Free One Hundred Candles [2] by Mara Purnhagen

Harris said happily.
    I stood off to the side while Gwyn printed out some forms and flirted with Harris. She obviously liked him and he obviously knew it. I wondered if he was like that with other girls. Did he use his looks and charm to get everything he wanted? Or did he have a history with Gwyn? At least now I knew why Gwyn was giving me a little attitude. She must have seen me with Harris at the party and hadn’t liked it. I was actually relieved—it meant she wasn’t judging me based on my family or what we were known for. But now I had to smooth things over somehow so she would talk to me.
    For the rest of the day Harris helped me. As soon as the bell rang, he was waiting for me outside my classroom or near my locker.
    “You should be careful,” I told him. “I might get used to this.”
    “That wouldn’t be a problem for me,” he said. It was the end of the day and I was headed to my final—and favorite—class, AV, where I would edit the daily school news footage with Noah.
    Harris smirked when we reached the AV room. “Couldn’t get out of this one? Maybe I can talk to Gwyn again.”
    I was slightly annoyed. “I like this class.”
    “Well, I guess it’s an easy A.” He smiled at me. “No offense. I just didn’t think that cool girls took AV.”
    “Well, they should,” I snapped. “The industry needs more women behind the camera, not just in front of it.” Harris looked taken aback by my little outburst. Even I was surprised by how sharp my voice had sounded. “Sorry. It’s been a long day without painkillers.”
    Harris nodded. “I understand. I pulled a muscle once during a game and it hurt for a week. I was miserable.”
    In reality, my arm didn’t hurt all that much. It was getting better every day, and I was optimistic that I would be free of my sling before the six-week mark in February that the E.R. doctor had predicted.
    I told Harris I would see him later and made my way to the back of the room. Noah was already at the editing station, staring intently at a computer screen. I slid into my seat, feeling like I had returned home after a long absence. As incredibly lame as it sounded, this was where I was in my element. Everything about the classroom felt comfortable. I belonged here, surrounded by equipment I not only knew how to operate, but most of which I could fix, as well.
    “What are we working on today?” I asked Noah.
    He was frowning at the screen. “Not sure.” He turned the monitor toward me. “This disc was already loaded into the computer when I got here. What does it look like to you?”
    I watched the footage. The first thing I noticed was that the video had been shot in black-and-white. The second thing I noticed was that the camera was fixed on one spot, and that spot was the senior hallway of our school. “Is this from a security camera?”
    “Yep. Keep watching.”
    The hallway, which was lined on both sides with lockers, was empty. The date stamped in the bottom right corner told me that the video had been taken today, just past midnight.
    “What am I looking for?” I asked.
    “You’ll know when you see it.”
    After a minute, I noticed movement at the end of the hallway. At first, it was so slight I had to squint, but as it slowly moved across the screen it got bigger. It was a blurry white shape about the size of a small dog, and it glided across the floor in a straight line. Within seconds, it was out of the camera range.
    I turned to Noah. “Show me again.”
    “I thought you’d say that.” He typed at the keyboard and the video went back to the beginning. “So,” he said as he sat back, “what was Harris doing out in the hallway?”
    “Walking me to class.” I focused on the center of the screen, knowing that the wispy shape would soon appear.
    “That was nice of him.”
    “Uh-huh.” The shape was moving at the end of the hallway, against the back wall. It was very white and looked exactly like a dog, except for the fact that it was