Haze by Erin Thomas Read Free Book Online

That’s the best part of front crawl—when your body feels it was made to move through water. I wasn’t fighting anyone’s wake now. I focused. Swim . Almost there.
    End of lane. I hit the wall. Surfaced.
    Practice ended. Coach called us over. Our first meet was still more than a month away, so there was plenty of time to decide who would compete in what event, he said. He had a good feeling about this year. If we played our cards right and stayed strong, we had a shot at the statewide championship. He looked at Steven when he said this.
    I was halfway out of the pool area before he finished talking. The other guys made for the showers. I went straight to the locker room. Steven’s varsity jacket hung on the hook at the end of the aisle.
    I swiped his keys out of his pocket, then dressed faster than I ever had before, yanking my pants up over wet legs. I ran out the door.
    I reeked of chlorine, but I had the keys.
    I nodded hello to the two boys I met on the way to Steven’s room. My hair was dripping. Steven had five keys on his keychain. One was the key to his BMW. I let myself what-if about that one for half a second before I got back to the business of unlocking his door.
    The room was scary neat. Hotel-room neat. As head boy, Steven had no roommate, but even so, shouldn’t there have been socks and sweatpants lying around? The room was perfectly clean. The burgundy bedspread looked like it had been ironed into place, and even the pillowcase was smooth. There was a spiral-bound notebook on his desk alongside his computer. Nothing else. Everything was lined up at right angles to the edge of the desk. The chair was pushed in. Books were lined up on shelves according to size. There were no pictures of friends thumb-tacked to the bulletin board, just a class schedule, a school calendar and a swim-team roster. No posters.
    The room even smelled kind of bleachy, as if someone had used cleaning products in it recently. I shivered.
    I closed the door behind me. It was risky. I wouldn’t know if Steven was coming, and I couldn’t get out easily. But that was better than someone seeing me in Steven’s room and telling him about it.
    If Jeremy’s laptop was here, it wasn’t in plain sight. I checked under the bed. Nothing, not even a dust bunny on the hardwood floor. I started my search. The desk drawers were compulsively organized. And when I got to the closet, I shivered again. The blazers were on the left, all facing the same way. The shirts were next, arranged by color. Then the pants. They were arranged by color too. Everything was lined up. There was nothing wrong with a clean room, but this? This creeped me out. Even Mom wasn’t this organized.
    I exhaled. How long had I been here? I had to get out before Steven got his hands on a spare key. I moved to the door and listened, making sure there were no footsteps in the hall when I opened the door.
    I made it as far as the stairs before I met Steven. He held a set of spare room keys from the front desk, complete with a large, orange keychain. His real keys were heavy in my pocket. I made a fist around them. I would have to find a place to ditch them outside, somewhere between the pool and the main building when no one was looking.
    I nodded as we passed. “Good practice.”
    He nodded back but stopped walking. His eyes narrowed. I felt his stare as I continued down the stairs.

chapter thirteen
    I texted Abby that evening to tell her I hadn’t found anything in Steven’s room. She was going to visit Jeremy after school, so we wouldn’t have a chance to talk. Droid and I spent the time after study hall blowing each other up in an online game. He kicked my butt as usual. Maybe it would make him feel better about not making the swim team.
    Tuesday after school, Abby texted me to meet her out front and bring my bike. I didn’t bother to hide my grin.
    â€œGirl Sherlock?” Droid asked.
    I nodded. Maybe we