“Hmm, you’re right,” Clay said, appearing by my side. “Any ideas?”
I looked around the outside of the school, and saw the main office window. There would definitely be some type of alarm system in there.
“Something tells me we need to get in there,” I said, pointing to the office.
“Not a bad assumption, we just need to open this window somehow.”
I used my phone’s flashlight to see it was double locked, but luckily for us, I noticed the left side wasn’t fully in place.
“Think we can force it?”
“Seems risky,” Clay observed. “But why not?”
Clay and I placed our hands side by side on the window and tried to force it open. It was heavier than it looked, but we managed to lift it a few inches. Clay slipped his hands beneath and held it up.
“Oh God. This is heavy. I don’t think we can get it up any higher than that.” Clay was struggling to keep it open, and I had to find something to wedge it. “Hurry!” he yelled.
I thought about sticking a rock in between, but then I had an idea. If I threw the journal inside, Clay could fade out, then fade in beside it. I grabbed it from my bag and tossed it through the opening.
“What are you doing?” Clay said as he let go. The window slammed down.
“Think for a minute.” I poked his head. “Just fade to it.”
Clay’s frown melted away once he realized what I was thinking. “Oh! Yeah, I’ll be right back.” He faded away.
I saw him reappear on the other side of the window. He switched on a desk lamp and looked around the office. He finally noticed a security monitor.
“The buttons! Try to see which button is the alarm!” I called, but he couldn’t hear a thing. He just looked at me and shrugged. I kept pointing to the button board beside the monitor, but he wasn’t understanding any of it. It got to the point where I just shrugged and he tore the plug from the wall, making the entire room go dark.
“Clay! Clay!” I tapped the window but couldn’t see anything. “Dammit,” I said under my breath.
He didn’t open the window and there was no point waiting around, so I made my way back to the entrance of the school and tried sticking Grampy’s key in the lock again.
“Please, please don’t let an alarm go off,” I murmured while twisting the key and pulling forward.
Thankfully nothing happened when the door opened, just a loud creak. Moonlight washed the giant picture of Grampy in the entrance. Clay must’ve turned the alarm off, if there even was one.
“Clay? Clay, where are you?” I called out.
Nothing.
I eventually made my way to the main office where I’d thrown the journal to see the door opened, no sign of Clay.
“You’re starting to creep me out, dude.”
I made my way back to the hall. I couldn’t worry about Clay; I knew he’d be okay, so I just followed the classroom numbers.
I walked past classrooms 389, 390, 391—409 was a little ways away.
On the way there, I reflected on the past week. It had been nonstop. One minute, Clay and I had restored Nan’s memory. The next, we were rushing to the hospital, only to find out Nan’s short-term memory was partially repaired. Then Tia met Clay, I went to a party, and now I was breaking into my new school. It was the weirdest time of my life but I had a feeling it was only going to spiral from there.
I squinted down the hall and could just make out 409. And there was Clay, staring at the door.
“Clay! There you are.”
He didn’t reply right away. He was focused on the door. He reached out and placed a hand on the number—409. All around those numbers were all the sticky notes. It was a nice reminder of the impact he had left on this place.
“So this is where Rudy taught,” Clay observed.
“Yeah, what about it?”
“It’s just that I spent most of my life trying to understand that man. Replaying the memories he felt were worth sharing. He wrote a lot about going to university, about the struggles he had faced. But he never really wrote about this part of his life. He never wrote about the great teacher so many saw him as.”
That surprised me. “He always seemed like the kind of guy who wanted the spotlight. He was always after attention one way or another.”
“That’s what you told me,” Clay replied. “You told me about how the story of him and Nan meeting didn’t align with the one he wrote in the journal. Maybe looking for attention was a way he hid a part of himself. Maybe he was more honest in his private moments.”
“I still have my suspicions about that one,” I replied. “Which one can we really know is true?”
“I’d go for the one without the audience.” Clay grinned.
“There was an audience of one,” I shot back.
“True, but one he didn’t know would watch.”
As we stood outside Grampy’s classroom, I began to feel anxious. What if we did find something? And what if it was something I didn’t want to find? There had to be a reason those pages were torn out, after all.
“You think we might find something heavy?” I asked Clay.
“There’s only one way to find out, I guess.” He shrugged. “What do you think we’ll find?”
“I dunno…maybe something about his childhood? It was the one thing he was never really open about. Mom didn’t know much about it, and Nan didn’t want to tell me about it.” I squared my shoulders and faced the door. “I’m just hoping we find something. Anything. What was it like when he first got to Canada? What was his family like? I’d love to know. His past was a secret.”
“Well, I hope the only thing keeping you away from the secret is this door.” Clay pointed at the numbers.
409.
I grabbed the doorknob and turned.
