She Heard Nothing novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Star

Abby and Lottie search everything she owns and find a hidden microphone inside the necklace Sabina gave her. Lottie spots Sabina's phone: two people are listening.

After lights-out, Lottie and I met on the back stairs of the girls' building with one flashlight and my gear bag.

"Everything you wear or carry," Lottie whispered. "One at a time. We find the thing."

"It could be nothing."

"It's never nothing. My brother put a tracker in my backpack once and told me it was a good-luck charm."

We started with my cap.

Lottie ran her fingers along the band and the brim and found only sweat and a fraying seam.

My boots had nothing in the heels, and my belt had nothing in the buckle.

I turned out the pockets of my jacket, then the big pocket of my duffel, then the lining.

Lottie picked up Gran's tin of lemon drops and looked at me.

"Open it?"

"It's just candy."

I thumbed the lid up.

Six lemon drops rolled in the bottom, and under the lid the old paper lining was still glued flat.

Gran had told me once, in her last month, never to peel that lining unless I truly needed what was under it.

I had not asked her what she meant.

Lottie shook the tin, sniffed it, and handed it back.

"Nothing."

I closed the lid and held it against my chest for a second.

That left one thing.

I took the silver star off over my head and laid it flat in my palm under the flashlight.

It was no bigger than a quarter, with five neat points and a thin seam along the back.

Sabina had given it to me at registration, in a little white box, with a card that said welcome to the best four years.

I had cried a little, standing there, because no one had given me a present since Gran's funeral.

"It's pretty," Lottie said, in a small voice. "It's really pretty."

"Pry the seam."

Her thumbnail slid into the crack, and the back of the star popped open with a click.

Inside was a gray disc the size of a lentil, with two threads of copper wire running to a flat battery no thicker than a coin.

We stared at it.

"That's a microphone," Lottie said. "That's a little tiny microphone."

I had worn it every day since registration.

I had worn it in the shower line and in my bunk, and the night I cried into my pillow about Gran.

I felt sick.

"Don't break it," I said. "Not yet."

"Why not? She's been spying on you!"

"Because I want her to keep believing it works. Test it with me."

Lottie looked at me for a long moment, then nodded fast.

"Okay. You stay here and talk into it. I'll go sit in the bunk room, near her."

"Watch her phone if you can."

"I always watch everybody's phone," Lottie said. "I'm nosy. It's my one skill."

She tiptoed down the stairs, and I sat alone in the dark with the star held up near my mouth.

For a moment I could not think of a single word to say.

Then I whispered, very clearly, "Sabina smells like a wet sock."

Nothing.

I waited.

"And she cheats at card games," I whispered. "And her braid is fake."

My phone buzzed against my knee.

It was Lottie.

She just sat bolt upright in bed!!! She grabbed her phone and held it under the blanket!!

I read it twice, with my heart going hard.

Another text came in.

Her face is SO red

I pressed a hand over my mouth to keep from laughing out loud, and my eyes stung a little all the same.

It was real.

It was the star, and it was the girl who'd smiled at me for three days.

Lottie's feet came pounding up the stairs a few minutes later.

She dropped to her knees on the step below me, panting.

"Okay, don't be mad, I did something."

"What did you do?"

"I dropped my pillow near her bed, and I leaned down to get it, and I looked at her phone."

"Lottie."

"I had to! There's a screen with a little gray line on it, and it was jumping around while you were talking. I could tell it was you."

She gripped my wrist.

"And there were two little icons under the line. Two, like headphones. One said she was the one connected."

"And the other?"

"The other said someone else was listening too, from the first night."

I felt the stairwell go very quiet.

"Who?" I asked.

"I couldn't read the name," Lottie whispered. "She turned the phone over. But it wasn't hers."

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