Chapter 37 Locker 114

Chapter 37 Locker 114
Daisy
I woke up at six forty-three.
Not because of an alarm. My body had developed the inconvenient habit of waking itself up slightly before the alarm went off, as if even in sleep it was determined to stay one step ahead of things.
I lay there for a moment staring at the ceiling, running through the mental checklist that started every morning: AP English reading, calc session tonight, history quiz Thursday, party Saturday, outfit still undecided.
Then I remembered last night.
The empty driveway. The tea. The integration problems I had eventually finished at midnight. The hoodie I had fallen asleep in and was, I noticed with detached resignation, still wearing.
I got up. Pulled it off. Folded it and put it on the chair with the deliberate efficiency of someone who had made a decision and was sticking to it.
Then I crossed to the window.
Liam's car was in the driveway.
I stood there for a moment looking at it. Black, clean, parked at the slight angle he always used when he came home late and wasn't thinking about straightness. The morning light sat on the roof of it in a long flat stripe.
What time did he get back?
I caught the thought, identified it, and moved away from the window.
It was not relevant information. I did not need it. I was going to get dressed and go to school and focus on the seventeen things I had to do today, and the time Liam Martinez had returned from a party was not one of them.
I got dressed.

The morning routine without Liam driving me felt different than it used to.
That was the first annoying thing I noticed while I was walking to the bus stop at seven twenty with my bag on both shoulders and my earbuds in.
Before the deal, before the car rides, before any of this, the bus had been completely neutral. Just transportation. A functional object that moved me from one location to another.
Now it felt like a commentary.
I pushed the earbud in deeper and scrolled through my music, deliberately bypassing anything that had been playing in his car, and landed on something my mom used to play on Saturday mornings, an old soul record, Stevie Wonder's "Isn't She Lovely," and pressed play.
The bus came. I got on. Found a window seat near the back.
The song filled my ears, and the morning moved past the window, and I made a genuine, committed effort to think about nothing except the warm brass of the melody and the way the October light looked on the California suburbs at seven thirty AM.
It almost worked.
By the third song by Marvin Gaye, Mercy Mercy Me, something in my chest had loosened enough that I could breathe normally without it feeling like a minor administrative task.
Old music had always done that. My mom had a theory about it: songs from before you were born carried none of your personal history, so they could reach you without catching on anything.
I leaned my head against the window and let Marvin Gaye do his job and watched Oakwood approach through the glass.


I noticed it before I could name it.
The specific quality of attention that the hallway had when something had happened: the conversations dropping half a volume, the eyes that moved and then moved away, and the particular angle of people's bodies that said, "We are not looking at you," while very clearly looking.
I had felt this before. Two weeks ago, in the morning, Tiffany had spent the night building rumors.
My shoulders went back. My pace stayed even. I kept my face neutral and moved through the morning current of the hallway like someone who had somewhere to be, which I did.
Locker 114. East corridor. Books for first and second period.
I worked my combination right, left, and right and pulled the door open.
Something fell out.
Not a book. Not a note folded small the way people pass notes. A photograph. Glossy, like it had been printed properly, not just printed from someone's phone on regular paper.
I caught it before it hit the floor.
I looked at it.
The image was clear and well-composed, which somehow made it worse than if it had been blurry or badly lit. Liam and Tiffany at what looked like last night's party, the lights in the background matched what I had imagined when he said Dev's house, warm and close together.
Tiffany was laughing at something, her head tilted toward him. Liam had his arm around her shoulder in the loose, easy way of someone completely comfortable.
They looked exactly like what they had always looked like to everyone at Oakwood High for the past three years.
They looked like Liam and Tiffany.
I stood at my open locker with the photograph in my hand and breathed through the three seconds it took to get my face back to neutral. Then I turned the photo over.