“We’re not going to get caught,” Chase reassured her.
“How can you be so sure?”
“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “How about you stay here as lookout, okay? That way, if anything goes down, you can bolt. No permanent-record blemish.” Not that I was counting on anything going down. I was pretty sure Mom would kill me, too, if she found out what I was up to.
Sam looked from Chase to me. “Okay, I’ll be lookout. But I’m not bolting. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
I gave her a quick hug. “Thanks.”
“Maybe I should stay here, too,” Kyle said, eyeing the school building.
I shot Kyle a look.
“Dude, I don’t think it’s safe to leave Sam here alone in the dark. Not after what happened to Nicky.”
While I had a feeling that Nicky had been specifically targeted and since Sam had no idea who was selling the cheats, she was pretty safe, what he said made a certain sense. And, honestly, it was kinda cute that he was worried about her.
“I guess that leaves you and me, Hart,” Chase said. “Ready to break and enter?”
I gulped down a small amount of fear, said good-bye to my own stain-free permanent record, and nodded. “Ready.”
Step one was simple: get inside the school. Chase and I tried the obvious route first, but as we’d expected, the front doors to the school were firmly locked in place. Lucky for us, there were about a billion other entrances. We circled the main building, coming to the back quad, where the ancient Roman part of our school met up with the modern math and science wings. Unfortunately, the first couple of doors I tried in the math wing were locked, too.
“So, your plan is to try every door on campus on the off chance someone forgot to lock one?” Chase asked.
I paused, hand on doorknob number five (locked). He had a point. Our whole purpose here was to prove that it was so easy to break into the school and steal the answers that anyone could do it. Most likely our cheat stealer hadn’t checked every door, hoping that one was open. Most likely he or she had a more foolproof way in.
Like picking a lock.
Luckily, contrary to what Chase might think, I was prepared for that.
I slipped my hand into my sweatshirt pocket, coming out with a hairpin I’d plucked from Mom’s room. I stuck the end in my mouth, biting off the rubber tip, then did my best to straighten it out into one long piece of metal.
“What’s that?”
“Hairpin.”
Chase raised an eyebrow as I stuck it into the keyhole at the front of the handle. “You done this before?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“You know what you’re doing?”
“I watched a YouTube video this afternoon.”
I thought I heard Chase snort behind me, but I was too intent on the keyhole to turn around. Instead, I wiggled the piece of metal up and down, side to side, slowly moving it in any direction I could just like the guy on the video. Too bad I had no idea what I was feeling for. And, unlike the guy on the video, five minutes later the door was still locked.
“Got a plan B?” Chase asked.
I blew a big breath of air up toward my hair, straightening and looking around the campus.
Truth was I did not. I spent most of my life trying to get out of school. Breaking in had never been high on my list of priorities.
I looked up at the main building. This part of the school was two stories high, though the east and west wings, which had been added on later, were only one story. Behind us sat rows of portables. In all, there were over a hundred classrooms, most dark at this hour.
Most.
As I squinted across the quad, I noticed a light in one of the windows of the science wing.
“There,” I said pointing. “Someone’s inside.”
Chase spun around. “I hate to break it to you, but it’s probably just the custodian.”
I bit my lip, watching as a figure moved in the room. Right. The custodian. Who was in there mopping experiments gone wrong off the floors, wiping notes off the whiteboards, and taking out the trash. And who probably had a set of keys to get in…
“That’s it! I know how the cheat thief got in!”
Chase raised another eyebrow at me. “Don’t tell me you think the custodian is stealing the answers?”
I shook my head. “No. But he has to get in and out of the building, right? To take out the trash and stuff?”
Chase nodded. “I guess.”
“So when he goes in and out, you think he pauses to lock the door behind him each time?”
A tiny grin played at the corners of Chase’s mouth. “I doubt it. He probably just locks everything up when he’s done.”
“Which means some of the doors must be unlocked while he’s working.”
“Let’s go check it out.”
We quickly crossed the quad, staying out of the line of any outdoor lighting, then moved close to the building as we approached the science wing. I ducked under the window with the light on, peeking just my eyes and nose above.
As we’d guessed, a custodian was in the room. Big guy with buzz-cut hair and a pair of coveralls on. He had earbuds in, his mouth moving to the music as he dipped a gray mop into a bucket and swished it along the floor.
Chase tapped me on the shoulder, then pointed to the left. Two windows down there was a door. I nodded, following him as he crouch-walked toward it.
He stuck a finger to his lips in a silencing motion as he slowly tried turning the knob.
What do you know? It opened easily in his hand.
I did a silent
The hallways were eerily quiet, the only sound a rhythmic ticking of a clock encased in a protective metal cage on the wall. I blinked, letting my eyes adjust to the dark as I got my bearings. The good news was that we were inside the school. The bad news was that Mr. Tipkins’s room was in the math wing, on the opposite side of the building.
Chase led the way as we slowly walked the length of the corridor and turned right at the end of the hall to enter the main building.
It was even darker here, the ancient architecture not affording much natural light as all the windows were high and tiny. I squinted through the darkness, doing my best to make out familiar shapes. A water fountain outside Spanish. A bank of lockers at the end of the hall. A poster about the upcoming homecoming dance on the wall next to the trophy case.
I put my hands out in front of me, feeling my way through the building as I followed Chase.
Ten dark, stumbling minutes later (I know because I pulled my cell out to light the way as we rounded the corner to the math wing), we finally hit the door to Mr. Tipkins’s classroom.
Where we encountered another lock.
“Still got that hairpin?” Chase asked.
I nodded, pulling it from my pocket and sticking it into the keyhole.
But fifteen minutes later, I was still wiggling the hairpin to no avail. And I was beginning to seriously rethink our theory about how the cheats had gotten out. Okay, it was possible that the thief was a lot better at picking locks than I was. It was possible he had better tools than a bent hairclip from his mom. But it was growing less likely by the second.
I almost jumped out of my skin when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out to see a text from Sam.
whats taking so long?
