To Tell An Altswood Lie (The Altswood Saga #3)

Chapter 6 - Costume

Chapter 6 - Costume

As soon as the final bell rang, I bolted from the classroom, barely pausing to zip up my bag. I drew a few startled cries in my desperation to push through the hallway crowd, but once my fellow classmates saw that the mad woman on a warpath was me, whatever they were about to say died on their lips.

I entered the library at high speed, accidentally ramming my shoulder into a security barrier. The librarian glared at me from the front desk, though even she knew there was no point saying anything as I sprinted into the back section again, scanning the shelves. With a breath of relief, I retrieved the 2009 yearbook, semi-surprised that it was still there.

For some absurd reason, I had become paranoid that someone would have taken it.

My fingers working nimbly, I returned to the page for Poetry Club and used my phone to snap a picture of the poem first, for my paranoia's sake. This time, hopefully, my phone wouldn't get smashed in half to prevent me from having the poem in my possession. There were probably hundreds of copies of this yearbook around Bottle Island anyway.

"Alright," I muttered. "Let's do this."

I retrieved a pencil, circling every fourth word in the poem. When I was done, I set the pencil down slowly. Though the true message that I had extracted made far more coherent sense, I still didn't know what it was referring to.

Meet behind the gym for cargo, all throughout summer every second Sunday.

"Cargo?" I whispered to myself. "What is the cargo?"

Though I wanted to continue mulling over it, I was going to be late for my shift at the Ice Cream store if I didn't leave now.

Deflated, I put the yearbook away, sliding it back between 2008 and 2010. The bell had only rung five minutes ago, but now the library was deathly quiet. I didn't think any students came here after school—on such a small island with so little extracurricular activities, they went home if there was nothing else to do.

Which was why I wasn't watching my steps as I texted Dad, and rammed right into someone.

"Oh, geez, sorry," I spluttered, seeing spinning stars. When my vision cleared, I was staring at Kaydee Merchand and her equally stunned expression.

"It's fine, I wasn't watching where I was going either," she said quickly. She thinned her lips. Looked to the right. "See you around, Luca."

Kaydee hurried deeper into the library before I could say anything else, her ponytail swinging after her.

"That wasn't weird at all," I muttered. Maybe it was some social disease spreading through the school. Last I heard, she had started dating Douglas. That was probably where she caught it from.

As I left the library, trudging into the school quad, I finished the text I was sending to Dad, telling him that I was walking to the Ice Cream store and I wouldn't need him to pick me up.

I was about to put my phone away, but then I paused over the second message tab, the one from the blocked number that had told me to open my eyes and then given me the decoder for the yearbook message. I couldn't figure out their angle.

The note in my locker wanted me to solve the mystery. The text message insisted that Maire died because she couldn't solve a mystery. Did that mean I was being handed Maire's task? Was my anonymous texter Maire's actual killer?

And what was the mystery that Maire couldn't solve before she died?

At that thought, a brainwave rolled through my head. I dug through my bag again with a gasp, retrieving the newspaper clipping that had been stashed into my locker.