Free Old School Bones by Randall Peffer

are REALLY depressed, they stop eating, they shit on everything, even themselves. They totally lose their sense of humor. They stop thinking about schoolwork. And they don’t sleep. Or they sleep ALL the time. Trust me on this.”
    He looks at her hand holding his hand. “What are you saying?”
    She tells him to read between the lines. Pauses. Unhands him, doesn’t want him to think she’s clingy. Just real. A force. The ninja warrior in the killer sweater.
    “I think I’m out of my league.”
    She smiles, says Liberty was bitter and confused about how males treat females. That seemed to bother her even more than the awful note. But she still had the ability to feel for Doc P and her mother. Still the same girl as in the videos. Still had her sense of humor, her whack sarcasm. Still thinking about her beauty sleep and working on the history stuff.
    He says that’s not exactly a smoking gun. Why would your headmaster want to steal Liberty’s journal?
    She swallows a bite of
Moo Shi
pork. “That’s the sixty-four-million-dollar question. What was he looking for in here? What did he find? What was he trying to keep out of the public eye? And does it point to Liberty’s murder?”
    She watches his mouth. Sees him roll a noodle over his tongue, swallow. There’s a buzzing starting along the insides of her legs. A bubble building in her chest.
Fuck, would you just look at this guy’s beautiful face.
    “Maybe Awasha will shed some light on this.”
    “You can’t tell her about the journal.”
    “Why?”
    “First, you promised …” She licks her lips. “And, second, it would break her heart.”
    “Damn.” His voice arcs. She can hear the lightning, feel the strike.
    “Yeah.”
    Exhale.
    “This is between us.”
Exhale.
    “So now what?”
    “Maybe I should have another look at Hibernia House. I missed a lot the first time around.”
    Exhale.
    “The school has posted No Trespassing signs. But Ninja Girl knows the secret passage in.”
    “We can’t go in there alone. It could be dangerous.”
    No shit, Sherlock.

15
    AWASHA has seemed on edge since before they entered Hibernia House through the back alley, the basement door. Gracie’s secret passage in.
    Now as soon as he asks if he can see her apartment, it’s clear he’s really hit a nerve. She has been staring out the dormer window, probably watching for one of the school’s green and white Honda SUV’s the security folks drive. Now she wheels back toward him, her long, black hair cutting a perfect arc through the harsh morning light. Her eyes suddenly a ghost crab’s, on sticks.
    “Why do you want to see my apartment?”
    Tory shoots Gracie a look. Like
what the fuck?
    “Is it a problem?”
    “No. But it would not be cool at all if someone found us in here. And I just don’t see—”
    “You said Liberty came into your place the night before she died. She let herself in. I want to see how she did that, where she was. Maybe … I don’t know.”
    “Whatever. Come on!”
    She leads him and the two teenage girls out of Liberty’s empty quarters, the scrubbed walls and oak floors giving off a mercurial glow. Across the moth-eaten oriental rug in the common room, James Dean still leers from the poster over the mantle. They go down the students’ stairwell. Treads, creaking. Two flights to a dirty white door. She tries the door. It’s locked. She hisses, fishes in her bag for keys.
    “Was the door always locked?”
    “Never. Doc P left it unlocked for us,” says Tory.
    “I guess the maintenance people must have locked up.”
    She keys the lock, opens the door into a small study. Everyone files in.
    “Was it locked last week when I was here?”
    She looks confused. “What do you mean?”
    He says that when she hid him in the closet upstairs, she came down here with someone—a colleague, she said. For tea.
    “Oh … right. I don’t know. Why is this …? No. It was unlocked. I remember.”
    “So someone has been in the building since