It was around nine-thirty, and Cameron drove up to the school in a SUV he stole earlier from Kit-Cat Café’s parking lot.
Winter secretly hoped it was Layla’s.
He looked to Winter, a smirk curling his lips. “Ready?”
“Don’t we have to wear scarves…?” she wondered. “Or like… hats or something?”
“You’re a newbie to this,” he stated, shaking his head. “No, Winter Evans, we don’t need human burglary gear.”
“What do you mean ‘human?’” she questioned.
He smiled. “I meant what I said, Snowflake. Humans don’t have powers to blur the videotapes, or maybe change the way you look when someone catches you.”
Oh, well… okay…
It wasn’t her fault she didn’t know this new world she’d been in for what… two weeks?
“Three,” he corrected, responding to her thoughts. “Almost a month.”
She only shook her head.
Cameron opened his car door then, hopping out of his side and walked over to Winter, prying her door open while she stared at him curiously.
“What?” he said then.
“Plan?” she responded, raising her brows.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “There are two rooms with student files. One upstairs in the teacher’s lounge, and the one downstairs also in the teacher’s lounge.”
“So….”
“So,” he said, “you go up. I go down. It’s as simple as that.”
“We’re splitting up?” she clarified.
A nod.
“You trust me?” she questioned. Surely he knew she’d try to run… right?
“Not really,” he said with a small smirk, “but I’ll find you no matter how far you run.” He leaned a little close, making her cheeks flush. “You won’t get far.”
She pushed him away. “Too close.”
He only chuckled. “Let’s go.”
After hopping out of the car, as well, Winter and Cameron made their way to the south entrance, knowing that there would be less surveillance.
Winter watched in shock as Cameron took a pocket knife out of his leather jacket and picked the lock on the door expertly.
“How in the world did you do that?” she questioned.
He didn’t respond to her question, just pried open the door and gestured inside with a wave. “After you.”
She stepped in the darkness, feeling a sudden cold consume her when she entered the pitch-black hallways.
“Don’t turn on the lights,” Cameron whispered from behind her. “Not where there’s windows. You know this school well, so you should be able to feel your way upstairs, alright? And the room you’re looking for has no windows, so you can turn on the lights when you look for her document.”
“Hold on,” Winter said, turning around to look at his shadow. “Why am I going upstairs? You can see in the dark!”
“Because it’ll be easier for me to get to you when you run,” he said. “That’s why.”
He meant that the only exits to the school were on the lower level, and if she’d try to run, he’d know that she was planning it, and he’d be close enough to catch her.
She rolled her eyes. “Fine.”
“Call out to me through your necklace if you find something,” he said, and she felt Cameron’s presence fade when he walked away.
She blew out a sigh, feeling her heart pound against her rib cage when she started down the dark halls, touching her hand to the lockers to feel her way through the pathways.
She made it to the first intersection, knowing the nearest staircase was on the right, so she turned that direction, continuing down the halls.
Eventually, her hand met the banister, and she grabbed a hold of it, placing her first foot on the step to make sure it was actually a staircase…
It was, shockingly…
But after that clarification, she darted up the steps like she did every day during passing block, holding onto the railing to make sure she could catch herself if she tripped.
But she finally made it to the top floor after the two flights of stairs, and wandered down the hall again, looking left and right for signs beside classroom doors despite knowing it was pitch black.
But she knew that the staircase she took ended up in the math-hall, so she managed to step carefully down the math-hall, knowing that it would loop to the tech-hall which had the large lounge she assumed Cameron was talking about.
After about five minutes of walking, Winter found another intersection and she continued down the current hall she was in, knowing the next intersection would be the tech-hall.
Another three minutes passed due to her walking faster, and she made it to the hall she was looking for, stepping down the pathway as she felt the wall on her left.
When her hand met a dip in the wood, she could tell from the texture that it was a door, and she knew she made it.
Mainly because this was the only door on the left side, and she knew it was the teacher’s lounge.
She felt the door, searching for the handle.
When her hand met the cold, metal, she pried it open, and wondered why there was a room full of student files in here, and that they kept this door unlocked.
But she managed to touch her way to another door on her left and pried it open.
The teacher’s lounge had windows to the hallway, and Cameron told her not to turn on any lights that would give away her location.
He probably didn’t want her to get caught.
Also… why was the student file room unlocked, too?
These teachers sure were idiots.
But she shoved the thought away, making her way into the room and shut the door behind her, flipping on the light switch next to her.
She winced as the flash blinded her, but blinked away the pain, looking up in the giant file room that lay before her.
Huh… she honestly didn’t think this was the right room…
She thought it was just a storage room… Because she just opened the closest door to her…
Also… how the hell did Cameron know the location of both rooms…?
Whose file was he snooping for?
The answer slapped her in the face, and she sighed, shaking her head. It was mine, wasn’t it?
So she walked to the file cabinets that were labeled the letter L. She knew that they were ordered from last names, and she also knew that Layla’s last name started with L, so she opened and closed drawers, shuffling through files and searching for the suspicious girl’s name.
After a good five minutes of opening and closing file cabinets, she found it, Layla Lapina.
It was weird how both her first and last names ended with A, but Winter dropped the subject, pulling out a stack of papers that were two inches thick…
What the hell? Did she have a lot of drug problems or something?
Winter did feel a little satisfied that she found the files instead of Cameron… because he made her walk up here when she couldn’t see.
She would probably wait before calling him… she wanted to see the files for herself first.
She looked at the top paper, seeing Layla with brown hair and gold eyes staring at the camera with one of her pretty smiles.
Ugh…
She threw the file to the floor when the rest was blank, thinking she’d pick it up later…
“What the…?” Winter started, staring at the second one in confusion.
She thought it’d be the rest of her file… but it was a second picture with the same girl on it… but she dyed her hair blonde… and her name was Layla Lapnino… the letters in her last name slightly different.
She looked at the date of the student file.
2003-2007.
She graduated in 2007? But that was almost a decade ago… How could she look the same for that long?
Winter threw the file to the floor, looking at the third.
It was the same changes, hair dyed a different color… last name slightly changed… but the dates were earlier… in the 1990s…
She tossed all the papers to the floor, just looking at the dates now…
1980s, 1970s, 1960s, 1950s, 1940s, 1930s…
Then it stopped…
How the hell was this possible…?
This meant that… Layla wasn’t human, was she?
She was like Cameron… but what was she..? And why was she so obsessed with him…?
“What the hell are you doing?” a voice echoed from the door.
Winter spun around, thinking a teacher or janitor caught her, but it wasn’t either… though it was a girl with straight, brown hair and golden eyes…
It was Layla…
ns 15.158.61.46da2
