Feelers pt. 3

“Should we turn the light on?” I whispered.

“If we do, we have to shut the door,”

“I really don’t want to do that!”

“I know; me neither, but if someone looks in, it will just look like we ducked outside to the hallway,” Grant argued.

I had to agree with that. So I carefully closed the door shut behind me and heard it softly click shut, at the same time that Grant flipped the light switch up. Greenish fluorescent light flickered overhead, turning his skin a sickly shade and casting shadows under his eyes that looked like bruises. I looked away from him and took in the surroundings.

My first impression was how very untidy the place was. Manila folders bulging with papers were piled on every horizontal surface. The wall shelves were stuffed with artifacts. My second impression was that the room was much larger than it had seemed from the architecture of the building. I’d been in several of the other teachers’ offices. One time, when I was in the band teacher’s office waiting for him to come back and give me a lecture for not participating in their silly team-building exercises, I’d had some time to look around. It wasn’t even as big as my parents’ walk-in closet in their room. A tall bookshelf with an old, beat-up tuba perched on top, a battered teacher’s desk and swivel chair, a filing cabinet and one “chair of shame” were the only items could have fit comfortably inside. But Devius’s office, while only as wide as the usual, extended further back. In fact, I couldn’t see the end from where I was standing, there was so much stuff, and the light was so dim.

I turned back to Grant. He was already snooping around, flipping folders and looking under empty bags of potato chips and Taco Bell wrappers. I turned back away and began to inspect the shelves.

The shelves went all the way to the ceiling. Some had doors across them, and some were just open, with jars, boxes and objects piled and filed in them. Close to my hand was a wooden box about the size of a shoebox. I picked it up and turned it to look inside the top, which was covered with a panel of clear glass. A dozen iridescent beetles, green, red, blackish, gleamed on their respective pins that impaled them to the cork beneath. I re-shelved the box and pulled out another, flatter one. This one held butterflies. I didn’t recognize any of them, but that wasn’t surprising, since I really only paid attention to the bugs that crawled or hopped around on the ground, like preying mantises, which were my favorites. I moved along the shelf, looking for more oddities. I picked up a jar that seemed fresher than the rest. I turned it, trying to understand its contents despite the depressing lighting.

The contents were floating in a liquid, just like most of Devius’s other specimens. I looked closer and swirled it around. Tiny paws swirled around, unattached to whatever used to own them. My fingers twitched so suddenly, I almost dropped it, and had to fumble it back to the shelf with the other hand helping. Yuck! Yuck! I wiped my hands on the sides of my jeans.

“Hey Andie! This guy is really into some kind of business that I can’t figure out, but it sure doesn’t look like school stuff!”

“Like what kind of stuff? Against the law?” I shuddered with a little thrill that maybe Devius was doing something illegal that could get him fired. We would be the whistleblowers. But only if we could be anonymous.

“I don’t know. Look at this.” Grant came over with a file folder that was less dusty and coffee-stained than its companions on the desk. Inside was a letter that had been addressed out by hand, in a crawling black script to Mr. Lothar Devius, but with no return address. It had been opened, not neatly with an opener or a knife like the other correspondence scattered around, but hurriedly, carelessly ripped open, leaving the edges jagged, like a saw. “Come here; let’s see what’s in it,” he said, and moved in close with his head inches away from mine.

I still couldn’t believe that Grant Johnson, the boy I would have picked to be on a desert island with, was alone with me, talking with me in an exciting situation like this. This close, his hair smelled like coconut shampoo, and I could see how long his eyelashes were, longer than mine! I could have admired his clear brown eyes, but right now they were like black holes in the ugly light. I was sure that I looked just as bad, my blue eyes turned to murk, my light brown hair a muddy green. As Grant pulled the folded sheet of paper out of the envelope, I leaned in to read what it said.