Social Menace [boyxboy]

Social Menace {5}

                I couldn't stop thinking about the riddle.

                Tyson and Farren had talked about hiring the service and the right price, so twenty probably meant $20 was the cost of the service. But there had to be more to it than that. Somehow, out of those five words, kids knew the price of the service and how to contact them.

                It was Monday, and one of my teachers was currently going on and on with a lecture. My focus was gone though, caught on this riddle.

                It had to be difficult enough to figure out that bullies wouldn't be able to crack it, but simple enough that victims could. And in a private school with such high education standards, these were some pretty intelligent bullies.

                There were plenty of spots around school with the color blue, so that didn't help much. Some of the bathrooms had blue tiles on the floor, some of the classrooms had blue walls, and plenty of rooms around the school had blue banners or paintings. The gym had a lot of banners with bl-

                My eyes widened a little.

                The gym.

                Of course. There were no cameras in the locker rooms. And, at least in the boy's locker room, there was a blue stripe pattern that ran along the walls.

                I checked the time. I had a study hall in two periods, so I'd have a chance to check out the locker room during that.

                It was just a guess right now, but logically, it made sense. With no cameras in the locker rooms, kids could use this service without fear of having it traced back to them. The bullies in this school had plenty of targets, so it would be hard to know who had retaliated.

                I'd even seen Drew shoving a few other kids around. Maybe...

                I shook my head a little. No, no, I was trying to be a good person here. I wasn't going to hire a revenge service just because Drew liked to push me around. I was just curious, that was all.

                When my study hall finally came around, I got a pass to the locker room and went down there. I waited a few minutes to make sure no one would be in there getting dressed for class before heading in.

                Sure enough, it was empty in there. The blue stripe pattern went around all the walls, twisting its way over the lockers.

                "Feeling blue, twenty will do," I muttered to myself.

                I searched around for a blue locker, or a locker with anything blue on it. But there weren't any. There were several small, blue banners around the locker room, but I couldn't find anything that indicated the riddle or the service itself.

                Good job Nolan, waste your study hall searching around the gym. The only twenty I was spending was twenty minutes of my precious time when I could've been doing homework.

                "Wait," I whispered. Twenty will do.

                I searched the lockers until I found the 200s. I found locker 220 but there was no lock on it and nothing inside of it. I looked around the lockers, frustration starting to gnaw at me. What was I missing?

                I slumped against the lockers with a sigh. Maybe it was in the girl's locker room. Maybe students snuck in afterschool to hire this service. Or maybe I'd gotten the riddle wrong.