There wasn’t a sound in the principal’s office.
Nobody was there, and the place was full of a subtle stillness, the gray of the sky outside casting only a dim light through the window. What little paraphernalia lay on the shelves along the walls was covered in the faintest lair of dust, the kind gained from simply not having been moved in a few months. Papers were neatly organized on the desk that faced the door, several pens arranged in a row in the bottom right corner next to a single polished surgical scalpel. A clock ticked behind the chair, the only thing on the blank beige wall besides a calendar for the year 1995, absent a diploma or pictures to mark some semblance of identity to the room’s owner. Its hands moved, but if there was any ticking, it was swallowed by the silence.
The air only moved when a screw fell from the overhead ceiling vent and onto the dark carpeting below with a quiet thump.
“I told you to be careful with those.”
The other three screws fell seconds later with an equally quiet impact, but small fingers grasped the vent cover, holding it in place before gently pulling it up and inside the vent. A figure dropped down, the impact louder but cushioned by the roll they made upon landing. They grabbed one of the chairs from the side of the desk closest to the door and moved it to below the vent, just in time for another to drop down onto it.
“I was. Are we really going to put them back in before we go?”
Michael Jay looked up at his friend from under a fringe of dark hair and let go of the chair. “That’s why we have that attachment on the screwdriver.” He looked around, surveying the room, and immediately moved towards the back wall. “There should be more things here.”
“Okay, yeah, that’s pretty clear.” James Donovick, his friend, ran a hand through his own curly hair as he got down. “Aw, man, this shirt’s all dirty.”
“It’ll wash out.”
“I don’t know, dude, that vent was nasty and this shirt’s white. When do you think they cleaned them?”
“I don’t care.” Michael looked down at his own sweater, dark enough that stains of any kind just blended in, and back up at the clock. “It’s not ticking.”
“Do you think it’s fake?”
“Could just be electronic.”
James nodded and moved, walking over to where Michael was and shifting the leather office chair over a few inches towards Michael before pulling open several drawers and rifling through them. Michael stood up on the chair, ignoring the creaking as his boots dug into the leather, and gently reached out towards the clock, hands brushing its sides. The second hand was moving, but near-silently, and in perfectly even ticks. A battery powered clock, then.
The chair wobbled as Michael removed the clock from the wall, his balance unsure, but the noise was lost in the rustling of papers as James kept digging through the desk. Michael moved the clock behind him and poked James with it, waiting for him to take it out of his hands before returning to the thing on the wall. A stick-on hook to hold the clock in place sat above a tear in the wallpaper, exposing not the cinderblock of the middle school, but a metal door with a dial in here.
Michael smiled. “James, look at this.”
The shuffling of papers paused, and a gasp came out from behind him. “That has to be it.” Even without looking, Michael knew he was excited. “That has to be something. Oh, dude, we’re going to be the coolest if we found something big. You, uh, you crack that, and I’ll keep looking.”
The rustling resumed, and Michael leaned in, shifting his footing for stability. The wallpaper was haphazardly torn around the safe door, as if it had been placed and then crudely removed to give access to the safe, and if he looked he could see the cinderblocks underneath in tiny gaps between metal and wallpaper. Hinges poked out of the metal, and a small divot seemed to be what served as a handle. The door was slightly scratched, worn from minor aging, and the faintest tinge of rust marked the hinges. He reached out and slid his fingers into the divot, pulling out as a test, only to shift the chair a bit as the door opened without any resistance.
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Michael felt himself tilt back, only for a set of hands to catch him on his sides. He patted James to let go once he was stable, and the hands moved to hold the chair in place as Michael reached in and removed the small stack of papers inside.
He stepped down from the chair and turned, faced with the scattered mess of official school documents all over the desk and floor. He glanced at James, who shrugged. “It’s all about report card filings and people getting in trouble. We’ve heard of everybody that’s in here anyway.”
“You didn’t find anything?”
“No, it’s all pretty normal. Nothing people would get excited about. But let’s see what’s in there!”
He made a motion like grabbing for the papers, but Michael pulled them away, setting the stack down on the side of the desk further from James before beginning to flip through them. His eyes raced down the papers, taking them in before flipping to the next, dashing through dozens of pages before his actions began to ever slightly slow down, smile beginning to slide from his face.
“Anything in there?” James asked.
Michael shook his head, movements visibly slower now. “No. It’s all just stuff about the school’s budget, and something about hiring new teachers. It’s financial gibberish.”
“No way, man, there’s got to be something.”
A few more pages, and Michael stepped back. “No. There’s nothing in there.”
Silence lingered for a moment, confusion filling the air, and James began digging back through the papers. “No, no, there’s got to be something. He kept this stuff in a hidden safe, and if there were finances there would be an accountant, right? Maybe it’s code or something.”
“The school system in Ravenville isn’t big enough for an accountant.” Michael blinked, a bit of awareness returning to his eyes as he glanced at the clock, his smile now gone. “We should hurry. Lunch is almost over, and the monitors are going to realize something’s off when they don’t see us.”
“It’s Mrs. Tatie on that today right? We can spare some time.” James dropped to his knees, digging through the lower drawers on the desk. “Come on, dude, there has to be something in there. Mr. Peel has to know something.”
The inexorable tick of the second hand held Michael’s gaze fast for a second longer before he broke off and moved, bending down to pick the vent’s screws back up off the carpet.
“No. We need to leave. There’s nothing here.”
The words were half-whispered, haunted by the shuddering echo of disappointment.
James pulled one more drawer out from the desk, reaching in to see if there was anything left inside, and huffed in annoyance at the emptiness within. “Okay, okay,” he grumbled, climbing up the chair and taking a breath before jumping up, his hands slamming into the vent with a metal clatter. “We need to come back at some point.”
“Nothing to come back to,” Michael muttered. He slipped the screws into his pocket before standing on the chair and jumping up, grabbing James’s outstretched hand and swinging himself into the vent with relatively less noise. James began moving the vent back into place as soon as Michael was steady within the vent, the thin metal being extended down through the hole and tilted to line back up with the holes on the lower panel of the vent itself. Michael reached down, thinly threading the screws through the grate and into their holes as James’ other hand reached out with the screwdriver and began screwing them back in from behind.
“Do you think we should try to go for the high school principal next year?” James’s attempts to patch up the silence were hollow in the metallic echoes of the vent. “They might know more. Mr. Peel knows a lot, but if he doesn’t know anything, then we might need to go looking.”
“If he didn’t know anything, why would anybody else?” Michael whispered back. “I don’t think there’s anything to know. If the school was hiding any secrets, we’d have found them.”
“Well, we still snuck into Mr. Peel’s office.” James’s smile was dulled, but still there as he finished with the final screw. “We’re doing pretty well. Everybody’s going to think that we’re so cool after this, Mikey, it’s so worth it.”
“Yeah, sure.”
James awkwardly turned and began to crawl away, a quiet thumping coming from his every movement, concealed by the growing clamor of other kids in the halls outside. Michael sat there for a moment longer, staring at the mess of papers through the vents, still searching for something that could be there before turning around himself and moving to follow behind James, his body only going through the motions of stealth.
His disappointment sat in the quiet huff of his breath with every movement, looking for any way to express itself.
He had hoped for more.