“Even if Amanda did paint all over your car,” said Hal, “what makes you think we had something to do with it? Like Nia said, we aren’t even, you know, friends with her.”
I was about to open my mouth to correct Hal and tell Mr. Thornhill that I was friends with Amanda even though obviously Hal and Nia weren’t, when Hal looked directly at me with his startlingly blue eyes and added, “We don’t know her at all.” Was it my imagination or was he trying to tell me something?
Or trying to tell me not to tell something?
“If you aren’t friends with her,” said Vice Principal Thornhill, “then why, in addition to vandalizing my car, did she spray-paint a symbol on each of your lockers?”
Amanda had spray-painted something on my locker? I was about to ask what, but before I could say anything, Mr. Thornhill continued.
“And perhaps you’d like to tell me if she left something inside your lockers?”
She’d gone in my locker? Why would he think she had gone in my locker? Anyway my locker was locked, and nobody but me knew the combination.
As if speaking my thoughts, Hal said, “How could Amanda even have gotten inside our lockers?”
For the first time since we’d entered his office, Mr. Thornhill smiled. “An excellent question, Hal,” and he slipped his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. “Why don’t you tell me?"
“I just like having them, knowing somewhere there’s a lock and I could open it if I wanted to.”
Outside it was pouring, a freezing February rain that seemed as if it might continue forever. The rain only made my room, which I generally love anyway, feel even cozier, like a tiny haven that the wet and cold could never penetrate. Even the fact that the silence from my dad’s workshop meant he was probably drinking and not working didn’t bother me when Amanda started talking about something cool, like why she collected keys.
“They’re not worth anything,” I pointed out. As usual, my mind was quick to turn to money. It’s funny how when you don’t have any, suddenly all paths seem to lead to it.
“True,” said Amanda, fingering the tiny, ancient-looking key she always wore on a ribbon around her neck. “But I like their symbolic value.”
We were sitting on the floor, Amanda resting her back against the big armchair and me facing her, my back against the bed. We were both wearing a pair of slippers from the basket by the front door, and I had my comforter wrapped around my legs. The day before, Amanda had cut her hair short and blunt, but today she was wearing a long, platinum wig. I’d asked her if it was because she didn’t like the cut, but she’d said, “No, I like it. Why do you ask?” in this way that made it seem like wearing a wig the day after you get your hair cut was just something anybody would do.
“But where do you get used keys?” I asked.
“Oh, the Salvation Army or antique stores. Or if someone’s
got a really big ring of keys it usually means there’s at least one they don’t use anymore.” She swung the key chain back and forth, admiring her collection.
“It’s like something a custodian would carry,” I said. Once I watched a custodian get something out of a supply closet at Endeavor. Even though his key ring must have had a hundred keys, he found the one he needed in less than a second. “I could never find the right key if I had as many as they do.”
Amanda looked at me. “You don’t carry a house key.” It was a statement, but there was a little question mark at the end of it, like I should explain if I wanted but I didn’t have to.
My family never locked the front door. Not that there would have been any point to locking it. Farmhouses built at the turn of the last century might have a lot of charm, but they weren’t usually designed with airtight security in mind. Even if we did bother to lock the doors, anyone who really wanted to break in would have needed about ten seconds to do so.
“I don’t have a key,” I said. “My mom lived in New York City for a while, and when she and my dad bought this house she said her favorite thing about living in the country was not having to lock her door.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth I realized my mom might never again open our front door with or without a key. The thought made my eyes burn.
Amanda didn’t say anything, just looked away from me and studied her key chain. I knew she wasn’t avoiding the subject, she was giving me a minute of privacy. I took a deep breath.
“Here,” she said suddenly, and she flipped the keys fast around the circle before slipping one off. “Take it.”
I took the key from her hand and studied it. It was just a regular key, but it had a five-digit number and the words do not duplicate stamped on the top.
“What does it open?” I asked.
Amanda shrugged. Then she smiled, her bright eyes sparkling with the joke. “Well, whatever it opens, I sure hope they duplicated it before they lost it.”
I laughed and slipped the key into my pocket. “Thanks.”
“Unscrew the locks from the doors! / Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!” she said.
“Totally.” Seeing she was ignoring my confused expression, I stood up. “Now let’s eat. I’m starving.”
Vice Principal Thornhill marched us to our lockers so we could show him anything Amanda might have stashed inside. While we were in his office, first period had ended and second had started, so the halls were empty again. This time I was glad rather than creeped out by the stillness; the last thing I wanted was the population of Endeavor staring and pointing at the three of us as our lockers were inspected like we were criminals or something. I distracted myself by reading the flyers for chess club, band rehearsal, call-outs for newspaper contributions, and the formation of some new after-school jazz quartet. None of these were I-Girl activities.
Nia’s locker was in the humanities corridor, just a few feet from Mr. Randolph’s room, and I realized I’d passed it on my way to class this morning and definitely hadn’t noticed anything weird (not that I would have even known it was hers if I had). As we stood in front of it now, though, I saw that in the bottom right-hand corner was a small stencil of an animal, a bird of some sort, painted a metallic gray slightly paler than the gray of the metal locker. Nia’s expression definitely changed when she looked at it—as we’d walked from Mr. Thornhill’s room, she’d been scowling as usual, but suddenly her face was the picture of amazement. The look was gone almost as soon as it appeared, and I didn’t know if Mr. Thornhill had seen it or not.
“Anyone could have done this, Mr. Thornhill,” she said. “What makes you think it was Amanda?” Her hand fluttered up, and it looked like she was about to touch the picture, but then she seemed to think better of it and jerked her hand back, pulling the sleeves of her pale blue sweater almost to her fingertips as she crossed her arms tightly across her chest.
Mr. Thornhill gave her a long look but all