18. Friday Morning

I discover that my locker is empty.

Not like I had a thousand mementos and memories stored inside, but I do need the books and notebooks that I left in there.

I head to the main office and explain my problem to a young lady at the main desk. She guides me to the small waiting area outside the principal’s office. When the door opens I go inside to see Miss Harking.

“Good morning.”

I nod and say the same, even though it’s not really a particularly good morning for me.

“We changed your locker. We gave you one on the south side, the new lockers just installed a year ago. That way you’ll have one that nobody will be able to get into. With some of the older lockers, we’ve had issues of people knowing their combinations.”

I nod again.

“Of course, you have to understand our concerns when something like this occurs.”

“Yeah.”

“Did Deputy Ross come by to interview you yesterday?”

“No.”

“He didn’t? Did anybody?”

“No.”

She jots a note on her desk. “Tell me something, Chris. Do you know who did this to you?”

“Not a clue.”

“But you have any ideas? Do you think it might have been Gus or one of his friends?”

“I don’t know. I know he’s been after me. So, yeah, if I had to guess one person, it would be Gus.”

“We spoke to him. He said he had nothing to do with it.”

I nod.

Did they think he’d admit it?

“We’ll keep our eyes open. If anything happens today, I’m just down the hall. My door is always open.”

I leave with a slip of paper telling me the locker number and combination.

Three lockers down from mine, I see him. The little guy named Newt.

“You’re back,” he says, his eyes looking massive behind glasses three sizes too big for him.

“Hey.”

“That your locker?”

“They gave me a new one.”

“I thought you were expelled.”

“Not yet,” I say.

Newt appears to be using his locker door as a shield. He looks as if he wants to sneak inside the locker and shut the door.

“You’re Newt, right?”

“Yeah.”

I make small talk, yet every word I say makes him seem to shrink more.

“You okay?” I finally ask.

He looks around. The hallways are crowded over in this section.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“You just better be careful.” He says it in a whisper.

“Careful of what?”

He does a double take and then turns quickly to shut his locker. “See you later.”

I nod, glancing and seeing Gus and company heading my way. I’m sure they were roaming the halls looking for me.

I take out a book and turn my back toward them.

“Changed lockers, huh?”

Turning around, I shut the locker door with my books in hand.

The English book with its one thousand pages is big enough to make a dent in Gus’s ugly meatloaf of a head.

“Easy, killer,” he says as if he’s reading my mind. “Just coming by to say hello.”

I don’t say anything. I just stand there, ready for something.

Ready to fight. Or tear down the hallway.

“Got any special surprises in your locker today?” Gus asks.

I’m not taking the bait. I start to walk away.

“Hey. You. Turn around.”

I stop and look back at him. Gus is flanked as usual by his buddies.

“I hear we’re neighbors. You know that? So I don’t have to just look forward to seeing you here. Who knows? Maybe I’ll show up at your front door sometime.”

This sounds like a threat.

I wonder if he knows it’s just my mom and me staying at the cabin.

I want to tell him that I’ll have a baseball bat waiting to greet his ugly face and ratty teeth.

Instead I turn around and head to class.