I once again shake off the feeling and stick my head through the gap to make sure this room is empty. When I see and hear no living person, I push open the door and pull Corden and Deena through the threshold, shutting the door with a quiet click and racing heart.
“That was really easy,” Deena whispers from beside me. I turn to see her with her phone torch on and scanning it around the windowless square box we have broken into.
“Yeah, I know right,” Corden snorts. “I just don’t get it though,” He murmurs on the way over to a wall lined with large filing cabinets. I follow close behind them, my fingers itching to rummage through them. “With the modern security on the door, unlike those on the others, you would think they would have digitized the records,” His brows furrow as he drops his bag on the floor. “Like I said last week, they keep them on paper. I know there isn’t a limit to how much cash the Academy has, but I don’t suppose this is good for the environment,”
“I know, it is strange,” I say as I search the front of the filing cabinets, where it has the years scrawled in an almost unreadable font. When I first suggested this little adventure, Corden thought I was crazy and said he would hack the security and find our files. I said if I get a few moments alone without them both there, then go ahead. We found out quickly that the records were never digitized and that we would have to get them the old-fashioned way.
“It’s not strange,” Deena chuckles. I turn my own phone torch to face her, she smiles with a shrug. “It’s Marrowton Academy. Strange is the norm,”
“Very true,” Corden pulls open one of the draws. “Here this is the past five years,”
“Find yours then Deena and then I will look for mine,” I whisper.
“What the hell is in your file, that the two people who you committed a crime with, can’t even see,” Corden jokes but there is curiosity in there to. One of his brows are lifted and his right elbow rests on the open drawer.
When I don’t answer he sighs and steps away from the drawer. “Here Deena, you can grab yours,” Deena rushes forward and starts to search the letters. “I don’t really care about my file; I just didn’t want to be left out of the fun,”
I smile as Deena takes a brown file from the drawer. It isn’t thick, like it is nearly empty. I guess being an orphan with straight A’s doesn’t give much to fill out a student file. She takes it off to the desk on the other side of the room and sits down with slumped shoulders. Corden busies himself looking through all the unnamed drawers as I start to search for Marlowe’s file.
Finding the file won’t prove anything, I already know she attended here, my father knows that too. Mr. Carmichael the head teacher, also verified that she attended every day for the past three years, handed in assignments and was keeping on track. What he couldn’t tell us, was who her friends were, who she spent her time with, her extracurricular activities other than gymnastics. The prick told my father that he couldn’t keep track of all the students personally, that was what parents were for, it wasn’t his fault if their child wasn’t informing them of their whereabouts.
That’s why I want the file. It will have in her class schedule, her teachers, her friends. The groups she took part in, if there was any. Then I can really start my investigation.
I start to sift through the A’s at the very front, glancing behind me to make sure the others are still occupied. I really don’t want to have to explain when I still need to keep it a secret. Even though I have fun with Corden and Deena and seem to have bonded slightly over criminal offences, I still don’t trust them with this.
When I get to the first B surname, my brows furrow. I pause.
“What?” I whisper to myself, my arms dropping to my sides.
That can’t be. I look at the front of the drawer and double check I have the years right.
I quickly scan the whole drawer in case Marlowe’s has been put back in the wrong place.
There is nothing with the Astor surname.
But there is a Griffith. Ruella Griffith. I grab my own, which is a lot thicker than Deena’s. I don’t really need to open it to know what it will be filled with.
Bad grades. Bad attitude. Depression. Anxiety. Panic attacks. All around fuck up.
To be honest, I am not even sure how my father managed to get me enrolled in the school. He must have had to pay a hefty fee to make things disappear, and at that thought, I smirk to myself.
“You find yours?” Deena asks as she comes up beside me. I hold up my file as I shut the door, feeling my shoulders slump in defeat.
“Hey, guys. Look at this,” Corden whisper shouts from the other side of the room. When I glance over his shoulder, I see a much smaller and older filing cabinet, this one with only one drawer. Exactly like the old mahogany door, the modern scanner on the antique piece doesn’t fit.
“Did you break into this one as well?” Deena sounds exhausted.
“Of course. You can’t tell me, if you had my skills, you would see this very suspicious lock and not want to see what it is inside,” He grins over his shoulder. “The scanner on the door locked away every student file, so what would need to be double locked?”
I nod in agreement.
When he pulls open the drawer, I shine my light into the deep box. I frown when I see a collection of files, some old, but others new like the ones in the other filing cabinets. My eyes widen as I pull them out andplace them on the table. There are about twenty files. All girls ranging over the past ten years.
That’s not what has my brows meeting.
Three of the names call to me like a beacon.
Piper Vander
