Sang

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My brain was overloaded by school operations, budgets and questioning what I was doing acting as an assistant to Mr. Blackbourne while he studied for certifications.

The information wasn’t difficult. It was just a lot.

We’d pulled in office chairs from other offices and set up a second folding conference table for me along one wall of the principal’s office to act as a temporary desk. I sat at it while Mr. Blackbourne sat behind the main desk. Sometimes we switched it up, depending on what we were working on.

I’d seen barely anything or anyone except him for days, and we did nothing but research and study.

Mr. Graves often came by, usually during his lunch or after school. We gave him anything interesting that he needed to go over before the police took a look at it, and then followed up with things we weren’t sure about the school itself.

By Monday, I was frazzled. I closed up a manual and put it aside. The whole weekend had been spent studying. Monday was tense with faculty looking in at us, hearing all the complaints about being short staffed and the police presence, and particularly problematic students.

The phone Victor had given to me, my replacement, buzzed at my chest. I pulled it out, looking at the surface.

Dr. Green: Miss you.

I smiled at the message. He’d been particularly interested and messaging me whenever he got a chance.

Sang: I miss you, too. At home?

Dr. Green: I’m not with you, so nope. But I am at my condo. Want to move in?

I smothered a giggle of delight, not wanting to distract Mr. Blackbourne.

Sang: Help me find a house for us?

I waited for an answer, but he didn’t take too long.

Dr. Green: Join the stooges? I’m in. Let’s go out sometime this week.

Sang: When we can.

Dr. Green: I’ll call when I get a chance, Pookie.

I looked back at the collection of papers and books and material I had left to work on. There hadn’t been time to look for a house or consider the options with all the work we had to do. I sat back, pressing my palms to my face, breathing slowly.

“We’re almost done.” Mr. Blackbourne’s voice was gentle, the same tone he used the last few days with me. “I’ll take a few exams tomorrow.”

“Are you ready for this?” I asked and then dropped my hands. “This is a lot.” Why I was studying with him? He went through books faster than I did. But since I was going to be helping him out, I considered I needed to understand it all as much as he did. I just didn’t have the exam to take.

He had his head dipped down over a book and took notes on a pad. His coat was off. His tie was still in place. He’d rolled the sleeves of his shirt up to his forearms. When he turned pages, I admired how his lean muscles flexed a bit. “I’ll be ready.”

I turned the chair I was sitting in to face him more directly. “What about a vice principal? And a counselor? Ms. Wright quit.”

“I’m calling in Mr. Duncan for vice. You remember him.”

I recalled the man from the campground. The one who seemed to be in charge and spoke at the assembly at the beginning. “He has experience?”

“He organizes the yearly event,” he said and then lowered his voice for the next part. We were alone, but he was always careful when he spoke about the Academy. “And manages two of our safe homes for teens and adults. I think he can handle it.”

“What about the counselor position?”

He picked up his head and looked toward the ceiling, deep in thought. “I’m not sure. I thought Mrs. Rose.”

“She’s not a bad choice,” I said. “But we’d need an interpreter. I can’t if I’m with you. And is it just academic counseling or was there more? Anything more, and we’d have to consider confidentiality.”

He nodded and looked back down at his work. “There are other options. It depends on who can take the time. However, it will cut into the favors we’ll earn when we get to the bottom of all this.”

I slid a fingernail against the plastic top of the table idly. “I still haven’t heard from anyone about...about me.”

A phone rang in another part of the building. Only the cleaning crew might still be here, and I wasn’t sure any of them were here this late. The sound was odd in the eerily quiet.

Mr. Blackbourne ignored it and continued to focus on his studying. “I’m sure a meeting will be arranged soon. You’ve joined a busy team. And scheduling has become complicated. A tryout takes time to set up as well, and they have to be sure you’ll be able to go through it without distraction.”

“So it’s us, and not them?”

“It’s—” he paused as another phone rang in the building, one a little closer. He glanced up, at the door, like he wondered about answering it but then shook it off. “It’s partially me.”

“What do you mean?”

He refocused on me. “I wanted to slow it down a bit. We gave ourselves time. Let’s take it. Let’s sort ourselves out. Prove to them this can work.”

Oh. I hadn’t realized maybe I didn’t want to hear from them until we were ready. And then I remembered part of why I was able to stay with them and not join another team was because I was in the middle of this Ashley Waters operation. It bought us time.

And with being his assistant in this, I became even more vital than ever. He also had control over my records in the school, protecting my ghost status without asking favors of anyone for it.

Piles of folders and paperwork on my desk distracted me for a few moments. Trust in Mr. Blackbourne was all I had regarding the Academy and where I stood with them now. I needed to remember that. Only part of me was still nervous about needing to go through whatever test or try out to join officially. There was still that small chance I wouldn’t make it, and the thought hovered over me constantly.

Another phone rang from another part of the offices. We both looked at each other, eyebrows raised, asking the other who would be calling the school so late. The phone system had a line set up to direct people to office hours. Someone was bypassing this to allow the phone to ring through.

Someone knows we’re here?

Mr. Blackbourne stood slowly and walked around the desk. “Maybe we should check this out.”

“Be careful,” I said, rising. “Volto...”

“Could be,” he said, but he passed me to go to the door and out into the hallway.

I followed, curious as to what was going on and wanting to stay nearby.

Another phone went off as we approached. Both of them were near the front desk in the lobby area. Mr. Blackbourne went to one, picking up the receiver to put by his ear and pushed a button on it to answer the right line. “This is Mr. Blackbourne of Ashley Waters High School.” He waited. An eyebrow arched. “Explain it to me,” he said.

The phone opposite was still ringing. He waved to me, wanting me to answer.

Me? I went to it, picking up the receiver. I figured out how to answer the right line by pressing a blinking button.

I spoke. “This is...” I paused, hesitating to speak my name. “...Ashley Waters High School.”

There was silence on the phone at first, and Mr. Blackbourne speaking behind me was all I heard. Suddenly a woman spoke. “I know it’s late but I need to report my child is sick and won’t make it in to school tomorrow.”

Calling about it this late? Why not call about it in the morning? Or leave a message? “Oh,” I said. “I could...take his name down for you if you’d like. The normal person who does this isn’t here...”

“I figured,” she said. “I was hoping someone was there, though. I wanted to warn you, I think it’s something in the food. He’s got food poisoning or E. coli of some sort.”

Food poising? “Are you sure?” The question slipped from my lips. I looked over my shoulder as I spoke, seeing a tense expression on Mr. Blackbourne’s face as he listened.

“I’m sure,” she said. “This isn’t the flu or strep. I’ve got him at the clinic and the doctor here says it’s food poisoning. The last thing he ate was lunch at the school.”

“Do you know what he ate?”

“He says the hamburger option,” she said. “From the cafeteria.”

Mr. Blackbourne was speaking behind me again, asking the same question into the phone as I had.

I didn’t know what else I should say, but I mumbled into the phone. “I’m so sorry. We’ll look into it. Thanks for telling us.”

“Sure. Just leave a note for my son? I’ll be keeping him out until he’s over this.”

She gave me his name and I wrote it down. I was only glad she wasn’t yelling at me about the situation.

After I hung up, I turned to Mr. Blackbourne.

He was saying goodbye and hung up as well and turned to me, his eyebrows raised. “Food poisoning?” he asked me.

I nodded. “An isolated case, you think?” Although as I said it, I knew that two cases probably meant there were more.

He turned to the phone again, hit a bunch of numbers and started to listen. “Checking the message system.” As he did, he waved at me and pointed to a computer nearby. “Go through the emails.”

I went to the computer, turning it on. There was a password required, but the password was listed on a sticky note on a notebook nearby. Not very secure.

I clicked around and found a few hundred emails. Most were from earlier today, about grades or other things regarding students. The latest ones, however, were notices that students would be kept out of school.

Not all of them were sick, but many said they were. Some with angry tones about it was the school’s fault. Some saying it was food poisoning.

“They’ve been calling in,” Mr. Blackbourne said. He hung up the phone and took out his own.

“What do we do?” I asked, moving away from the computer.

“I’m calling in...” He paused and then looked at his phone. “There has to be a protocol for this.”

“Mr. Graves,” I said. “He’ll know.”

“Yes, I can call him,” he said but he looked up. “But we can’t tell him what we know. About the truck that came in to swap out food. An investigation into that might lead to him calling around about what happened and why.”

“It may be too late,” I said. “There are kids sick. Won’t parents talk to each other? And we have to take that food out. We have to be sure no one else gets sick. We have to find out whatever it was.”

He lowered his phone and gazed out, thinking. He pressed a palm to his forehead. “This whole thing was a set up.”

“What?”

He turned to me, leaning into me with a sharpness in his steel eyes. He stage-whispered to me, “Ms. Johnson coming to us, making us aware to monitor her. Knowing we’d be watching after school, possibly recording what was going on. Mr. Hendricks suddenly unavailable. But how did he...” He paused, turning away from me again and putting fingers to his lips, head dipped as he continued thinking without speaking.

I wasn’t sure I was following him. “You’re saying Mr. Hendricks delivered food like that here?”

“I think he knew the food was contaminated,” he said. “He’s set us up so it’s...me.” He turned to me again and his eyes brightened up. He snapped his fingers shortly once. “There’s paperwork somewhere. He’s going to show a money trail. That I sold good food out the back door and brought in cheap, old stuff.”

“You can do that?” I asked. “Sell school food?”

“And replace it, yes,” he said. “Stuff on the brink of going bad, perhaps. Past the expiration dates. That restaurant probably saw a golden opportunity to switch out food with little cost.”

“But it was all produce,” I said. “Didn’t North say that?”

“It’ll be that, too,” he said. He nodded firmly once. “Perhaps stuff that was returned to that warehouse because it was contaminated. The owners owned restaurants.”

Another phone rang, the one he was nearby. He went to it, hovered a hand over it and then pulled back, allowing it to ring. “We need Victor to cover these phone lines. We need Dr. Green and possibly Dr. Roberts. We need to get ahead of this.”

I swallowed thickly. I didn’t know what to do. If he was right, if this was a set up, we had to tread carefully.

Hendricks was smart. He possibly wanted Mr. Blackbourne to take the heat for this. With the police distracted by investigating Mr. Blackbourne, Mr. Hendricks could escape with whatever money he’d gotten from the school and disappear.

We couldn’t let it happen.

“The amount doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “A bunch of food in a swap? Is this his big money pay off? It doesn’t seem like it would be a lot. Was this what he was doing?”

Mr. Blackbourne was typing into his cell phone. He shook his head as he did so. “No, it isn’t a ton of money. For three people in his conspiracy? Possibly more? No.” He looked up from his typing, gazing at me. “This was just to take me out. His scheme was something else. Something he’s already got perhaps. But if I get pinned for this, I’ll be under investigation for the rest of it, if it’s ever discovered.”

That was what Mr. Hendricks seemed to do. He got other people to do the dirty work, to line them up as the fall people so he could get away. Mr. McCoy and his awkward behavior. Possibly Mr. Morris with monitoring students and teachers. Anyone in his path, he used.

Mr. Blackbourne had become his next target.