“Hi, Derek,” Xander smiled sinisterly, leaning up against the stalls.
“We’ve been expecting you,” Mike added, stepping out from behind a corner and giving Derek a start.
Derek raised an eyebrow and smirked at the situation. “How long did you guys practice that?”
Xander heaved a sigh, then turned and looked at Mike, who did the same. “Alright,” Xander said as he stepped away from the locker and loomed toward Derek. The Womb surged inside of him, forcing him to swallow hard to keep the black bile from rising up his windpipe. “I’m gonna put this into terms you can understand, pal. This is the end of Empire. You’re Han and I’m Boba. This isn’t going to end well for one of us.”
Derek raised an eyebrow, looking from one to the other. “That’s... not a great analogy. I mean sure, it was going Boba’s way at the end of the movie, but Han ended up on top in the end of the trilogy. Maybe you’re looking for more of a Green Goblin/Gwen Stacy reference?”
“Sure. Why not?” Mike shrugged, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
“That wouldn’t really work either, though. Maybe you should just use a metaphor instead of an analogy. Or use an analogy more commonplace, like saying that I’m Bates to your Manson or something like that,” he chuckled, then took another step forward. Again, the true Womb vibrated.
“Let’s get to the point,” Mike interrupted, rolling his eyes. “Tell us what we need to know, or that smirk‘ll come off your face before you can say ‘Revenge of the Nerds.’”
Xander cursed and stepped forward, his tone losing all the menacing crypticness he’d tried so hard to convey throughout the exchange. “We need you to tell us about what happened with Julie Peterson,” he said empathetically, pressing his lips together and looking down, obviously feeling shameful of the actual topic.
Derek shook his head. “Why? So that you can turn around and freak on her like all the other low-life scum in this place? I tell you, you guys deserve to die like the rest of them.”
“Careful what you wish for,” Xander said, his tone sounding like that of a wise old man. “You just might get it.”
“Like it’d matter,” he scoffed, discarding Xander’s warning. “I’m not telling you crap so that you can ruin her any more than this shit already has.”
“We don’t want to hurt her, we just want the names of the people that did this,” Mike spoke up, stepping toward the both of them.
“Oh yeah, why?”
“We wanna kick their heads in.”
Derek stopped, looking from Xander to Mike and then back again. A sly smile extended across his face. “Okay,” he said cheerfully.
CHAPTER FOUR:
HEAD FIRST
The library smelled old and musty, like something between the scent of new paper and an old, smouldering cigarette. There was a dryness in the air that set it apart from everywhere else in the school. Mike kept expecting to see large clouds of dust move ominously between bookshelves, as if they had a mind of their own. It was still a welcome change from the bathroom, especially after Tommy and Sud had come in and used it. It seemed that he had been right all the years he’d said that those two were ‘full of it,’ and that they wasted no time expelling ‘it’ from their systems on a daily basis.
He frowned, putting the large, navy blue book back onto its place on the shelf. He was sure that Mrs. Richards, the old bat that they used for a librarian in this school, wouldn’t react kindly to some of her books being out of place. He traced his fingers carefully over the leather bindings, each yearbook a different colour but all of them sporting the same golden lettering along the spine as the one they’d looked at earlier. All of them had the same creases of use up and down their weathered edges.
At the end of the corridor, Xander sat atop a table with his legs resting firmly upon a chair, flipping through old files. “Any luck?” he asked, not really interested as he turned another page lazily. He already knew what his friend’s response would be anyway.
“No,” Mike responded, his voice taking the high-toned pitch it did whenever he was truly annoyed. “I don’t think we’re doing this right,” he admitted as he took out another yearbook, this one dating back ten years, and flipped it open to the index. “Shouldn’t we have found that clue everyone else had overlooked yet?”
“I think you’ll find it’s rarely that simple. Plus, we’re the only ones looking for clues, in case you haven’t realized that yet,” Xander responded bitterly, muttering something incomprehensible about this town’s population. He stopped a moment, slamming down one stack of counsellor files and scooping up another. “I’ve been through all these a thousand times. Our guys aren’t in here.”
“Are you sure they went to school here?” Mike asked under his breath, scrolling his finger down through the index.
“That’s what Derek said, anyway. We’re taking a lot on his word, and he’s taking a lot on Julie’s. I’m not entirely certain we can trust third-hand knowledge, man. You know the way gossip in this hole works.”
“True,” Mike nodded, handing him the yearbook. “But we’ve got nothing else to go on.”
Xander shook his head in dismay. “I thought you said there were three guys?”
“There were. She only told Derek about two of them.”
“Christ. Remind me to stay away from
