Sadie Sinclair's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

The principal kept Sadie waiting forty minutes and then sent her back to class without a word. That silence told her what she already knew. The paper was out, the story was loud, but the man whose name she had printed had not spoken. Without a quote from him, the fired-teacher angle was still just paper and a signature. She needed his voice on the record before the district buried the rest. She tried him at lunch. His classroom door was locked. She tried again after sixth period and caught the back of his jacket turning into the staff lot. She called his name once. He kept walking. His car door slammed before she reached the curb. At three she rode the city bus to the district office and climbed the stone steps between the two front columns. The lobby smelled like floor wax. A woman behind the counter looked up from a leaning stack of warning reports, grey hair frizzed around thick glasses, a rubber band on her wrist. "I need to speak to somebody about a vendor contract," Sadie said. She set a copy of the Friday paper on the counter. The headline faced up. The clerk read two lines and pushed the paper back like it burned. "Honey, I've been telling this building the foundation's cracked for six years. Nobody stops filing." Her eyes flicked to a closed door behind her. "He's in there. Signed out at two. Hasn't left." "Can I go in?" "I didn't see you." The clerk turned to her monitor. Sadie walked past the counter. She lifted her camera off her chest and let it hang ready. The door was cracked an inch. Inside, a man in a grey suit was feeding paper into a shredder. She recognized the shoulders from the hallway that morning. On his desk sat a folder she knew — the same tidy invoice on top, forty percent too high, his printed name at the bottom. She pushed the door open. The shredder kept running. "Do you have a comment on the invoices in your name?" He looked up. His hand did not stop feeding. "Get out." "On the record?" "I said get out of my office." He shoved the whole folder into the teeth. The blades caught and jammed. He swore. She raised the camera and took the picture. The flash caught his face, the jammed shredder, the corner of the invoice sticking out of the slot. "You just gave me your quote," she said. She was down the steps before he cleared his desk. On the bus she played the audio back on her phone. Get out of my office was clear. So was the mechanical whine of a shredder eating evidence. By the time she reached her front porch, her phone was buzzing. Mr. Sorrentino. Three missed calls. A text under them: The principal just resigned. They're coming for you next.