The Brightest Star in a Constellation

10: The Investigator of Suspicious Boys, Nicole Nyra Duford

☽ Peter ☽

The windowpanes of Ms. Crozier's classroom are hazy, with splotches of dirt covering the patches of light that poke weakly through. In the summer, the school's garden stands out, with its bright flowers. Now, at the beginning of the year, when the weather is starting to get colder, the garden is bare. The grass around it coils towards the wooden surface and overtakes it.

I'm staring down through the window when two figures cross in front of the field, cutting through the garden area and continuing in a blur of motion. From above, it's hard to tell exactly who they are, but definitely on a sports team, based on the way they're running.

"Peter," Ms. Crozier says, making me jolt. I whirl back towards her; luckily, she's too distracted, and doesn't notice. "I... give me a moment, I could swear I put that notebook under this portfolio and... oh, there we go!"

She pulls a page out from underneath from her notebook and brandishes it like a medallion. "Okay, so... I had my meeting with the directors, and you've got pre-approval for the club. What that means is that, basically, you are free to hold a meeting every Thursday at lunch, given that you have a club monitor—that's me—and a schedule. However, after talking to the other council members for a while, I managed to figure out that there are requirements for after school meetings. Namely, you need at least six members for the school to justify letting you stay after hours."

She holds out the page to me, a blank list of required members. At the top, she's signed herself as the coordinator and left the rest empty. "Six members... we have five right now, including me."

"Yes, well, that's the thing, isn't it? There's always a problem. This one... say you can't find another member. At the worst, we're still a club, but we aren't allowed to schedule events and the like. It's up to you, but I think it would be nice to hold a few events off school grounds."

"If we can get that many members, anyway."

Ms. Crozier scoffs. "Yes, if. But I prefer thinking positively, right? You got five members on your first day. That's rare! I have no doubt about that." She goes rifling through her desk drawers, slamming them shut one by one. "In the meantime, um, bear with me for a moment, I have to find this pamphlet. I called our local Museum of Natural History to see what they had for supplies, like a star chart or something, considering we don't even teach astronomy as a class..."

"The Museum has charts?" I ask.

"Well, they referred me through to Mount Allison's campus, after a whole ordeal... and I drove over there to get this." Turning the glossy pamphlet in my direction, Ms. Crozier smiles and hands it to me. "Those are the different telescopes we can borrow. But I don't know the first thing about what makes a good telescope, do you?"

"Uh..." I stare at the laminated pictures in my hands. "I guess I can figure it out?"

"Oh, thank you. I was hoping you would say that. I really don't have the time."

I offer her a smile. "I'll get on it."

☆ ☽ ☆

I don't get to see Nicole until the end of the day, when I meet her by her locker. It's tucked away in the basement corner, and it has been our lunchtime hiding place for years. The lock is painted with bright purple nail polish in retaliation for the vice principal taking away the personal lock she put on it. And for which her father apparently received a strongly worded email about respecting school property.