Chapter 38 Handle It

Chapter 38 Handle It
Daisy

On the back, written in black marker in neat block letters:
DON'T DARE COME BETWEEN LIAM AND TIFFANY. OR YOU WILL GET IT.
I read it twice.
Then I looked at my locker. At the combination dial. At the door.
Someone had opened my locker. Someone who knew my combination, or who had watched me work it enough times to memorize it, had opened locker 114 and put this photograph inside before I arrived this morning.
I thought about who had been watching me closely enough. Who had enough access to this hallway? Who had been at the party last night where this photograph was taken.
I already knew the answer.
I put the photograph in the front pocket of my notebook, closed my locker, and picked up my bag.
My hands were completely steady.
That was the thing about two years of being a target at Oakwood High — it had excellent training value for moments like this. The first time Tiffany had done something cruel, I had cried in the bathroom for six minutes. Now I could receive photographic evidence and a written threat at seven fifty AM and feel nothing on the outside except the particular cold clarity that came with having a problem to solve.
On the inside was a different matter.
On the inside the photograph was sitting in the pocket of my notebook, doing the specific damage it had been designed to do, which was not the threat—I had navigated threats—but the image itself. Liam's arm. The easy comfort of it. The fact that it had been taken last night while I was sitting at my desk in his hoodie studying integration problems and telling myself I didn't care where he was.
I walked toward first period.
Maya fell into step beside me at the junction of the east and main corridors, appearing with the timing of someone who had been watching for me.
One look at my face and she slowed. "What happened?"
I reached into my notebook pocket and held the photograph out without stopping.
Maya took it. Looked at the front. Turned it over. Read the back.
Her expression went through several things in rapid succession before settling into something very quiet and very controlled.
"Someone got into your locker," she said.
"Yes."
"This is from last night."
"Yes."
"So whoever took this was at the party and came to school early enough to put it in your locker before you arrived."
"Or they sent it to someone who was already here," I said. "The photo could have been shared and printed by anyone."
Maya handed it back. "Tiffany."
"Almost certainly," I said. "But I don't have proof. I just have a photograph and a threat with no name on it."
Maya walked beside me in silence for a moment. The hallway moved around us, morning noise and motion completely indifferent.
"Are you going to tell Liam?" she said.
I put the photograph back in my notebook pocket.
"No," I said.
Maya looked at me. "Daisy—"
"If I tell Liam, he confronts Tiffany, and Tiffany escalates because that's what she does when she's cornered. "I kept walking. "And I still have no proof. And I still look like the person running to her boyfriend every time something happens instead of the person who handles things herself."
"You're not running to anyone. Someone put a threat in your locker—"
"I know what they put in my locker," I said. My voice came out sharper than I intended. I adjusted it. "I know. And I'm going to handle it. But I need to think first."
Maya was quiet for three steps.
Then: "The photo. Them together. Are you okay?"
I looked ahead at the hallway. At the doors to AP English twenty feet away. The ordinary machinery of a school morning was operating exactly as it always had.
"I'm always okay," I said.
"That's not what I asked."
I pushed the classroom door open.
"Let's go to class, Maya," I said.
She followed me inside. I sat down. Opened my notebook to a clean page. Wrote the date at the top with a steady hand.
Underneath the date, in letters small enough that no one sitting nearby could read them, I wrote:
Someone knows my locker combination.
Someone was at that party last night.
Someone wants me scared enough to leave.
Then, underneath all three:
I don't scare that easily.
I underlined it once. Capped the pen. And when Mr. Patterson started talking about Janie Crawford and self-determination, I looked up and listened and kept my face exactly as calm as it needed to be.
The photograph sat in my notebook pocket the whole period.
I didn't touch it again.
But I didn't forget it was there either.