Chapter 12 - The Forgotten Roster
The drive back to Oakridge High took seven minutes.
Neither of us uttered a single word.
The streetlamps flickered past like ghostly sentinels.
The school parking lot, which had been packed with hundreds of cars an hour ago, was now an empty sea of black asphalt.
A solitary yellow light burned in Noah’s first-floor office window.
We took the concrete steps two at a time.
The heavy exterior doors hissed shut behind us.
The smell of fresh latex paint from the new center mingled with the dusty scent of ancient plaster.
Noah was sitting behind his desk.
His hands were flat on the wooden surface.
Between his hands sat a dented, army-green lockbox.
The brass latch had crumbled away from decades of hidden moisture.
Scratched violently into the green paint were the initials: *M.C. + L.V. — 11/14/99*.
Malik stared at the rusted metal.
"That isn't my handwriting," Malik said softly.
"Nor mine," I whispered.
Noah looked up at us, his eyes wide and troubled.
"I didn't open the envelope, Dad."
"I waited."
"But I looked at the label on the cassette tape."
Noah carefully turned the cassette case toward us.
Written on the faded masking tape was a name I hadn't heard in a quarter of a century.
*Julian Vance.*
A chill crept along the back of my neck.
Julian Vance had been in our eighth-grade class.
He sat two rows behind Malik.
He had disappeared in the middle of that school year.
Our eighth-grade guidance counselor told us Julian's family moved to Seattle overnight.
We were thirteen.
We never questioned where kids went when their desks suddenly became empty.
"Julian didn't move," Malik muttered, his pupils dilating as a buried memory resurfaced.
"He left two days before Mrs. Baxter struck me."
I stepped closer to the desk and reached for the wax-sealed envelope.
The wax was stamped with an emblem I recognized instantly.
The Oakridge District School Board seal.
My hands trembled as I slid my fingernail beneath the hardened crimson wax.
The paper tore with a sharp, dry crack.
Inside lay a single sheet of yellowed district stationery.
At the top was the signature of Arthur Vance, the former Board President.
And beneath it was a handwritten order addressed directly to Evelyn Baxter.
*Handle the Carter boy before he talks to the county sheriff.*
May you like
*A disciplinary distraction will discredit anything he claims.*
*Ensure the ruler is used in plain sight of witnesses.*
