But she doesn’t get to finish her sentence before the door bursts open and Coach marches in, followed by Detective Mendez. Coach looks like she’s about ready to choke a deer. Her hands clench and unclench by her side. Mendez, on the other hand, looks like the cat that swallowed the expensive can of tuna. Or the salmon. I dunno, something more delicious than a stupid canary.
“Alright girls, line up!” Coach calls out. “Random locker check.”
“What the hell?” Mandy says. “Why?”
My cheeks go hot. She’s going to look even guiltier than I expected. Which is good. But wow, does it ever feel shitty. I stand up and follow the other girls to form a line. My legs tremble a little.
Mandy stays where she is, arms folded across her chest. “I don’t think you have the right—”
“Mandy, shut up and fall in,” Coach says with a sigh.
Someone telling her to shut up? That shut her up. She stomps over to the line and says, “I’m telling my mom about this. You’re violating our privacy.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Coach says. She turns her head and glares at Mendez. “You wanna take over from here?”
“With pleasure.” Mendez steps forward. “When I call your name, please lead me to your locker and open it.”
“Jesus,” Mandy says.
Detective Mendez’s head snaps to face Mandy. “Let’s start with you,” Mendez says.
Oh god. This is it. It’s happening now. I watch, frozen, as Mandy leads the detective to her locker. Half of me is screaming to stop them, to call it off. The other half is rubbing its dirty, red hands with glee. Once they open the locker, there’s no going back. I step forward.
“Wait—” I say.
The locker swings open and Detective Mendez plunges her hands inside.
I step closer, but Stacey catches hold of my arm. “What are you doing?” she whispers. “Stay here, dumbass.”
“But—” I turn back and—this can’t be right—Detective Mendez is straightening back up, empty-handed.
“Alright, you’re clear,” she says to Mandy.
What?
I look at Mandy and back to her locker. Could she have found it beforehand and gotten rid of it? No, she doesn’t look relieved or smug or anything. She just looks pissed off as she kicks her locker shut, still grumbling about the cops not respecting boundaries. Have I put the drugs in the wrong locker?
I scan the rows of lockers frantically, retracing my steps. I’d been half-delirious from lack of sleep. It’s possible. Did I stop at the correct row last night?
The second girl—Arjuna—leads Mendez to her locker. My heart stutters again. Would it be in there?
Clear.
Then Yoshi has her turn, and then Elle, and then three other girls, and they’re all clear. And now a dark feeling is worming its way through my stomach. Something’s gone very, very wrong. And when Mendez makes eye contact with me, I know now, where the drugs will be found.
I lead her, my throat dry, each step taking me closer to my doom. I stop in front of my locker and stare at the lock for a moment. Does it look like it’s been broken? I take it in my hand, trying to squeeze an answer out of it.
“Everything okay, Lia?” Detective Mendez says.
I nod and turn the lock, its little clicks reverberating through my hand, each one a bullet being loaded. One final click, and it snaps open. I pull it off and—one final breath—I open my locker. Nothing looks moved. I’m about to reach in when Detective Mendez grabs my arm.
“I’ll do that,” she says and pushes me gently but firmly to the side. She ransacks my locker as I watch, helpless, but as the seconds go by, it’s clear there’s no shoebox to be found.
I practically melt into a puddle. I just. What’s happening right now? Did I imagine it all? The world takes on a dreamlike quality, and I watch wordlessly as Detective Mendez goes through the rest of the lockers and finds nothing. Maybe I’m so sleep-deprived, I dreamt the whole thing. Maybe instead of putting a box in Mandy’s locker, I actually threw it all away. Maybe there are three empty shoeboxes in Safeway’s trash bin and not two.
Whatever it was that just happened, Mendez is not happy. Down to the last two girls, and she ransacks their lockers like she’s got a personal vendetta against them, then she whirls around and snaps, “Okay, which one of you kids made the call?”
We all look at her blankly. Well, I try to look as blank as I can, which is easy because I still have no clue what just went down.
“You guys think this is funny?” she says, her eyes hard as flints. “You prank call the police department, make us waste our fucking time—” She slams the last locker shut as she says the word time, making everyone jump. “I don’t know what you kids are playing at here, especially when we’ve got a murder investigation going on, but this isn’t a fucking joke, you hear me?”
Coach goes ballistic. “Hey!” she thunders, and when Coach thunders, she goes full-on Zeus. “We’re done here,” she bellows. “Girls, haul your asses to the track now. Warm-ups. Go, go!” As we hurry out, I turn and catch one last glimpse of Coach and Detective Mendez having some kind of staring showdown, and I hear Coach saying something about lodging a formal complaint and Mendez saying something along the lines of bite me, and then the door swings shut and I can’t hear anything else, and I stagger to the track, wondering what the heck just happened.
Chapter 28
After that day in the changing room, I keep expecting the sky to crumble down on me. Whenever anyone raises their voice, I jump, thinking the SWAT team’s finally here to—I dunno, swat me. I keep wondering how the murder investigation is going, how close they are to finding the real killer. The thought of Mendez digging and digging sickens me until I see her in my nightmares.
But weirdly enough, the next couple of weeks pass by and nothing happens. I guess Coach must’ve lodged a complaint about Mendez, because I don’t see her around anywhere, and the drugs don’t make an appearance either, and weirdly, gradually, we kind of move on from all the crazy shit. Midterms are upon us, and we’re all wound a bit tighter, sleeping less and studying more, and the atmosphere settles into an anxious hush, everyone’s head buried in books.
Danny still stays away during mealtimes. Once or twice, his friends approach me to ask what’s going on with him, and I tell the weak version of the truth: he’s really stressed out.
Stressed out. I don’t know what to call it, really. Every afternoon, once classes end, I drop by his room with a sandwich and check on him. He takes the sandwich and gives me one-word answers.
Have you showered/eaten/drank water? Yes, yes, yes.
And still that deep, dark rage lurks underneath his skin. I can sense it, even though he never raises his voice around me. I can practically hear it ripping him up from the inside, scrabbling to come tearing out, and every time I leave his room, I feel spent. All my insides, carved out and empty.
I know it’s not healthy, but it’s penance. I killed his uncle—yes, it’s self-defense, yes, yes, but the knowing and the accepting are two very different things. The least I can do is stick around for him.