The folder went missing on a Tuesday.
Nathan kept it in his locker, always, the same routine every day — until the day he opened the lock and found the space where it should have been empty, the lock itself showing faint, careful scratches that hadn't been there the day before.
"Someone got into your locker," Sasha said, when he told her, her face draining of color. "That's not a rumor. That's not a hallway comment. That's someone breaking in."
"We still have the note," Nathan said, patting his jacket pocket where he'd taken to keeping it separately, an instinct he was now deeply grateful for. "And the photograph — I scanned copies weeks ago, they're on my laptop. But the original documents, the printed staff records, the notes Marissa gave us permission to write down—"
"All gone."
Th
