Dead Seat

Chapter 3 — The Girl Who Knew

Zoey's POV

I didn't open the sketchbook in school.

That was the smartest decision I made all day. Because every time I sat down in a class and felt the weight of my bag against my leg I wanted to pull it out and keep going through the pages. But I didn't. I kept my bag closed and my face neutral and I sat through four classes feeling like I was carrying something that could explode.

Which maybe I was.

First period passed in a blur. Second period I wrote nothing in my notebook because my brain was somewhere in Row C of the gymnasium going through pages of drawings that I couldn't stop seeing every time I closed my eyes.

By third period I was sitting in Mr. Calloway's English class staring at Declan's empty desk and feeling something I hadn't expected to feel.

Angry.

Not sad. Not scared. Angry.

Because I was looking at that desk and thinking about everything in that sketchbook and thinking about how Declan had sat right there in front of me for six weeks. Six weeks of cedar and old books and careful drawings in notebook margins. Six weeks of a boy carrying something heavy and terrifying completely alone. Six weeks of him showing up every single day to a school where the person he was afraid of had a key to every room in the building.

And nobody noticed. Nobody asked. Nobody looked closely enough.

I looked at the empty desk for the entire forty minutes of English class and I did not hear a single word Mr. Calloway said.

Lunch was the problem.

Westbrook High had a specific lunch period geography that had been established sometime around freshman year and had not shifted since. The athletes sat at the long tables by the windows. The seniors claimed the back corner like it was territory they had earned. The sophomore and junior middle ground was a complicated arrangement that I had never fully mapped but had learned to navigate by instinct.

I usually ate alone. Not in a sad way — in a deliberate way. I had a specific table near the side exit that got very little traffic and had an outlet nearby where I could charge my phone. I ate there every day and nobody bothered me and I bothered nobody and it worked perfectly.

Today I didn't go to my table.

Today I went looking for Priya Anand.

Priya was easy to find because Priya was always exactly where you expected her to be. Centre of the room. Centre of the conversation. Surrounded by people who wanted to be near her because being near Priya felt like standing in a warm light.

She was sitting at a table with four other girls, laughing at something on someone's phone. She was wearing a yellow top and her hair was pulled back and she looked completely fine. Easy and warm and completely fine.

That bothered me more than I expected it to.

Declan had told me — through the note in the sketchbook — that Priya was his closest friend. The person he trusted most at Westbrook. And here she was laughing at a phone video three days after he had disappeared like it was any other Thursday.

I picked up my lunch tray and walked over.

"Can I sit here?" I said.

Priya looked up. She didn't know me well — we had one class together sophomore year and had exchanged maybe twelve words total. I could see her running me through her internal catalogue. Trying to place me properly.

"Sure," she said. Warm and easy. The Priya Anand default setting.

I sat down. The other girls at the table glanced at me and went back to their conversation. I opened my bottle of water and took a long drink and then I looked directly at Priya and said quietly —

"I found the sketchbook."

The warm easy expression didn't disappear. It did something more subtle than that. It froze. Just for half a second. Like someone had pressed pause on her face and then immediately released it.

"Sorry?" she said.

"Declan's sketchbook," I said. Same quiet voice. "The one in the gym locker. Row C."

She picked up her fork. Put it down again. Picked up her water bottle. All of it very casual and very deliberate and completely unconvincing to someone who spent their entire life watching people perform composure.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said.

"Okay," I said.

I ate a forkful of rice. I didn't push. I didn't lean forward. I just ate my lunch like I had said nothing important at all.

Priya watched me from the corner of her eye for approximately forty five seconds. I counted.

Then she said very quietly, "How did you find it?"

"Someone left a tip on my blog," I said.

Something moved across her face. Relief maybe. Or something close to it. Like she had been hoping for this specific answer and hadn't known she was hoping until she heard it.

"Your blog," she said slowly. "You're Dead Seat."

I didn't confirm or deny. I just looked at her.

She put her fork down properly this time. She leaned forward slightly and lowered her voice so the other girls couldn't hear.

"He told me about the locker," she said. "Two weeks before he disappeared. He said if anything happened to him I should tell someone. But he said don't go to the principal and don't go to Hendricks and don't—"

"Don't go to Halliday," I finished.

She stared at me. "You read it."

"I read it," I said.

She sat back in her chair. She looked at the table for a long moment. When she looked up again the warm easy Priya was mostly gone and what was underneath was something much more tired and much more real.

"He told me things," she said. "Before. Weeks before he ran. He told me what he had seen and what he was collecting and what he thought it meant." She paused. "I told him to let it go."

Her voice was very flat when she said that last part. The flatness of someone who has replayed those words so many times they have worn smooth.

"Why?" I said.

"Because I was scared," she said simply. "Because it was Halliday. Because everybody loves Halliday and nobody was going to believe a sophomore with a sketchbook over the most popular teacher in school." She looked at me. "Was I wrong?"

I thought about the sketchbook in my bag. The dated drawings. The careful documentation. The last image of two figures standing at a locker.

"He made it pretty hard to ignore," I said.

Something shifted in her face. Not quite a smile. Something smaller and sadder than that.

"That was Declan," she said quietly. "He couldn't say things out loud. He was never good at that. But he could show you exactly what he meant if you were willing to look."

We sat quietly for a moment. Around us the cafeteria was loud and ordinary and completely unaware of what was happening at this particular table.

"He's okay," I said. It wasn't a question. I didn't know why I said it like that. I just had a feeling that settled in me somewhere around the time I opened that locker — that Declan Mwangi had not run without a plan. That wherever he was, he was breathing.

Priya looked at me for a long time.

"I think so too," she said finally. "I have to."

The bell rang. Lunch was over. The girls at the table stood up and gathered their things and Priya stood with them, slipping back into the warm easy version of herself like putting on a coat.

But before she turned away she leaned down slightly and said in a voice meant only for me —

"There were others before Declan. Students who left. He had their names written in the back of the sketchbook. Did you see that part?"

I had not gotten that far yet.

"Look at the last three pages," she said. "And be careful who you talk to about this. I mean it."

Then she picked up her tray and walked away and the warm light went with her.

I sat at the table alone with my lunch going cold and my bag heavy against my leg and three pages in a sketchbook I hadn't read yet.

I picked up my bag. I walked to the side exit.

I had twenty minutes left of lunch.

It was enough.