At one point I looked across the room and spotted Troy and Buck. Not surprisingly they smirked at me. Troy had a cocky I-know-something-you-don’t-know look on his face and then he started flapping his arms like wings and making an eek-eek noise.
“A bat,” Ema finally said.
“As in Bat Lady.”
“Man, he’s clever.”
I guessed that his father had told him about my arrest near Bat Lady’s house and this was his subtle way of communicating this to us. I responded by pantomiming a yawn. Troy glared when I did that, and then he used his finger to cut across his neck, the international dumbwad sign for, yup, “You’re a dead man.”
Not worth it. I turned away.
“Do you know where Spoon is?” I asked Ema.
I had caught her mid-chew, so she gestured behind her. Spoon was hurrying over to the table—sprinting really—with an open laptop in his arms. Ms. Owens blocked his path and said, “Walk, don’t run.”
Spoon nodded and apologized. When he reached us, he was wide-eyed and out of breath. “Shocking,” Spoon said.
“What?”
Spoon put the laptop on the table. “Oh boy, you are so going to want to see this.”
“What is it?” I asked.
He frowned. “Didn’t you ask me to check the surveillance video of Ashley’s locker?”
“Right.”
“Well, I’ve been going through it since last night. You are not going to believe what I found.”
The bell rang. Everyone started for the door, except for the three of us. Spoon sat down in front of the laptop. I pushed my chair over so I was on his immediate right. Ema did likewise so she was on his left.
“Okay,” he started, “so I was doing what you asked—checking the video, right? I started with that hooligan breaking into the locker, and then I traveled back from there until I found the last time that Ashley’s locker was open.”
He stopped, pushed up his glasses.
“And?” I said.
“Watch.”
Spoon was about to hit the computer key when Ms. Owens cleared her throat in dramatic fashion.
“The bell rang,” she said in a clipped voice.
“We’ll be just a minute,” I said.
Ms. Owens didn’t like that response. “We don’t operate on your time, Mr. Bolitar. The bell has sounded. That means you leave the room. You aren’t special.”
Was she kidding me?
I tried an old standard: “It’s schoolwork.”
“I don’t care if it is a cure for cancer,” Ms. Owens said—and on that, I believed her. She slammed the laptop closed, making Spoon gasp out loud. “You had all lunch period to discuss this matter. Move along now or you’ll all be in detention.”
“You assaulted my laptop,” Spoon said.
“Excuse me?”
“You assaulted my battery or whatever they call it.”
“Are you challenging my authority, young man?”
Spoon opened his mouth to say more, so I kicked him just hard enough to get him to close it again. I stood, pulling Spoon along with me. The three of us left the cafeteria. In the corridor we quickly discussed what classes we had next. I had English. Spoon had study hall. Ema had “PE, which I’m going to cut anyway.”
Spoon rushed us over to a janitor’s closet on the lower level. We huddled around the laptop again. Spoon hit the start key and said, “Watch.”
And there it was.
Ashley’s locker. Spoon had it cued up right where it needed to be—right as the locker was being unlocked. We all watched in silence while the locker was cleaned out, all the possessions dumped into a backpack.
My jaw dropped open.
“I knew it!” Ema said. “I warned you, didn’t I?”
It wasn’t Ashley clearing out the locker. It wasn’t Antoine or Buddy Ray or his big bouncer Derrick. The person who opened up the locker with the combination and cleaned it out was none other than Rachel Caldwell.
First, there was confusion, but that almost immediately gave way to anger.
I was furious. I was beyond furious. I not only felt betrayed, but I felt like the dumbest sort of sap. We get mad at those who hurt or deceive us—we get even madder when they make us feel like fools.
Right now I felt like a great big sucker.
Rachel Caldwell had batted her big blue eyes at me, and I fell for it.
Grab your thesaurus, boys and girls. Sap. Loser. Sucker. Fool. Me!
I played back Rachel’s every smile, every coy look, every little laugh.
Phony. All so phony. How had I fallen for her act?
Ema could not have looked more pleased. “I told you that we couldn’t trust her.”
I said nothing.
Spoon pushed his glasses up. “Whatever you saw on this video doesn’t change the main fact.”
“What fact is that?” Ema asked.
“That Rachel Caldwell is a first-class, teeth-melting, jawdropping, knee-knocking hottie.”
Ema rolled her eyes.
The late bell rang. It was time to move. We broke up, Spoon and I going to our respective classes, Ema going . . . wherever it was she was going. I had Mr. Lampf for English. I sat in the back and opened up my notebook, but I can’t tell you anything else about the class. I was still consumed by fury. Finally, after some time had passed, I allowed the obvious, more important question to break through my cloud of anger: What could Rachel Caldwell possibly have to do with all this?
I trotted out about a million different scenarios, but none of them made any sense. Logic wasn’t working for me, so I let the rage back in. The rage was good right now. The rage reminded me that Rachel Caldwell was in this very building at this very moment. The rage reminded me that I could confront her and then I would find it all out.
When the bell rang, I hurried toward the door. I knew that Rachel had math with Mrs. Cannon right now. I knew that because, well, I just did. Mrs. Cannon’s class was only halfway down this same corridor. I often caught glimpses of her in the hallway between this class and the next. Sue me, I looked, okay?
I headed into the corridor and turned right.
There she was. Rachel was turning away from me, her hair seeming to move in perfect slow motion, like in a shampoo ad. I rushed after her, swimming through the throngs of fellow students. She was about to turn the corner when I reached her. I put my hand on her shoulder, maybe a little too roughly. She turned, startled, but when she saw it was me, her face broke into a gorgeous, gut-punching smile.
“Hey, Mickey!” she said as if she couldn’t be happier to see me.