the kind of guy to have little baskets stuck to his door, so that left the cubby at the t
op of the locker, where the catapult and water balloon lay. I pushed the trap aside and examined the back, finding some pens, old erasers, and cough drops. Nothing big enough to hide a key in or under. I pushed them around anyway.

  My hand caught paper, and I paused. It was the twenty-dollar bill Mark had tried to pay me with. “Well, well, well.”

  I was angry. Mark had used me, set me up to take his fall, forced me to work with Becca, and tried to splatter me with paint. This wasn’t about money for me, and I wanted Mark to know it. Using one of Mark’s pens, I wrote with my left hand under Andrew Jackson’s face, You can’t buy skill. I reread it. Good. Mark would know who wrote it, but teachers couldn’t link those words to me. It was all about proof, who had it and who didn’t.

  Speaking of which, I had to reset the trap. Couldn’t let Mark prove I’d been there, could I? I readjusted the arm of the catapult and nested the water balloon in the cup. When I drew back my hand, it was stained with red.

  Oh, perfect. Looking closer at the balloon, I noticed a slow dribble of red paint from the loose end, where the rubber was knotted. That explained why it hadn’t burst. It must have been punctured when I caught it or when I pushed it aside to search the locker. If it had been water, it would have sprayed everywhere, but the thick paint just bubbled out. My stomach lurched as I thought about how much trouble I’d almost been in.

  I should have been more careful and treated the balloon like the live grenade it was. The red paint coated my palm, smearing with every movement. I’d have to be careful to reset the string without getting paint on it—

  Footsteps down the hall, around the corner. Voices echoed. Mark and Becca!

  “I appreciate this,” Mark said. “With all the thefts, I’m glad you’re coming with me to check on my locker.”

  “No problem,” Becca said, smirking. I didn’t know a smirk could be audible. “Maybe we’ll find some evidence.”

  Dang! Double dang! That was the last time I’d tell Becca Mills to “do whatever you want.” Forget resetting the trap. I closed the locker door with my elbow and looked for a place to hide. I had only seconds.

  The girls’ bathroom across the hall. It was my one option. I’d just have to hope that no one was inside.

  I made the door with less than a second to spare. No one was inside, thank goodness. I looked around. “Wow. It’s really clean in here.”

  I could hear them through the door. “Looks like nothing’s wrong,” Becca said, her voice calm. “No signs of forced entry.”

  “A thief might not need to force his entry,” Mark said. “Let me look inside. Stand back.”

  I heard the locker door open. “Someone was in here,” Mark said.

  “Really? How can you tell?”

  Becca sounded so cool and disinterested, so different from how she spoke to me. Was this what she sounded like most of the time? I thought her voice was permanently set on either brownnosing (for teachers) or simmering with acidic hate (for me).

  “Look. The balloon’s broken. There’s paint all over my catapult. It wasn’t like that when I left it.”

  “Well, balloons do that, especially the cheap kind,” Becca said. “At my friend Elena’s birthday party, half the balloons exploded before we took them out of the cooler. Do you have any incontrovertible evidence for me?”

  Incontrovertible. Good word. I’d have to remember that one. And it sounded like I’d done a good job covering my tracks. I fist-pumped, which spread the paint from my palm to my fingers. Great.

  “Everything’s been moved around.”

  “It looks neat to me,” Becca said.

  “Exactly. My locker wasn’t this neat last I saw it. And he went through my jacket. All the pockets are turned out. He can’t have gotten far. We should go after him.”

  My heart fluttered. Would he come looking for me? I couldn’t let him catch me hiding in a girls’ bathroom!

  “Hang on,” Becca said. “Our not-so-bright thief left us a lot of evidence when he straightened up your locker. Let’s make a case, and then we’ll get him.” The smugness in her voice made me grit my teeth. “Has anything been taken?”

  After a few seconds of silence Mark spoke. “No, nothing’s missing. But wait. I swear there wasn’t anything written on this when I saw it last.” He’d found the twenty-dollar bill.

  “Really?” A pause. I pictured Becca clenching her fists. “Why the money?”

  “What?”

  “It’s odd, that’s all.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I see a stack of notebooks here, all full of paper. Why leave a note on a twenty-dollar bill hidden at the back of a locker? Did the money have some kind of meaning, some significance?”

  I smiled. When I’d told Becca everything, I’d told her everything. She knew all about Mark trying to pay me. She knew the answer to the question. It made me wonder how much she already knew when she asked me questions.

  “No,” Mark answered. After a pause he added, “I guess the thief didn’t want to rip out any pages.”

  “Well, the good news is you can still spend the money, even if it’s been written on. Why don’t you go back to lunch and I’ll do some forensics here? We’ll catch this thief. By the way, do you have any idea who did this?”

  Mark snorted. “You know who it is.”

  “Right. Wilderson. He’s gone too far this time. Now, I wasn’t kidding about you going back to lunch. I need an untouched crime scene.”

  One pair of feet walked away, down the hall. I still had my ear against the door when it jerked open and Becca walked in with a dangerous smile on her little face. “Fancy meeting you here. Oh,” she said, looking at my paint-stained hand. “Looks like I caught you red-handed.”

  “That was a really bad pun,” I said as I walked over to a sink. “Now I hurt inside.”

  “I know, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.” She stood there, watching, as I struggled to turn the hot-water spigot, which must have rusted to the sink. When I finally succeeded and started washing the paint off, she coughed. Twice.

  “What?”

  “You do know this is the girls’ room.”

  “I’m aware of that. How did you know I’d be in here?”

  “I heard your footsteps. You didn’t move for long, so I knew you weren’t far. And this is the only hiding place, unless you’d shoved yourself into a locker.” She smiled and pulled her camera out of her pocket. “Jeremy Wilderson, lurking in a ladies’ room. Say ‘cheese.’ ” She snapped a picture of me at the sink, unable to dodge or hide my face. “I think I’ll print a copy of this one.”

  I felt like I was at war and losing. Bad. “Can’t we just congratulate ourselves on a job well done and let bygones be bygones?”

  “The note on the money. Don’t you think that was a bit much?”

  “I thought it would help sell the con.”

  At the word “con,” Becca flinched.

  “That came very close to leaving enough evidence to indict yourself.”

  “I never leave evidence unless I want to. You know that.” I scrubbed harder at my hand, but the paint didn’t come off. “I’m so glad I didn’t get this all over my face. I’d look like the cafeteria’s red Jell-O salad.”

  “You wouldn’t have lost much. But here.” Becca turned up the hot water on my hand. Taking a handful of paper towels, she pumped enough soap over them to wash a Chevy pickup. Then she grabbed my wet wrist.

  “What are you doing?” I tried to pull away, but she didn’t let go.

  Becca rolled her eyes. “You’re never going to get it off at that rate. I can’t afford to have anyone see that paint and link you to Mark’s locker and suspect that you’re working with me. I don’t think you understand how much I’m risking. If anyone knew I teamed with you on this case, it would destroy any faith people have in me. And I don’t just mean kids. Teachers, too.”

  Really? She was giving me a lecture on risk when I was hiding in a girls’ bathroom and set up by a crime-lord wannabe to
take the fall for a series of thefts?

  “Are you sure this isn’t just an excuse to hold my hand?”

  Becca responded by grating the soapy paper down my stained hand, removing a lot of paint by scraping off my top layer of skin.

  “Oww.”

  “Did that feel like a love note to you?”

  “Well, you are hiding evidence for me. If that’s not true love, I don’t know what is.”

  “I’m not going to dignify that with a response.” Becca bit her lip. “I thought you would have taken that money instead of written on it. Since it was supposed to be your payment and all.”

  “You made it clear that I’m not allowed to retrieve anything on pain of getting turned in, not as long as we work together. And, oh yeah, I’m not a thief.”

  “Liar.” Becca’s hand clenched, cutting off the flow of blood to my wrist. As I squirmed, she said, “You have a long history of thefts, Wilderson. The longer I work with you, the closer I come to finding what I need to prove what you are. Why don’t you just confess and save us both the trouble?”

  I twisted my hand free from Becca’s grip. “We both know you have nothing without my official confession. Maybe that would be different if you knew how to do your job right.”

  “I know how to do my job.”

  “You were supposed to keep Mark away by any means necessary. For twenty minutes. I had maybe fifteen before I had to run for it.” I examined my hand. The paint was gone, but the skin burned. What do they put in that soap?

  Becca threw the wad of soapy paper towels at my face. “Well, excuse me,” she said as I fumbled the dripping mess. “Mark was pretty determined, and I couldn’t make it obvious I was keeping him from his locker. I have a reputation at this school.”

  “Yeah, well, so do I. It would be great if you could respect that.”

  She laughed. “Respect? That will happen on the far side of never.”

  I gritted my teeth. What was it about this girl that made me want to argue until the zombie apocalypse had come and gone? Remember the plan. Remember Mark and all those kids whose stuff has been stolen. “Can you come over after school today? There are some phase-two details I want to hammer out.”