The Framing

Thirteen.

January 11th, 7:00am. Cafeteria.

Alex and I walked into the cafeteria and set our stuff at the table we like to sit at. "How are you doing on your chemistry work?" I asked.

"This is what I worked on last night," he said and pulled out his homework.

"This all seems right to me," I said.

"I don't know what we should work on," he said, "I've already done most of my homework."

"How are your grades doing?" I asked.

"They're fine," he said, "I'm not in danger of failing for the first time."

"That's pretty good," I said.

Alex took out his notes from his trig class and we went over those. I suggested him to get a separate notebook for all of his classes but he told me having one notebook for everything is what works for him. After we went over his notes for an hour, we ran out of things to study.

"What should we do now?" He asked.

"Do you wanna snoop around Mr. Douglas's room?" I suggested.

"You still think he's behind all this?" He asked.

"Probably not but it wouldn't hurt to double check," I said.

We put our stuff in our bags and went upstairs. "His room is probably locked," he said.

"The janitors clean every room Friday night and I think they leave all the rooms unlocked," I told him.

We walked up to his classroom and the door was closed. I put my hand on the handle and prayed for it to be unlocked. I slowly turned it, and the door pushed open. The lights were off and it felt really weird to be in here on a Saturday. "Where should we start?" He asked.

"I'll go through his desk," I said. I went behind his desk and looked through all his drawers, but I didn't find anything interesting. It was mainly loose papers, binder clips, and books. Alex went to his closet and started going through it.

"Have you found anything in there?" I asked.

"Just a bunch of boxes of random crap," he said.

"I guess he really doesn't have anything to do with this," he said.

"Well that means we're back to where we started," I said.

"Not necessarily," he said. He walked over to his desk and noticed Mr. Douglas had the password for his computer written on a sticky note. Alex typed it in and we managed to log on.

"What are you looking for?" I asked.

"Anything," he said.

Alex logged into Mr. Douglas's email and scrolled through his inbox. We found a bunch of emails between him and parents of students. He scrolled all the way back to the end of November because that's when this all started. We still didn't find anything.

"There's one more thing I want to do," he said. He opened up Mr. Douglas's grade book and raised his grade on the most recent test we took. "Okay we can go now," he said.

We walked back to the cafeteria. "Are you sure there's nothing else we can go over?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said, "but my grades are honestly fine. I hope the school realizes how much you've helped me and stop making us do this every week."

"Aren't the police or something making you do this?" I asked.

"My parole officer is," he told me.

"What are you even on parole for?"

"I've been waiting for you to ask me that," he said, "my aunt wasn't making enough to pay our mortgage so I started selling drugs to cover what she couldn't."

"Did you go to jail or something?"

"No but I was caught doing it in school last year and I had to go to court over it," he said.

"Oh that sucks," I said, "this school sucks."

"Yeah," he said, "but my parole is over in June so next year I'll be a free man."

"I wish I knew when I'd be a free woman," I said, "my parents haven't had a real conversation with me in so long."

A few seconds after I said that, we heard the doors to the school open. "Who is that?" Alex whispered.

"Is it a janitor?" I whispered back.

Alex and I stood up to get a closer look. We stood in the cafeteria doorway and saw someone wearing all black with their hood up walking down the hall. "Do you think that's the guy?" I asked.

"Let's find out," he said.

Alex and I walked as quietly as possible and kept a distance between us and the guy. We watched him go upstairs and we followed. He went down the hallway my locker was on, so Alex and I crept around the corner to get a look.

"What's he doing?" I whispered.

The guy grabbed a crowbar from his bag and started trying to break into my locker. "Hey!" I yelled down the hall. The guy looked up at me. Half his face was covered by a scarf so I couldn't tell who it was. "I know what you're trying to do!"

The guy stood up and ran the other way. Alex and I followed him, but by the time we got outside he was gone. "Who do you think that was?" Alex asked.

"It couldn't have been Mr. Douglas. That guy was too short," I said.

Alex and I walked back inside and went up to my locker. "I don't think they were able to open it," I said.

"Look inside just to be sure."

I put my combination in and opened it. It looked the same as I left it yesterday at dismissal. "What do you think they were trying to put in here?" I asked.

"Something worse than a gun or a knife," he said.

Alex and I walked downstairs to the cafeteria and I looked at my phone to check the time. "We still have half an hour until we can go," I said, "what do you want to do?"

"I just wanna go home," he said.