I have to give it to Stacey. While I stand there, frozen in shock, she takes out her cellphone and dials 911. She sounds scared but somehow manages to tell the 911 operator that we’ve found a dead body at our school. She even retains enough lucidity to tell them exactly which building we’re at and what room we’re in.
“Come on,” she says after hanging out. “We should wait outside.”
“But.” I can’t tear my eyes off Sophie.
Stacey takes my arm gently and starts to tug me away. “No,” I say, my voice coming out surprisingly loud. I pull my arm away. “We can’t just leave her. She’ll be alone then.” Tears spring to my eyes, hot and stinging. Sophie looks so helpless and tiny, like a child. I don’t want to leave her here, in the office of the man she blamed for everything. It feels wrong, somehow.
“Seriously,” Stacey says. “They said to wait outside. It might be dangerous here.”
That shakes me out of my daze. Dangerous? I stare at Sophie with renewed horror. I’d assumed she’d taken her own life, but what if I was wrong? What if it was murder?
Suddenly, I can’t get the hell out of the office fast enough. Stacey takes my hand again, and together, we rush out of the office and hurry down the stairs, not stopping until we’re outside. The cold air feels sharp on my skin, and I take deep, shaky gulps of it. God, did that really just happen? Did we really just come across a dead body? Stacey walks a few paces away, hugging herself and shaking her head, muttering something like, “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.” She does not sound okay. A small voice inside my head whispers that I should go comfort her, but I do not have it in me to comfort anyone right now. My mind’s a mess. My breath is coming in a high-pitched wheeze, and I can’t seem to stop my hands from shaking.
“What the hell happened in there?”
It takes a second to realize that I’ve spoken out loud. Stacey’s head jerks up, her face looking haunted. “I don’t know,” she mutters.
“Was she—did someone—”
“I don’t fucking know, okay? Stop asking such fucking stupid questions!” With that, Stacey buries her face in her hands and utters a strangled cry.
I focus on trying to breathe. Just inhale. Exhale. Inhale. I keep seeing Sophie’s thin legs sprawled on the floor. Bile rushes up my throat. Maybe she was just passed out. No, not with her eyes open like that. Oh god. She’s dead. She’s DEAD. And that’s when it hits me. She’s not just dead, she’s dead in Mr. Werner’s office. Mr. Werner, the man who has a really shady business going on. The man whose house I’ve sent Danny to snoop into.
It’s as though every cell in my body has exploded. I feel hot, like I’m suddenly running a high fever. I need to get a hold of Danny. I yank my phone out of my pocket and my palms are so slick with sweat that I immediately drop it. I grab it, my fingers all thumbs, unlock it, and call Danny. There are two rings before it abruptly goes to voicemail. My stomach drops. I hit Dial again, and this time, it goes to voicemail right away. Oh shit. What does that mean? Did he get caught by Mr. Werner?
But just as I’m about to freak out, Danny sends a text: Can’t talk now, will call in a bit.
I’m in the midst of typing out a reply when lights flash in the darkness. A few feet away, Stacey gasps, “Thank god, finally!” The ambulance has arrived.
***
A crowd has gathered, hungry eyes watching as Sophie’s body is carted out on a stretcher by paramedics. My gaze keeps straying from the cop who’s taking my statement to the stretcher. The paramedics have covered Sophie with a blanket, but I can’t stop imagining her underneath that white cloth, her face so blank, devoid of any expression. As they load the stretcher into the ambulance, a boy breaks through the crowd, his eyes wild. I vaguely recognize him as the boy who tried to help Sophie that first day.
“Logan! Stay back!” someone shouts.
He ignores them, making a beeline for the stretcher. Before he can get to it, a police officer steps in his path. “Calm down, son,” the cop says.
“Fuck you!” Logan shouts. “Let me see her!”
The cop lays a heavy hand on Logan’s shoulder and gently but firmly leads him away. The other kids are all aiming their phones at him, recording him as he shouts and struggles and begs the cop to let him see Sophie. My insides twist with sympathy and fear and what feels like every emotion there is.
“And what were you doing in there at this time of night?” the officer says to me.
I blink and snap back to the cop in front of me. “Uh.” Belatedly, it hits me that I haven’t thought of a good explanation as to why I was in Mr. Werner’s office so late at night.
“It was a dare,” Stacey says. I turn and find her right next to me. I haven’t even been aware that she’d been here all along.
The officer frowns at Stacey, who shrugs. “I’d dared Lia to break into the teachers’ building.”
The cop narrows her eyes, obviously doubting Stacey.
“It’s true,” I blurt out loud. “We dare each other to do stupid stuff all the time. Sorry,” I mumble.
The cop shakes her head with a sigh. “I was a teen once. I know what it’s like. So you were dared to break into the building. What made you go into this particular office?”
Think fast! My mind screams. “Um, the door was left open.” I go over what I just said, picking it apart for flaws, finding none. “Yeah, it was like halfway open, so I went to close it, and that was when I saw um. The body.” Those two words feel like stones coming out of my mouth. So alien, so wrong.
The officer nods, writing this down in her notepad. “That’s unfortunate,” she says sympathetically. She turns to Stacey. “And you were with her the whole time?”
“Yeah,” Stacey says quickly. “I was the one who called nine-one-one.”
The cop nods. “Alright, sounds good. If we have any questions, we know where to find you.”
Is it just me, or does that sound really ominous?
Just then, Mrs. Henderson arrives, her hair all messy, her eyes raw from interrupted sleep. Her arrival causes a few murmurs to rise from the crowd, as she pushes her way toward us. “Officer, I’m the school principal. What’s going on?”
The cop who’s been questioning me leads Mrs. Henderson away, speaking in a low voice. I catch Mrs. Henderson’s soft gasp and the words, “Has anyone called her parents?” before they go out of earshot.
Stacey clears her throat. “Hey, so—”
“Lia!” someone calls out, and relief surges through me because it’s Danny, oh, thank god, he’s okay. I hurry over to him, forgetting everything else. The whole time, my head is just going, He’s okay, he’s okay!
“Danny, thank god!” Everything else I’m about to say dies halfway out my mouth because right behind Danny is Mr. Werner. But Mr. Werner isn’t looking at me or even in my direction. He’s staring at the ambulance, his mouth parted and his eyes wide with horror.
“James,” Mrs. Henderson hurries over, and the cop talking to her follows.
“Sir, are you James Werner? Your office is in that building, room 404?” the officer says.
Mr. Werner nods. “What happened?”
The officer leads him and Mrs. Henderson away from the crowd, out of earshot. I turn to Danny, grasping his arms tightly. “Oh god, Danny. I’m so relieved you’re okay.”
“What happened?” Danny says.
At that, the everythingness of it all crashes down on me and I sag into his arms, my face crumpling into ugly, uncontrollable sobs. Danny gently leads me away from everyone while I cover my face and try without luck to control my crying. I barely register where we’re going until the doors swing shut and I realize we’ve gone inside a building.
We’re inside the boys’ dorm. I’m too upset to register anything else aside from the distinct smell of sweaty gym socks and Axe body spray. I try to control my sobs as we walk down the hallway and into Danny’s room, and once we’re inside, we sit down on his bed and he holds me tight, keeping his arms around me as I fall apart.
It’s a long while before I run out of tears. I rest my head on his shoulder as he strokes my hair gently. I haven’t felt this spent in a long while. My insides have been carved raw and empty. Danny asks if I’m okay to talk about what happened, and I release a wobbly breath and nod. I start with getting the idea to sneak into Mr. Werner’s office to look for the ledger and tell him all about running into Stacey. I’m stalling, I know it. I don’t want to talk about Sophie, about seeing her shoes first, followed by those skinny, long legs of hers. I don’t want to relive that moment, the worst moment of my life, of realizing that there’s a dead girl in the same room, someone I can’t help, no matter how much I want to. But finally, I do.
“Wait, you found—what? Sophie? As in, Sophie Tanaka?” Danny’s voice is sharp. Under my head, his shoulders stiffen, and he stands up so abruptly that I’m taken aback.
“Yeah. The girl who—uh, well, you know.”
“How the hell did that happen?” he cries.
I gape at him. “I don’t know. I think Stacey said it looks like Sophie overdosed on something.”
“No, I mean how the hell did she manage to sneak back in here? She’s not at Draycott anymore. And last I heard, she was a total druggie, but somehow she managed to sneak back onto campus? Did you know that she assaulted my uncle not long ago?”
Okay, this is not the reaction I was expecting. Danny actually looks…angry. Maybe under normal circumstances, I would be more patient, but I’m done with this cursed day. I have no fucks left to give. “Who cares how she snuck back in here? The school grounds cover hectares of land, I’m sure there’s a ton of ways to get inside. And you’re missing the point, which is that a girl’s dead, Danny! What the fuck?”
The raw panic in my voice catches Danny, and he stops pacing. He sighs and grimaces. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I just freaked out because yeah, you’re right, holy shit. A girl’s dead. A girl I knew. We were in quite a few of the same classes last term. Jesus.” He sinks back down onto the bed next to me and rubs his forehead, looking suddenly very, very tired. “And she was in my uncle’s office?” When I nod, he groans and slumps down on the bed, staring at the ceiling. “Poor Uncle James.”
Poor Uncle James? I want to scream at him. Poor Sophie! Am I the unreasonable one here? Sophie’s the victim, not Mr. Werner. He screwed her over so badly with his stupid cheating business that she took her own life in his office, and we’re sitting here feeling bad for Mr. Werner? I can just imagine Mr. Werner right now, talking to the police. He’d be saying all the right things, murmuring about how awful he feels, how disturbed Sophie had been. He’d probably even bring up the fact that she punched him a few weeks ago. At the end of the day, Mr. Werner would get out of this unscathed, and Sophie would still be dead.
The thought bolsters me, infusing me with renewed anger. Enough to say, “So, um, I hate to ask right now, but did you manage to find anything at Mr. Werner’s house?”
Danny releases the longest sigh in the history of sighs, which immediately makes me feel like such a terrible person for asking him that at this moment. But still, tonight’s events serve as more evidence that Mr. Werner doesn’t deserve to be a teacher.
Danny closes his eyes for a long moment before opening them and sitting back up. But even when he’s sitting upright, he keeps his gaze at his lap, avoiding my eyes. “Sorry. It’s been a shitty night. I mean, not as bad as yours, obviously. But.” He sighs again. “My cousins are in Indo and weekends are always hard on Uncle James, especially in that big house all alone. And then I asked him to look for my old baseball cards, and while he was looking for them in the garage, I went through his home office. It was just—I felt like such a shit, and I didn’t find anything. I’m sorry.”
The disappointment is crushing. Sickening. I haven’t realized just how much hope I’ve pinned on him finding something until this point.
“It’s okay.” It’s not okay. It’s so not, but there’s no use in pushing him. He’s tried his best, and he looks so deflated, I can’t bear to say anything else.
Danny takes my hand, interlaces our fingers. “We’ll find another way,” he says.
It’s all I can do to bring myself to nod. Another way. I close my eyes and try not to think of Sophie, lying alone in Mr. Werner’s office, staring forever at his ceiling.