I’ve decided that I’m not going to track this morning. I just… don’t have a good feeling about it. And I feel a little sick to my stomach, so I don’t think I’d be able to enjoy it. But I don’t want to look like a slacker, so I get to school early anyway and go by the gym to tell Coach Everheart I won’t be there.

They are about to get started when I get there, but a few boys are dawdling to chat with the coach. As usual, they only have girls (more specifically their appearances) on their mind, but this is the first time I’ve seen them actually bother a teacher about it.

“What kinda girls are you into, coach? I’m curious now,” one of them is asking.

“I’m not into girls, Devon. Only women,” Coach Everheart replies.

“What kinda women, then?” a different boy asks.

“Well, if I’m honest, I was always interested in dating an Asian woman.”

“Whoah, I didn’t expect you to say that? What for?” the first boy presses.

“I guess it’s because you don’t see them around here too much,” he answers.

I walked up to them and say, “If you’d like to meet someone Asian, you’re better off going to the west coast,” I explain. “My family went on a vacation to California once, and I noticed they are a much greater percentage of the population over there.”

“I see,” Coach Everheart acknowledges. “What parts of California did you go to, Kevin?”

“We mostly spent time near the Yosemite National Park,” I say. “But we also toured the surrounding area a bit.”

“I’ve always wanted to go there,” he replies, as the other boys who were talking to him earlier leave and get started outside. “I’ve heard it’s a great place to go on vacation.”

“Uh… yeah, I guess,” I say uncomfortably. “Oh yeah, Coach… I’m not feeling up to practice today. Feeling sick…”

“Oh, well that is okay, Kevin. You have been very good about showing up on time, so I trust you. Take the morning off,” he tells me kindly.

“Thank you,” I say, surprised at how smoothly that went. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then…”

I wander away from the gym, feeling relieved. The problem is, now there’s still quite a while before class starts and I’m not sure what to do…

Zoe and I arrive at the library to find it oddly empty. While the room is never fully packed, there is nobody here today other than Anja and Nova in our usual back corner, and the librarian at the front desk who is sorting things in her office. It strikes me that these are the perfect settings to discuss something of a more secretive nature.

“Hey, not practicing this morning?” Anja questions me as we arrive at the table. “I was sure you’d be holed up in here, with this being region day!”

“That’s exactly why I am not practicing,” I tell Anja matter-of-factly. “I don’t want my face muscles to already be tired out when we arrive.”

“I’m so glad that I don’t have to do it twice like you guys do,” Zoe laments as she takes her seat. “I’m so nervous about this…”

“Well, if I do well enough, I will be there with you on Saturday,” I assure her. “And frankly I’m pretty confident I will get at least that far.”

“I’m pretty confident I won’t,” Anja jokes. “But I don’t want to do any bullshit on a Saturday, so I’m fine with that.”

“I think I’m gonna try and audition next year,” Nova interjects. “It feels kinda bad that you are all going without me.”

“Just try and take it seriously if you do,” I advise him. “Don’t be like Anja and go just to skip class.” Anja makes an odd gesture at me, consisting of pulling down one of her eyelids and sticking out her tongue. I ignore her.

“I feel like I still don’t know what I’m doing,” Zoe complains nervously with her hands on her cheeks. “I hope I don’t disappoint Mr. Castro.”

Anja starts picking her teeth, thinking. “Oh, there was something I was going to tell you guys about… yes! I remember!” She looks up seriously. “Yesterday morning, I saw Mr. Castro in his office hugging another student… specifically Mason.”

“Is that so?” I comment. “That’s very unusual.”

“Right? With all this stuff about the predator at the school, it kinda makes me uneasy…”

For a moment, this just hangs over the air. I’m sure we are all contemplating the same disturbing idea.

“Ashley, do you remember when we saw him in the park?” Zoe asks timidly. “That was so weird… why was he out there that late?”

“I have no idea, Zoe,” I respond thoughtfully. “But… I don’t think we can use that as a point in favor of him being the culprit.”

“Are you sure ?” Nova questions. “That is pretty suspicious.”

“Yes, but think of the implications,” I argue. “Assume that he is the culprit. He goes to a park at night, for some unexplained reason, and found Zoe and I. From his perspective, we were two young teenage girls who were alone in the middle of nowhere and seemingly defenseless. And to boot, we were girls who already had a certain level of trust in him. Of course, I could have whisked us into the Metaverse to escape at any time in reality, but he had no way of knowing that. Disregarding that, this is a pedophile’s dream scenario. Why, then, would he simply tell us to go home?”

“Maybe because… he already knew us, so he’d feel bad about doing it to us?” Zoe suggests.

“Eh, Ashley’s got a point, actually,” Anja counters. “That’s not how abusers usually work, Zoe. Contrary to what you’d expect from all the stranger danger PSAs we grew up with, it’s most common for the perpetrators of child sexual abuse to have a close relationship with the victim, usually family members and family friends, or someone like a pastor or teacher.”

“Exactly,” I agree. “If anything, Zoe and I’s relation to him made us more at risk, since he’d see us as easier to groom. But once again, he showed absolutely nothing but concern. There’s no way he can be our blogger.”

“Still, why the hell was he out there so late then?” Nova questions. “That’s crazy. It’s like he has a secret life none of us know about.”

“Yeah, it really is like that,” Anja agrees. “I’m not saying it’s him, I just thought I should bring it up, since we’re supposed to be on the lookout for that stuff.”

“Has anyone else noticed anything suspicious?” I ask the group at large. “We still don’t have any hard clues other than the contents of the original blog post, and I’d like to be in a position to go storm the palace as soon as possible.”

“Oh yeah,” Nova cuts in. “I have this one teacher, Mrs. Harding… every day she always says this annoying shit about how she loves seeing our beautiful faces…”

Zoe giggles. “Nova, I don’t think that counts as suspicious… that’s just a thing old ladies say.”

“I think we might just have to go in there regardless,” Anja suggests seriously. “I know we’re supposed to know who it is first, but I feel really uneasy letting this person run amok. There has to be something we can do in the Metaverse already.”

“Maybe we can at least go there to get information about the person,” Nova comments. “When you two went into the palace before, you said it was like a jungle, right?”

“Yes, it was,” I confirm. “And I will think about it. I do agree that this situation is making me… restless. Keep an eye on the group chat, I may want to have us go in tomorrow. I don’t want to go in there without Ted, so if we do this I’ll…”

Zoe suddenly makes eye contact and lifts a finger to her lips, so I stop talking. I hear footsteps behind me, and then someone comes to our table. I recognize her as the older girl who usually sits at a table near us.

“Excuse me… I believe I left my phone somewhere around here earlier. Has anyone seen it?” she asks. This is the first time I’ve heard her voice, which is an alto tone said in a dull manner, like how most of our teachers would talk during a lecture.

“I haven’t, but we can look around,” Zoe offers, checking around the base of her chair. For some reason Anja looks very uncomfortable and is intently looking away from everyone else.

“Oh, is this it?” Nova asks, pulling up a phone that has a sturdy looking case around it.

“Yes it is, thank you very much,” the girl replies, giving him an appreciative nod. She takes her phone from him, presses a few buttons on it, and then slides it into her pocket. And without further ado, she leaves.

After the interruption, the conversation returns to being relatively mundane. I realize that there was something I never brought up to the others… the note I found in my locker. I ponder if I should do so, but ultimately, I decide there’s no point. I was not able to derive anything useful from the note, and I still have no idea who put it there and why. That said, the occurrence gives me the strong feeling that we are not even close to the bottom of this mystery.

Eventually, I get bored enough to where I decide to go to class early. As I expected, nobody else is there yet except for Ms. Truman, who seems to be grading the worksheets we did at some point last week. When she sees me, she looks up from her work and smiles at me with wide eyes.

“Good morning, Kevin,” she greets. “How are you feeling this morning?”

“Uh… not the best, if I’m honest,” I admit.

“Oh, is that why you weren’t at track this morning?”

I nod. “Just feeling really stressed about… that stuff I told you about.”

“I understand. You can talk to me about whatever you need to,” she offers kindly. She sets down her grading pen and gives me a worried look as I sit in the desk nearest to the front. “You said that your dad is a police officer… have you been talking with him about all of this?”

“I don’t think I should,” I declare. “It’s hard to talk to my parents about stuff sometimes.”

She gives me a small smile. “Family can be difficult… I had a pretty bad home life growing up, so I understand that very well.”

“They’re not abusive or anything,” I interject quickly, worried about how she’ll take it. “I just mean that… they don’t really listen to me. It’s like they think I’m this bad kid.”

She raises her eyebrows, seeming curious. “Oh, but Kevin, you’ve been just a model student the whole time I’ve had you. Why would they think that about you?”

I take a deep breath. There’s a story that I was reminded of earlier when talking to Coach Everheart… but I almost never tell it to people. I’ve only told my closest friends. But Ms. Truman has been really kind to me… she’s heard me out and is being very supportive. Maybe I can tell her…

“Well, I think it’s mostly because of something that happened… one time. We went on a vacation trip to California, visiting the Yosemite Park… but while we were touring the surrounding area, something really scary happened to me.”

“Oh, is that so?” she coos sympathetically.

“We were on this crazy road that goes around a mountain, and they pulled over and got out of the car to take pictures of the coastline nearby. I was tired, so I stayed inside and played on my DS. They were gone for several minutes, and I eventually got out of my seat and went to lay down in the back. I must have dozed off, because I woke up and…” I shudder. “The car was starting, but there was some man I had never seen before in the driver’s seat. He must have not seen me back there, because he started driving away, and I started panicking and breathing heavily. He looked up and saw me and swore loudly. He said that he had a knife, and that I needed to stay back there and be quiet.”

“Oh my gosh! That is so horrible!” Ms. Truman cries, hands over her mouth with shock. “How on earth did you get out of there?”

“Well… that’s the weird thing. He drove us away from the cliffside to somewhere with a forest, and then he just… pulled over, jumped out and ran away, leaving me there. My best guess is that he was trying to steal the car, but at least had the conscience to not kidnap someone’s kid while he was at it. This was before everyone had cell phones, so I had no idea what to do. I just sat in the car and cried. I was so scared, I thought that the guy was going to run back and slash me with his knife or something. But thankfully, a police officer found me after a while. My parents had called 9-1-1 when they saw their car was missing.”

“Thank goodness you got out of there safely,” she comments.

“I guess so… the problem was, everyone thought I was the one who drove the car away, and my parents were furious. They had decided to climb down to where the shore was and go swimming there, and they left their keys sitting somewhere so they wouldn’t get wet and short out. I think the burglar must have found them there and found out they were to our car… but nobody saw anyone suspicious in the area, so everyone just assumed I had snuck down there and taken them because I was bored. The guy was never caught.”

“Well that’s not fair at all!” she calls out sympathetically. “Kevin, I am so sorry that happened to you. I know that you are a good kid, and you wouldn’t do something like that.”

“Thank you. It’s not just that, either. Since then, I’ve gotten blamed for small things… like a few weeks ago, I was doing my driver’s ed hours, and while my mom was in a store, some lady opened her car door too fast and scratched our car really badly. When my mom saw it, she just assumed that I had taken the car out and ran into something…” I huff with frustration. “Why can’t they trust anything I say? I never asked for any of this stuff to happen to me. I just feel like I’ll be blamed for anything that goes wrong from now on, so there’s no point in trying to impress anyone…”

My train of thought gets interrupted by the door to the classroom opening. In walks Ashley, carrying herself with that unquestionable confidence as always. She stops at the doorway briefly, and her eyes flit between Ms. Truman and myself several times.

“Good morning, Ashley,” Ms. Truman greets her cheerily. “Where is your girl this morning?”

“Good question. I thought she was right behind me,” she replies calmly. She throws her backpack into the seat where she usually sits, and then walks back out, presumably to go find where Zoe went. I can’t help but to watch her as she goes out.

“You like her, don’t you?” Ms. Truman asks me mischievously.

“What? Oh, uh,” I stammer, taken totally off guard by this. “I mean, I know it’s not gonna happen, but yeah, she’s cool.”

“Oh, you’re not gonna try asking her out?” she questions.

“Well, I did, and she… rejected me very harshly,” I admit. “But it’s okay. We can just be friends. And she’s not interested in dating guys, you know.”

There are more students coming in by now, so I take my backpack to my own desk and get ready for class. It was nice getting a lot of that stuff off my chest, I have to admit. I go about the rest of my day feeling a bit lighter than before…

“So, we go to half of our next class, and then it’s time to take off?” I question Ashley as we finish up lunch. “What’s the point of that? Why not just let us go now?”

“I mean, you probably could go now,” Nova points out. “In my class yesterday, two girls left at the very beginning of class and the teacher didn’t give a shit.”

“Well, I won’t take that chance, as Mr. Johnson is pretty strict about that stuff,” Ashley explains. “Anja, you can make your own judgement on that.”

“Eh, I’ll just go to class. Without Ashley there to pester, I don’t know what I’d do hanging around the band hall anyway,” I reason.

I notice something strange… a sudden increase in the noise level of the cafeteria, as the chatter becomes even more deafening than usual. I look around to see if there is a cause, and then follow the direction of some pointed fingers to see a few police officers in one of the hallways.

“What are they doing here?” Zoe asks, trying to peer across the table to see.

“I’ll go in close and check it out!” I offer. “I’m small, so I can hide easily!” I give the group a mock salute, and then skitter up to the scene of attention and hide behind a pillar.

Three police officers, two men and a woman, are talking to one of the teachers in heated tones. I don’t recognize which teacher it is, but he’s a gangly, bespectacled white guy who looks fairly young. I arrive just in time to hear him say defensively, “…Then run your tracking software again. It must have misfired.”

“That will be our decision to make, not yours, okay?” the female police officer says. “We’re bringing you in under suspicion of statutory rape.”

“I will need to speak with a lawyer before any interrogation happens,” he requests. “I won’t let you pin this on me.”

“We are required by law to grant that,” one of the male officers tells him begrudgingly. “But we’re not letting you stay at this school while you’re under suspicion.”

“Yes, I understand,” the teacher says in a defeated way. He sighs gloomily as the officers put him in handcuffs and lead him out of the building.

The chatter of the cafeteria gets even louder, and I can faintly hear a few girls scream. Nearby, there are a few other students who got up to listen in, and I overhear some bits of conversation.

“…won’t have to go to biology today, I guess. That’s so crazy that they just marched him out in the middle of school…”

“…always gave me the creeps. When we talked about the ‘phile’ suffix, he said that ‘pedophile’ means ‘lover of children…’ do you think he was warning us? Like a subconscious confession…”

“…had back when I was in track. Is he really the guy behind that one blog? What a revolting…”

My head is swimming… I dart back to where my friends are seated at once, as some of the counselors start swarming the area of the confrontation to make students calm down.

“Did you guys see that?” I demand upon sitting down. “A teacher just got walked out by the police!”

“That was our biology teacher, Zoe,” Ashley states, her face blank as ever. “Coach Everheart.”

“He was the culprit???” Zoe questions with huge eyes, absolutely floored. “I… I can’t believe it!”

“I don’t have that guy,” Nova states. “Does this mean that this saga is over? We didn’t even have to do anything.”

I think about this… the man whose shadow tried to violate me is now being taken in… the school is safer now…

“He will presumably have to face interrogation and trial,” Ashley states. “It could be a false lead.”

“Ashley, I overheard the cops saying they caught him with the IP tracker,” I explain. “I think this is over.”

For some reason, Ashley looks annoyed at me for this. “Let’s just not let our guards down just yet, okay? We need to see what happens with this case.”

“What makes you think he might be innocent, huh?” I ask, bothered that she is questioning the intense sense of relief I was about to feel.

Ashley gives me a hard, silent gaze for a few seconds. Then she simply says, “Just a hunch…”

I don’t truly have time to reflect on this development until after my half of Human Geography is over, and I am on my way to the band hall to leave for region. If I am to be totally honest, this whole situation feels very dissatisfying to me. I know that it is probably just because I feel like we’re being robbed the glory of solving the case and taking down the villain. I mean, who expected the police system to actually work properly? I certainly did not. And that is the only real theme of my feelings on the issue. It feels too anticlimactic. I can’t really find myself being happy about the capture just yet.

Still, the majority of people seem to have no problem going along with the story. And it does make sense: I did predict that the blogger was most likely a coach, and sure enough, it was. Zoe messaged the group chat saying that a different teacher had to hurriedly take over the class, as Everheart would normally be teaching her this period.

I arrive at the band hall, to find most others going to region have already arrived. Passing by, I already hear a few jokes from other classmates about the situation, most notably a few “Yee-hee!” shouts a la the late pop singer Michael Jackson. I don’t have the peace of mind to be critical of making light about a serious situation this soon, so I simply ignore it and start getting my things from my locker.

I am so absent minded that I almost miss it. Another note in my locker, just like the one from yesterday. I open it up at once. The handwriting is recognizable as the same as the first one, but the smallest amount less tidy, as if the writer wrote it in a hurry. It reads three words only.

“It’s not him.”