Between every period, I passed both my locker and Jack’s, hoping to catch someone placing a photograph inside. I was waiting for it, really. I couldn’t believe that he or she would stop.
At the end of the day, I found Jack putting his books away. I had come up with a plan.
“Anything?” I asked him.
“Nope,” he said, closing the door.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said.
“I have to go to practice. I promise I’ll tell you if something comes up.”
He was about to walk away, and I felt I couldn’t let him. Not yet.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” I asked.
He looked at me impatiently. “What?”
“That she told someone else.”
“It is what it is.”
“No, there’s something else there.”
Jack slammed his hand against his locker door. “Look,” he said. “What do you want me to do? What do you want me to say? There’s a part of me that thinks you’re actually enjoying this.”
Enjoying. This.
“Jack—you can be such a jerk sometimes.”
“No—I know. That’s not right. But, Evan, I don’t know what you want from me here. It doesn’t make any sense for us to get worked up over something we don’t have any control over.”
“I’ve thought about it,” I said.
“And?”
“I think we need to go to her house.”
He was not expecting me to say this.
“What are you talking about?”
“Think about it for a second. If she was close enough to someone to tell him or her our locker combinations and the place where you two first kissed—don’t you think she would have mentioned that person in her journals?”
“Wait a second, Evan—”
“No, it makes perfect sense. All we have to do is read the journals—we don’t even have to read them, we can just scan them. But there has to be a name there.”
“Are you crazy?”
“You must be crazy, too.”
“No.”
“First of all, I don’t think Ariel’s parents would just let us into their house because of what we did to their daughter. Second, we have no idea if the journals that I don’t want to read are still there. And third … I’m sick of you well, it’s just wrong.”
“You remember where the spare key is, don’t you? You are not getting out of this. I’m sure it’s in the same place. Nobody not even your new girlfriend ever has to know we were there. Nobody. It’s the only way for us to find out.”
Jack shook his head. “No. We’re not doing it. I’m late for practice.”
“If you don’t do it with me, I’m doing it alone,” I told him.
Jack hit the locker again. “Evan.”
“Someone’s stalking us,” I said. “We have to stop it. The only way is to find out who it is. Her parents both work until six now, at the earliest. I’ve been by their house. They’re never back before six.” This wasn’t true. I was just guessing.
“Does it have to be tonight?”
I knew if I wavered, I’d lose him.
“Yeah. Let’s get it over with.”
Jack didn’t like any of it, but he wasn’t going to make me do it myself.
“Fine. I think you’re a jerk, too, sometimes. I’ll get out of practice early and meet you here at four. Out front. In the meantime, go over there and make sure their cars aren’t in the garage.”
I nodded and started to leave. But Jack grabbed my shoulder and turned me so I had to look him right in the eye.
“I’m only going to say this once, Evan, okay? If I find out that these are your photos and you’re doing this just to mess with me, I’ll kill you. Got it?”
“Don’t worry,” I told him. “I’m not that smart. Or that masochistic.”
He let me go.
“I think you are that smart,” he said. “But not that cruel. That’s what I’m betting on.”
This was, I figured, the biggest compliment he’d ever paid me.