Grayshore College's locker rooms were off-limits after Maya's death, sealed behind yellow police tape and a flimsy plastic chain. That didn't stop Tara.
She waited until dusk.
By 7:42 p.m., the campus was near silent. Only the sound of distant traffic and buzzing fluorescent lights echoed through the halls. She wore black from head to toe, her long hair tucked beneath a hoodie. Not that she cared about being seen—people rarely noticed her unless she made them.
The door to the women's locker room wasn't even locked properly. Just taped. As if they expected no one to care.
Tara slipped in.
The room smelled of bleach, but faintly—like someone tried and failed to scrub away something deeper. The overhead lights flickered, casting shadows over the row of pale blue lockers. Her sneakers squeaked against the floor as she walked toward the far end. That's where Maya's body had been found. Locker 41.
Tara stood still. Let the silence settle.
Then she crouched, scanning the edges of the locker door.
A faint mark.
Scratches.
Like someone had forced it closed. Not locked from inside—locked from outside. That detail was buried in the report, glossed over as "irrelevant."
Her eyes narrowed. "They didn't see it."
She opened her bag, pulling out her small flashlight and a pair of gloves. Her hands moved methodically, brushing along the base of the locker until she found it.
A torn piece of paper wedged beneath the metal lip.
Carefully, she unfolded it. Just a corner, but written in red ink was a shaky sentence:
"He knows. He watches when they think he's not there."
Tara's breath caught.
She wasn't imagining this. Maya had tried to leave a message. And no one listened.
Saturday, 11:10 a.m.
At the library, Tara sat across from her friend Jessie, who was chewing her pencil nervously. Jessie didn't like being dragged into "dead girl investigations," but she also knew better than to ignore Tara's instincts.
"You went in there alone?" Jessie hissed.
Tara nodded. "They cleaned it. Poorly. Maya left a note."
Jessie paled. "You should tell someone."
"I did," Tara said flatly. "They ignored me."
Jessie tapped her fingers anxiously. "Okay, but why Maya? Why would someone kill her?"
"I don't know yet. But this wasn't random."
Tara flipped open her notebook. She'd drawn a rough timeline of Maya's last known movements. "She was tutoring someone three nights a week. English lit. I'm guessing a male. Someone she didn't trust at first, then started to. Enough to be alone with him."
Jessie frowned. "You're guessing."
"No. I'm deducing. She changed her routine the week before she died. Took longer routes to class. Skipped her usual study spot. She was hiding something. Or from someone."
"You're starting to sound like—like some Netflix detective."
"I know," Tara said. "But I'm the only one who's paying attention."
Monday, 3:33 p.m.
Tara walked into the campus counseling center pretending to need an appointment.
Instead, she walked straight into the file room. No lock. No guard. Typical.
She flipped through intake reports. Most were meaningless. But then, tucked near the back, she found Maya's file. Just a single report filed two weeks before her death:
"Male tutor behaving inappropriately. Repeated boundary violations. Claims not taken seriously by department."
No name listed.
Just one note:
"Student denies it's romantic. Claims she feels watched."
Tara stared at the page, heart thudding. This wasn't just a feeling. This wasn't suicide.
This was a cover-up.
Tuesday, 9:47 p.m.
She made her first mistake that night.
Walking home in the dark, Tara noticed someone behind her. Not close—but just close enough. She crossed the street. The shadow followed.
She didn't panic. Tara never panicked.
Instead, she cut through the alley behind the library, climbed the metal fire escape like she had done a hundred times before, and crouched on the rooftop.
She waited. Breath steady.
Below, a man stepped into the alley. Hood up. Hands in pockets. He looked around, confused. Like he'd lost her.
Tara watched him for three minutes before he left.
She didn't see his face. But she saw his shoes.
White. Dirty. Torn on the left side.
Remember that.
Tara always remembered details.