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‘Is there something we can do for you guys?' asked Jordan, cutting in before I had a chance to respond.

‘Actually, there is,' said Freckles, putting her hands on her hips. ‘We want to know why you guys are still staff-student liaison officers when you've been busted stealing and vandalising and stuff.' She elbowed Ghost in the ribs.

‘Y-yeah,' said Ghost.

‘Dunno,' I said. ‘I'm sure Pryor
tried
to come up with a worse punishment than dealing with you everyday, but –'

Jordan put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Peter …'

Freckles sneered at me. ‘You're not even doing your job properly,' she said. ‘We've been trying to talk to you for ages, but you guys are never in the playground.'

‘Funny, that,' I said, looking up and down the street.

Ghost stared at the concrete, like he really didn't want to get caught up in this.

‘Listen,' said Jordan, stepping in front of me and looking down at Freckles. ‘We're sorry we're not around as much as you'd like. We've just been really busy lately. And I know what people are saying about us – that we're petty criminals or whatever – but a lot of that's just a misunderstanding. I mean, you can't always believe everything you hear, right?'

Freckles thought about this for a minute. Then she rolled her eyes. ‘Whatever,' she said.

She took one last suspicious glance at the bike racks, and then she and Ghost headed back around the side of the security centre.

T
UESDAY
, J
UNE
2
72
DAYS

‘I didn't say she wasn't annoying,' said Jordan the next day. ‘I said it's probably not smart to bite her head off every time she comes up to us.'

Luke opened his mouth to agree, but I cut in before he had the chance.

‘Yeah, no, you're right,' I said. ‘Need to be more careful. But no harm done, right? Pryor's still got nothing on us.'

‘You keep saying that like it actually means something,' said Luke.

We were on our way to Pryor's office with my spectacular forgery of our latest waste-of-time assignment. Staples had caught us on the way into school and asked us to come in at recess.

Pryor was waiting in the front office when we got there.

‘You're late,' she said as soon as we were through the door. Her face had the same dark scowl as when she was questioning us about the phone. She'd clearly given up on the whole best-friends-forever bit. She marched us up the hall, snapped at Staples to make sure we weren't interrupted, and then let us into her office.

Jordan glanced up at the security cameras as she walked in.

‘Your assignment, please,' said Pryor, stretching a hand out across her desk as soon as we'd all sat down.

‘Here you go, miss,' I said, handing over the pages. ‘Some of our best work, I reckon.'

Pryor snatched the assignment from me and scanned the first page without speaking. Actually reading it this time. Why? Clearly she wasn't interested in the results. So what was her game?

I waited, feet scuffing against the rug on the floor.

All these months, I'd been convinced she was holed up in here doing whatever it is that normal principals do, when really she was prancing around the Shackleton Building, plotting world domination.

Pryor turned to the second page and kept reading. Her lip curled.

No way had she spotted my fake. She was good, but she wasn't
that
good.

Next to me, Jordan was sitting up way too straight, arms folded in front of her. Nervous. Her eyes kept flitting across in my direction.

Don't worry,
I thought, smiling back at her, letting her know it was all okay.
Pryor's got no idea –

Pryor threw the assignment down on her desk. ‘I am insulted,' she spat.

I tried to look puzzled. ‘Sorry, miss?'

‘This is unacceptable,' said Pryor. ‘I want this assignment completed again from scratch.'

‘Why, miss?' I said. ‘What's wrong with –?'

‘What's
wrong,
Mr Weir, is your attitude. Your blatant disregard for authority and your unwillingness to take seriously the duties that have been assigned to you.'

Jordan glared at me, almost as angry as Pryor. Blaming me.

No. This wasn't my fault.

‘Miss, no,' I said, ‘that's not –'

‘Did you honestly think you could just shrug off this assignment without my knowledge?' Pryor raised her eyebrows, like she was actually expecting an answer. When I didn't give her one, she got to her feet. ‘There are no secrets in Phoenix, Mr Weir. I would have hoped I'd made that abundantly clear to you three by now.'

She went to the door and shouted at Staples to join us.

‘I believe our staff-student liaison officers may require some additional supervision as they complete their next assignment,' Pryor told Staples. ‘I would like you to keep an eye on them. Please ensure that they do not leave school property before four-thirty this afternoon.'

Staples gave Pryor a look like she was pretty sure this wasn't in her job description, but said, ‘Of course.'

‘Four-thirty?' I said, trying to stay calm and polite. ‘What for, miss? Won't everyone be out of here ages before then?

‘Not the students in the study centre,' said Pryor, eyes glinting. ‘The library doesn't close until four. We wouldn't want to neglect those students in our statistics, would we?'

‘No miss,' I said. ‘We definitely wouldn't want that.'

Pryor sat back down again. She picked up our assignment and made a show of dropping it into the recycling bin next to her desk.

‘I do hope this isn't a
problem
for you, Mr Weir,' she said, suddenly smiling again. ‘You don't have somewhere else to be this afternoon, do you?'

‘She knows,' Luke whispered. ‘She knows we're meant to be meeting Reeve today.'

‘As if she does,' I said.

It was 3.25 p.m. And it was raining.

The school was deserted except for Jordan, Luke and me standing out the front, clipboards in hand, waiting to check off the last few losers on their way out of the library.

‘Why else would she make us re-do the assignment?' asked Luke.

‘Because she could tell the first one was a fake, that's why,' said Jordan, water dripping down her braids.

‘Whoa, hey,' I said. ‘I didn't get this far at school by not knowing how to fake an assignment. That Year 7 kid must've said something to her.'

‘And I wonder who could've made her angry enough to do that,' said Jordan.

I shivered in the cold, mind racing for a way to redeem myself.

How long had Freckles been watching us before she spoke up? Long enough to see where we'd hidden the note? Or had she just gone to Pryor to have a whinge about us not doing our jobs properly?

Either way, we were screwed unless we could find a way out of here.

I looked back towards the front office. Staples was standing a few metres away, holding an umbrella and a mug of coffee, looking as frustrated as we were to be stuck out here.

‘All right,' I said. ‘Let me handle this.'

Jordan shot me a sceptical look. I ignored it and started walking over to Staples.

‘Hey, miss!' I called. ‘You look cold.'

Staples' eyes narrowed. ‘Back to work, Peter.'

Usually, Mrs Stapleton wasn't a teacher you tried to negotiate with, but I was betting this whole situation had her just irritated enough to hear me out.

‘Ah, don't be like that, miss!' I smiled. ‘Why don't we get out of your hair and let you get back inside?'

‘It's only three-thirty,' said Staples. ‘Ms Pryor wants you out here for another hour.'

‘Come on, miss,' I said. ‘Stuff Pryor. She's wasting our time.'

‘Peter,'
she barked, but only half-heartedly. ‘I will not have you speaking so disrespectfully about our principal. Whatever either of us may think about the task Ms Pryor has given us, the fact remains that
she
is in charge, and this is her decision.'

‘Yeah,' I said, ‘but what she doesn't know won't hurt her, will it miss?'

For a second, I swear she almost smiled.

‘We'll even swing by the library on the way out,' I lied. ‘Count how many kids are in there and put them on our maps. Everybody wins!'

Staples stared at me for a long moment. She took a sip of her coffee and gazed across in the direction of Pryor's office, shivering slightly.

Then she looked back at me and shook her head. ‘All right,' she sighed, like she was agreeing to this against her better judgement. ‘Go.'

‘Thanks, miss!' I grinned. ‘You're the best!'

‘If you breathe
one word
of this to anybody, I will see to it personally that you are expelled from Phoenix High.'

‘Got it,' I said, ‘Have a good afternoon, miss!'

I came back over to join the others, soaking up the disbelieving expression on Jordan's face as she watched Staples walk away across the grass.

‘What did you –?'

‘Told you I'd handle it,' I said, shoving my clipboard into my backpack. ‘C'mon. Let's go find Reeve.'

Chapter 22

T
UESDAY
, J
UNE
2
72
DAYS

We rode straight to the south end of town, to the place where all the bike paths and walking trails start out into the bush. It was bucketing down by the time we got there. On the plus side, this meant the streets were all but deserted – no sane person would be out here in this. But the pouring rain also meant that we couldn't count on Reeve waiting around for long.

Assuming he'd come out here in the first place.

Assuming he'd even got the message.

Assuming the million other things that could've gone wrong hadn't gone wrong.

Don't think about it.

We shot straight off the concrete path and down one of the dirt riding tracks. My head swam with déjà vu. This was the same path we'd started out from two weeks ago, when we were following Crazy Bill's map out to the wall. This time around, the path was wet and slippery and turning to mud at the edges. The trees pressed in from both sides, and in my head I saw armed security guards hiding behind every one of them, training their weapons on me.

Then again, anyone out here who wanted me dead could just wait for the pneumonia to set in and save themselves the trouble.

Jordan was ahead of me, dark skin and the outline of a singlet showing up through her soaking white shirt.

More rain. More mud. More imaginary guards with imaginary guns.

And then, finally, I spotted the Nest coming up on our left.

Jordan reached it first. She slid to a stop, sending mud splattering back at Luke and me.

‘Sorry.'

‘No worries,' I said, wiping the worst of it away from my face. I jumped off my bike and checked to make sure no-one else was coming along the path. ‘All right, let's go.'

The Nest is this rock formation that's basically one giant boulder with a couple of little boulders sitting on top of it. Looks nothing like a nest, but whatever. Jordan had decided that this would be a safe enough place for us and Reeve to have our little chat.

We lifted up our bikes and started dragging them off the path, into the bush.

I'd been hoping we wouldn't feel the rain so much once we were under the trees but, if anything, it was worse. All the trees did was collect all the little raindrops and dump them down on top of us in massive sheets.

We tracked around to the far side of the Nest, until we found an outcropping that jutted out far enough for us to cower under. Although by this point, it wasn't like we were getting any wetter.

There was no sign of Reeve. Nothing to do but stand there, staring out at the bushland, watching the rain pelt down all around us.

I tried to listen for footsteps, or the sound of someone moving through the trees, but it was impossible to hear anything over this ridiculous downpour.

‘How long do we wait?' I asked after a while.

‘We wait until he gets here,' said Luke firmly.

‘What if he's not coming?' I asked.

‘He's coming.'

I checked my watch. It was almost 4 p.m. ‘He might have already been and gone,' I said.

Jordan made a noise which I reckon was meant to tell me I was being insensitive. Like I wanted to be right about this.

But drowning out here in this rain wasn't going to help anyone.

I stepped away from the outcropping.

‘What are you doing?' Jordan snapped.

‘Just gonna do a quick circuit round the rock,' I said, holding my hands up. ‘Make sure Reeve isn't waiting around the other side.'

I walked off into the bush, feet squishing through the mud and leaves, dragging my right hand along the rock wall.

Thunder cracked above my head.

This was insane. Who would be dumb enough to –?

I swore loudly as a uniformed arm grabbed my shoulder.

I wrenched my body forward, pulling free of the guard's grip, and stumbled to the ground, sprawling on my hands and knees in the mud. My hand came down on a big stick. I grabbed it, lifted it above my head, and brought it around to –

I stopped in mid-swing.

‘Whoa. Easy there, mate.' Reeve was staring down at me, looking wary.

‘Oh,' I said. ‘Hey. How's it going?'

I dropped the stick, and Reeve reached out to pull me to my feet.

Jordan and Luke came running around the rock towards us. They saw Reeve and their faces lit up.

Reeve was soaking wet like the rest of us. He'd wrapped up his broken arm in a plastic bag or something, but it didn't look like that was doing him much good. The whole left side of his body was covered in mud, like he'd taken a dive off his bike on the way here.

‘This had better be good,' he said.