Page 68 of Room to Breathe

“Things will be back to normal soon,” she said, more to herself than to me, it seemed.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” I asked, needing her to tell me Dad would just get some sort of fine or suspension or something. If he was being truthful and he’d done nothing, they couldn’t punish him.

“I don’t know,” she said, but I had a feeling she did, and the fact that she wouldn’t say it out loud let me know it was way worse than a fine.

“Can they arrest him for real?”

“I don’t know,” she said again.

That meant yes.

“I have to go,” she said.

When she left I went and searched my room again for the document. I even searched his office, but there was nothing to find in there; they had taken everything.

I was sitting in first period when the classroom phone rang. It was such a rare sound that I jumped. Mr. Fraser, my AP Lit teacher, walked over to the wall by the door and picked up the phone.

“Hello,” he said.

The few times the phone had rung in class, it was typically a parent waiting in the front office to take their kid to a doctor or dentist appointment. Parents used to be able to text their child about that, but we weren’t allowed to look at cellphones anymore. This time Mr. Fraser’s eyes found mine as the person on the phone relayed some sort of message to him.

I didn’t think either of my parents was waiting in the front office. Or maybe they were. Had something happened with my dad’s case? My heart immediately accelerated. Mr. Fraser hung up the phone and said, “Indy, front office. Take your things.”

Take my things? Did that mean I wasn’t coming back to class?

“Okay.” I picked up my bag. Caroline was in this class with me, but she didn’t look at me as I walked toward the door. So shewasmad at me. I didn’t blame her. I’d been a bad friend the past couple of weeks. I should’ve gone back to the party after the stunt withCody, but I’d just taken him to his dad’s house, not in Harper’s neighborhood, and went home to settle my nerves.

In the front office, the woman behind the desk pointed me toward the back hallway. I’d never been in the back hallway in my life. It led to the principal’s office. I only saw the principal, Mr. O’Connell, out and about on campus, when he would wave to us in a friendly manner.

I knocked on the door and heard a muffled “Come in.”

I opened it and the first person I saw was my mom, sitting in a chair in front of the principal’s desk. At first I was confused, and then I was terrified. Had something happened with my dad? Why wasn’t he here?

“Have a seat, Ms. Blair,” Mr. O’Connell said.

I didn’t want to sit. I wanted him to immediately tell me what was happening. Or better, I wanted my mom to just check me out of school and not involve anyone else in our business. Wasn’t that what she’d told me we needed to do? Why had she changed her mind now? Had she told Mr. O’Connell about my dad?

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Sit down, Indy,” Mom said, her voice sounding tired and angry.

So I did. I sat. And that’s when I noticed an open laptop on the desk in front of him. A grainy image of me and Cody running out the doors of C building was frozen on the screen. My blood ran cold.

He pointed to the laptop. “You have been identified as one of the people that broke into the school last Friday. There was some damage done in the chemistry room.”

My eyes went to the screen again.Iknew it was me, but how did he? My face wasn’t clear. Were there other images?

“Some chemicals were stolen from the supply closet.”

“Chemicals?” I asked, surprised. What chemicals? Why? “No. That wasn’t me.” Or Cody, I wanted to say. He hadn’t taken anything either. But I stopped myself. If Mr. O’Connell didn’t know Cody was the other person in the video, I wasn’t going to tell him.

He didn’t stop there, though. He placed my calculus test in front of me. “Do you recognize this?”

My blood ran cold. “Yes.”

“It has also been brought to our attention that you cheated off another student’s paper to get this grade.” The score at the top said 99 percent. It was a good score. “Is that true?”

Beau had tattled on me? Had he also been the one to identify me on the video? The thought shocked me.