“Which one is Natalie’s?” I ask, figuring that’s why the tape is here. They were searching it. Bronte points at an open door in the middle of the row. Inside, I find a half-used bottle of body glitter, a pair of pom-poms, and a tatty pair of sneakers, but not much else. Not even her cheerleader uniform, which surely she took off last night to get into her dress. Did the cops take it?

“Bron,” Amber says in a warning tone. “Do they know about the other locker? Shouldn’t we tell them?”

“Other locker?” I ask, but they ignore me, in their own world.

“Does it really matter?” Bronte, nervous, bites her lower lip. She finishes up with her locker, slams it shut, a beat-up canvas grocery bag now slung over her shoulder.

“It might. Should we?”

And now they look at me even as they still talk to each other.

“She’s already all in,” Amber reasons. “If we find nothing, it doesn’t matter. But just in case. It’s what my dad would do.”

“This is idiotic,” Bronte says, but it doesn’t stop her from following Amber back under the tape, out into the hallway. And I follow—toward the entrance, to a dingy and dark corridor to the left and a heavy wooden door that has names and invectives carved into it, some with decades of wear. PEDO jumps out at me. Streaky white residue covers the other half of the word, like someone slapped a sticker over it at some point, only to have someone else peel it off.

Bronte produces the key again, the one she’s avoided explaining to me, and lets us inside. It’s a windowless room—pitch-dark, until Amber finds the lights. Likely a junk room, maybe once an office. There’s a beat-up desk in the corner and an ancient TV collecting dust on top of an old filing cabinet. I can’t put my finger on what is disturbing me, but something about the room is unnatural—as though someone other than us is here. I see that the condensed rows of lockers on the other side of the room are dust-free, recently used.

“Natalie had a secret locker in here,” I put together. “Why?”

“Because why not?” Amber says with a shrug. “The cool kids have been using this place for decades. Our parents did. It’s the best place to store contraband, or shit you don’t want stolen.”

“Like a dress?” Bronte’s voice wobbles. We didn’t even hear the locker open.

“Holy shit,” Amber says as her girlfriend stumbles back, as far away from her discovery as she can.

But I’m pulled forward in a zombie walk, my eyes drinking in every detail.

A baby-pink homecoming dress hangs from Natalie’s locker, crinoline innards spilling out of deep slashes. And a message scrawled across the chest in lurid red lipstick:

FUCK YOU.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN