By the time I climbed the front steps of Crescent Bay High, I already regretted letting Oracle drag me into another scavenger hunt.
The bay wind pushed cold through my jacket, bringing the usual cocktail of salt air and faint hairspray from the salon down the hill. Somewhere near the waterfront, a soundcheck thumped under the day—bass ricocheting off yacht club glass, prepping for the next regatta fundraiser or faux-casual charity ball. Up here, under the brick facade and engraved donor plaques, everything pretended to be about learning.
Luz waited in front of the glass doors, hands shoved into the pockets of her gray blazer instead of her usual leather jacket. A police badge glinted at her hip, offset by sneakers that squeaked when she shifted her weight.
“You look official,” I said, pulling the door open.
“That’s the idea,” she replied. “Figured you might need backup with the librarian.”
“You say that like she’s worse than a Harrow,” I said.
Luz lifted an eyebrow. “I have seen this woman shush the school board chair mid-speech,” she said. “Do not underestimate.”
The entryway smelled like floor cleaner and old paper. We signed in at the front desk, the secretary shooting me the wary look I had come to recognize: Oh, it’s the podcaster. The one from TV.
“Library’s upstairs,” Luz said. “Archive room’s locked. She has to let us in.”
“And if your case file fairy dust doesn’t work?” I asked.
“Then I start waving around words like ‘evidence preservation,’” she said. “Relax. I’m not dragging you here without a plan.”
I wished that answered the bigger question—the one about whether I should keep following breadcrumbs from a voice that might belong to Juliet’s killer. Instead I followed Luz up the stairs, past trophy cases full of silver cups and regatta photos, past a faded flyer for the annual Prom Throwback fundraiser where adults cosplayed their teenage selves in 90s satin.
The library door sighed open into fluorescent light and dust. Old computers slept along one wall. The air tasted dry, like shredded paper and printer toner. At the back, a heavy wooden desk anchored the room, and behind it, the librarian sat guard in a cardigan the color of wet cement.
Her nameplate read MRS. KELLY.
She looked up when we approached, eyes flicking from Luz’s badge to my face, lingering a beat too long.
“Ms. Lane,” she said. “Back again.”
The last time I’d been here, I’d requested old prom photos and left with a lecture about privacy and “not turning my students into content.” I still heard the word content in my sleep.
“Afternoon, Mrs. Kelly,” Luz said, slipping into her mildest voice. “Detective Navarro. We called earlier.”
Mrs. Kelly gave her a curt nod. “You said you needed access to the archives,” she said. “For the Reeves matter.”
The way she said matter carried twenty-eight years of gossip and fatigue.
“That’s right,” Luz said. “We’re focusing on 1997 records. Yearbooks, especially.”
Mrs. Kelly’s gaze came back to me. “The yearbooks are school property,” she said. “Not props. I won’t have them cut up for a podcast segment.”
Heat climbed my neck. “I don’t cut up evidence for segments,” I said. “Not anymore.” I unclenched my jaw. “We think there might be something important hidden in one of them. Something someone wanted kept safe.”
“Someone’s been watching too many movies,” she said.
“Maybe,” Luz said. “But we’d like to check. It stays in my custody. If we find anything relevant, it goes into the case file.”
Mrs. Kelly eyed her badge again. “The case was closed,” she said.
“It’s not closed now,” Luz said, voice still calm. “I have authorization from my captain to review archival materials. I can get you a copy of the memo.”
A muscle ticked in Mrs. Kelly’s cheek. She pushed her rolling chair back with a small squeak and stood.
“I remember when those kids picked up their yearbooks,” she said. “They ran their hands over their faces like it proved they existed. It broke my heart when Juliet’s mother came for her copy alone.” She turned toward a door marked STAFF ONLY. “You damage a single page,” she added, “and I will personally file a complaint.”
“Understood,” Luz said.
I swallowed and followed. The staff room held a metal cabinet the size of a teenager, its doors wired shut with a padlock. Mrs. Kelly dug out a ring of keys, the metal clinking like wind chimes in a storm.
While she fumbled with the lock, I stared at the cabinet, thinking of Oracle’s line: faces printed in ink. Sweat prickled under my shirt. I still half-believed we’d pull out nothing but dust and old annotations about the math club.
The lock clicked. Mrs. Kelly swung the doors open to reveal rows of identical spines, labeled by year. The 1997 books stood in a neat line, glass-rose icon stamped on the navy covers, the symbol that had followed me into adulthood and onto podcast cover art.
She pulled out three copies and set them on a rolling cart. The glossy covers caught the light like waves.
“You may use the back table,” she said. “Gloves are there.” She nodded at a box of thin cotton. “I’ll be at my desk. I expect everything returned.”
“Thank you,” I said.
She studied my face again, whatever she thought hidden under two decades of professional neutrality, then walked away.
Luz nudged my arm. “Gloves,” she murmured. “No fingerprints. No accusations that you planted anything.”
I snapped on a pair, the fabric whispering against my skin. Luz did the same. Together we lifted the yearbooks and carried them to the table under the high windows. Outside, the cliffs framed the edge of the view, postcard-perfect in the pale midday light, hiding the ugly rock shelf beneath where kids used to sneak with cigarettes and cheap beer.
“Oracle said ‘look behind us,’” I said. “If this works, I’m going to be insufferable.”
“If this works,” Luz said, “we’re taking that tape straight to evidence. No detours to your studio.”
“I know,” I said. “I can want justice without turning Juliet’s last words into a hook.”
Even as I said it, my brain started drafting episode titles. I pressed my palms flat on the table until the urge quieted.
We opened the first book. The pages exhaled a smell of aged glue and ink, that particular yearbook scent of time and hair gel. Luz flipped to the senior portraits, fingers moving with the casual speed of someone who had spent years combing files for patterns. Names rolled past: ANDERS, BENNETT, CALDER, HARROW.
“Here,” she said.
Juliet Reeves smiled up at us from the page, frozen at eighteen in black-and-white. Her hair fell in polished waves, her shoulders straight. Underneath, the caption: ‘Every story deserves a happy ending.’ Whoever chose that quote must have thought they were very clever.
The photo looked normal. No ripples, no bulges, just glossy paper over cardstock.
“Check the others,” I said.
We opened the second copy to the same spread. Juliet’s face again, but this time my fingertip caught on a tiny ridge along the edge of her picture. I traced the border. The gloss lifted a fraction where the glue met the page, like someone had pried it up once and pressed it back down in a hurry.
Luz leaned closer. “You see that?” she asked.
“Yeah.” I glanced at the bottom edge of the book. The lamination on the cover near the spine had a hairline gap too, like the layers had been flexed. “Water damage?” I asked. “Humidity?”
“Could be,” she said. “But look.”
She angled the book so light from the window skimmed the page. A faint tide line ran across the lower half of Juliet’s photo and into the margin, a watermark arc you only caught at the right angle. It looked like the book had sat briefly in a shallow puddle before someone yanked it out.
“Flooded basement?” I asked.
“Or a dock,” Luz said quietly.
My pulse stuttered. Oracle had written about the service dock, the generator shed, the path. Had someone carried this book there? Hidden something wet inside and then brought it back to school, sliding it back into the line like nothing had changed?
I pulled the third copy and flipped to Juliet. No watermark. No lifted edge. Just that careful smile and the offensive quote.
“So we have one weird twin,” I said. “What do we do, call Mrs. Kelly over and ask for permission to dissect her baby?”
Luz chewed her cheek for a moment. “I have a better idea,” she said. “We ask her to supervise.”
She walked back to the desk, where Mrs. Kelly was tapping at an ancient keyboard. They spoke in low tones; I caught the words “anomaly,” “page separation,” and “evidence.” Mrs. Kelly glanced over at me, then at the cliff line in the window, then sighed so hard her cardigan shivered.
She joined us at the table.
“I see the swelling,” she said, leaning down. “Could be moisture from the roof leak we had in ‘03.”
“But only in this copy?” I asked.
She pressed her lips together. “Books live odd lives,” she said. “Students spill things. They drop them. They dog-ear. That doesn’t make a murder mystery.”
Luz’s voice softened. “If we’re wrong, all you lose is a little glue,” she said. “If we’re right, this could matter a lot. For Juliet. For her family.”
Mrs. Kelly’s throat worked. I watched her fight some internal PTA demon, some memory of Katie Reeves in the hallway with mascara running.
“I have an archival spatula,” she said. “We can lift the backing without tearing. If there’s nothing underneath, you put it back and never tell anyone I allowed this. Understood?”
“Understood,” we both said.
She disappeared into the staff room and returned with a thin metal tool that looked like a palette knife mated with a letter opener. I stepped back, palms slick inside my gloves.
“Hold the page steady,” she said.
Luz placed her fingers on the margin. Mrs. Kelly slid the spatula under the bottom edge of Juliet’s photo, working slowly, millimeter by millimeter. The sound of adhesive giving way—soft tacky pops—set my teeth on edge. Sweat trickled down my spine.
“I swear, if Oracle made me vandalize a yearbook for nothing,” I muttered.
“Shh,” Mrs. Kelly said without looking up.
The gloss lifted further. A faint chemical smell rose, old glue waking up. As the backing peeled back, a dark rectangle flickered beneath.
My breath hitched. “Is that—”
“Don’t touch,” Mrs. Kelly snapped.
She eased the photo up until we saw it clearly: a tiny clear-plastic microcassette, the kind my mother’s salon answering machine used to swallow, taped flat against the cardstock with yellowed strips of Scotch tape. No label, no writing, just two small reels frozen mid-spin.
The room went very quiet. Down the hill, a wave crashed against the unseen rock shelf, the vibration traveling up through the foundation.
“Oh my God,” I whispered.
Luz exhaled slowly. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. That’s… something.”
Mrs. Kelly stared at it like it might bite. “I cataloged these books myself,” she said. “I would have noticed if—”
“Who has access to this cabinet?” Luz asked gently.
Mrs. Kelly blinked. “Just me. Former librarian before me. Custodial staff with keys, I suppose. But this was shelved with the others. No one’s requested the ‘97 books in years except you, Ms. Lane.”
My throat tightened. “Someone hid this expecting that someday the school would protect it,” I said. “Or at least not throw it away.”
Or, a harsher thought whispered, they hid it knowing that if the wrong people found it, it would vanish quietly into a Harrow storage unit.
Luz pulled out her phone to snap photos: the tape in situ, the edges of the lifted photo, Mrs. Kelly’s spatula in frame for scale. Then she reached into her pocket and produced a small evidence bag, smooth and crinkling under the library light.
“I’m going to remove it now,” she said. “Everyone okay with that?”
My heart pounded so hard I heard it in my ears. “Yes,” I said, though part of me wanted to scream that we should leave it right there, protected by cardboard and nostalgia.
Mrs. Kelly nodded, shoulders tight. “Do it properly,” she said. “Please.”
Luz peeled the old tape away with the spatula’s edge and plucked the microcassette free, holding it up between thumb and forefinger. Up close I saw a faint line of ink on the plastic, rubbed nearly away by time—a single letter, maybe a J, maybe nothing.
Luz slid it into the evidence bag and sealed the top. The sound of the adhesive strip pressed down felt final.
“We need to hear it,” I said.
“We will,” she said. “In a controlled environment. Chain of custody. Documented.”
“There’s a media lab two doors down,” Mrs. Kelly said quietly. “If this is what you think it is, I don’t want it leaving this building before you know.”
Luz hesitated, then nodded. “All right,” she said. “We’ll use school equipment. One listen. No recordings on your phone, Mara.”
“I know,” I repeated, though my fingers twitched toward my pocket.
Mrs. Kelly led us to a small AV room that smelled like dust and overheated plastic. Old televisions and projectors lined the shelves like retired soldiers. She dug through a cabinet and produced a microcassette recorder so ancient it might have belonged to a 90s journalism class.
“Does this even work?” I asked.
“We used it for language lab until about five years ago,” she said. “It worked then.”
Luz clicked the evidence bag open just enough to slide the cassette out. Her gloved hands looked steadier than mine would have. She placed the tape into the recorder and closed the cover with a gentle snap.
“Ready?” she asked.
My stomach rolled. This tape had lived behind Juliet’s smiling face for almost three decades. Whoever hid it had trusted cardboard over cops, ink over institutions. And now I was about to run it through a machine, potentially the first person to hear what she meant by someone will hear.
“Do it,” I said.
Luz pressed PLAY.
At first nothing, just the hiss of old magnetic tape waking up. Then a low hum of music rose, warbly but recognizable: a 90s downtempo track, bass distorted. Voices layered on top—laughing, shouting, the slurred vowels of drunk teenagers.
“Turn it up,” I whispered.
She nudged the volume. A boy’s voice cut through, half-singing the hook to a song I knew from those prom-night playlists the subreddit obsessed over. Another voice yelled something about the dock. The recorder’s tiny speaker crackled.
“That’s definitely outside,” Luz murmured. “Hear the water?”
Under the noise, I could make out a steady rush like distant surf, the same sound that lived under every memory of our cliffs and rock shelf. My chest tightened. This wasn’t a reenactment; this was the night itself, trapped on plastic.
The music dipped. Footsteps crunched on gravel or boards. A male voice, closer now, said, “You don’t have to go down there, Jules.”
The nickname twisted my insides.
Then, faint but clear, a girl’s voice: Juliet. I knew it in my bones before my ears caught the words. Not the bright, rehearsed tone from old school plays, but lower, hoarse.
“Keep it on,” she said to whoever held the recorder. “If this goes wrong, at least someone will hear.”
The room jolted around me. My hand flew to my mouth. The tape hissed on, drunk laughter rising again like a wave, but those words hung in the stale AV air, heavier than any bassline outside.
Juliet had known.
She had stood on Harrow Island, near that treacherous edge where kids smoked and the town pretended they didn’t, and she had spoken into a microphone the exact prayer I had built an entire show around: that someone would listen.
Luz pressed STOP.
“Why did you do that?” I rasped. “We need to hear the rest.”
“We will,” she said, eyes fixed on the little machine. “But I need this logged at the station before we accidentally damage it. You heard her. This is evidence, not content.”
Evidence. Not content.
My fingers dug into the back of a metal chair. Under my grip, the paint flaked. Outside, the cliffs sat in their perfect brochure pose, hiding the violence under their postcard surface. Inside, a dead girl’s voice vibrated in my bones, reaching across decades and plastic.
I stared at the cassette, at the reels that had finally spun for me, and one thought shoved past all the others:
If Juliet hid her proof in a yearbook because she didn’t trust the grown-ups in charge, what right did I have to decide which parts of her last words would be heard by the world—and which parts would disappear into another filing cabinet with someone else’s lock?