Chapter 2 Not Alone

Margo's POV

"Margo!"

I spun around so fast I nearly knocked the mic stand off the board, my heart still slamming from a hand that wasn't there anymore, a voice that had said my name and vanished like it was never real.

It was Mr. Halloway standing in the gym doorway, flashlight in one hand, keys jingling in the other, looking at me like I'd just seen a ghost, which, honestly, felt about right.

"Whoa, hey. It's just me." He crossed the floor fast, flashlight beam bouncing with every step. "You okay? You look like you saw something."

I opened my mouth to tell him. Someone grabbed me. Someone said my name. But then I looked past him at the empty gym, the streamers, the one lost shoe by the punch table, and I heard how it would sound out loud. Like a girl who got spooked in the dark and made up a story to explain it.

"The power went out," I said instead, which was true, just not the whole truth. "I was checking the board."

"Yeah, the whole east side of the building tripped a breaker." He said it easily, like it happened every Friday, already turning to check the speakers behind me. "Sorry you got stuck in here alone. I would've come sooner, but,"

He stopped.

I know Mr. Halloway's voice pretty well. I spend four hours a week in his AV room, running cables, learning the boards, being the only student he trusts with the good equipment. His voice does not stop like that. Not mid-sentence, not for nothing.

"But what?" I said.

He looked at me for a second too long before he answered, and something about his face had changed; the easy, everything's-fine teacher face was gone, and underneath it was something tighter. Worried. Maybe even scared, though I'd never seen Mr. Halloway scared of anything, not even the time a kid set off a fire extinguisher in the equipment closet.

"Wilhelmina Prescott," he said. "Her mom's called the school twice. She never made it home."

The words didn't land right away. My brain kept trying to fit them into something normal: she's with friends, she's at the after-party, she lost track of time, because that's what happens to golden girls like Wilhelmina Prescott. Nothing actually bad. Ever.

"She left like an hour ago," I said. "I saw her walk out toward the parking lot. Everybody saw her; she was still wearing the crown—"

"That's the thing." Mr. Halloway's flashlight had gone still in his hand, not sweeping anymore, just pointed at the floor between us. "Her car's still out there. Purse is on the hood. Nobody's seen her since she walked out that door."

I felt the floor tilt a little under me, the same way it had ten minutes ago when a hand closed around my wrist in the dark, and a voice that wasn't Mr. Halloway's said my name like it had been waiting all night to say it.

I hadn't told him about that. I still didn't.

"Maybe she's with someone," I said, because I needed to say something, and because the alternative, the thing sitting cold in my stomach, wasn't something I wanted to say out loud in an empty gym at eleven at night. "Maybe she went to another party and forgot to text her mom."

"Maybe," he said, in the tone adults use when they don't believe their own maybe. "Cops are already out there talking to the last kids who left. I need you to lock up back here and get on home, okay? Your dad's waiting?"

"He's on a shift till two." I always feel a little stupid saying that out loud, like it announces something about my life I'd rather keep quiet. Mr. Halloway just nodded, though, no pity in it, which is one of the reasons I don't mind him knowing things other teachers don't.

"Then I'll wait till you're locked up and walk you to the doors myself." He clicked the flashlight off since the real lights were back on now, and headed for the gym exit to talk to whoever was radioing him from outside, leaving me alone at the board one more time to shut everything down properly.

That's when my knee bumped the underside of the board, and something scraped against my leg. Not a wire. Not a cable clip. Something small and hard, wedged up in the gap where the board met the frame, like it had been jammed there on purpose and left to be forgotten.

I crouched down and felt for it in the shadows under the desk, my fingers finding the edge of something plastic, rectangular, small enough to close my whole fist around.

A USB drive.

Not mine. I know every piece of equipment in this booth because I'm the one who catalogs it every single week for Mr. Halloway's supply list, and this one had no label, no school tag, nothing but a strip of black tape wound tight around one end like somebody didn't want it slipping loose.

My first thought was: some kid dropped it, no big deal, turn it in to lost and found Monday.

My second thought came right behind it, quieter, colder, and it wouldn't go away no matter how hard I tried to shove it back down; that hand had grabbed my wrist from right about here. Right about where I was crouched now, right about where this drive had been wedged, tight and deliberate, like someone had put it there on purpose and wanted it found by exactly one person.

Me.

I turned it over once in my palm, feeling the tape catch rough against my thumb, and out past the gym doors I could hear Mr. Halloway's voice going low and serious with someone else, saying Wilhelmina's name, saying words like last seen and nobody's answering her phone.

I should have handed the drive straight to him. That was the smart thing, the right thing, the thing that wouldn't have gotten me into any trouble at all.

Instead I closed my fingers around it and slid it into my pocket, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat, because some part of me already knew, before I'd plugged it into a single computer, before I'd heard one second of whatever was on it, that whatever was hiding on that drive was the reason a hand had come out of the dark tonight and said my name like it already knew exactly who I was.