Confessions of a Queen B*

Untitled Part 44

I got to school just as classes were changing. It was easy to melt into the crowds of students on campus and make my way to the locker room with the poor souls—mostly freshmen—who had P.E. for sixth period. I hid in one of the bathroom stalls while they changed and filtered out in groups of twos and threes. Once it was silent again, I ventured out and checked the premises.

It was empty.

I cracked open the door to find Brett waiting beside it. "All clear?"

"All clear." I opened it further and looked around to make sure no one was watching as he slipped in.

He stood a few feet inside like he was afraid to go any further. "So this is what the girls' locker room looks like."

"It's nothing special." I brushed past him, scanning the tops of the lockers for the new camera.

"It smells better."

I remembered the Axe body wash–scented cloud that had billowed out of the boys' locker room Friday night. "It didn't smell too bad in yours after the game."

"That's because we were all getting clean to go out and celebrate. You should've smelled it before the showers."

"I'll pass." I walked down the next row of lockers, but still couldn't find the camera.

Brett was right behind me. "Any idea where the video was shot from?"

"You're the one with the link."

He pulled out his phone and handed it to me to open the link. Perhaps he had seen enough of Summer's enhanced cleavage.

I started the video and moved around the locker room until I found the same vantage point. "It's somewhere around here."

He took his phone back, turning off the video as he slid it back into his pocket. "Then let's start looking."

Unlike last time, there was no big desktop camera sitting on top for me to grab and dispose of. Brett and I both looked along the row of lockers and found nothing.

"I was afraid of this," he muttered. "Time to get technical."

He pulled another device out of his pocket. It was about the size of his phone, but the screen was smaller. A small knob dominated the space below the screen.

"What's that do?"

"It picks up wireless signals."

"And how will that help us find the camera?"

"Unless the person behind the videos is hiding in a locker with a handheld camera the entire time, the images are being sent through a wireless connection." He pulled a small LED flashlight out of his other pocket. "Here, take this and shine it into the slats of the lockers."

I did as he told me to do while he slowly scanned the lockers with his device, his eyes focused on the screen. I found nothing.

He stopped about halfway down the line of lockers, his brows drawn together. "Come back over here and take another look. There's a strong signal coming from this one."

The locker in front of him had a dark blue padlock on it. I scanned the slats. The light flashed on something in the upper left hand corner. I repeated the movement and got the same result. "Something's there."

Brett took the flashlight from me and saw the same the thing. "I think we might've found our camera."

He handed me the flashlight again and reached into the cargo pocket of his shorts. This time, he pulled out a bolt cutter.

"Let me guess—you're a Boy Scout, too?"

"Nope, but it never hurts to be prepared." He started working on the padlock. "I'm just glad I stopped by my house on the way over here."

A couple of minutes later, the lock yielded and fell to the ground with a loud clang. I opened the locker and found an old iPod taped to the door with a set of wires coming from the charging port and a wireless router. "Bingo."

Brett seemed more interested in the wires than the actual camera. "This is pretty clever. Whoever put it there put a lot of thought into making sure the iPod had plenty of power, and it looks like he was remotely enabling the recordings through FaceTime."

"I don't care—I just want it gone." I tugged at the last of the duct tape holding it up and ripped the device off the door. Then I pressed the red circle with the phone icon. "Time to end this call."

Brett held out his hand, still studying the snarl of wires in the locker. "Let me see it."

"Fine." I handed it over to him and waited for him to finish investigating the setup.

Voices filtered in from the windows outside, slowly growing louder. My gut tensed. Someone was coming this way.

I jostled Brett's shoulder, but he waved me away. "In a minute."

The entrance of the locker room creaked open. My pulse jumped into overdrive. We were seconds away from getting caught. I searched for a place to hide. Someone would see our feet if we hid in a bathroom stall (unless we decided to stand on the toilet seats, but ick!). The way out was blocked.

But by some small blessing, the door to the janitor's closet wasn't fully closed. Which meant it wasn't locked like usual.

I grabbed Brett by his shirt and dragged him over to it as the front door of the locker room banged open. A deep male voice I immediately recognized as Principal Lee's echoed off tile walls. "Someone said they saw a guy sneaking in here."

Shit! That blog post I'd written last year about students cutting class to make out in the locker rooms was coming back to haunt me.

I pushed Brett into the janitor closet and pulled the door closed behind us as quietly as I dared. If we made any noise, I couldn't hear it over the pounding of my heart and the continual string of four-letter words repeating through my head.

"I'll take a look around," a woman said. Coach Dittmer.

The closet was pitch black, but I had no trouble finding Brett's mouth. I placed my fingers over his lips to remind him to keep quiet.

I'd been terrified about Brett getting caught in the locker room, but as he wrapped his arm around my waist, I quickly came to realize I should've been more afraid of getting caught with him.