To Right the Wrongs

by Sheryl Scarborough

  “I can do that,” Spam says in an almost trancelike state.

  “Do what?”

  “What Brianna just said.” Suddenly energized, Spam’s thumbs work overtime as she punches stuff into her phone. Her head swivels toward the door.

  “Shhhush,” she hisses loudly. “She’s coming.”

  A wave of action ripples through the room as everyone sits down and opens a book. A few seconds later, Principal Blankenship enters. A notebook is cradled in her arm with a fat purple highlighter clipped to the cover. She quietly stalks the room, taking in the prescribed quiet studying in progress. Finding nothing, she stalks out.

  A few moments later a harried Coach Wilkins arrives. “Whoa.” He’s visibly shocked to see so many people in this room. He holds up a piece of paper. “Okay, sports fans, I’m sending around a detention sign-up sheet. You want credit for today, make sure your name is on it. Stay like this for the next forty minutes and we’ll be all good.”

  3

  If you witness a crime, it’s important to record your memories as soon as possible; otherwise there’s a risk that what you remember will become warped by hearing other versions of the incident.

  —VICTOR FLEMMING

  So, after an hour of our lives that we’ll never get back, we drag ourselves out of the Detention Dungeon and wander toward the parking lot with the rest of the incorrigibles. The group is so huge it feels like half the school. Lysa and Spam are bickering over which one of them should give me a ride home. Personally, I don’t care. I wouldn’t even mind walking today. This new principal thing has me feeling very weird and unsettled. Just when things were supposed to finally fit into place. Now we have her to deal with.

  I can tell she’s definitely not keen on us.

  We stop on the front walkway next to the flagpole. If I’m going to ride with Spam, she parks in the lot to the right. Lysa, who is rummaging in her bag for her sunglasses, parks in the one to the left.

  “Spam, how did you do that? How did you know Blankenship was coming?”

  “It was amazing, wasn’t it?” She peers at her phone as if it’s magic. “It totally worked.”

  “She was expecting us to be goofing off,” Lysa says. “Did you see her face? She was disappointed that she couldn’t add to our misery by handing out more D-slips. No doubt she has severe rules about misbehaving in detention.”

  “But seriously, how did you know?” I ask.

  Spam looks up from her phone. “That purple highlighter clipped to her notebook was mine and it has a tracking beacon hidden in it. There’s an app on my phone programmed to track the beacon. When I turned it on I could tell she was coming toward us.”

  “Is the beacon expensive?” Lysa asks. “Can you track her wherever she goes?”

  “The electronics are cheap, just a few dollars. As for tracking, I think you need to be fairly close. But I could probably work on the range. Why?”

  Lysa finds her sunglasses. We wait while she puts them on and checks her look in the mirror on the back of her cell phone case. “Ahh, that’s better. We hate giving up Cheater Checks because it made us special. But we promised…”

  I instantly get where Lysa’s going. “So, what if we sell apps instead? Knowing when someone is lurking around might be valuable.”

  “It’s genius,” Spam says. “Both of you. Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “The highlighter might be a problem, though. If everyone started carrying one it could be suspicious.” Lysa, the practical one.

  “Good point. I’ll figure out another type of bell for our cat,” Spam says.

  “Seriously, how weird is she?” I slip my head through the strap of my bag and adjust it so it hangs cross-body style. “A massive number of detention slips, and she’s like this super-spy or something.”

  Lysa removes her sunglasses to polish them on the hem of her skirt. “I think she’s just establishing her Alpha power over us. She’ll calm down.”

  “Did you not see the same thing I did?” I say. “Everything about her is deliberately calm … calm and grim, like a little boy pulling the wings off flies. She enjoys torturing us.”

  Spam fluffs her hair. “Have you ever noticed how the first thing Lysa says is always something nice, whether it’s the truth or not? You have to wait awhile for her actual feelings to rise to the surface.”

  “That’s not true,” Lysa argues. “I say what I feel inside. Especially to you guys.”

  I hide my smile because Spam’s right. Lysa does tend to paint things in a sunny light.

  “You actually believe that after that impressive show of force, she’ll drop back and become a normal, everyday principal?”

  “Hey.” Spam spins in a circle as a guy we’ve never seen before zips past her on a skateboard. He’s so close, his wake ruffles her hair.

  Skateboarder guy skids sideways to a stop and flashes a huge smile. “Hey yourself, shortcake.” He points to the GoPro attached to his helmet. “Smile.” Then he frames the shot with his fingers.

  On command, Spam offers up more than just a smile, moving quickly through a series of silly fashion model poses while the skateboarder slowly pans all three of us. Spam ends with a kiss blown off her palm. “What’s your name?” she says.

  “The Lone Ranger.” He flip-kicks, swiveling his board, and rides off.

  It’s not until this moment that we notice the car speeding toward us.

  The car surges straight for the skateboarder, but he manages to pivot and deflect danger by pushing off the front fender with his fingertips. As he swerves around the moving vehicle, the driver overcorrects and aims for us.

  We scream, grab for each other, and tumble backward.

  There’s a series of terrifying scrapes and bangs as the car jumps the curb and slams into the flagpole with a teeth-jarring, metallic thwang.

  For a second everything is silent.

  Then people scream and run in all directions.

  The flagpole teeters briefly before it snaps and plunges forward, landing on the roof of the car with a giant crash. The force of the falling flagpole explodes the car windows, and glass flies in all directions. More students scream and run.

  Coach Wilkins and a security officer appear at the vehicle and try to wrench the door open. But it’s bent in such a way that it won’t budge.

  A trail of smoke drifts up from the crumpled hood in a question-mark shape.

  My movements are slo-mo. I’m barely aware of distant sirens and warnings to run because the car is going to blow. I sit up alongside Lysa and Spam. We contemplate the black skid mark that runs across the cement only a few inches from our toes.

  A familiar chill compels me to turn my eyes into a recorder and take in the whole scene. My suspicious mind goes to a dark place. Was that really an accident?

  “Holy crap.” Spam scoots back.

  Blankenship stands off to the side, arms crossed over her chest. She’s not looking where I would expect her to be looking, at the rescue operation for the driver of the car. No, she’s staring at us, and the scowl on her face suggests that she thinks we had something to do with all of this.

  A shiver traces through me.

  Lysa is babbling. “I skinned my knee. But it’s fine. It doesn’t even really hurt. Everything is fine, though. Are you fine? Because I’m fine.”

  “Erin. Erin. Oh my god!” someone yells.

  Spam and I help each other up, then reach down to help Lysa up too.

  Everything is shrouded in a strange fog and nothing makes sense right away.

  Especially because the voice yelling my name belongs to Journey and he’s racing toward me across the open area between the Administration building and what used to be the flagpole. Victor is a few feet behind him, but veers off to help the driver out of the car. The chief of police is here too, walking fast and talking on his cell phone. But Journey’s not supposed to be here at all.

  The sirens are suddenly loud and upon us.

  I go through a minimal check for injuries.


  “Yep. Skinned knee. That’s all for me. What about you?” Lysa asks.

  Spam sticks her finger into a new hole in her jeans. “Tore my jeans a little. But they actually look better like this.”

  Journey arrives at my side. He grabs me and pulls me into a protective hug. Then he holds me out at arm’s length and brushes the hair off my face. “What happened? Are you okay?”

  I stretch out my neck. “I’m fine, I think. But why are you here? I thought you had to leave early to take your suit to the cleaners?”

  Journey shifts from one foot to the other. “I did. Or I was supposed to but then Victor called me to come to his office. We were just finishing up when we heard the crash. When I saw you on the ground I was so scared.”

  I shake my head to clear the cobwebs. “Wait a minute. What office? And why did Victor want to talk to you?”

  Journey slips his arm around my shoulders and starts to lead me toward the building. “Come inside and I’ll tell you.”

  Spam and Lysa are still adjusting their clothes and their bags. Lysa obsessively cleans off her sunglasses with the hem of her dress again.

  “Lysa. Spam. You guys come too,” Journey says. “We need to make sure you’re okay.”

  Spam and Lysa hold on to each other.

  “We are a little shook up,” Lysa says.

  Spam shakes her head. “I don’t even know what happened.”

  The Fire Department arrives and hauls out a giant tool to pry open the car door. They’re helping the driver out and to her feet as we pass. We pause to watch the end of the rescue. There’s some blood on her face from all the broken glass, but otherwise, she looks okay.

  “She just looks like somebody’s mom,” Spam whispers.

  She does look harmless. Maybe it was just an accident—wrong time, wrong place.

  “It was that skateboarder’s fault,” the woman says. “He cut in front of me and caused me to lose control of the car.”

  “What skateboarder, ma’am?” a fireman asks her.

  “The skateboarder!” The woman points at us. “You girls saw him. He was wearing a blue jacket.”

  Lysa, Spam, and I exchange pensive glances.

  Spam shields her mouth with her hand. “She’s lying,” she hisses. “He was wearing a plaid Pendleton.”

  Not that it means anything, but I notice that Journey’s jacket happens to be blue. “Maybe she’s just confused,” I say.

  “He never left the walkway,” Lysa whispers. “She was aiming for him.”

  “Or us,” Spam adds.

  “But why lie?” Lysa murmurs.

  “Come on,” Journey says, and we follow him. I’m anxious to see this mysterious office, but at the same time I’m wondering if there’s a mystery here with the woman and the skateboarder, or if it’s all what Rachel likes to call my overactive imagination.

  4

  A coincidence is not an acceptable explanation. The smart, guilty criminal anticipates being linked to the crime scene, so they will come prepared with a plausible story to explain the connection.

  —VICTOR FLEMMING

  Journey leads us around the back of the administration building to a set of ancient cement steps that descend into a dark basement area under the main building. Steps I never noticed before.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “I told you,” he says. “Victor’s office.”

  “Since when?” I ask.

  “Since today, I guess,” Journey says. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him.”

  The stairs empty into a long, dark hallway with two doors to the right. Journey opens the first one and leads us into a huge, rectangular science classroom that is nearly twice the size of Miss P’s classroom. I know it’s a science classroom because alongside each four-person lab table is a sink.

  Even though this is still in the basement, a strip of ground-level windows along each end of the room allows a warm slant of light to wash over the desks, chasing the dark and giving the room a cathedral feel.

  But I’m still not getting it.

  “Why would Victor use this as an office?” I ask.

  “No. This is the new science classroom and lab,” Journey says. “Victor’s office is over here.”

  He leads us through a door to a large, unfinished space, roughly the same size as the classroom. There’s a folding table and a couple of chairs. In the middle of the table is Victor’s distinctive pile of papers.

  “This must be Victor’s office because that looks exactly like our kitchen table at home.”

  Journey sets up a few more folding chairs.

  Lysa and Spam and I each take a chair, but our eyes are bouncing all over the place. The main attraction is a large whiteboard on a stand. Journey moves it to the side and pulls up a chair for himself.

  “Victor and the chief just gave me the whole rundown and they’re going to tell you guys, too. But here’s the deal. This part is going to be a crime lab. The new Iron Rain crime lab.” He pauses, eyebrows peaked, waiting for us to squee or something. But we all kind of sit there. I don’t know about Lysa and Spam, but I’m a little too stunned to react.

  “Seriously? Here? Right here? On our actual campus?” It’s all I can manage to croak out.

  “Yes. Right here on our actual campus.” Journey grins.

  “But how?” Lysa asks, and she sounds just as astonished as I am.

  “Miss P, man.” Journey makes a wide gesture. “This is what she was working on when she was killed. The new science classroom was never a problem, which is why that part’s almost done. It was the crime lab that Principal Roberts objected to.”

  Principal Roberts was paranoid that somehow his DNA would wind up in the system and ultimately implicate him as the man who murdered my mother. “The fact that Iron Rain was without a crime lab for all these years worked in his favor.”

  “It did,” Journey says. “It’s only because Victor agreed to stay on to teach at the school and run a part-time crime lab that this project is still going forward.”

  I let my gaze roam around the room as I contemplate my dream come true. “I knew Victor wanted to set up a crime lab. I didn’t know it would be here at the school. This is amazing.”

  Spam gets up and wanders the space, trailing her fingers along the cement block. “I’m not even into all that alphabet science stuff and I’m plenty wowed by this idea.”

  Lysa touches up her lip gloss. “My father says our city has needed this for a long time. You’d think that’s the last thing a defense attorney would want, but he says when the only evidence you’ve got is eyewitness testimony, that can tank your case in a hurry.”

  I wander over to the whiteboard. There are some photos randomly taped in different sections and some notes scribbled in various spots.

  “What’s this?” I ask.

  “Oh. Victor started a murder board for my father’s case,” Journey says.

  “Oh my god. Seriously?” I lightly clap my hands. One of the best things that came out of Journey and me teaming up to catch Miss P’s killer is that Victor agreed to take another look at the conviction that put Journey’s father, Jameson Michaels, behind bars. “Show me. Show me. I want to know how this works.”

  “Basically, the purpose of the murder board is to reconstruct all the details of the case against my father so we can examine every piece.” Journey points to the different sections on the board. “My father’s in prison because someone trespassed on our property and wound up dead.” Journey’s expression hardens. “We think it was more like an accident or a setup rather than murder, but unfortunately a jury saw it differently.”

  I look at the board, there are a few photos under the witness column. “There were witnesses?”

  Journey tilts his head to the side. “No one saw the actual shooting. These witnesses were brought in to give their impressions of the broken-down wreck of the cannery and what they thought were my parents’ states of mind.”

  I squint and point to a photo that
looks familiar. “Is that Coach Wilkins?”

  Journey chuckles. “Yeah. He was a college student then.”

  “But he testified against your dad?”

  Journey shrugs. “I haven’t read the transcripts yet, but you know I told you how my parents bought the old cannery because it was a cool building with a lot of history. They wanted to turn it into a hotel. According to my mother, almost as soon as they arrived, strange things started happening. Someone was messing with them and the property. They called the police but they could never find any evidence of anything. When it came to my dad’s trial, Coach Wilkins and a bunch of other people testified that the cannery was haunted and all the weird stuff my dad described was because my parents were New Yorkers who didn’t fit in around here.”

  “Wow. Someone can get convicted of murder just because they don’t fit in?”

  “It happens all the time. Ask Lysa,” Journey says. “I’m sure she’d tell you.”

  I point to another photo of a woman. “So who’s that?”

  Journey shrugs again. “I don’t know. Like I said, I haven’t read all the transcripts yet.”

  “She looks kind of familiar, though.” I gesture to the board. “So, this is why Victor called you down here?”

  Journey shifts his feet. “Well, yeah. Sort of.”

  I take out my phone and aim it at the murder board, but before I can snap the photo Journey puts out his hand and pushes my phone down.

  I start to turn toward him, confused, but the door flies open and Victor and Police Chief Culson enter.

  Victor gives us a quick scan. “Everybody okay?”

  The three of us nod.

  “I skinned my knee, but it’s really fine,” Lysa says.

  “Apparently, it was just a crazy accident.” Victor comes around the table to an empty chair and settles in. “But I’m really glad you’re still here because I wanted to show you what’s going on, and I have an offer for you.”

  The chief steps up. “One second, Vic.” He points to me and reads off his phone. “I gave Rachel a heads up about the accident, and let her know that you were completely safe. She thought you should have been home over an hour ago.”