Free One Hundred Candles [2] by Mara Purnhagen Page A

missing feet. A ghost dog? My debunker instincts were on high alert.
    “So someone left this for us to find?”
    “Yeah. It was right here.” Noah patted the table. “What do you think?”
    “I think it’s staged.” I froze the image on the screen. “It doesn’t look like the stuff I normally see.”
    Noah moved his chair closer to mine so he could get a better look. “You mean because it’s a dog?”
    “Not exactly.” I tried not to allow myself to be distracted by the light scent of Noah’s cologne. I had a thing for guys who wore a slight musky aroma. I liked it so much that part of me wanted to nuzzle into his neck and breathe it in. The image made me blink hard. This was Noah, after all. We were friends, nothing more. Besides, Harris was sending strong signals that he wanted to spend more time with me and he smelled great, too. I banished all semiromantic thoughts from my mind and focused on the video.
    “I would expect it to move differently. It seems to follow a straight line. A little too straight, you know?” I squinted at the screen. “I wish I could zoom in on it.”
    “Our school security system isn’t that advanced,” Noah said. “What I don’t get, though, is why didn’t the motion detectors go off? There’s one at each of the main doors, and that’s close to where this was shot.”
    “No clue,” I murmured. “But it’s got to be a hoax.”
    “A hoax set up when no one was around to witness it,” Noah reminded me.
    “Right. But the fact that someone slipped us this disc means someone wants us to see it, which probably means that someone staged it and wants an audience.”
    “But if it’s fake, why send it to the one person in school with the ability to figure out that it’s not real?”
    Noah had a point. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Let me take this home with me. Maybe Shane or my dad can figure it out.”
    He grunted. “Yeah, if Shane’s not busy with my mom tonight.”
    I had to work hard to suppress a giggle. Noah glared at me. “It’s not funny!”
    I held up my hands in mock surrender. “I didn’t say it was!”
    “Wow. You two are working hard.” Bliss Reynolds stood in front of our work station, hands on her hips. “I mean, it’s not like we have a million things to cover for my broadcast tomorrow. Please, continue having a good time.”
    Whereas I was ready to lunge at Bliss for her sarcasm, Noah didn’t let it faze him. “Hey, Bliss. We were actually about to give you a list of footage that was taped today. Why don’t you decide what you’d like us to edit first?”
    Noah handed her his notebook, where he’d scrawled the list. I was impressed—he must have come to class extra early or been stopping by throughout the day to see what had been turned in.
    “Well, I guess we could start with the new vending machines,” Bliss said, checking off an item in the notebook. “And I want to do a segment on Mrs. Demarse’s new baby and the sub who’s going to cover for her.”
    While Bliss was making her choices, one of her freshman minions ran up behind her, lugging a digital video camera in his scrawny arms. I winced at the way he was manhandling the expensive equipment.
    “Bliss! Guess what?”
    “Don’t talk to me until you’ve got at least a full minute of crowd shots that I can actually use.”
    “What if I got something even better?”
    Bliss eyed him suspiciously. “Don’t tease me, Matthew. I’m not in the mood.”
    “I thought her only mood was irritated,” I whispered to Noah.
    “Irritated is not a mood,” he whispered back. “It’s a state of mind.”
    Bliss and I had not started off the school year on the right foot. She originally thought I was trying to take over as senior anchor of the school news. After I convinced her that I preferred to work behind the camera and was not a threat to her dream of becoming the youngest female news anchor of all time, we reached a kind of truce. She was still pushy, crabby and wary of my