I keep sniffing as my nose blocks. God, I hate crying. I can’t breathe, and the more I gasp, the more tears fall, the more my chest hurts and squeezes.
The more I want to leave this place and never come back.
18
CHIAMAKA
Friday
In all my years of school, I’ve never gotten detention before. Now, somehow I’m on my third.
Sure, I’ve done things that could have resulted in one, but I’ve never been caught for anything.
And now here I am, in the year it matters most, no longer Head Prefect and standing next to Richards, being given our labor tools.
Usually, I don’t see him in detention—or outside of it, for that matter. But today Ward took us both to the same classroom, handing Devon the trash picker for outside and giving me the gum scraper for inside. I almost feel sorry for Devon. It’s raining pretty badly.
“No talking,” Headmaster Ward says, giving us one last look before exiting the classroom.
Richards quickly moves toward the door, but I stop him, placing my hand on his shoulder before he can leave. I’m relieved that I’ve managed to catch him in time. I’ve tried to talk to him the past two days, but I barely see him at school. He hardly goes to his locker, doesn’t hang out in the cafeteria either, and when I do see him, it’s like he can’t wait to get away from me.
He gives me aWhat?look, but I press my finger to my lips, waiting for the sound of Headmaster Ward’s office door.
Slam.
There it is.
“What?” he finally says.
I let go of him, walking up to the classroom door and shutting it gently.
I turn back to look at him.
“We’re getting rid of Aces.”
His eyebrows furrow together. “Getting rid?”
“Taking them down. I’ve been working on a plan, and this is what I know. One: Aces has to be a student here, because they know things only a Niveus student could, and have access to places only a student does. Two: They are following me, us, to watch what we do and document it. Three: They’re clever. Very clever. Four: They seem to have a reason to want to take us both down.”
“Yeah… I figured. I didn’t know I was important enough to take down, though,” Devon says.
Not going to lie, I was thinking the same thing. I’m being objective here: Most people had no clue who Richards was before this all started.
“Apparently you are—I don’t get it either.”
I catch him rolling his eyes at me, which is surprising. Most people don’t have the confidence to be rude to me—correction,didn’thave the confidence to be rude to me. Since Aces started revealing my secrets, the other students have been getting braver and braver. I’ve barely seen or heard from Ava and Ruby, which I have no doubt is because of Aces and my steadily growing social-pariah status.
The depressing fact about Aces is that they could literally beanyone. They could be people in my close circle, or people from the past, like Scotty, or anyone I used to get to where I am now. In the rise to the top, I’ve probably pissed off most people at Niveus. I just can’t quite figure out how Devon fits into all of this.
“So, the entire student body is your suspect,” he says with a tired sigh.
“Don’t be so negative. I’ve drawn up a list of people it could be, and I’ve spoken to a tech guy in my AP math class who might be able to help us solve this.”
“You want a high school tech guy to solve this.”
Why is he so negative?
“Obviously, not just any tech guy. Peter is a hacker. He is going to trace the messages and see who sent the texts, and he’s already getting the CCTV to see who planted the USBs and to recover the files on them. I heard he even turned down early admission to MIT last year because some top-secret federal guy hired him to hack into a Russian database. He’s really good. And at the moment, he’s our best chance at getting closer to finding out who’s doing this to us.”
