I wasn’t the type of girl who believed in signs or fate or whatever. But when I got assigned Locker 218 on the first day of 8th grade, something about it felt … different.
It wasn’t just that the hallway was weirdly quiet or that the lock turned perfectly on the first try. It was that there was already something inside it.
A notebook. Simple, spiral-bound. I opened it to check for a name, figuring someone forgot it, but there wasn’t just one. Just a note was written in neat handwriting: Don’t forget to look behind you.
I did.
And there she was. Natalie Carter. Probably the only reason I wasn’t completely dreading 8th grade. We’d been friends since 6th grade, and she’d grown taller and glowed up a lot! Her accessories were more … distracting than usual like she had really changed.
“You good?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “You look like you just saw a ghost take your soul.”
I laughed awkwardly. “Just found this in my locker. It’s kind of creepy.”
Natalie looked over to read the notebook and froze. “Wait, this was Clara’s locker.”
Clara Jenkins. I remembered her. She was smart, funny, and always trying to volunteer to read aloud in class. She moved away suddenly last year. Or at least, that’s what the school said.
Natalie frowned. “She always used to talk about weird stuff happening in this hallway. Notes were showing up. Someone was watching her.”
I should have let it go, but something about the mystery pulled me in. Or maybe it was the way Natalie looked at me: curious, protective, like she wanted to figure it out too that made me want to go along with it.
Over the next week, we worked together. We met at lunch, stayed after school, and even messaged about it late into the night. We found old yearbooks, library logs, and even an old selfie Clara had posted from school. In every photo, she looked nervous.
“Look,” Natalie said one afternoon. “Same necklace. She’s wearing it in all the photos.”
I stared closer. “It has a key on it.”
The next day, I checked the locker again. This time, there was a photo of Clara taped to the back wall, with a message written in marker: The key unlocks the truth.
Natalie and I followed the clues until we found the final piece: an old journal page hidden behind the vent in the locker. It told a story Clara couldn’t share out loud about a substitute who made her uncomfortable, and how no one believed her.
We brought the page to the principal. A few days later, they opened an investigation. The man was arrested. Clara’s story was real.
After it was over, Natalie and I stood by Locker 218 one last time. She gave me a soft smile.
“You were brave,” she said. “Most people wouldn’t have cared.”
I shrugged, suddenly shy. “You helped.”
“Still,” she said, opening her arms, “I think we make a pretty good team.
I smiled and hugged her back.
