Page 4 of Forever Summer

Sarah stepped forward, getting up into my face. “You heard me. Give it back!”

“Back off, Norman,” said Tess in a rather timid, unconvincing way; still, she tried. Adam merely stood next to me, looking amused by the showdown. Seriously, give him a bucket of popcorn and you would think he was at the movies. He was so entertained.

I felt less confident now, even surrounded with, give or take, three hundred students from Onslow High; make no mistake in thinking they wouldn’t love a girl-on-girl fight. It would be their favourite blood sport.

And what could I say? “I don’t know what you’re talking about?” When I had as good as snatched the diary from her hands; yeah, there was no denying my involvement. Maybe I could buy time, play dumb, momentary amnesia; yeah, this was going nowhere fast.

I had nothing to say, no smart-arse quip to come back at her with, and mercifully I felt Adam’s grip on my upper arm pulling me into a walk. I did a double take of his hold.

“Maybe you should check your locker before you go throwing around accusations,” said Adam.

Something sparked in Sarah’s eyes—surprise, relief, I wasn’t sure. Adam was as good as frogmarching me out the door.

“Are you for real?” I asked him; surely what he was saying wasn’t possible. Was he buying me more time?

“I was always pretty good at jigsaw puzzles,” said Adam with a broad, cheeky grin.

Tess gasped. “THAT was your assignment you were finishing up?”

Adam squinted up at the sun. “Took me hours; I’m hoping for a certain A plus.”

I stopped dead in my tracks, causing the chattering crowd to shift around us as we blocked the path.

“You didn’t,” I said, blinking with disbelief.

What he was saying wasn’t possible; there was no way he could have pieced, taped, glued—whatever he did—those pages together and have it back to a fully functional diary, it just wasn’t possible. I should know; I destroyed the bloody thing.

“Oh, ye of little faith,” he said.

I bit my lip, my anxiety twisting my insides. “Isn’t this just putting the evidence of what I have done straight back into her hands?”

They’ll probably fingerprint it, no doubt.

Adam slung his arm around my shoulder, just like he had done a million times before, as we walked toward the Year Eleven locker room. “Oh, I don’t think you have to worry too much; I think the heat is going to be well and truly off you for a while.”

Adam’s reassurance didn’t appease me at all, and his confidence was just downright confusing, until we walked into the locker room. The centre of hype, gossip, chat, and drama through the day, the locker room was always about chaos, but today it was a different kind of chaos. There was something different, something happening. I read it all over Macey Dodman’s face as her murderous eyes affixed onto a sheet of paper she held in her hands with white-knuckled intensity.

“Macey Dodman smells like cabbage?” she read aloud.

I tried to spy on the paper she was holding, but my attention was quickly averted to the slamming of the locker opposite.

“What the fuck?” yelled Hayden Banks, the residential sporty meathead of Year Eleven who was also holding on to a bit of paper.

“O-oh,” said Adam as I picked up one of the many pieces of paper littered throughout the locker room, my mouth aghast as I recognised the very familiar and aggressive slant of handwriting. My eyes lifted to Adam who was busying himself plunging textbooks from his locker into his bag.

“THIS was your secret project?”

“I know nothing.”

The full weight of the situation really started to unfold as I looked around at the cluster of people pawing, laughing, swearing, crying. Oh God, was Laura Whitehead crying? I could only imagine what had been said about her.

I picked up a wayward flailing sheet of what looked like a photocopied diary entry, with only jigsaw grey lines as evidence of tampering.

Adam was a genius.

Tess stepped closer to Adam. “You photocopied her diary?”

Adam’s sweet smile morphed into a devilish grin as he turned fully toward us, and our horrified expressions.

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