It Happened Last Year

I rush to the cafeteria, to the table, then to Jana. She is sitting with Watts, Taylor, and Jordan, but I yank her up and drag her out, ignoring her “what are you doing” and “Hailey, what’s going on” until we make it out of the cafeteria doors. The hallways are sparse with students, and I take her back to where Sam took me, yet he’s gone as I expected. I wonder what he’s thinking.

I let her go and she lets out a weird laugh. “Will you tell me what that was all about? You know, I could have followed you, you didn’t have to pull me out.”

“Shut up,” I breathe out, panicking. “Something bad has happened.”

Her face turns serious. “What? Is it Harrison? Daphne? Did they do something?”

“Actually, yes, but I need to explain, and before I do, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? For what?”

“For not telling you this sooner,” I give her a sad smile, hoping this will make her less offended by my explanation. As my best friend, I should have definitely told her when it first happened, not Daniel, not someone so unsure in my life. “I have proof that Harrison… did what he did.”

She steps back. “What? How?”

“It was caught on video through a window. Some kid named Sam was filming at the party last year and caught us through Harrison’s bedroom window, and the video shows enough.”© 2024 Nôv/el/Dram/a.Org.

“This is crazy. We-we have to take it to the police, You’re gonna get justice, payback for-”

“It’s not that easy anymore,” I mumble.

“What do you mean? Do you not have the video?”

“Well, I did. Now I don’t.”

She raises an eyebrow. “You lost it, didn’t you? Did you make any copies? Do you know where it might be?”

We pause our conversation as a teacher walks by. He smiles and says “good afternoon” and we say it back, then Jana turns to me with a questioning face. “I put the USB in my locker thinking that it would be safe there, right? Well, I went to get it a few minutes ago and it’s not there. Someone broke into my locker and took it. And the kid, Sam, said that they knew. Harrison knows I have proof. Harrison has the USB.”

Jana falls back against the locker. “So what? We have to steal it back from him? How are we gonna do that?”

I pause for a moment. “It could be in his locker.”

“And you know his code?” She asks sarcastically.

“Well if he got into my locker somehow, then we can get into his.”

“Do you even know which locker is his? Do you know the number?”

I sigh. “Stop being so hard on me.”

“When did you get the USB from this Sam kid?”

I bite my cheek. “I don’t know. A week ago.”

She gives me a very dramatic look. “A week ago? I thought you were going to say this morning, or maybe yesterday, but a week!”

“I couldn’t do it then. I don’t know, it’s hard to explain. I just wasn’t in the right mind. I just wasn’t right,” I murmur and look to her. “Things aren’t right anymore, Jana. I don’t know how to tell you this, but my Dad is moving back to Florida and-”

“No,” she blurts, “you are not doing what I think you’re doing. You are not leaving again.”

“Jana, I-”

“No, Hailey. No. Sorry, but I’m not letting you give up like this. I’m not letting you leave me and Taylor and Jordan and Daniel. What about him? Daniel? The guy You practically love?”

I look away. “Things with Daniel are over.”

“What are you talking about? He came to the table at the beginning of lunch asking where you were?”

“I ended things between us, and I can’t explain why, and I don’t want to be here to watch him talk to Daphne at the track-”

She interrupts again. “What? So what he was talking to Daphne,” she says, confusing me. “You have to know that she’s the one who probably went up to him and started talking. We all know Daniel finds Daphne obnoxiously annoying, right? And we all know that Daphne has been trying to get at Daniel for, well, forever. So that’s not a valid reason to leave. I said he came looking for you. You. Not Daphne. I know you aren’t that oblivious.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter anyway. I ended things.”

“Why?” She asks, calmly, genuinely. “He’s a good guy. He’s good for you, Hailey. He was helping you get better, remember?”

I shake my head. “I don’t believe that anymore. What I did couldn’t have been normal.”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but please just really think before you go off saying that you’re moving again. Okay? And if finding the USB and breaking into Harrison’s locker will make you stay, then hand me a damn crowbar.” Without thinking, I pull her in for a hug, causing her to laugh. “Now, if we’re going to do this, we can find the listing of lockers with their codes. Every student has to give up their codes to the school in case they need to search for anything.”

I pull back. “And where is this list?”

“The front office. I’m guessing Mrs. Guy has it on her computer. She’d be the person to handle those kinds of things.”

Jana and I make our way to the front office, Jana saying that she already has a plan. I follow her inside as she smiles at the few front office workers and walks up to a cluttered desk in a closed-off office in the back corner. The door is wide open, and sitting behind the picture frame and nicknack filled desk is a tall cadaverous woman who I am assuming is Mrs. Guy. Jana charismatically speaks up. “Hi, Mrs. Guy. I’m a teacher’s aid for Mr. Hall, and I was wondering if you could show me how to make copies. I asked the woman at the front desk, but she was too busy.”

Mrs. Guy stands up. “Alright, come on,” then she sees me peeking into the office, “and who is that?”

Jana shrugs. “Just my friend. You know, emotional support.”

Mrs. Guy rolls her eyes and leads Jana to the copy room to make copies of her unfilled homework paper from English for Mr. Hall, and I slip inside Mrs. Guy’s office to thankfully see her computer is unlocked and open to some school business. I sit down and close out of the window, scanning the desktop screen for any promising files.

Schedules, meetings, mail, college visits, counseling meetings, substitute teachers, teacher information, student information, assigned classrooms, then, finally, assigned lockers. I click in and scroll through, seeing a grid of names in alphabetical order listing last name, first name, locker number, then code. I hurry and scroll down to ‘K’ and find Harrison Keller, locker 73, code 5676.

Jana’s familiar voice jabs me, and I swiftly close the window and open the one that was up before. Shooting out the door, Mrs. Guy and Jana come out of the copy room just as I fall back against the wall.

“Thank you for the help. Hope I wasn’t too much of a bother,” she smiles brightly and Mrs. Guy glances at me before returning to her seat. Together we rush out of the front office and head for locker 73.

I look down at the stack of papers in Jana’s hands and laugh. “How many did you make?”

“A hundred.”

Locker 73 happens to be upstairs and beside the lecture hall, and when we get there I tell Jana, “The code is 5676.”

She attempts and swings open the locker. “Go on, look. I’ll keep watch.”

His locker is a mess, but there isn’t much in it. Food wrappers, two textbooks, a dirty jersey, a few stray pencils, a nub of an eraser, an empty can of soda, an empty blue water bottle, a notebook, and a pair of white converse shoes at the bottom. I look through it twice. “It’s not in here,” I say, my voice clear with disappointment. “I don’t understand.”

Jana closes the locker as I back away. “Hey, it’s probably in his backpack. He probably took it after going to his locker so he’d just keep it in his backpack, right?”

“How do we get to his backpack? We can’t just swipe it off his back?”

Jana thinks for a moment then looks at me with wide eyes. “I have an idea, but you’re not going to like it.”

“You might as well just tell me.”

“Harrison is having his ‘end of the football season’ party this weekend. We can take it from his house.”

I sigh. “He would probably destroy the USB by then, don’t you think?”

Jana stops walking, catching my attention in the empty hallway as we leave Harrison’s locker behind. “It’s worth a shot.”

Before the bell rings, Jana drops the stack of papers off in Mr. Hall’s empty classroom, not knowing what else to do with them. She sets them on his desk and sneaks back out as I wait for her. “Okay, let’s go.”