Chapter Five
Ian and me arrive at Vanilla Valley Diner.
"Guess what?"
"What?" He asks intently.
"I'm moving back here..." I tell him. He looks up from the menu and his eyes lock with mine for a few seconds. I smile. Again.
"This is the first time I have ever seen you this happy." He says, smirking, I look down at his bottom lip, chapped kinda, but a perfect rose gold tone.
"Yeah." I say looking back up at him,
"For some reason my mom and brother decided to get their life's back together so fast it's like-"
"Wait. How is your mom affording all this?" Ian cuts me off. That's a good question, I don't know.
"Uhm- I actually don't know." I say trailing off into a million different possible ways my mom could be coming up with this sort of money. I look back down in my pocket. The key shimmering happily. I bite the bottom of my lip.
"What time are library hours at school?" Apparently my mouth caught up with the question inside my brain before I could even process thinking about it.
"Uh, I think 11-4." He answers scamming them menu.
"I need to tell you something." I say to Ian in a deep tone. He looks up and raises his eyebrow,
"I was giving up on this investigation but I found a key that I have never seen before in my brothers desk, he said it's a key to his old locker but my intuition tells me to just check in case."
"Wanna go right now?" Ian says keeping both his eyebrows raised.
"Yes." I answer. We thank Clark and we head down to the library.

In the car we both make up excuses at to why we need to go to the library, usually most people go to make up for extra college credits, nobody usually goes there to check out books unless it's for an assignment.
"Should we just say we wanna look for an old book?" I ask Ian as he parks his car into the school parking lot. Only two other cars are here, a bright red Ford, and a dark navy blue Honda. It's probably the old librarians who offer their time to work summer and holiday hours, such sweet women.
"Uhm, yah that works." He says, he probably didn't hear a thing I just said and went along with whatever would please me. I roll my eyes and as soon as I get out he stops me.
"Bailey, are you sure this is a good idea?"
"Yes." I say and gesture him out of the car.

"Hello, Mrs. Smith." I say with a bright smile.
"Oh, why hello Bailey. You must be here for college credits?" She asks looking down on her roster. She scans the page from top to bottom, bottom to top and looks at me again. She has a half crooked smile on her face, you can tell by the way her eyebrows are positioned on her face, she must be so confused. I sigh and look at Ian,
"Uh- actually I was here to check out a book."
My eyes squint in the sun, the cold weather breezing past my face. Mrs. Smith, a troubled old lady with a puzzled face, she's too sweet to decline my request.
"Come on in." She responds with a smile, she leads us into the library through the only outside door that you can access the library. As she signs us in, I can't help but notice all the miserable kids here finishing extra work for college credits, obviously it wasn't their idea. Me and Ian look at each it her as she lets us go free, and she travels back to her corner with her desk wrapping all the way around it.
"What should we do?" I whisper as me and Ian duck behind a bookshelf. We act as if we are looking for books. Ian looks at me,
"It would be a little suspicious if we both went to the bathroom at the same time."
I agree with him. I let him know that by nodding my head. I look around, I notice a dark red door that leads to the halls. I'll have to go by myself.
"I'm gonna have to go by myself, Ian." I tell him. He looks down at me disappointed but I'm pretty sure he knows why.
"Okay." He whispers.
I get up and walk past all the desks to Mrs. Smiths desk.
"Hi." I say smiling, she looks up from her book. "I have a little bit of a lady issue and I need to use the restroom." I say, trying to sound convincing I add, "It's an emergency." I tell her. She responds with a mumble of "yes" but what that really means is, "whatever, go quickly." She hands me the key,
"Make sure to be back in five or less minutes, I'm not allowed to do these type of things." Mrs. Smith says in her sharp but pleasantly sweet voice. I smile to thank her, and she shows me her hand, she must be really scared to get in trouble by the principal. I open the door and shut it as quietly as I can, I sigh and put my hand on my heart, and breath through perked lips. I open my palm, the rusty key reads, "227" I think to myself, the eight grade hallway is all the way at the front entrance, there's no way I'm gonna make it back in five minutes, but there's an odd chance that Mrs. Smith will come running down the halls to find me. This is my only opportunity to look to see if my brother is innocent. I start running down the halls. My shoes echo through the hallway, I'm almost there. It's not that big of a school, but I did come all the way from the back of the school. I get to the eight grade hallway, all lockers are shut, the soft color of yellow hits the sunbeam, you can see all the dust flying around. Locker 227. I search around, the very end of the hallway locker. I hope it works. I shove the key into the locker hole and I twist, first time, nothing happens, second time, nothing happens. I turn it the other way and it still doesn't work. The key fits perfectly inside the slit, but it won't open. Maybe it's for a gym locker. I look at the clock which is like 1 minute until my five minutes are up. I'm just gonna trust my instinct and run to the boys locker room as fast as I can. The locker rooms are right across from the eight grade hallway, and the student lobby. I try opening the locker room door, but I forgot that all doors were locked, I try using the key Mrs. Smith gave me, when I twist the key, surprisingly it opened without difficulty. I smile. I look around all the tiny little yellow lockers until I see the 227 one. I go straight for it and I push the key in, it locks into the hole and I twist, but it doesn't budge. Unbelievable.
I ran all the way down here for nothing. I run out of the locker room with both keys in my hand, before leaving the locker room I make sure to close the door and re-lock it. I run all the way back to the library. I look at the clock, I was late by six minutes. It's gonna be a grueling experience trying to explain myself.
I unlock the door and as it opens, Mrs. Smith looks at me, her eyebrows inward, she shakes her head.
"I am so sorry for that, I had really bad cramps, Mrs. Smith." I say frowning as walking towards her. She snatches the key from my hand,
"I'm not mad, but make sure not to do that again." She says, her tone visibly unpleased. I half smile,
"I understand." She nods her hand and looks down at her book. I walk towards Ian and grab his arm. As we get out the door he stops,
"What the hell, Bailey."
"What?" I ask turning around. He breaths and turns his head, his breath comes out like he just took a big puff of a cigarette.
"Is everything okay?" Both his eyebrows goes up.
"I'll tell you in the car." I say while turning back heading towards the car.
I can hear Ian follow me. I shut the car door and lean back, closing my eyes.
"What is it?" Ian asks. I turn my head.
"The key didn't fit, the school locker nor the gym one."
Ian looks down at his shoes. Not knowing what to say.
"Why would he lie to me unless he has something to hide." I continue.
"My mother, off list. My brother how ever, is the only person I'm pointing fingers at."
"I think you might be looking too deeply into this." Ian says comforting me.
"I don't care." I respond through partially opened lips. I sigh and Ian start the car.

I get out the car as soon as Ian parks it. I swing open the front door and head straight to his room.
"So this isn't a key to your locker." I say, yelling.
"Bailey what?" Andrew says puzzled.
"I kept this key in hopes to find that it did open your locker, and the gym locker. I was in for a rude awakening when it didn't open any of them." I finish, and Andrew sits up on his bed. He says my name but before he could even finish what he was about to say my mom comes from her room and grabs the key away from me.
"What are you doing with this, Bailey?" Mom asks, holding it up.
"It was Andrews, he had it in his drawer, he said it was for school but it obviously wasn't." I say, I turn to him, "So can you please tell me what it's for?" I ask Andrew.
"Stop with your conspiracies, Bailey. This a safe key, it was your fathers." Mom turns me around. I raise my eyebrow,
"Than how come Andrew had it, and lied to me too?" I ask. Andrew stands up.
"I knew if I told you what it was for Dads safe, you'd wanna go investigate it. I was keeping you out of trouble"
I look at him in the eyes, for about what seems like an eternity, I finally speak,
"Why do you have it though?" I ask.
"Because Mom gave us a bunch of dads stuff when we moved out, and this key was on of them."
"Whatever." I say and grab the key back from Mom.
"Where is this safe?"