The Nine Seconds Erased

No one had ever told us the name of the student Leo supposedly threatened. The answer had been sitting right there in the picture. I swallowed hard. “Chloe signed it. She was the one who complained about Leo back in May.”

Toby lowered the phone and restored the video to its usual size. “And today she handed the actual paper back to Aris.” He tapped the screen, and the recording started again.

Mr. Aris examined the signature before giving a short, satisfied nod. He folded the complaint away, slipped it into an envelope, then hid the whole thing inside his gray jacket.

His eyes lifted toward the camera. He didn’t flinch or look startled. He simply raised a finger to his mouth, making a measured shushing gesture at whoever was behind the lens.

After that, he turned and walked off. Chloe’s face changed. She gave a small, smug smile, then toppled backward into the lockers as if someone had shoved her.

The clip stopped. I kept staring at the dark screen while rain chilled the back of my neck. “He knew you were recording,” I said. “Aris knew the whole time.”

“He sure did.” Toby sounded close to panicking. “Chloe told him where I’d be. They planned it together. Not long after fourth period began, Aris came and got me from math.”

“He took me to his office. He didn’t ask what I’d filmed. He ordered me to open my phone and erase the video while he watched. Then he made me clear it out of Recently Deleted, too.”

“You actually did it?” I asked. I couldn’t believe it. The man who was supposed to help students had just forced a kid to destroy evidence.

Toby’s eyes looked huge. “He pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk. There was a bag of Adderall right beside his stapler. Then he said Principal Hayes might find it in my gym locker that day.”

“He said the police would get involved if that happened. I’m thirteen, Maya. What was I meant to do?” His voice shook as he asked.

For a moment, everything inside me went quiet. A guidance counselor had threatened to plant drugs on a middle-schooler just to hide what had happened in a hallway.

“But you still have the footage,” I said, forcing myself to breathe evenly. “How did you keep it?”

Toby reached into his pocket and brought out a little blue USB stick, its plastic case cheap and scuffed. “My phone sends recordings to a private cloud account automatically. Aris erased what was on the phone, but he didn’t know that.”

“I saved a copy from the cloud onto this during lunch.” He pushed the drive into my palm. His fingers felt icy against mine.

I closed my hand around it. “Why give it to me? If you’re so frightened, why not erase the backup yourself?”

“Because he could still decide to plant those pills on me whether I have the video or not,” Toby said. “Somebody else needs the proof. But you can’t tell anyone I gave it to you.”

“I’m deleting the cloud copy tonight. I’m done with gossip. Don’t contact me again, Maya.” He didn’t wait for me to answer.

Toby darted out from under the shelter and ran through the rain toward the neighborhood. I stayed beneath the roof of the empty batting cage, alone with the pounding drops.

For a long time, I watched the blue drive in my hand. It could clear me, but it also showed that the district’s counselor had teamed up with a twelve-year-old girl.

Still, I couldn’t make the exchange make sense. Chloe had signed Leo’s complaint in May. Why was she carrying its original around five months later? Why hadn’t Aris already put it in Leo’s school file?

Unless the paper wasn’t safe there. Maybe the complaint had been invented, forged, or could get Aris into legal trouble. Perhaps he had to get the original back before the district’s digital audit.

And perhaps Chloe handed over proof of what they’d done before in return for his help with my suspension. My thoughts tightened around that possibility as rain drummed overhead.

I buried the USB in my pocket, pulled my hood over my head, and raced home through the storm. By the time I reached the house, water had soaked through my clothes.

The kitchen was deserted. Leo’s picture still hung on the wall, but Mom was in the living room; I heard the television murmuring beyond the doorway.

I crept upstairs, carrying my dripping raincoat until I reached the hall. Then I left it on the floor in a spreading puddle. My bedroom could wait. I went to Leo’s door.

The room smelled of old cedar and the mint gum he used to chew. His bed was neatly made, and his electric guitar stood untouched in the corner. It felt like a display devoted to someone our family had lost.

I sat at his oak desk and started his old computer. When the password box appeared, I entered Artemis—the name of the stray cat we’d fed behind the garage when we were small.

The screen opened. I was going to find out what Leo had known about Chloe’s complaint, and why Aris needed its original so badly.