Ticktock Love

[22] Snitch Perfect

I regretted my decision the very second the door shut.

The chairs screeched, dragged across the floor, mine because it was one of the devil's torture devices, Jeffrey's because of a broken wheel. The miniature grandfather clock replica ticked the seconds away, each one of them evaporating into the hot, stale air, never to be lived through again. As the principal turned his computer on, his caterpillar eyebrows furrowed like two sides of a triangle, a deep wrinkle in his forehead completing the obtuse shape.

I couldn't help but shudder. Adults usually glowered at me like that only when I informed them that they needed to pay twenty cents for extra butter on their popcorn.

"Lisbeth Hall. A Swedish exchange student, wasn't it?" he asked me as he once again pulled up my record, merrily humming a Christmassy tune under his breath.

The bastard was doing this on purpose. I just knew it.

Although tempted to utter a sarcastic reply, I tried to appear as docile and meek as possible. After all, if he took pity on me, maybe the punishment wouldn't be so severe. I evoked my inner 'student on the Honor roll' persona, beaming at him as if he had just told me I was getting a full-ride scholarship to NYFA.

"No, sir. I'm American, born and raised."

"Indeed," he muttered, vigorously rubbing his jaw. To amuse myself and calm down my nerves, I imagined he had just eaten one of those cafeteria burritos and now suffered from stubborn guacamole sauce stains. Judging by the used paper napkin peeking out of his trash can, the possibility wasn't even that farfetched.

"Let's cut straight to the chase. I happened to overhear your conversation with your friend," he informed me as he ominously steepled his fingers. "So you admit to being behind the Tic-Tac video that caused us all this trouble?"

Recalling all the teen movies I had ever seen, I tried to remember what kind of students never got expelled. Was I supposed to plead with him? Offer to scrub the entire gym floor with a toothbrush if he refrained from kicking me out in return? I was already imagining the faces of the NYFA college board when they read my application essay: 'You might have noticed some worrying facts on my student record. Yes, it's true. I have once broken into the principal's office and left him a cow as a gift, but I can assure you that this is the kind of experience I do not intend to repeat.'

Oh, God. I was doomed.

"Yes, sir." I nearly bit my tongue. "I admit to everything."

Panic started to overtake me, like a python wrapping around my body, inch by inch, ring by ring, nearly ready to swallow me whole.

The snake charmer smiled. "Really, Miss Hall? Do you admit to posting all three videos? Because it's hard to believe you didn't have help."

"No. Yes." I felt the blood leaving my face, and I imagined my skin losing all the color, pale like that snow on Aiden's desktop background. "I didn't have any help, sir."

He pulled up his phone, one of those fifth-gen iPhones, probably running on pure magic at this point. The upper left corner of the screen was cracked, spreading like a translucent spiderweb, hanging from the corners and waiting for the next fly to enter its trap. Now that I knew that I was coming out of this office alive, my head felt a bit lighter. Killers were never allowed to use Apple products in murder mysteries.

"Let's check the Tic-Tac, shall we?"

It surprised me to see Jeffrey had the app installed. After all, he never struck me as a tech-savvy person, seeing that he didn't even know how to pronounce the name correctly. But when I saw him type on the phone with one finger, almost like he was slowly squishing ants one by one, I suspected that Naomi had helped him with this at some earlier point.