Forty-One After Midnight (Completed)

Chapter Eight

We waited. That's all we could do. Somewhere in this school Mrs. Reeves was going to be digging up records on past students, but until then, we couldn't continue in our investigation. We did start having more meetings though. Not during lunch. That's when I was spending time with Laney and the popular crowd after Laney came back from wherever she had disappeared to the other day. Sometimes though, after we ate dinner, we went outside to sit in the snow and talk with some privacy. We didn't want to seem like we were always whispering secretly about things in the café.

What we were going to need was Jane's school records, the list of people that were involved when this whole trapping thing took place, where and when it took place and at what time. We were going to need any sort of spells or curses or weird rituals. Half the group didn't seem to believe in that sort of thing, but I figured if the dead could get up and hang out in our school every night, than that sort of thing could quite possibly be real as well.

Once we had all that information I wasn't sure what we would do with it. I figured that would be something that Jane could help with, or maybe we'd just figure it out along the way.

In between two of my classes I was surprised to run into Laney and Callie. They saw me and stopped to talk to me, but something seemed off about Callie. She wasn't her normal, happy, excited self.

"Hey Nicole," Laney said as they walked over to me. "Got any plans for tonight?"

"Well, I made plans to hang out with Kyle after dinner."

"Can't you like... reschedule or something?"

I looked over at Callie who sat watching us, but didn't say anything. When our eyes met she looked over at Laney again.

"Not really. I promised him this time," I told her.

"What's so important that you can't come with us?" she asked.

I had nothing to say back to that. I wasn't about to tell her about our plans to dig into the school history and uncover what might be some strange one-hundred year old curse.

"I just, it's kinda...."

"Good, so we'll see you then."

Laney and Callie walked off. Great. Now I was apparently stuck hanging out with them when I could be getting more information about this case. It was almost the end of January and we weren't even sure if we had all the time in the world to do this, not that I wanted to take a really long time even if we did. I wanted this settled and I wanted it settled soon.

I knew this was probably going to be a bad idea, but I was going to have to ditch Laney and her friends. I hoped, well, prayed actually, that it wouldn't get her more interested in what we were doing.

When I went to History that day I tried to read any sort of clues from Mrs. Reeves about whether or not she found the records, but she went on teaching as usual and didn't hint at anything.

I sat there in my desk impatiently waiting for the end of the hour so I could ask her about it. I understood that she said to give her time, but I wanted this figured out so bad. I had to admit that I was getting a little obsessed with it.

After class I was up at her desk before everyone else could get out of the room. She looked up at me and smiled.

"I bet I can guess why you're here," she said, still smiling.

"Anything?" I asked eagerly.

"Nope. Sorry. I'm trying though. I really am."