Red Herring ✔️

30. Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

Boiling hot dread coiled in her belly like a provoked rattlesnake, gearing up the courage to attack but preferring to stay camouflaged in the sand. 

Immediately, Mazie dropped to her knees and ducked her head underneath the windowsill to hide her silhouette, outlined by the moonlight. In the eerie silence, Mazie heard a car door open and slam shut. Heavy footsteps on the pavement. A ringing call on speaker phone. The heavy sound of her crushed breathing as she precariously clutched the water jugs to her chest as not to spill any water on the ground. 

Anxiety and fear quarreled in her chest, seeking control. Her hands jittered with nervous energy. Mazie glanced around, looking for a hiding place. What if the officer came inside? What if he came looking for her? What if he found Christian in the office making copies? 

She had to alarm Christian. Somehow, she had to make it back to the office without the police officer seeing. Which was nearly impossibly considering she would have to make her way across the hallway in front of the main entrance to the school to reach the office. 

Every worst case scenario ran through her head at the same time, thrusting her heart rate into overdrive. Her palms sweated around the water jugs, slicking off the clear plastic. Worst of all, she couldn't talk herself into getting up off the dusty floor and finding a hiding spot especially because she heard the police officer jiggling the locked doors of the front entrance to the lobby. 

"Hey, yeah, I'm responding to the alarm that was tripped at Colonel Holden High School. No cars. No suspicious activity." 

Mazie forced herself to set the jugs down, squat on her haunches, and peek over the windowsill outside to spy on the officer. 

The paunchy guy with a rotund belly flicked the phone off of speaker mode and pressed the cell to his ear, angling the receiver away from his mouth in a total classic dad move, posing with one hand on his hip and one hip cocked to the side, rolling his head back on the top of his spine as if it were terribly painful to work up the energy to deal with this sort of issue on a weeknight when he could be munching on donuts in his cruiser under the privacy of night. Overall, longtime occupants considered Hollywood a very safe place to live in Oregon with high-speed efficient first responders like Mr. Policeman outside Holden High, unexpectedly cruising around the city on a quiet night like tonight to stop crime in its tracks. 

And they were the crime. And they were on the tracks. 

And she wanted to freak out. 

Fumbling with all of her pockets, Mazie searched for her phone, forgetting in all the haste exactly which pocket she stored it in. "Come on, come on, come on," she whispered to herself. She checked outside again. The police officer waited at the front entrance, talking into his phone with animated hands. 

"Nothing here, man. You sure the alarm was tripped?"

 Finally, she located her phone, and, with shaky hands, spotted Christian's contact before she punched the screen furiously with her finger to call him. Lowering the volume, Mazie propped the phone up to her ear and listened to the monotonous ringing all while Christian didn't answer. "I told you to keep your phone on!" She said to herself. 

When she peered outside again, the police officer, with his cruiser stalled at the curb and the lights shining mercilessly into the night, was peaking into the school with his hands cupped around his eyes to ward off the glare. Mazie hung up the phone and called Christian again. Somewhere, she heard the copy machine whizzing. 

"I don't see anything. Nothing looks weird. Can't hear anything going on either." 

The officer continued to chat to the person on the other end of his phone call while he glanced around, circling the property from where he stood. Of course, there was nothing to see. He reported the truth. At least, Christian had done one thing right. Their trespassing wasn't totally obvious.