The Amanda Project: Book One

The Amanda Project: Chapter Four

CHAPTER FOUR

Vice Principal Thornhill marched us to our lockers so we could show him anything Amanda might have stashed inside. While we were in his office, first period had ended and second had started, so the halls were empty again. This time I was glad rather than creeped out by the stillness; the last thing I wanted was the population of Endeavor staring and pointing at the three of us as our lockers were inspected like we were criminals or something. I distracted myself by reading the flyers for chess club, band rehearsal, call-outs for newspaper contributions, and the formation of some new after-school jazz quartet. None of these were I-Girl activities.

Nia's locker was in the humanities corridor, just a few feet from Mr. Randolph's room, and I realized I'd passed it on my way to class this morning and definitely hadn't noticed anything weird (not that I would have even known it was hers if I had). As we stood in front of it now, though, I saw that in the bottom right-hand corner was a small stencil of an animal, a bird of some sort, painted a metallic gray slightly paler than the gray of the metal locker. Nia's expression definitely changed when she looked at it-as we'd walked from Mr. Thornhill's room, she'd been scowling as usual, but suddenly her face was the picture of amazement. The look was gone almost as soon as it appeared, and I didn't know if Mr. Thornhill had seen it or not.

"Anyone could have done this, Mr. Thornhill," she said. "What makes you think it was Amanda?" Her hand fluttered up, and it looked like she was about to touch the picture, but then she seemed to think better of it and jerked her hand back, pulling the sleeves of her pale blue sweater almost to her fingertips as she crossed her arms tightly across her chest.

Mr. Thornhill gave her a long look but all he said was, "Open it, please." She hesitated for a second, like maybe she really did have something to hide, but then expertly turned the combination lock and jerked the door open.

I couldn't help being curious to know what someone like Nia would have in her locker. She was so serious-it wouldn't have surprised me if there'd been a bound set of Supreme Court cases or a collection of Save the Whales bumper stickers in different languages. While Mr. Thornhill rifled through the unexpected amount of junk piled high inside-books and notebooks, two pairs of broken sunglasses, a bunch of empty candy wrappers, a bag of marbles, some Mardi Gras beads-I snuck glances at the postcard of the poster for a movie called The Thin Man taped next to a picture of a Mayan or Aztec warrior-looking guy on the inside of the door under a magnet in the shape of a fish with the word DARWIN written inside it. Pretty surprising stuff compared with what I'd imagined.

Mr. Thornhill didn't find anything that would have definitively proven Nia's guilt, and it obviously pissed him off. He slammed her locker shut and started walking. Hal and I followed a few paces behind. When I looked around to see what had happened to Nia, she was standing, staring at the closed door of her locker. A minute later, she turned and ran to catch up with us.

As soon as she was walking alongside me and Hal she said, "I-"

"Not now," said Hal. His voice was somewhere between a whisper and a hiss.

"But-"

"Not now," he said again.

Hal's face remained completely blank as we stood in front of his locker, where there was a stencil of another animal-some kind of cat or maybe a lion-also in pale gray, also in the lower left-hand corner. He was wearing a long-sleeved white T-shirt, and he looked almost bored as he leaned his hip into the wall of lockers next to his own, toying with one of the cuffs while Mr. Thornhill rifled through his stuff. Hal's locker was really organized for a boy's-there were books and notebooks neatly lined up, and hanging on the inside of the door was a small pouch with a bunch of colored pens in it. At one point, Mr. Thornhill took what looked like a sketchbook off the shelf and held it, closed, for a minute, looking at Hal as if to see if he'd flinch.

I flinched for him. I mean, Hal's a great artist and I can barely draw a stick figure, but my artistic talents (or lack thereof) aren't the reason that if Mr. Thornhill ever looked through my Scribble Book, I'd die of shame. The whole thing is just so . . . personal. It's the closest thing I have to a diary, and the only person I'd ever let see it was Amanda. I realized that if I hadn't left it at home today, Mr. Thornhill, Hal, and Nia might have had the opportunity to look at my most private thoughts, and I wondered if that was the kind of thing Hal sketched. If so, he must have been crying inside.

But Hal's face remained blank as Mr. Thornhill raised the book slightly, then lowered it, as if he were weighing the decision to open it, literally and metaphorically. After a minute, he slipped the book back where it had been and slammed Hal's locker shut, too. Hal stayed behind to lock it after Thornhill had walked away, and when I turned back to check if he was following us, I saw him standing with his head leaning against the cool metal.

I could feel my heart beating in my throat as we turned the corner into the science wing, where my locker was. I never go to my locker until after first period since all of my first period classes were about as far from the science wing as you can get without actually leaving the town of Orion. The last time I'd been here was yesterday, right before math, my last class. I'd actually been standing right here when I got Amanda's text-

Mrs. Watson absent.

Meet me at corner of Laurel and Kane

My locker is halfway down the hall, and it seemed to me that the trip was definitely proving Zeno's Paradox-you can't travel from point A to point B because the distance must be divided by half each time, and you can divide distances in half indefinitely until you've proven you can't move forward at all. I watched the numbers climb from 100 to 110 to 120 and then, finally, 128. My locker.

I scanned the scuffed, metal surface, but I didn't see anything in the corner where Hal's cat and Nia's bird had been. I had time to feel an instant of confusion and disappointment when suddenly my eyes caught a shape, the same gray color as theirs had been, up on the top right-hand corner.

It was a little bear. And in spite of myself, I let out a tiny gasp of amazement.