Murders at Westfield High

Chapter 5

The next day, I got in early but didn’t see the girl at the locker. I went to the library, which was open, and looked at the yearbooks for the previous years. Julia was right, they list the locker assignments in the yearbooks. No one was listed for that locker for the previous years of 1957, 56 and 55, but when I looked in the 1954 yearbook, I got a shock. Locker 235 was listed as being assigned to Carrie Adler. Could it be that she’s Julia’s sister? I went to the page that had Carrie’s picture and knew that I was right. Carrie looks a lot like her sister with longer blond hair. She also has Julia’s penetrating eyes, but since the pictures were in black and white, I couldn’t discern her eye color. What really got me upset was the fact that they listed Carrie as being deceased with no other information.

I really wanted to ask Julia about her sister, but I felt that it would upset her, especially if I mentioned that I had seen Carrie. She would think me crazy for seeing a ghost. Maybe I am crazy. There had to be more to this than the terse yearbook entry for Carrie indicated.

I had to go to swimming class in the last period. I hate swimming because they make us guys swim in the nude. Most high schools, collages, and YMCA organizations follow this practice. They claim the reason is that cloth fibers from wool bathing suits clog the pools’ filtering systems, but that doesn’t make sense. Girls are allowed to swim wearing rubberized suits and caps. They also don’t have this rule in outdoor pools. It’s just a nutty tradition, I guess.

Because guys are used to showering and swimming nude together, it’s no big deal. They consider it to be a necessary evil, and no one gives it a second thought. Mr. Taylor’s office had a large open window that looked out over the pool, but on the girls’ side, the office window was shuttered and the doorway to their shower room was closed. I’m sure that guys wonder if girls could see them by looking through peepholes.

Frankly, I don’t give a damn.

It’s mandatory to shower and step in a disinfectant footbath before entering the pool. I had just gotten started showering when I turned to see the girl in the prom dress staring at me from the shower entrance from the locker room. She wasn’t smiling or ogling me. Her expression had a dire look. I concentrated on her face to convince myself that she was Carrie Adler, the girl pictured in the yearbook.

“Hey Kramer, get your ass in there or I’ll mark you late.”

I turned to see Taylor glaring at me from his office door that opened to the shower room. “I’m working on it.”

He frowned and positioned near the entrance to the pool from the shower room.

I turned to see that the girl had vanished. When I rinsed off and stepped into the disinfectant trough, which was in the doorway to the pool, Mr. Taylor gave me a hard hand swat to my bare behind. “Move it!”

The loud cracking sound drew attention and made the other guys laugh.

I hurried as fast as I could down the clay-tiled steps that led to the pool past the bleachers. The last thing I would want to do is slip and fall. That would hurt like hell.

Bleachers behind clay-tiled three-foot high barriers flanked both sides of the pool. The shallow end of the pool faced a wall and the deep end, where the diving boards were located, had a balcony overlooking it. A high ceiling had skylights that could be opened.

“Late again, Kramer?” Nelson teased me.

“Yeah, Kramer, what took you so long?” Neil added.

I shrugged and held my arms out to express without words that I couldn’t help it.

Mr. Taylor blew his whistle and we all lined up on the side of the pool near him for attendance. He called out our names and we each held a hand up to indicate we were present. After attendance, He blew the whistle and we jumped into the pool feet first. Half the class swam to the other side. After a session of swimming exercises in which we held onto the pool’s scum troth and kicked our legs, we climbed out of the pool and did some dives off the sides of the pool, each side alternating to allow the guys from the other side to arrive before diving.

Taylor usually went back to his office after that, leaving us to do as we pleased.  Some guys liked to do cannon balls dives off the high dive board just to see how high they could splash water. Some swam around in the middle of the pool. Like some, I just spent time hanging out in the shallow end.

That’s when I saw the girl in the prom dress sitting in the bleachers. Obviously, I was the only one seeing her because a girl spectator would have caused a panic.

“You in a trance, Kramer?” Nelson asked. “You keep looking at the bleachers.”

“You won’t find a girl there,” Neil said. “They don’t allow girls in here.”

“Yeah,” Nelson said. “They’d get an eye full.”

They laughed scornfully.

After they waded off, I looked again and this time I saw the girl in the prom dress and three other girls. The other girls were attired in the usual outfits that girls wear to school. To me they were real, but yet no one else saw them.

I didn’t feel embarrassed by four girls gawking at me. They didn’t appear to be smiling or giggling; although, I couldn’t hear any noises from them. I had to assume that they were ghosts that only I could see. But, why were they haunting me? What did I have to do with them? More importantly, why were they haunting this high school?

I got out of the pool and walked over to the barrier right in front of where the girl ghosts were sitting. They stared at me, but didn’t smile or say anything.

Neil and Nelson climbed out of the pool and came over to me.

“Are you still looking for girls?” Kramer asked.

“Have they ever had girls in here when guys were swimming?”

Neil laughed derisively. “Are you trying to be a comedian?”

Nelson was more serious. “I’ve heard that Miss Gaines, the girls’ instructor, sometimes runs the boys makeup swim class.”

My right eyebrow shot up. “Miss Gaines?”

“Yep.” Nelson said it as if he were proud of it.

“I’m surprised that wouldn’t cause a stir.”

“Who the hell’s going to complain,” Nelson said. “All that would happen is that they wouldn’t let you graduate if you didn’t make up gym or swimming. I don’t know about you but I don’t want to spend another year in this shit hole.”

Yeah, he had a point there.