Chapter 4: The Plot Thickens

AN: sorry about the measly little last chapter I posted, but I promise that from here on out, the chapters are going to get a lot more interesting. Does anyone have any hunches about what's going on? What secrets Cameron's keeping? It will all be explained soon… kind of?

Hadley High was like your typical private high school. There were rich kids who bought their way in, scholarship kids who worked their way in, you had your jocks, your nerds, the people who thought they were the shit, and people who were shit (although those usually ended up being the same people), and you had those of us that tried their best, and just ended up average. You could tell which group a person considered themselves to be a part of by who they sat with at lunch.

Cameron and I sat with a bunch of kids from our English Lit class that were "average" the same way we were. We were friendly with them, but I wouldn't exactly call them "friends".

I didn't really have friends, aside from Cameron and Logan. There were plenty of people that I talked to, that I was friendly with, but at the end of the week, I didn't have sleepovers where I braided hair and gossiped with other girls.

A lot of girls didn't exactly want to be friends with a girl who was in and out of detention like I was, obsessed over baseball, and studies organic chemistry for fun.

They thought that I was weird.

I learned the hard way that a lot of people just wanted to get close to Cameron and Logan and would ditch me when something better came along.

The other smart kids, the ones who did well in school and also studied for fun, they tolerated me. They just didn't like the detentions. It made a lot of them uneasy.

But Cameron was always there by my side, through thick and thin. And never once did he consider leaving my side when the opportunity for something better came along. That is, until he started going to baseball camp when we were thirteen.

Then, I started coming second.

"Sorry we can't go to the beach for your birthday, Frank, I gotta leave a week early for baseball camp."

"I'll be over in a few minutes, Frankie, I need to call a friend from camp first."

"I'm breaking all of our summer traditions, but it's okay, I'm just doing it for baseball camp."

Camp became his new number one. I wasn't mad or anything, just a little jealous. And the worst part of all of it was that I wasn't even sure what I was jealous of.

Maybe it was the new friends that he was making, or the baseball he was playing, or the traveling he got to do, or maybe it was the fact that he never told me much about any of it.

I found things out secondhand from my dad, or Logan, or Mr. Tate.

Cameron never felt the need to tell me about it himself.

And whenever I asked, he would get all squirmy, like I'd asked about his mom or something, which I never did.

I grew up without my biological mom, and I hated when people brought it up. She left us when I was a baby, and we were better off without her. I was better off without her. I had my dad, I had Maggie, I had Logan, and I had the Tate's.

At least, I used to think that I did.

These days, I wasn't so sure.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" I asked Logan for what the twelfth time was probably today.

In response, he texted back the middle finger emoji.

"Is everything okay?" Cameron asked me, and the way I jumped out of my seat definitely contradicted the "I'm fine!" that I yelped out.

Was I fine? Nope. not really.

"Hey Tate, Frank," Logan said, feigning nonchalance.

Badly.

"Hi Logan?" Cameron looked suspicious. Dammit.

I bit my lip, trying not to yell at Logan for being such a bad actor, because that would definitely blow our cover. Instead, I rolled my eyes, took a bite of my leftover stir-fry, and glared at him.

"What do you want, Logan?"

He held his hands up in surrender, "Jeez, can't a brother check in on his sister at lunch to see how she's doing?"

"No? You don't even have this lunch period, Logan."

Cameron raised an eyebrow at my brother, like he was daring him to come up with a legitimate explanation, taking my "side", as usual.

Or at least, what he thought was my side.

My brother sighed, "I have study hall right now and you know they don't care if you leave or not."

"That still doesn't explain why you're here…" I trailed off, looking around the lunchroom pointedly.

"I forgot that we had chem homework," Logan said. He was in Honors Chemistry with Cameron and I, though neither of them paid nearly enough in class. I usually ended up doing the worksheets for all three of us.

"I'm not letting you copy my homework," I glared at him.

"I'm not asking if I can copy it-"

"Bullshit," Cam coughed, and I hid a grin.

"-I just need you to tell me how to do it." He finished, sending Cam a dirty look.

Technically, Cam was correct.

I looked at my best friend, rolled my eyes, then got up. "Fine, I guess I'll be a good sister and help you do your homework."

Cam started to get up, and I frowned at him. "What are you doing?"

Pfft, no, I wasn't panicking.

"Coming?" My best friend shot me a look, letting me know he thought I was being weird. "I'm not gonna stay while you guys-"

I cut him off with a shriek. "You can't come! You know someone's gonna try to take our seats, and if my stir fry's not here when I get back, I'm gonna be pissed."

"Fine, fine, I'll stay here," he said with a roll of his eyes. "You get so cranky when you're hungry."

I grinned at him and started taking a few steps backwards, towards the door.

"I'll be back in like, a minute. The homework was so easy even Logan can figure it out." My brother punched me in the arm as we walked away and I glared at him, "Do you want my help or not?"

"I could say the same for you. Quit calling me stupid or I'll tell Cameron what you're doing," Logan threatened under his breath.

Before I could threaten him back, the teacher in charge of monitoring the lunchroom was asking me where I was going.

"My brother needs lunch money and I left mine in my locker," I lied, giving her a 'what can you do' sort of look, praying that she would let me go.

"Be quick about it," she rolled her eyes at Logan, then waved her hand to signal us that we could go.

Out of the cafeteria, we booked it down the hall, away from the cafeteria- and the old chorus room that housed study hall. We skidded to a stop in between two of the history classrooms in the West Wing, the oldest part of the building, where the hallways just seemed dark all of the time, the lockers were rusty and creaky, and the air was just plain cold. Even now, in June, I needed a sweatshirt when I went to my history class.

"You could just be paranoid, ya know," Logan said offhandedly as the two of us stared at Cameron's locker.

Maybe I was stalling, but I turned away from the locker to face him. "Last night it was: 'maybe you have a point, Frankie, those are weird dreams, maybe Cameron is up to something', and now you think I'm paranoid?"

Logan shrugged, a dull expression on his face that didn't help to assuage my annoyance. "Look, if we break into his locker, there's no turning back. Besides, what do you even expect to find in here?"

Well, crap. He did have a point.

What exactly was I looking for anyway? It's not like I knew what Cameron was lying to me about. I didn't even know that Cameron was lying to me!

I shook my head, "No. I need answers."

"And we're going to get them in Cameron's locker?" Logan looked incredulous, his brow furrowed, mouth hanging open like he was drawing out a 'duh', his blue eyes staring into mine like he thought I was crazy.

"Well breaking into his house seemed a little extreme," I deadpanned.

Logan shrugged again, stretching out his arms as if to say, 'do what you want'.

Not that I wouldn't have done what I wanted anyway. It was just nice to get the go-ahead. It made me feel like I wasn't breaking about fifty school rules right now. Logan gave me the go-ahead, so what I was doing couldn't be that bad.

Right?

"Just," Logan sighed defeatedly, "Do your freaky delinquent thing and let's get out of here. I have a weird feeling about this."

I knelt by the locker, frowning. "Weird feelings usually mean we're on the right path. And it's not a freaky delinquent thing, I 'm just smarter than you."

I lost my balance after feeling a foot a foot nudge me in the back. "Hey! Cut that out!"

I turned to glare at Logan, who had his arms folded across his chest.

"Would you quit calling me dumb?"

I rolled my eyes, turning back to the locker. "I've never called you dumb. You jumped to conclusions, I'm just saying that I'm smarter, which is a fact. I can't believe I'm doing this in a skirt."

"Whatever, Frank."

I shushed him as I put my ear to the dial on the lock, then slowly began to turn it to the right. I needed things to be quiet if I was going to- there.

"What number is it on?" I whispered.

"Thirty-seven."

I hummed, then kept going. Turning it to the left this time. Slowly, slowly, I turned the knob, waiting for the lock to tell me what I was looking for.

It sounds crazy, I know. But I learned to pick locks when I was a little kid, I can't exactly remember when I learned it, Logan or Cam probably taught me how, even though neither of those guys remember how to do it now. I joke about being smarter than them, but when it comes to learning new things- unless its sports- I tend to pick up and retain skills a lot faster and a lot longer than they do.

"Thirty-seven, sixteen, five," I said, standing up and dusting off my denim skirt.

Logan raised an eyebrow, shaking his head. "I don't care what you say about it. That's just freaky."

"Just call me Freaky Frankie," I sighed, rolling my eyes.

My brother snorted, like I'd just made the joke of the century, and I elbowed him to shut him up.

"Hey, we're supposed to be quiet, remember?" I scowled, then got to work opening the locker.

Three to the right. Thirty-seven.

Two to the left. Sixteen.

Five.

And when I tried the handle, Cameron's locker swung right open with a sharp clang! That echoed down the hallway.

"Well, you got it open, now what are you gonna do?" Logan looked back and forth between me and the locker.

To be completely honest, I really wasn't sure. I hadn't been entirely confident that I'd even be able to get the locker open, much less make a plan for when I pulled off what the school had probably promised concerned parents was impossible.

"I guess we start with anything that seems out of the ordinary. Then we move on from there," I said slowly, the plan forming out in front of me as I spoke.

I peered inside the locker, not knowing what to expect, but somehow still feeling surprised (and maybe a little disappointed) when I saw that it looked perfectly normal.

A rain jacket hanging on the hook on the back wall, sticky notes covering the inside of the door, books resting atop the shelf, and a baseball bat leaning on the left wall.

"What exactly do you think you're doing, Miss Holmes?"

Shit.

After nearly pissing my pants, I slowly turned to find Mrs. Smith walking down the hallway to our left.

What the hell? How did she sneak up on us?

"Franklin Holmes, might I remind you that your lunch period is for eating lunch, not for locker visits with your friends," The bitch gave Logan a creepy looking smile. "And, if I remember correctly, your locker is located outside the door of our homeroom."

What? Since when did she know all of this personal information about me?

"It's my locker!" Logan blurted out, "She's helping me with something!"

I scowled at Mrs. Smith. "Logan's my brother. He's not just a friend."

"I know who this is, Franklin. And I believe that Junior lockers are located in the East Wing. We are in the West Wing. And if this isn't either of the two of your lockers, then you are breaking the Hadley High Code of Conduct. I must ask the two of you to come with me immediately."

"Hey!"

Logan and I spun to find Cameron crutching toward us. And he looked pissed.

This is it, I thought. Ten years of friendship down the drain. Cameron figured out Logan and I broke into his locker and now he's gonna drop us like hot potatoes.

"What do you think you're doing?" He sent us a dirty look.

I bit my lip anxiously. "Cameron, please-"

He cut me off with a shake of his head. "Not now, Frankie."

At this point, he'd caught up to us. He stood between Mrs. Smith and Logan and me. I wasn't sure how a sixteen-year-old boy on crutches could look particularly intimidating, but he managed to make me feel a lot more okay about the demon professor currently staring us down.

"Are you sure you want to do this, Mr. Tate?" Mrs. Smith, the devil herself, asked my best friend, and he reached behind him, arm outstretched, as if he knew my hands, for some reason, were shaking. I laced my fingers through his, and I began to feel stronger, my knees less weak at the thought of Mrs. Smith getting the better of us.

Cameron turned his head slightly, and when we made eye contact, he nodded slightly, like everything between us was okay.

And I stopped doubting that things weren't okay.

As long as I had Cameron, I was fine, right?

"What is going on here?" Mr. Chapman, our chemistry professor, walked through the double doors leading from the closest stairwell, and immediately jumped to our defense. "Mrs. Smith, kids, is something wrong?"

He paused, taking in the scene in front of him, Mrs. Smith and Cameron appearing to be in the middle of a standoff, Logan and I standing behind Cameron, like we were hiding, and of course, Cameron's open locker.

"Mr. Chapman, I came across these two breaking into Mr. Tate's locker," Mrs. Smith said with a devilish gleam in her eye. "When I began to reprimand them, Mr. Tate himself appeared and began to threaten me."

"That seems very unlike Cameron," Mr. Chapman said with a quizzical look upon his face. "Cameron? Logan? Frankie? Is this true?"

I opened my mouth to respond, but Cameron squeezed my hand and my jaw snapped shut.

"I asked Frankie and Logan to grab my homework from my locker for me," Cameron explained with a roll of his eyes. "I didn't think that it would be very efficient if I went, seeing as I'm on crutches. But when they didn't come back, I came to see what was taking so long."

Nodding, Mr. Chapman turned to Mrs. Smith. "It seems as though all of this has been sorted out, then. No need to hand out unnecessary detentions. Guys, please get back to class?"

"We're in lunch," Logan shrugged, speaking up for the first time since Cameron had appeared.

"Then get back to lunch."

"Yes, sir."

"Okay, Mr. Chapman."

"Thanks, Mr. Chapman."

The three of us spoke over each other in our haste to get away from Cameron's locker, Cameron shutting it behind him, then crutching behind us.

"What just happened?" I hissed under my breath when we were far enough away.

Cameron shook his head. "I'll explain later."

I almost stopped to demand that he give answers now, but when I looked over my shoulder, Mrs. Smith was still standing in the hallway, staring at the three of us, a grin on her face like we'd somehow just played right into her hands.

Hadley High was like your typical private school. Housed in some old-ass building, with professors that are either wildly eccentric and care way too much or let us play Kahoot for the entire class.

Life is boring, like, 85% of the time, and then, during the other 14%, it wasn't usually fun and exciting. Typically, it was absolute panic.

This was the final 1%.

Just plain weird.

AN: What did you think? Please comment, favorite, follow, and PM me if you like what you read! Thanks guys!