By fourth period, the entire school smells faintly of burnt popcorn and fresh marker ink, a scent I can track across the breezeway and up the sloped hallway to the journalism room. The Harbor Herald is a square of posters and coffee rings with a wall of last year's front pages hung like trophies: wildfire coverage, the teacher walkout, the robotics team at state. In the back corner, our thrift-store couch wheezes every time someone sits down. The radiator knocks like it's keeping time for us. "You're late," Zuri says without looking up from the layout screen. She's wearing a neon beanie and the kind of eyeliner that could cut glass. "Ms. Kline's in a mood." "Ms. Kline is always in a mood," I say, dropping my backpack by the whiteboard. "That's why she's our spirit animal." "Animal?" Ms. Kline repeats from behind a pile of newspapers. She has a silver streak in her bun and a smile that appears only when she thinks you're too stressed to notice. "I prefer mythic creature. Lena, agenda." I pull up the notes on my phone, thumbs tapping out of habit. "Homecoming coverage, the math team profile, and the budget piece if we're brave." "Be brave," Ms. Kline says, then sips coffee from a chipped mug that says Write Like You Mean It. Theo drops into the chair beside me, camera strap slung across his chest. He's still smelling like darkroom chemicals and cafeteria fries. "You saw the post?" he asks, voice low even though everyone in here pretends not to eavesdrop. We all saw it. The account popped up three days ago: LedgerLeak, no profile picture, no followers-at least not at first-and a single black-and-white scan of a spreadsheet with our district's crest in the corner. The caption read, Where did the arts budget go? Then it blew up. People love a good scandal, or the hint of one. In two hours, it had a thousand followers and a duet on TikTok where someone danced with a highlighter while pointing to "reallocations." "I messaged them." I try to sound casual and fail. "They messaged back." Theo's eyebrows do a neat little arc. Zuri actually pauses her mouse. "They sent you receipts?" Ms. Kline asks, her tone suddenly too nonchalant to be anything but strategically nonchalant. I shake my head. "A place and a time." I turn my phone so they can see the DM. It's brief and precise, like a sticky note from a surgeon: B-12. Under the old pool. Thursday. 3:25. Bring a friend. Under the old pool is supposed to be a trope, not an actual location. At Harbor Ridge, though, it's literal. Before the district drained it, the pool sat behind the gym under a wall of windows that bleached the swimmers' hair without mercy. They filled it in two years ago to build new science labs. What's left is a maze of storage rooms beneath the concrete-places with numbers instead of names, with metal doors and fluorescent lights that hum in a way that makes your teeth itch. "Hard pass," Zuri says, as if she can ward off the idea with sarcasm alone. "It'll be asbestos and old desk chairs. Also, haunted." "It'll be a pile of boxes and maybe a filing cabinet," Ms. Kline says. She's not looking at me; she's looking at the clock. "If you ever go anywhere, you tell me where you're going and you bring a second set of eyes. And you don't touch anything that looks like it could collapse a lung." Theo leans forward, conspiratorial. "So we're going." "We're not going anywhere today," I say, though my pulse is already syncing to the radiator's knock. "It's Thursday after last bell. If it's a prank, we lose thirty minutes and have a dumb story about getting dust in our hair. If it's not..." I let the sentence dangle. "If it's not," Ms. Kline finishes for me, "we do our job." She sets down her mug. "You find corroboration. You photocopy. You photograph. You don't publish anything you haven't cross-checked. And, Lena, you breathe." I nod. My mother says the same thing before every debate tournament: breathe, even if the judges don't. The rest of the day drifts through its routine-AP Statistics with the clack of graphing calculators, English where we argue whether Gatsby is doomed by hope or delusion-but the DM glows at the edges of everything, like someone turned the saturation up on the world. In the cafeteria, Pep Club hangs a glitter banner over the doors: LIGHT UP HOMECOMING. In the hallway, student council paints posters with thick letters that drip slightly at the edges. Our principal, Mr. Davison, stands at the foot of the stairs in his Friday blazer even though it's Wednesday, shaking hands with a school board member who visits only when there's a camera. They smile like they practiced in front of a mirror. After the bell, Theo and I hole up in the library, pretending to work on a photo essay. The truth is in front of us: a yellowed blueprint of the school that Mr. Halvorsen, the head custodian, keeps rolled up behind the reference desk. He's not supposed to lend it out, which is why he's watching us like a hawk from the circulation counter, a sudoku puzzle spread open like a decoy. On the blueprint, the lines are stuttery from age, the labels handwritten in small capitals. Gymnasium. Cafetorium. Mechanical. And there, under a rectangle labeled Former Natatorium, a honeycomb of rooms: B-9, B-10, B-11, B-12. The hallway that leads to them is a thin thread from the back of the equipment closet, past the boiler, under the bleachers. "Is that accessible?" I ask, even though the map can't answer. "Not to students," Mr. Halvorsen says without looking up from his pencil. He's been at Harbor Ridge longer than most of the seniors. People tell stories about him: that he once trapped a raccoon in a recycling bin and set it free during a principal's speech, that he can fix anything with duct tape and a magnet. "We're working on a historical piece," he says. I say, which is not true. "The evolution of the building." He finally lifts his eyes, which are the pale blue of fishing line. "The building evolved by not drowning. That's the piece." He leans back so his chair creaks and studies us. "Whatever curiosity is chewing on you, spit it out now. I don't like surprises in my hallways." I meet his gaze and choose the truth, edited. "We're trying to understand how the district spends money." "Good luck," he says, and returns to his sudoku. After a minute, he adds, "If you go down there, don't go alone. And don't mess with things that hum." "I like him," Theo says as we roll the blueprint back up. "He's concise." The next day is Thursday, which starts like any other, except everything feels like it could tip. In Chemistry, our bunsen burners hiccup. In Government, someone's slideshow freezes on a slide that says TRANSPARENCY in a font so big it looks like a joke. At lunch, Aaron-student body treasurer and my most reluctant source-slides into our booth with a tray and a lowered voice. "Hypothetically," he says, stabbing a carrot stick, "if funds for a club got frozen mid-year, and then unfrozen, and then disappeared for a month and came back, that would be a breach of procedure. Hypothetically." "Which club?" I ask. "I didn't say," he says, and then, because he's terrible at secrets and I am relentless, he exhales. "Two." "Which two?" He folds a napkin until it's the size of a postage stamp. "Art. And robotics. Don't quote me." "I never quote you," I say, which makes him roll his eyes because he knows I absolutely do, but only with his consent. By the time the last bell rings, the gym is already thudding with warm-up music for the pep rally. The floor shakes with every bass drop. The stands bloom in waves of school colours, kids in glitter and paint. On the far wall, the new science wing windows glint like freshly sharpened knives. "Ready?" Theo asks. He has his camera. I have a notebook, a cheap flashlight, and the kind of adrenaline that spools tight behind your ribs. "We tell Ms. Kline," I say, texting her: going to check a tip. location: B-12 under old pool. not alone. back by 4. -L Her reply comes quick: Don't be dumb. Don't be heroes. Bring me back the truth, not a rash. We slip out under the pretense of taking crowd photos, then cut down the back hallway where the floor slopes and the lockers thin out. The door to the equipment closet is propped open with a crate of dodgeballs. Beyond it, an unmarked metal door stands ajar, as if someone got lazy or generous. The air shifts: cooler, damp, with a metallic tang that tastes like old pennies. "Comforting," Theo whispers. We descend a flight of narrow stairs where the cinderblock sweats. The hum grows audible, a chorus of machines doing what machines do. At the bottom, the corridor is lit by a single fluorescent tube that flickers, then commits. Pipes run along the ceiling like the veins on the back of a hand. On the left: B-9, door chained and padlocked. On the right: B-10, open to a mountain of broken chairs. B-11, mop sinks and a faded sign that reads CUSTODIAL ONLY in a font that means business. B-12 sits at the end, its number stenciled lopsided. The door has no chain. The knob is stubborn, then merciful. It gives. Inside, the room is wider than I expect. Shelves line the walls, sagging under the weight of labeled boxes: Yearbooks 1993-2001. Theater Props. Marching Band Uniforms (Retired). There's a cleared space in the centre, as if someone planned to do yoga down here and then thought better of it. Dust floats in the beam of my flashlight like slow snow. "Document everything," I say, and Theo raises his camera. It's quiet in the way of places that keep secrets for a long time. I feel my skin prickle as if the room itself is paying attention. On the back wall, under a chain of wires, sits a beige filing cabinet that has seen better decades. It has a tag on the handle with the district's crest and a bar code that doesn't scan when I try it with the library app. The drawer is locked. Theo lifts the camera strap off his neck. "No way the tip was for a cabinet we can't open." "Maybe they left something else," I say, scanning. We check under the shelves, behind boxes, on top of a stack of folded bleacher covers. There's an envelope under the edge of a rubber mat like a rug hiding a stain. My hand pauses over it. It's manila, thin, with ink that has bled from humidity. On the front: L. ORTIZ. "Okay," Theo whispers. "I don't love that." My name written in someone else's neat hand makes the temperature drop another three degrees. I look at the door without meaning to. No one is there, but that doesn't help. I slide my finger under the flap and tilt the envelope so nothing falls out. Inside is a single sheet of paper, a photocopy so crisp it had to be done recently. It's a ledger page with columns and codes only a clerk could love. But even I understand the header: Student Activities Fund - Transfers - Q3. And I recognise the numbers in the left-hand margin: our school code, our club IDs. There's a line with a transfer amount that could pay for a thousand paintbrushes or half a robot, and next to it, instead of "Art" or "Robotics," is a company name I've never heard: Blue Tern Consulting. Theo zooms in and photographs the page, then again, then again. "This is real?" he asks, like speaking too loud might break it. Before I can answer, there's a sound above us, faint but distinct: the scrape of a chair on the gym floor, the thump of a drumline hit. The rally is in full swing. Down here, the hum swallows everything but our breathing. My phone buzzes. Another DM. Careful, it says. You're not alone. Theo and I look at each other. "We weren't," he says, meaning the drumline, the hundreds of feet on the bleachers, the school. But the ceiling is not what the message means, and we both know it. Something shifts in the hallway. A shadow moves under the gap by the door, not ours. The doorknob clinks, once, as if tested. Then a key slides into the lock on the outside, metal on metal, a sound so small it fills the entire room. "Lena?" a voice calls, muffled and entirely too familiar. My mouth goes dry. I fold the paper back into the envelope and grip my notebook so tightly my knuckles glow. Theo lifts his camera halfway and freezes. The key turns.