The strap of my backpack digs into my shoulder as I push myself through the swarm of students in the hallway. I pretend I know what I’m doing—where I’m going—but I know nothing. As far as I’m concerned, this is the first time I’ve ever stepped foot in this school. The first time I’m seeing these people’s faces. They smile at me, bob their heads in greeting. I reciprocate the best I can.
I glance up at the numbers on the lockers, navigating my way through the halls until I find mine. According to everything I wrote, I was here just this morning, searching through this locker, hours ago. I obviously didn’t find anything then, so I’m sure I won’t find anything now.
When I’m finally facing my locker, I feel the hope that I didn’t even know I had evaporate. I guess a part of me was hoping I would find Charlie standing there, laughing at this genius prank she pulled off. I was hopeful that this mess would be over with.
I’m not that lucky, obviously.
I enter the combination on Charlie’s locker first and open it in an attempt to find something we missed earlier. As I’m digging through her locker, I can feel someone approach me from behind. I don’t want to turn around and have to interact with an unfamiliar face, so I pretend I don’t notice they’re standing here in hopes that they’ll walk away.
“What are you looking for?”
It’s a girl’s voice. Since I have no idea what Charlie sounds like, I turn around, hoping it’s her. Instead, I find someone who isn’t Charlie staring back at me. Based on her looks, I assume this is Annika. She fits the description Charlie wrote of our friends in the notes.
Big eyes, dark curly hair, looks at you like she’s bored.
“I’m just looking for something,” I mutter, turning back to face Charlie’s locker. I find no clues whatsoever, so I close the locker and begin to enter the combination on my own lock.
“Amy said Charlie wasn’t home this morning when she went to pick her up. Janette didn’t even know where she was,” Annika says. “Where is she?”
I shrug and pull open my locker, trying to make it inconspicuous that I’m reading the combination from a sheet of paper in my hand. “I don’t know. Still haven’t heard from her.”
Annika stands silently behind me until I’m finished searching my own locker. My phone begins to ring in my pocket. My father is calling again.
“Silas!” someone yells as he passes by. I look up to see a reflection of myself, only younger and not as…intense. Landon. “Dad wants you to call him!” he yells, walking backward in the opposite direction.
I hold up my phone, screen facing him, so he knows I’m already aware. He shakes his head with a laugh and disappears down the hall. I want to tell him to come back. I have so many questions I want to ask him, but I know how crazy all of it would sound.
I press a button to ignore the call and I slide it back into my pocket. Annika is still standing here, and I have no idea how to shake her. The old Silas seemed to have an issue with commitment, so I’m hoping Annika wasn’t one of his conquests.
The old me is sure making things difficult for the current me.
Right when I begin to tell her I need to get to my last period class, I catch sight of a girl over Annika’s shoulder. My eyes lock with hers, and she quickly looks in the other direction. I can tell by the way she slinks away that she must be the girl Charlie referred to as The Shrimp in our notes. Because she really does kind of resemble a shrimp: pinkish skin, light hair, and dark, beady eyes.
“Hey!” I yell.
She keeps moving in the other direction.
I push past Annika and rush after the girl. I yell, “Hey,” again, but she just picks up her pace and tucks into herself even more, never turning around. I should know her name. She’d probably stop if I just called out her name. I’m sure if I yelled, “Hey, Shrimp!” that wouldn’t win me any favors.
What a nickname. Teenagers can be so cruel. I’m embarrassed to be one of them.
Right before her hand reaches the doorknob of a classroom, I slide in front of her, my back against the door. She takes a quick step back, surprised to see me directing my attention at her. She hugs her books to her chest and glances around, but we’ve reached the end of the hallway and there aren’t any students around us.
“What…what do you want?” she asks, her voice a scattered whisper.
“Have you seen Charlie?” The question seems to surprise her more than the fact that I’m talking to her. She immediately distances herself from me with another step.
“What do you mean?” she asks again. “She’s not looking for me, is she?” Her voice sounds fearful. Why would she be afraid of Charlie?
“Listen,” I say, glancing down the hallway to ensure our privacy. I look back at her and can tell she’s holding her breath. “I need a favor, but I don’t want to talk about it here. Can you meet me after school?”
Again with the surprised expression. She immediately shakes her head no. Her hesitance to want to have anything to do with Charlie or me piques my interest. She either knows something and she’s hiding it, or she knows something that she has no idea could help me.
“Just for a few minutes?” I ask. She shakes her head again when someone begins walking in our direction. I cut the conversation short and don’t give her a chance to say no again. “Meet me at my locker after class. I have a couple of questions,” I say before walking away.
I don’t look back at her. I head down the hallway but have no idea where I’m actually going. I should probably go to the athletic department and find my locker there. According to what I read in our notes, there’s a letter I haven’t read yet in the locker room, along with some pictures.
I round the corner in a hurry and bump into a girl, causing her to drop her purse. I mutter an apology and step around her, continuing down the hallway.
“Silas!” she yells.
I pause.
Crap. I have no idea who she is.
I slowly turn on my heels and she’s standing upright, pulling her purse strap higher up on her shoulder. I wait for her to say something else, but she just stares at me. After a few seconds, she throws her palms up in the air. “Well?” she says, frustrated.
I tilt my head in confusion. Is she expecting an apology? “Well…what?”
She huffs and folds her arms over her chest. “Did you find my sister?”
Janette. This is Charlie’s sister, Janette. Crap.
I can imagine it’s hard enough searching for a missing person, but trying to search for them when you have no idea who you are, who they are, or who anyone else is kind of feels like shooting for the impossible.
“Not yet,” I tell her. “Still looking. You?”
She takes a step toward me and tucks her chin in. “Don’t you think if I found her I wouldn’t have asked you if you found her?”
I take a step back, putting a safe distance between that glare and me.
Okay. So Janette is not a very pleasant person. I should write that in the notes for future reference.
She pulls a phone from her purse. “I’m calling the police,” she says. “I’m really worried about her.”
“I already spoke to the police.”
She darts her eyes up to mine. “When? What did they say?”
“I was at your house. Your mother called the police when she found me in the attic looking for Charlie. I told the officer she’s been missing since last night, but your mother made it sound like I was overreacting, so they didn’t take it seriously.”
Janette groans. “Figures,” she says. “Well, I’m calling them again. I need to go outside to get a better signal. I’ll let you know what they say.” She steps around me to head outside.
Once she’s gone, I head in the direction of where I think the athletic building might be.
“Silas,” someone says from behind me.
Are you kidding me? Can I not make it five feet in this hallway without having to answer to someone?
I turn to face whoever is wasting my time, only to find a girl—or woman, rather—who perfectly matches the description of Avril Ashley.
This is exactly what I don’t need right now.
“Can I see you in my office, please?”
I squeeze the back of my neck and shake my head. “I can’t, Avril.”
She reveals nothing of what is going through her head. She stares at me with a stoic expression and then says, “My office. Now.” She turns on her heels and heads down the hall.
I contemplate running in the other direction, but drawing attention to myself won’t do me any favors. I reluctantly follow her until she reaches the door to administration. I follow her past the secretary and into an office. I step aside as she closes the door, but I don’t sit. I’m watching her carefully, and she still hasn’t looked back at me.
She makes her way to the window and stares outside, wrapping her arms around herself. The silence is awkward at best.
“Do you want to explain what happened Friday night?” she asks.
I immediately begin searching my infant memory for what she could be talking about.
Friday, Friday, Friday.
Without my notes in front of me, I come up empty. There’s no way I can remember every detail of what I’ve read in the past two hours.
When I fail to respond, she lets out a soft laugh. “You are unreal,” she says, turning to face me now. Her eyes are red, but so far they’re dry. “What in the world possessed you to punch my father?”
Oh. The diner. The fight with the owner, Brian’s father.
Wait.
I stand up straighter, the hairs prickling up across the skin of my neck. Avril Ashley is Brian Finley’s sister? How is that even possible? And why would Charlie and I be involved with them?
“Did it have to do with her?” she asks.
She’s throwing too much at me at once. I grip the back of my neck with my hands again and squeeze away some of the nerves. She doesn’t seem to care that I’m not in the mood to discuss this right now. She takes several quick steps toward me until her finger is poking me in the chest.
“My father was offering her a job, you know. I don’t know what you’re up to, Silas.” She spins and walks back to the window but then throws her hands up in frustration and faces me. “First, you waltz in here three weeks ago and act like Charlie is destroying your life because of her involvement with Brian. You make me feel sorry for you. You even make me feel guilty just for being his sister. And then you use that to manipulate me into kissing you, and once I finally cave, you show up every single day for more. Then you go to my father’s restaurant and attack him, then follow that up by breaking things off with me.” She takes a step back and puts her hand against her forehead. “Do you realize how much trouble I could be in, Silas?” She begins pacing back and forth. “I liked you. I risked my job for you. Hell, I risked my relationship with my own brother for you.” She stares up at the ceiling, placing her hands on her hips. “I’m an idiot,” she says. “I’m married. I’m a married woman with a degree, and here I am messing around with a student simply because he’s attractive and I’m too damn foolish to know when someone is using me.”
Information overload. I can’t even respond as everything she just said sinks in.
“If you tell anyone about this, I’ll make sure my father presses charges against you,” she says with a threatening glare.
I find my tongue with that comment. “I’ll never tell anyone, Avril. You know that.”
Does she know that? The old me didn’t seem to be very trustworthy.
She keeps her eyes locked with mine for several moments until she seems satisfied with my response. “Leave. And if you need a counselor for the rest of the school year, do us both a favor and transfer schools.”
I put my hand on the doorknob and wait for her to say something else. When she doesn’t, I try and make up for the old Silas. “For what it’s worth…I’m sorry.”
Her lips press into a tight line. She spins and walks angrily to her desk. “Get the hell out of my office, Silas.”
Gladly.