The "sterling reputation" for which Nazz had expressed her dubious concern remained intact, if it didn't come away even more polished than before. When in the water, Eddward was quick and methodical; out of the water, he paced restlessly like an impatient predator. In spite of himself, Kevin found the whole display strangely intriguing, and despite his attempts to focus on other teams, or at least other Peach Creek swimmers, Eddward continually drew his attention. To say the least, he was a distraction from almost everything else. Kevin held out for most of the events, but as minutes and events dragged on, a small oversight began to make itself known. With a grimace, he glanced to the equally packed seats on either side of him. He sat uncomfortably, fidgeted a bit, tapped his foot, and finally sighed and stood up.
"Bathroom," he assured Nazz when he caught sight of her look of alarm. "I'll be right back."
The path to his left was shorter, and thus the lesser of two evils. With many profuse apologies, and as few collisions as he could manage, he laboriously stumbled over countless feet before he reached the stairs. He breathed a sigh of relief, only to scowl when he noted all the people who, finding a lack of vacancies on the actual bleachers, had settled for seating themselves on the steps. Maneuvering them was a complicated dance in which one wrong move would send him tumbling ass over teakettle to the bottom, and the only thing more embarrassing than that would be standing up and loudly asking the swim captain out on a coffee date or something.
Kevin shuddered.
Once he was safely at the bottom, he had little room to think about how he would get back up to his seat. Damn it, he really should not have waited so long. Keeping his head down, as if that would help him remain undetected, he walked quickly out of the pool area before taking off in the direction of the nearest restroom.
Well, the second nearest, anyhow. Technically, the nearest one was in the locker room, but there was no way he was going to set foot in there. As he hurried by the open door, he could hear movement inside, and darted past to the next available restroom.
He emerged momentarily, wondering if he had missed anything exciting. He doubted it, however; the only meaningful event he could have missed would be a failure on Eddward's part, and he was close enough that he would have heard the dismayed wailing. As he approached the locker room again, he hoped absently that whoever had been inside had already left. To his disappointment, and immediate alarm, he could hear them emerging as he passed.
On instinct, Kevin broke into a run – light-footed, holding his breath – until he reached relative safety around the nearest corner. Behind him, multiple sets of footsteps told him that he had just barely managed to escape their notice.
"Come on, hurry up before someone sees!"
The hushed warning aroused just enough curiosity that Kevin ducked around the corner and cautiously peeked out.
"Dude, this is awesome."
"You're crazy, man. We're gonna get caught!"
"So what? Someone was bound to prank that asshole sometime."
Three boys, each of them easily over six feet, had emerged from the swim team's locker room. None of them, from what he could tell, were swimmers themselves; in fact, he thought he recognized two of them from the track team. One of them was grinning manically; the other two seemed to be various levels of nervous and triumphant. Mystified, he looked at the first again. The glint of something small and metallic drew his gaze to the jock's clenched fist, and he squinted to see what it was.
His eyes flew open in shock.
The trio set off together, thankfully in the direction that led away from where he stood frozen. Their voices, though hushed, reached him nonetheless.
"Relax, we'll just stash them somewhere he won't look for 'em!"
"What, our locker room?"
"Why not? It's not like he's gonna go snooping around in there."
"Yeah, we'll just stick 'em in your locker and–"
"Fuck no! If someone does find them, like hell am I implicating myself! We'll find a place, now shut up!"
Their voices faded, and Kevin remained standing there, watching their retreating backs until they were no longer in view.
Wow.
Wow.
What had he just witnessed?
Kevin would have been one of the first to agree that if anyone needed to get pranked or inconvenienced in any way, it was Eddward Rockwell, but… well, sneaking into the swim team's locker room and stealing his things wasn't really a creative prank so much as technically a felony. Not very imaginative, just… kind of mean-spirited, really. On the other hand, nobody touched the tags – unspoken Peach Creek High law right there – and these three track athletes had just flipped the metaphorical bird to impending danger. So all in all, he wasn't quite sure whether to be horrified or privately impressed.
It then occurred to Kevin that the meet would be ending soon, and considering what Eddward was sure to find – or not find – when he returned to the locker room, it would be in his best interests to be nowhere near it by that point.
Yeah… it would probably be better not to touch this one. It would be in his very best interests to give it a wide and generous berth. This was between jocks, and in those kind of issues, bystanders tended to get caught up in the blaze. Better to sit this one out. Preferably in a comfortable recliner on the other side of the country, but for now he could settle for his seat on the bleachers next to Nazz.
"Yo, Edd?"
The very sound of Johnny's voice was a nuisance, especially when his alleged friend was raising it to an unnecessary volume. The noise level in the locker room was restrained at best, and to hear Johnny shout to him, one would think he was howling over the noise of a house party.
Eddward sighed as he entered the main area of the locker room. "What is it?" His companion had gone ahead of him and, judging by the direction of his voice, was apparently already at their neighboring lockers. A trembling sort of relief settled over him as he absorbed the atmosphere of the room. After spending the entire meet in a constant state of agitation, alleviation was within reach once more. Admittedly, it would be something of a botheration to peel duct tape from around his locker, but he could live with that. It had been more of a psychological comfort than anything else; without it, he doubted he would have managed to swim in a straight line.
"Why's there duct tape on your locker?" Eddward's brow furrowed as Johnny's voice grated further in his ears.
"Extra precautions," he replied as he rounded the corner.
"Uhh… it might not have worked, man."
The annoyance transformed instantly into creeping dread, with all the abruptness of a flipped light switch. Without breaking stride, or even breaking into a run, Eddward reached Johnny's side in a matter of moments.
His locker was shut, the combination lock was intact just the way he had left it. The duct tape, however, had been sliced through all around the door, as if with a key or a pocketknife. The urge to fly into a rage and shout and curse sprang up within him, only to vanish just as suddenly; at this point, so accustomed was he to burying such emotional impulses that they could bury themselves half the time. Around him, a smattering of indignant voices rose up from his fellow swimmers.
"Where the hell is my shirt? I swear to God, if one of you was a fu– a creeper and stole my shirt, I'm gonna–"
"Guys, I can't open my lock. What gives?"
"Okay, who drew a dick on my bag? If this is permanent, somebody's gonna die."
"Hey George, is it just your shirt that's missing? Because I found pants in my locker, and they aren't mine."
"I found underwear in mine. Jake, are these yours?"
"Those are my pants! What the hell, man?"
"I didn't do it, I swear!"
"Hey, my combination's not working, either. Switch with me, maybe we have the wrong locks."
"Did you guys know Jake writes his name in his underwear? That's so cute."
"Oh for fu – God's sake, Todd, stop staring at my – just give those back."
"George, what the hell is your shirt doing in my locker?"
With icy calmness, Eddward rotated the dial of his lock, until it sprang open at his tug. Placing the lock to the side, he opened the door.
His fresh set of clothes was still folded in its bag, but had clearly been disturbed. There was a sour, almost acidic taste in his mouth, and he denied the infinitesimal tremble of his hand as he shifted the bag to the side.
Beneath his neatly folded garments, the dusted surface of the shelf was as bare as he had hoped against hope that it wouldn't be. He lifted the bag out entirely, and his locker yawned emptily before him.
"Oh, dear."
His fingers curled, and his entire hand clenched around the bag. Beside him, Johnny was staring at him questioningly, perhaps asking him what was amiss. but Eddward did not hear him.
It was dark by the time Eddward parked his car in his driveway, trudged up the walk to his front door, and let himself into an empty house. In the back of his mind he noted the familiar growl of a dirtbike pulling up across the street, but all trace thoughts of his classmates, his neighbors, and anything else promptly vanished the moment he closed the front door behind him and locked it. Wordlessly (there was never anyone to talk to anyway) he toed off his boots and made his way mechanically through the house. Time passed in a blur, and he navigated the hallway as if in a dream until he reached his room, shut the door, and fastened all the locks. Against what, he wasn't altogether certain.
Somehow he found his way to his bed, and in the next moment he was sprawling, staring up at the ceiling without actually seeing it. His hand came to rest on his chest, where his dog tags should have been.
He had felt something akin to this numerous times before, perched on the edge of a diving board with nothing but a narrow lane of water before him, awaiting the signal on bated breath. There was that familiar but no longer pleasant ache somewhere in the vicinity of his stomach, that strange hybrid of anticipation and dread, though now it was joined by something very close to fear. It was the feeling of standing at the edge of a cliff, toes curled over the corner of the precipice, staring down and simply wondering whether or not a badly-timed gust of wind would send him hurtling over the edge.
It was vaguely possible, he thought, that he had deceived himself about where he had left his tags. Perhaps he had left them in his locker in the hallway, rather than the one in the pool complex's locker room. Perhaps someone, mistaking them for lost, had picked them up – the thought made him sick to his stomach – and placed them in the lost and found, or the office, which had been locked. Come Monday, he could check. He could check everywhere. Both of his lockers, all of his classrooms, every single area he had ever set foot in – he would ransack the locker room, if he had to.
They were not simply gone, he reminded himself. They were still at the school, that much he knew. Somewhere, they simply existed, and as long as that was true, he would find them.
The possibility that someone had intentionally walked off with them was not lost on him, either, though the mere thought of it brought the taste of bile to his throat. If that was true, if someone had taken them – if someone with the sheer nerve had taken them – he would…
He almost frightened himself, with the vague half-knowledge of what he would do to anyone who had stolen them.
The thought of waiting the entire weekend for Monday to arrive was agonizing on its own, and he turned on his side as if he could relieve the persistent ache that way. It helped little.
Except… perhaps he would not have to wait that long. Hadn't he heard someone mention a club meeting on Saturday? Who was it…. which club…? Oh, of course, it had been Marie's friend, hadn't it? Yes, Nazz, from the Quiz Bowl team. There might possibly be other teams meeting, if not some tutoring sessions as well; it seemed unlikely that the faculty would bother having the school open for the sake of one small club meeting.
He grimaced to himself, before finally heaving himself to his feet so that he could go and shower the last of the chlorine from his hair and skin. He had no interest whatsoever in Quiz Bowl, or in the students involved, and would rather have avoided dealing with any of them. Regardless, scheduled club meetings meant unlocked hallways, and a chance to check his locker. If he did not find them tomorrow, then he would still have to put off his thorough search until Monday, but this plan was preferable to an agonizing, unbroken wait.