Under Locker and Key

by Allison K. Hymas

  I froze. “What do you mean?”

  Case shrugged. “People are starting to talk. They’re saying no one benefits as much from this crime wave as you.”

  “That’s insane.”

  “Maybe, but what they’re saying is making a lot of sense. Hear me out. With every locker knocked over, your client list grows. Some people on the bus this morning commented how easy it would be for you to return their stuff if you were the one who’d had it all along. When you help your clients, they talk you up. They recommend you to their friends. You become a legend, just like you want. Everyone will remember the guy who stopped the biggest crime wave Scottsville ever had. Even being the thief behind the crime wave is its own legacy.”

  “I’m not stealing anything!”

  “I know. We both know,” Case said, hands raised in a calming gesture. “So do other people, but the problem is, they’re speculating now. If it’s hitting the rumor mill, how long before the snitch picks up on it?”

  “Since when do you care what Becca would think?” I took a deep breath, trying not to blow up. “If I’m the thief, why would I steal from you? You’re my friends.”

  Case shrugged. “So we wouldn’t suspect you. Because those passes and the tablet are valuable. Because it would look good if you went out to ‘avenge’ your friends.”

  I rubbed the space between my eyebrows. “Oh, boy.” If people were already starting to talk, then I was in trouble. “What did you guys say?”

  “We had your back,” Hack said. “We told them you’d never steal from them, only for them. It’s just a few people who enjoy watching a hero turn dirty and fall from grace. No one important. But we can’t defend you as much as we want because we don’t know anything.”

  “J,” Case said, “tell us what you’re doing. We can help you if we know what your plan is to catch the thief.”

  “You know what I know.” A lie.

  Case pointed at my face. “You’re hiding something. I can see it when you lie to us. I know you’re busy. I know you’re working something. You always are. Yesterday I went to your house to talk about the crime wave, and you weren’t home. You’re always home after school in case someone comes over with a job.”

  “No one told me you came over,” I said.

  “Rick answered the door.”

  “Oh. That explains it.”

  “So, where were you?” Case asked.

  This was the moment of truth. Literally. What was I doing? These were my friends. They’d had my back hundreds of times, on hundreds of jobs. If I couldn’t trust them, I couldn’t trust anyone. I could tell them the truth, about Mark and the key and my involvement and working with—working with B—

  I chickened out. “I was looking into the locker thefts.”

  “Then why doesn’t it look like you’re doing anything about it?” Case waved at the list in my hand.

  “It’s not that simple this time. Scottsville has never had a crime wave like this. I can’t treat it like my usual jobs.” I felt like I’d eaten a burger and discovered it was made of leftover mystery meat. I hated lying to my friends and hiding my work from them. But it was for the best. “This job is different. It’s dangerous.”

  “So bring us in on it,” Hack said. “We can help you if you’d just let us.”

  Oh yeah, and Case and Hack and I could all sit around at Becca Mills’s table, eating cookies and drinking milk. That would go over well. “I can’t,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  Case gritted his teeth. “Why not?”

  “Because it’s not safe.”

  Hack took off his glasses and used them to scratch his head. “For you? Or for us? We can take care of ourselves.”

  “We’re not babies,” Case said. “We don’t need you to protect us from the big, bad world. We can help.”

  “Not with this one. Not this time.”

  “You know what? Fine.” Case jabbed a finger at me. “Go it alone. Sorry we’re too pathetic or too untrustworthy for you to confide in when your job gets dangerous. I hope whoever you’re talking to cares enough to keep you from self-destructing.”

  “I’m not talking to anyone else.” A lie, but Becca’s name could not come up.

  “Aren’t you? This job is too big for one person. If you’re not confiding in us, then you’re working with someone else. Someone that you trust more than your friends.”

  “I trust you.”

  “If you did, you’d talk to us. Unless everyone else is right and you are the thief behind the crime spree.”

  I froze, stung. “I know you don’t believe that.”

  “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. But maybe I don’t trust you enough to tell you what I think.” Case clenched his fists, making his gloves bunch up.

  I was shaking. “That’s great. Just wonderful. Maybe we shouldn’t tell each other anything at all.”

  Hack shook his head. “Don’t be like that, J—”

  Case stopped him with a wave. “If you get into trouble, don’t come running to us.”

  “I won’t. Enjoy homeroom.” I turned to leave. “I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  No one followed me to the boys’ bathroom, where I found an empty stall and seethed.

  Some friends I had. How could Case and Hack get so angry when all I wanted to do was protect them from Mark and Becca? Couldn’t they trust my judgment after all we’d been through?

  As angry as I was at my so-called friends, I was livid with Mark. Mark was going to pay for what he had done to my life. And soon. That eighth grader was lucky it was almost the weekend; he would not get another day to steal from innocent people. Not when I, with Becca’s help, could stop him.

  My enemy was my only ally, and my friends were upset with me. How did this happen?

  I kicked the stall door, slamming it against the frame. Then I pulled a notebook out of my backpack and penned a couple of notes to Tomboy Tate and Cricket. Becca had said no retrieving, but I didn’t care. Before school ended, I had an important job to do. There were a couple of things I needed to get back before Mark had any kind of chance to sell them or lose them. The stakes were high, but it didn’t matter. I had to make things right.

  I SKIPPED HOMEROOM, BUT I couldn’t stay hidden for long or the teachers would get suspicious. I stashed my backpack up in the bathroom’s ceiling tiles and then used my fake hall pass to find Tate and give her my note. By the time the bell rang for first period, everything was ready to go and I had reentered the flow of the school day.

  My anger at Mark and guilt/annoyance with Case and Hack dissolved, for a while, under the craziness of the rest of my day. People kept coming up to me—with no regard for who might be nearby listening or the air of mystery I try to keep—telling me what items had vanished from their sealed lockers. Could I, pretty please, find it for them?

  On top of that I saw Mark watching me as I walked from third to fourth period. A couple of the muscular guys who had pushed him into the lockers the other day were laughing and slapping his back like a friend, which worried me. Mark had gotten street cred since the last time we met. When he saw me looking, he smiled and hoisted his red backpack higher onto his shoulder. Who carries his backpack from class to class in middle school ? I’ll tell you who: someone who has something to hide.

  Mark knew I’d broken into his locker. Writing on the twenty dollars would have made that undeniable. Good, I thought. I wanted him to know it was me who’d bring him down. He needed to know that he couldn’t toy with Jeremy Wilderson, retrieval specialist, without swift and ruthless comeuppance.

  But my blood still ran cold when I saw him. Mark was smart enough to play me and becoming better connected every day. If he wanted to, he could get one of his new friends to attack me after school and I wouldn’t see it coming. That was why I needed to keep Case and Hack out of this job, and what Becca was for, if I could trust her enough to have my back. And if she didn’t catch me in my . . . extracurricular activities.

  I was grateful for lunchtime when it ca
me. At least until the “fire drill,” it would be quieter than the rest of my day; I didn’t think there was anyone else left in the school to hire me. Also, I wouldn’t be sitting with Case and Hack.

  Sitting alone at one of the tables too close to the teachers to be fun, I watched my best friends talk and eat. I knew what they were saying. They were debating whether I didn’t trust them enough to count on them or if it really was that dangerous a job. But sooner or later Hack would mention how his mom was thinking about shortening his sentence because of good behavior, and then Case would say that meant Hack was free to come to the county’s summer art competition—Case would mention it; he seemed to manage to work that competition and his entry into every casual conversation lately. I’d sat through many of his tangents on the tiny mistakes he might have made in color choice and detailing, but how it should be okay because his competitors were “mouth-breathing troglodytes.”

  That’s Case for you.

  I bit my lip, which tasted like weak cheese sauce. Part of me wanted to go over and explain everything. If I made it clear that they couldn’t get involved, I could tell them what I was doing. I could outline for them my plan for getting back their stuff.

  But the rest of me couldn’t forget that as soon as trouble—real trouble—popped up, they’d decided I didn’t trust them enough. Some friends. They’d feel so stupid once Mark got caught and they saw what I was really doing.

  A crumpled piece of paper landed in my overcooked broccoli. I scooped it up and unfolded it under the table. It was from Becca.

  Mark is in position. Phase two is a go.

  “Great,” I muttered. I wasn’t looking forward to what I needed to do to make phase two happen; kids got arrested for faking a fire. Also, dodging Becca was going to be nerve-racking and awful. But it was our only chance, and I needed to work, to get my mind off Case and Hack. Plus, getting the chance to swat Mark around, metaphorically speaking, could only brighten my day.

  After making sure I had the gear I needed for this job, I walked out of the cafeteria, once more “forgetting” to sign out. Once out the door, I peeked over my shoulder. Case and Hack were watching me. Case stood up.

  “Oh, perfect.” I hurried away before they could gain on me.

  Ten minutes later, when I met her in the hall, Becca glared at me. “Where were you?”

  “My friends are getting a little too curious. They tried to tail me when I left the cafeteria. I had to take the long way and pass through the gym before I lost them.”

  “That’s the rub, isn’t it? As soon as you go straight, your criminal friends get upset with you,” Becca said. She turned and started walking down the hall.

  “I never said they were upset.”

  “You didn’t have to. Your face is redder than usual, and you wouldn’t have even brought up your friends if they weren’t a problem. I am the snitch, after all.” She smiled, making me wonder how much else she knew. “What’s the matter? Are they mad that you didn’t cut them in on the take?”

  “Ah, you’ve been studying thief language,” I said. “As much as I would love to talk to you about my personal life and my friends—who have done nothing, by the way, and are none of your business—we have a job to do. Where’s Mark now?”

  Becca pointed to a door decorated with paper ducks and math symbols (I didn’t get it either). “In that classroom. Now do your stuff.”

  “Sure. As soon as you leave.”

  Becca folded her arms. “I’m not leaving you alone.”

  “You’ll have to. Mark is scared. He’s running. If he sees you and me together, he could suspect you. We’d lose our edge.”

  She didn’t look convinced. “I’ll tell you everything,” I said. “After it’s over.”

  Becca nodded. “Okay. I’ll trust you. This once. Partly because I think you have no plan and are making this up as you go, but mostly because if you go rogue I have a long list of things I can tell the principal.”

  Oh, perfect. “Just get out of here. Leave me to my part of this. And you better not be taping this.”

  “Of course not. I trust you, remember? You’d better not betray that trust.” With that veiled threat, she left me to my illegal activities.

  For illegal they were. I’m sure by now you’re wondering what I was thinking, going to such lengths to stop Mark. Well, a true artist is completely devoted to his craft, and I was. I did everything it took to complete a job. Also, I was responsible for the key’s theft, so I had to get it back, which meant making opportunities if they didn’t come served up on a scratched plastic lunch tray.

  Once Becca was gone, I looked around the hall and located the nearest fire alarm. Then I searched the ceiling for the bubbly CCTV cameras. One had a perfect view of the fire alarm—camera 15. I walked past it into the nearest boys’ bathroom and waited, peering out the door to the hallway.

  What I wasn’t supposed to know, but had learned from long afternoons waiting for my mom to finish red-inking papers so we could go home, was that the cameras were linked to TVs in the office, watched by security guards and off-duty teachers. The feeds from the cameras rotated, showing a minute of footage before moving to the next camera. A careful person could figure out the cameras’ schedule and know which ones were playing at Office Theater at which times. And I am a very careful person.

  As I watched the digital wall clock, waiting for the minute to change, I took a small roll of duct tape (the kind they sell at hiking stores) out of my pocket and tore a strip off. I stuck the strip to the back of my hand just as the clock changed. In the office the camera feed jumped off camera 15 and on to camera 16. I only had a minute or two, so I raced to the fire alarm. A thrill of excitement charged through my arm as I reached out, gripped the handle, and pulled. I jumped out of the way as soon as the handle was down; some schools have fire alarms that spray the puller with ink.

  Nothing happened, and thank goodness. I don’t think I could have handled being attacked with paint two days in a row.

  No, the alarm did nothing more than let out a very satisfying squeal. As scared I was of getting caught, the fear melted under a wave of exhilaration. Who hasn’t dreamed of pulling the fire alarm?

  As white lights flashed in the halls and the alarm blared, I pressed my back into the wall just outside Mark’s math classroom, where the door would swing out. When it did swing out, the class hurrying away, I grabbed it, just long enough to transfer the tape to the door, right over the locking mechanism. (I’d learned that trick in social studies, when we studied the Watergate scandal).

  Then I melted back into the crowd of classes hurrying outside and ducked back into the boys’ bathroom to wait out the crowd. I entered a stall, remembering to leave the door slightly open, and sat on the toilet with my feet up. A few minutes later a teacher came in.

  “Anyone in here?”

  I didn’t answer.

  A few seconds passed and the teacher left. I waited a couple more minutes and crept out of the bathroom.

  The hall was deserted; everyone was outside, getting counted to make sure no one was trapped inside by the nonexistent flames. I hoped that because I was supposed to be at lunch when the alarm went off, the teachers wouldn’t notice my name was missing for enough time for me to do my job. I would come out later and join the students, making sure the teachers counted my name. That way the teachers wouldn’t peg me as the guy who pulled the alarm. Which was a good thing, considering the fire department was probably already on its way.

  No one was around to catch me as I crept to the door with the ducks and pi symbols and walked in. The teacher would have locked the door on their way out so the fire, if there was one, wouldn’t spread all over the place, but this door was unlocked, thanks to the tape. I closed the door behind me. Any teachers scanning the hall would never suspect me.

  Mark’s red bag was right there, leaning against a desk. He’d had to leave it because teachers don’t let you take your stuff with you during a fire. This would be a sleepwalk. I knelt dow
n and started unzipping pockets.

  I’m not going to do a play-by-play on this one. I found textbooks, worksheets, a pair of gym sneakers, tons of pencils . . . even a few dollars, which I didn’t write on this time. I dug up a key, but it wasn’t the master key. I sighed. If only it were that easy.

  The work flew by. It wasn’t until I’d zipped up Mark’s backpack and leaned it back against the desk that I realized the flaw in my elegant plan.

  They would be looking for me.

  The teachers keep a close record of the kids in their classes, and if those kids go missing in an emergency situation, people tend to worry. A lot. Someone would be looking for me, whether the teachers outside, keeping an eye on the school doors for any stragglers, or security guards inside, crawling the halls and calling for me. If I held still, I could hear voices in the hall coming my way.

  I couldn’t let them catch me here. I crossed the classroom in seconds and yanked on the door handle. The door opened, but I caught myself before the door was more than cracked. Opening the door would signal my presence to anyone who might walk down this hall, and it would be hard to explain what I was doing in an eighth-grade math classroom. My lies wouldn’t hold up, and Mark would win. That wasn’t an option.

  I was a rat in a trap, thanks to one little oversight. With as much knowledge as I had of school procedures, I should have remembered earlier that the teachers would be looking for me.

  As I looked around the room, plotting my escape options, I realized that I was working on a time limit. If I didn’t get out before the teachers really panicked, I’d be in trouble even if I didn’t get caught here. They’d wonder why I didn’t tell them I was all right and put them at ease, and that would make them mad. I also had to get out of this classroom, escaping the people in the hall, before they found me here. Best case, I’d get in trouble for hiding out in the school during a fire emergency. Worst, they’d know I pulled the fire alarm and I’d be suspended or expelled, and Mark would still win. If that happened, Becca wouldn’t do a thing to back me up. She was always helpful during our after-school meetings—cameras aside—but I couldn’t forget that she was, when the late-bus bell rang, my nemesis.