Josh planned on giving Lindsey her gift at lunch; Pamela discovered this after restoring Josh as her target. She also discovered he tucked the gift bag in his locker for safekeeping. Pamela tucked away in her backpack her gift for Lindsey, which was prepared fresh this morning. Pamela's heart raced with so much excitement that she couldn't sit still: her foot bounced without end during her first two period classes. Asking to use the bathroom seemed like the more believable excuse, but students didn't carry their binders there. So Pamela asked the teacher to grant her leave to her locker with the reason being that she grabbed the wrong binder. The teacher expressed her disappointment in Pamela, but she apologized and hurried out of the room to Josh's locker.
Lockers were bundled together by grade, and Josh's was a few numbers from Pamela's. The only thing separating the two so much was the gap for two classrooms. Pamela considered herself lucky that their lockers were in the same row—luckier if they were next to each other—but her heart pounded with fret now. All it took was one person to know where either of their lockers was to notice Pamela opening the wrong one. The worst person to run into would be, of course, Josh, but Pamela checked on him before leaving class and before cracking his lock open; he was preoccupied with playing basketball in the gymnasium.
It had taken a few tries, but Pamela memorized Josh's locker combination that he was too kind to give to her: twist three times left, stop on 27; one time right, stop on 14; two left of that and pull. The shackle surrendered its hold on the body of the lock, and Pamela removed the device and opened the locker. Sitting at the bottom was the silver gift bag.
Pamela knelt down and picked the card out of the bag. She then carefully lifted the tissue paper to expose the case sitting at the bottom. Her skin rushed with hot blood as she felt like she was performing a heist in a museum, but a heist might be easier because a museum didn't have hundreds of students in a single well-lit building. Most were in classes, but Pamela knew some students came up with whatever excuse they could to escape to the gym or wherever.
When a splash of red gave color to the inside of the bag, Pamela removed the case and set it before the bag. She flipped open her binder, which she hid her substitute case in. She laid the case at the bottom of the bag, cringing slightly with every ripple of sound the paper produced when disturbed. Temptation poked at her temples, trying to persuade her to check up and down the halls, but she knew better. It'd not only slow down her process but possibly rouse suspicion in anyone who happened to be trotting down the halls. She kept her focus on the bag as she put the paper back and lay the card the way she had found it on top of the pile of tissue paper. Satisfied that the bag looked undisturbed—at least to someone without photographic memory—Pamela placed the original case where her substitute had been and closed both her binder and the locker
Success. Now all Pamela had to do was wait for the bell to ring, letting the students out to lunch. Her heart pulsed with excitement once more as she left Josh's locker and tried to hide the sadistic smile creeping up her lips.
ns 15.158.61.17da2
