Aftermath(19)

I keep walking, quieter now, muffling my footfalls as the other girl says, “Totally serious. She said it was for self-defense but, yeah, right. She’s planning something. We need to get the petition filled, fast. Lana says if we take it to the media —”

I spin around the next corner while she’s still talking and…

I’m staring down a short corridor of lockers with no doors or exits. A dead end.

I look around, searching for where the voices could have come from. A hidden recording? That’s the only answer.

The only answer?

I didn’t imagine those voices. I know I didn’t.

I spin around, run down the hall, and turn —

I bash into a guy standing around the corner. I send him staggering back, me stumbling, and I’m waiting for the inevitable “Watch where you’re going!” Instead, there’s silence.

I look up and —

“Jesse?”

He gives a gruff “Hey” without making eye contact.

“I’m sorry. I was… I was running late. For the next bus. And I got turned around.”

He nods.

“Are you okay? I hit you pretty hard.” I didn’t, but it’s an excuse to keep talking.

“I’m fine,” he mumbles. He stands there, hands stuffed in his pockets, hood raised, expression unreadable. I want to flee. Flee as fast as I can. But I dig in my heels and say, “I’m sorry if this is awkward. Having me here.”

A shrug and a mumbled, “It’s fine.”

“Someone should have warned you. I would have insisted on it if I knew you were here, but I was told you’d gone to Southfield. That’s why I chose RivCol.”

He stiffens, as if insulted.

I hurry on. “I didn’t want it to be awkward for you. You’ve been through a lot —”

“I said I’m fine.” A split-second pause. “Don’t you have a bus to catch?”

Isn’t there somewhere you need to be, Gilchrist?

“I just wanted to say —”

“You said it. I’m fine. I have a meeting.”

He walks away.

I’m outside the doors, and I’m shaking, and it’s partly embarrassment but partly anger, too. I didn’t linger. Didn’t pester him or, God forbid, ask him to go grab a soda. I said exactly the right things, and he was a jerk about it.

Now I’m outside catching my breath and remembering where Jesse was when I crashed into him. Standing in a hall that ultimately led nowhere… except to me.

I head back inside. When I hear footfalls, I duck around a corner, but it’s just Owen. I circle around, and then I hear more footfalls. Not the deliberate slaps of Owen’s work boots but the scuffling walk of someone not going anywhere in a hurry.

I peek around the corner to see Jesse. He’s moving at a stroll. Keeping my distance, I follow as he heads down one hall, then another… and eventually ends up back where he started. There he glances at his phone, as if checking the time. He nods, satisfied, and makes a quick left, toward the rear exit.

Here for a meeting, you said?

He’s been killing time. I could take offense at that, presume the “meeting” was a lie to get rid of me, and that he then wandered around to ensure he didn’t bump into me again. But that raises the question of what he was doing here in the first place, hanging around where the only thing nearby was me.

I keep thinking about that anonymous email. Jesse’s interest in school has obviously dropped, but I remember him as the math whiz who planned a career in software engineering. A kid who was a genius with a keyboard.

I hear my voice, from a distant memory. “Hey, Jesse, question for you. Purely hypothetical.”

We’re sitting on a wall outside the playground. Sun setting, children playing, parents shouting “One last time” before they herd their kids home to dinner. Jesse and me, on the wall, our heels kicking it, impatiently waiting for the moment when the park will be ours.

The parents and kids will leave, and the sun will set, and I’ll jump from the wall and hop onto a swing. Jesse will smile and shake his head, but he’ll follow eventually, and we’ll swing and talk, and later – if it’s dark enough – I can even coax him onto the twisting slide, hear him laugh as he forgets he’s thirteen, supposed to be past all this.

“Hey, Jesse, question for you. Purely hypothetical.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Let’s say one wanted to access the school computers. Maybe… fix a few things.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Not grades. That’d be wrong. But, you know, erase some comments on a student record. Where a student might have done some things that got totally blown out of proportion but could look bad on a college application.”

He slants a look at me. “No one’s going to check a middle school record for college.”

“I was thinking of high school. Could you hack those records?”

“You don’t have a high school record yet, Skye.”

“I’m planning ahead.”

He laughs, startling a babysitter, who squints over, as if thinking that laugh couldn’t possibly have come from the somber boy at my side.

“You could just stop getting in trouble,” he says.

“Yeah… so, hacking the school system?”