The Locker (4 page)

“I mean she just vanished into thin air.” Noreen gave a little shiver, then took my elbow and steered me down the hall, keeping her voice low. “You're bound to hear about it sooner or later—it's our town's one claim to fame. Or is it infamy?” She gave a wry smile. “One day she was here, and I was walking with her just like I'm walking with you now, and we were laughing and everything was normal. And then …”

She stopped walking. Her voice lowered even more, and her fingers tightened on my arm.

“No one knows what happened to her after school that day. No one ever saw her again … or heard from her.”

I could feel myself nodding as I gazed into Noreen's eyes. For a moment I thought they filled with tears, but she blinked quickly and gave me a thin smile.

“That must have been so horrible,” I murmured.

“For everyone. You never think something like that's going to happen to someone you know. Only this time it did.”

Her words made me feel cold inside. I leaned back against the wall, but then Noreen was pulling on me again, and I had to go with her.

“Come on. I'd better get you to class before you fall down. Tyler has gym this period, so he won't be around to help me pick you up.”

She grinned, and I was glad we were changing the subject. As she stopped outside the closed door of a classroom and hurriedly flipped through one of her notebooks, there was just one more question I had to ask.

“Tyler …” I said as casually as I could. “Is he your boyfriend?” Part of me was dying to know, while another part was bracing to be disappointed. When Noreen didn't answer, I thought she hadn't heard me, but then she looked up and moaned and slammed her notebook shut.

“I'm going to kill that Tyler—he forgot to give my notes back, and I need them for this class!” She cast me a long-suffering look and then giggled. “Me and Tyler? Are you kidding? We've been buddies since kindergarten—that's bad enough.”

“Wow. That long?” Again I tried to sound nonchalant, but she was looking at me with a knowing twinkle in her eyes. “He seems nice,” I added lamely.

She put her hand on the doorknob and looked back at me with that impish smile.

“Yeah,” she said, her own voice just as casual. “He is.”

I was glad to go into class then. I had this feeling that for all my efforts, I hadn't fooled Noreen for a second.

The day went by in a blur, and I was just as miserable as I always was in a new school, only this time it was worse. It wasn't that everyone wasn't nice to me—because they were—but I could still feel their stares and hear their whispers and I hated that feeling of being on display.

Except it wasn't just that.

No matter how hard I tried to concentrate, I couldn't stop thinking about what had happened that morning at my locker, and each time I remembered, I felt sick all over again. It just didn't make any sense—especially with the locker being empty all those months—yet I knew I hadn't imagined that smell. And the poor girl who'd used it before me, just disappearing off the face of the earth …

The whole thing gave me the creeps. If it hadn't been for Noreen, I don't know how I would have made it through that first day. Each time the bell rang, she magically appeared to whisk me off to my next class or lunch or gym or more classes again, and by the time school was over, I was in the hall looking for her, embarrassed that I'd come to depend so much on seeing her cheery face in the crowds.

“You survived!” she greeted me, grabbing my arm and herding me down the corridor. “Congratulations!”

“Thanks to you,” I said. “Your services went above and beyond.”

“Oh, come on, I was glad to help.” She brushed off my gratitude with a modest shake of her head. “But look at that load of books you're still carrying around—each time I see you, it's grown! How come you didn't dump all that stuff between classes?”

For a split second I wanted to tell her the truth, that I'd rather lug around everything I owned in the world than to go back to that locker again, but I realized how stupid that would sound. So instead I took a deep breath and lied.

“I thought I might have a spare minute in class to look things over. You know, to see if I'd already had some of this stuff in my other school.”

“You probably have.” Noreen chuckled. “I mean, look around—not exactly what you'd call progressive, right? Hey, a bunch of us are getting together later, and I thought it might be a good chance for you to meet some more of the kids. How about it?”

I shook my head. “That's really nice of you. But I have to stop by for my brother, and then my aunt's picking us up, and I promised I'd help her out at home.”

“Where's your brother?” Noreen asked. “And is he cute?”

This time I laughed out loud. “Dobkin? He's at kindergarten and he's six years old. But you really should meet him sometime—if nothing else, he's pure entertainment.”

Noreen waved as a small group shouted her name from the end of the hall.

“
Coming!
Look, Marlee.” She turned back to me with a smile and touched me lightly on the shoulder. “I've got to run. Sure you won't change your mind? Sooner or later you'll have to face them all in person.”

She laughed and I joined in, but I could feel a knot forming in the pit of my stomach.

“I will sometime,” I hedged. “It's just that with moving in and all, the place is such a wreck and I promised my aunt—”

“See you!”

Before I could even finish, Noreen waved and hurried off, and I headed back in the opposite direction.

I was glad there were still a few kids hanging around in the hall. With them laughing and talking, it wasn't like anyone was really paying attention to me while I tried my locker combination. I don't even know what I expected, exactly—some horrible repeat of what had happened earlier, I guess—but instead the lock popped open easily in my hand, and the door swung out with no problem, and I just stood there staring into the empty little compartment.

And that's all it is … just an empty compartment. Nothing to be afraid of …

Shivering a little, I started to remember the incident all over again, so I shut my mind against it. Then I counted off homework assignments on my fingers and threw in the books I wouldn't be needing that night and slammed the door shut. In fact, I was trying so hard to get out of there that I didn't even notice the guy standing next to me, rummaging quietly through his own locker.

“So,” a voice drawled. “You must be Marlee.”

Startled, I glanced over, but the guy's face was hidden behind his open door. What I
could
see were tight jeans and narrow hips, dirty boots, and part of a denim sleeve. I started to say something, but he swung the door shut and beat me to it.

“Marlee Fleming,” he said. “From Florida. You're renting the old Turley place.”

It was said matter-of-factly and without any emotion. He hesitated a minute, then added, “Why Edison?”

He was so tall, I could feel my head bending backward just trying to look up into his face. Six feet four, I figured, with broad shoulders, and the rest of him sort of tapering down gradually into slim hard muscle. His hair was brushed straight back over his ears, touching his collar in back, and I could see all these different shades of blond in it—cornsilk and straw-gold and almost white on top. His face was rugged and deeply tanned—not the kind of tan you get in the summer, but more like he'd spent his whole life outdoors.

“Excuse me?” I managed to stammer.

“Why Edison?” he repeated, raking me with his eyes. They were an odd color'—a mix of deep blue and deep green—and as they moved over me, they were so intense that I had to look away.

“Why
not
Edison?” I countered, keeping my gaze on my armload of books, pretending to sort through them one more time.

“No one would ever be transferred here, and I know for a fact you're not related to anyone in town.” He paused, waiting for me to answer, but I didn't. “There must be some reason,” he finally said.

“I don't have to have any reason,” I replied. “It's a free country.”

“Oh, I get it. Looking for a quaint little slice of Americana? Come to study the country bumpkins?”

He had this slow way of talking that made him sound lazy—almost indifferent—yet I could sense something just below the surface of his words—a sort of watchfulness, or wariness, that put me on my guard.

“I'm not that kind of person,” I said stiffly. For a long moment his eyes stared full into mine, holding me so I couldn't look away. And then, to my surprise, he shook his head and turned his back on me.

“Well,” he said softly, “we'll see.”

I had no idea who he was, and as I hurried out of the building, I grew madder and madder. I felt like I'd been deliberately baited—put to some test or something—and I didn't like it one bit.

Dobkin's school was just minutes away, and it made me feel good to see all the little kids laughing and playing inside the fenced yard. I wasn't surprised to see my brother off by himself in a corner by the sandbox, flipping through a picture book and looking totally bored with his surroundings. One of the teachers asked me the password then started waving to Dobkin, telling him it was time to go home.

“So how was school?” I greeted him as he came strolling out. His little backpack was hanging lopsided over one shoulder, and his chubby hands were stained as purple as his sweatshirt.

“Oh, you know”—he sighed—“they're all such children.”

I hid a smile and nodded as we started down the sidewalk. “What's with the new skin tone?”

“Dye,” he said.

Again I nodded. You can't rush Dobkin. You have to let him take his time and tell things his own way, or he'll just clam up and not talk at all.

“One of the kids really liked my shirt. He said he'd trade me his shirt for mine 'cause he really liked purple.”

This time I cringed.

“Of course I didn't want his shirt,” Dobkin went on indignantly. “You never know where another kid's shirt has been.”

He looked at me for confirmation, and I made a sympathetic sound in my throat.

“So I told him I'd dye his shirt to look like mine.”

I pressed my lips tight. I could feel a laugh coming, but I managed to keep a straight face.

“So,” Dobkin said solemnly, “when they passed out the grape juice—”

“I get the picture,” I said.

“The kid loved it,” Dobkin added.

“But the teacher didn't, I bet.”

He cast me a sidelong glance and shook his head.

“Teachers have no sense of humor.”

“No,” I agreed, and he sighed.

“So what about you?” he asked. “What happened?”

“What do you mean, what happened?”

“I told you to be careful, but something probably happened anyway,” he said matter-of-factly. “So what happened?”

I stopped on the sidewalk. A few steps ahead of me Dobkin stopped, too, although he didn't turn around.

“My locker attacked me,” I said.

“That'd make such a great movie.”

“I mean it, Dobkin. Something …
something's
wrong somewhere that I don't understand.”

“But I probably will,” he said. “So tell me.”

I did.

I told him exactly how it had happened—exactly what I'd felt—senses sharpened, panic heightened—and the way I'd gone queasy and faint, and that sickening, disgusting odor. And when I'd finished, I realized I'd begun to tremble again, and that Dobkin had finally turned around and was staring at me with his wise funny face.

“You know what it is,” he said solemnly.

“What?”

“The smell,” he said. “You know what it is.”

“No.” I shook my head at him, and as I kept repeating “No—no—” I could feel my head shaking faster and my hands quaking harder, and I could see Dobkin nodding at me, up and down, up and down, not changing his grim expression.

“Yes, you do,” he said, “so quit blocking it out of your mind.”

“I
don't
know,” only now I was pleading with him, and I could feel myself crumbling inside, dark images, dark memories flying out of long forgotten corners in my mind. “That horrible smell—I couldn't stand it—the stench—”

“Fear,” Dobkin murmured, and I broke off abruptly.

“What … what did you say?”

“The smell of fear.” Dobkin's eyes gazed back at me, huge brown saucers filled with sadness. “You remember. You smelled it once before.”

5

Y
ou shouldn't have brought that up!” I could hear my voice as from a long way off, and I was screaming at him, something I never do to Dobkin. “You promised you wouldn't! You
promised!
”

Dobkin looked so guilty. His head bent forward a little, and his mouth was pressed together into such a tight line that both his cheeks puffed out and I could see his double chin.