wrote your names on the inside of the stall door after stabbing her.”
“Was there enough time?” Dex is so practical. “If I’d done it, I would have been outta there right after doing my thing with the knife.”
“Okay, maybe the killer went early, wrote the graffiti inside the privacy stall, then waited for Caitlin to come in from the pool. Everybody knows she always used that stall to change.”
“Everybody? You mean the other kids, right?”
“Who did you think I meant?”
“Nobody gets a spare at the end of the day, Allie. All the other kids would have been in a class, not sneaking into the change room with a knife.”
“You mean, you think one of the staff did it?”
I was still thinking about what Dex said at school the next day, but I was super confused. Why would one of the staff want to kill Caitlin Anderson? Or any of us, for that matter? And how many of the staff would know about Caitlin always using the privacy stall? It’s not like that was a hot gossip item. Whoever it was must have known her pretty well. Maybe she’d been having an affair with a teacher? It happens, but I couldn’t imagine even Caitlin being dopey enough to want to sleep with any of the ones at our school. They’re all so geeky, like Mr. Dorbinette, who’s a birdwatcher, for God’s sake. Still, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to find out who’d been roaming the halls that afternoon.
“I didn’t hear about your special project, Allison. How nice.” Mrs. O’Reilly is the cutest school secretary ever, I swear. She looks like one of those sweet little garden gnomes, but without the hat.
“Oh, it’s really interesting, Mrs. O’Reilly. I get to draw a map of the school and then plot out where people go all day long, and figure out which rooms get used the most, and when, and stuff like that.”
“It’s unusual to get such a complex assignment this late in your final year though, isn’t it?” Mrs. O’Reilly went through the school schedules and waddled over to the copier, and I tried not to feel guilty about lying to her.
“It’s a makeup thing. You know, I’ve missed a lot of class time lately.”
“Oh, yes.” She gave me the gnome smile that scrunched up her eyes, and she pinched my cheek. “Our little athlete!”
Of course I didn’t go over the lists in the hallway where a homicidal teacher or attendance cop might find me. I mean, I was skipping gym. I did it in the yearbook room, which was mostly deserted now that everything had gone to the printer, except for when some jockette decided to use it as extra locker space. It took me right up to the end of the last period, but I finally figured out that the only teachers not in a class when Caitlin was killed were Miss Rumsey and Mr. Clark, and everybody knew those two had taken off early that day for a long weekend in Vegas. We all figured they’d do a quickie wedding there, but it turned out they didn’t even get engaged.
I was writing down which teachers were close enough to the change room to kill Caitlin on a bathroom break when Sarah Ann Felding came in and yanked a jean jacket off the coat rack in the corner.
“Oh, hi, Allie!” She was acting all bubbly at me, but she looked like she was cheesed underneath, as usual. She’s one of those jockette girls who carries around grudges like they’re fashion accessories. I didn’t really care, since I’d just remembered she had English class in her last period, with geeky Mr. Dorbinette, whose classroom is just up the stairs from the pool and the girls’ change room.
“What are you doing here?” She was accusing me of something, God knows what. I thought I’d play her for a minute before I pumped her for information about birdwatcher boy.
“I’m so upset, I just had to have a few minutes to myself.” I put on a teary pout. “You won’t tell anyone, will you?”
Sarah Ann got that breathless look she gets when she thinks there’s good dirt coming, and she whipped a chair out from the table and sat down on it. “Of course I won’t tell. Is it about Dex? Did he dump you?”
“Dump me?” I had no idea what she was talking about, but I knew she’d fill me in if I gave her half a chance.
“Yeah. I saw you guys in Walters’ last night. Looked like you two were getting ready to, you know, hook up.”
The lingerie. She thought he was choosing stuff he wanted me to wear. Gross! I had to put my face down so she wouldn’t see me laugh. “It was so…heartbreaking,” I choked out after a minute. “We were just about to…you know…and I found out he was really fantasizing about my being…another girl!”
I peeked up and saw Sarah Ann looking like her head was going to explode. “Who?”
“You!” I just choked out the word, threw my head down on my arms and really let myself go. I figured she’d see my shoulders shaking and assume I was crying my eyes out. It was crappy of me, but I’d had a bad week.
When she started patting my back, I brought my head back up and made a big fuss about drying my eyes. I knew the only way I’d keep her attention now would be to spill some more stuff about Dex lusting after her. I launched into this story about his telling me that he’d tried to get her attention the other day in English class when Dorbinette went out of the room, but that Sarah Ann hadn’t noticed, and then everybody found out about Caitlin, and he hadn’t had another chance to make his move yet.
“But Dorbinette was out of the room for ages that day!” Sarah Ann’s eyes went all sticky-outie. “How could I have missed Dex like that?”
“Maybe it only seemed like a long time to you. Dex told me he hardly had a chance.”
“No way. Dorbinette was gone for nearly twenty minutes. He said he wasn’t feeling well and gave us an open book test. He was in the john forever.”
The look on her face was funny, and I really did laugh, which meant I had to cover by getting all bitter and jealous. “And you just did your test like a good girl instead of noticing Dex trying to make you be bad.”
“Well, I’m not going to make him wait any lo—” she hesitated, looking at my flushed face.
“It’s okay,” I said like I was being all noble and giving up the last rocky road bar on earth to a kid who’d never had one. Then I squeaked out “It’s you he wants” and threw my head back down onto my arms. This time she didn’t bother patting my back, and when I looked up she was gone. Well, Dex was more than paying his dues for getting me a reputation as a lingerie-buying slut down at Walters’.
Now I had more stuff to chew on. Like, if Dorbinette killed Caitlin, how come? I looked at my watch and decided I might as well check out Dorbinette’s classroom for a clue. He’d probably be on his way home by now.
On my way to Dorbinette’s end of the building, I passed Dex looking all wild and sweaty, like he’d been running. “You’re in big trouble, Allie,” he said as he speedwalked toward me.
“Aw, you know you love it,” I told him when we passed each other, and he slapped my tattoo-free tush.
Sarah Ann nearly knocked me down as I turned the corner to the change rooms, where Detective Stewart was standing with some other cops. Even though they’d had a whole weekend, plus another day when school was closed for the kids to have a grief break
