Too Many Secrets To Hide | ✔| #Wattys2017

Chapter One

Word Count: 3022

   Today was my first day at my new school. I was a freshman, so at least I wouldn't be the only one in my class with trouble finding the different classrooms. Or my locker, for that matter. It was number 367, but I was convinced that number didn't exist after dedicating a solid ten minutes of searching for it.

   I had all but given up, deciding my locker wasn't even real. I sighed, with my arms crossed, sticking my lips out in a very exaggerated pouting face. This was not a good way to start the school year. My eyes searched up and down the hall. I had been on this one before, and the numbers on the lockers went from 100-300. So, the next hall should start at 300 and no doubt have my locker. But it didn't matter what I did, where I went, it just wasn't there. Very irritated and my arms aching from holding all my books, I trudged towards the hall my locker should have been on, again. Most kids were in their classes by now, so that at least made things a bit easier. Of course, it also meant the bell would ring any minute. I would have checked my phone for the time, but my hands were too full.

   So I prowled the halls, now on the one that, logically, should have housed my locker. "Which one are you looking for?" a deep voice spoke from behind me, and I knew he was talking to me. I turned around sheepishly to face the owner of the voice. "367," I mumbled sadly. To my surprise, a huge smile spread across his face. "I've had that one before," he grinned at me. "I'll take you to it." With that he turned on his heel, and so began my gentlemanly escort through the near empty halls of the school.

   He led me back down the hall, then down another that led to even higher numbers. After that we went down another that had four digit numbers. I glanced nervously at a clock on the wall. He must have noticed. "Do you know how late I was the first day when I had that locker?" he asked with just a whisper of a smile. "How late?" I retorted. "Fifteen minutes," he breathed with an irritated kind of air, but he was still grinning. I smiled, it was nice he was trying to make me feel better.

   From there, he steered us down a flight of steps that didn't look like there was much of anything but half abandoned science labs at the bottom. At the end of another long hall, we took a left, and in glorious color were the missing interval of lockers mine was apart of. He walked me all the way over to it. "And it opens kind of hard," he said after I put in the combination and struggled to pull the door open. He grabbed it and yanked, causing it to make a horrible sound as it scraped open. The effort made his muscles flex, and the sound made my skin crawl.

   I would have thanked him but I was just too confused at this point. "Why?" was at first the only word my mouth could form. "What, even...kind of sense does that make?" I still couldn't get over how dumb this was. "So apparently there was like water damage or something a while ago and they had to do some weird renovations and this is what happened," he explained while I put my things away quickly. "Really they should know better than to give a freshman a locker on this hall," he stated. "I guess they decided to pull that one on both of us," he chuckled. I gathered that he had also been a freshman when he got this locker. I wondered if the combination on it was the same and if he knew it, but now I had a more important question to ask. "How did you know I was a freshman?" He shrugged. "Well I could tell you were new, I just kind of assumed." he told me.

   I was finished with my locker now and shut the hateful door with a slam. "Do you by any chance know where room...105 is?" I said glancing at my schedule. "Yes, that's advanced math and I was just heading there myself," he flashed an award winning grin. I laughed a little. "What a coincidence," I offered back with a hf smile. "But...we better hurry," he informed me, looking at his phone. "We have less than a minute."

   "Then let's go!" I took off at a speed walk, and he was close behind. By the time we hit the stairs, we were moving at an all out sprint. He was definitely faster than I was, but he stayed only far enough ahead for me to follow him comfortably- as he was the one who knew where we were going. We made record time to our class and he held the door open for me, motioning me to enter first. I quickly adjusted my pace to a brisk walk and entered the room. No sooner had he crossed the threshold behind me did the bell ring. I looked at the unhappy looking teacher with a smile, and I'm pretty sure my escort did too before he shut the door behind us.