“We better hurry and find her. We can’t risk her finding the swapplet, if it isn’t too late for that. We have to do damage control now!”, Ethan said sternly.
“Fine”, sighed Lilly. “Let’s just hope, we don’t get into trouble. But how do you suppose we find her? We can’t possibly go from class to class and look for her.”
Ethan grinned. “Easy. We have her tablet, right? Please tell me she is a lazy person and doesn’t lock her tablet with a pin or something like that.”
“How can it be easy if we have to get through her swipe lock…”, sighed Lilly.
“Any better ideas? Just give me the thing”, he said, stretching out his arm and grabbing the tablet. Lilly, out of any useful ideas, simply gave the device to him and waited for what her friend might do. Said friend began swiping on the tablet, trying various combinations. Just when there was one last attempt left before permanently locking the device, Ethan got lucky and found the right pattern. Triumphantly he looked over to Lilly and held the device victoriously in front of him.
“See? Easy”, he said.
“We really have a different understanding of the word easy… So, what now?”
“Now, my fair lady”, he began, trying to sound intellectual. “We will look if she has a time table or something like that in here. Like for example this one.” He turned the device, so she could see his discovery.
Lilly shook her head. “Your plan basically is getting lucky and apparently you have all the fool’s luck in the world. So let's see... She apparently has P.E. right now. Poor thing, P.E. in the morning is no fun.”
“Well, our luck”, said Ethan. “We might get into contact with her without making too much of a buzz. Hopefully, she didn't notice anything so far.”
“Why even bother talking to her?”, asked Lilly. “She won't have it with her during class, so let's sneak into the locker room and take the device. If she did find out, she might have thought it was only her imagination or something.”
Ethan was excited and terrified at the same time to break into the girl’s locker room. On one hand, like every other boy in school, he was interested in getting in there. The forbidden land. On the other hand, if they do get caught, his punishment would be more severe than usual.
“So, we have to basically look through the whole locker room to find her locker and then see if she has the tablet”, sighed Ethan. “Sounds easy enough…”
“Luckily for us, I still know what her backpack looks like. It will be a piece of cake”, smiled Lilly, now gotten her enthusiasm back.
Ethan nodded slowly, still dreading what might happen. The two then started to walk to the gym. The hallways cleared pretty soon and half way on their journey they were the only students.
“If we meet the hall monitor, we’ll simply say we have to hurry”, whispered Ethan. “This excuse won’t work on our way back though.”
“You worry too much, Ethan”, whispered Lilly back.
“And you worry too little, ‘Susan’!”, replied Ethan angrily and stopped, looking right at Lilly. “You are far too careless with everything! All you think about is swapping here, swapping there! Even now you don’t seem to understand the whole situation. Can you even imagine what might happen if this thing falls into the wrong hands? Or what some people would do to get this into their hands? Your carelessness could get us killed!”
Lilly looked back at him, her face turning angry the more he talked. “And whose fault was it that we lost the swapplet, huh? Oh right, yours!”
“My fault? You could have done something as well, maybe grab the swapplet before she got it! You aren’t completely innocent either!”, he snapped back at her and immediately regretted it. Lilly stopped on the spot and looked to the ground. “Great…”, he thought. “Now I’m in a fight with my best friend and the love of my love, just because of this stupid thing… Maybe using it isn’t the best thing the two of us could do…”
Ethan looked at her and waited for her to say something. “I’m… I’m sorry”, he said to her after a while of awkward silence. “I didn’t mean to be so harsh…” Lilly shook her head. “No… You’re right. It’s not your fault, I could have reacted faster as soon as the incident happened. To be honest, I hadn’t even noticed that you grabbed her tablet… Also, you’re right. I’m drunken because of the power the swapplet gives us. I AM careless. Even now I didn’t think of what might happen if we can’t get the thing back other than that I couldn’t do any more swaps.”
Ethan looked at her, unsure what he should reply. He was sure that he should say something, but he had no idea what. A few heartbeats later Lilly looked at him, her eyes slightly wet from the tears she withheld.
“I’m a horrible person who only thinks of her own fun. I’m sorry.” Tears ran down her cheeks. “When we got the swapplet back, I think it would be the best if you don’t allow me to use it for a while.” She wiped her tears away and forced a smile on her face. “But we better hurry up, right bro?”
With that she continued on their path to the locker room and left Ethan stunned behind. He felt bad for what he had said to her, even more so because he made her cry. But was it really his fault? He said the truth. He could have worded it better, but truth is truth… Right?
Miserably he followed her, a depressing silence between the two, which helped them to avoid the hall monitor. The closer they got to the locker room the more nervous he got. When they stood in front of the door, he did not feel bad about the situation earlier because all he could think about was what might happen if he got caught in there.
Quietly the two entered and Lilly immediately began searching the lockers. Ethan just stood behind and looked around. He knew that it would not look any different than the boy’s locker room but still he was disappointed. “And the main attraction is also missing”, he thought.
“For someone who worries so much about losing the swapplet you sure seem oddly calm now”, said Lilly amused. “Come on, help me find her locker. You might not have noticed because of the collision, her backpack was a black one with pink cherry blossoms on it. Can’t be that hard to spot it through the small openings.”
Ethan gathered himself and began helping Lilly. Luckily for them, no other girl had a similar looking backpack and said backpack was, like Lilly said, fairly easy to spot.
“Now what?”, asked Ethan. “We can’t just break this locker open.”
“We both seem to be on a lucky streak right now. At least since after losing the swapplet. You see, this particular locker is infamous around here. If you punch the lock hard enough…”. Lilly punched against the lock which then made a ‘click’ noise and the locker opened. “The locker opens just like that. The school doesn’t have any money to fix this thing. I don’t blame Keiko for not knowing, she is a freshman after all.”
“You’re right. We really ARE lucky”, said Ethan and moved over to look through Keiko’s stuff.
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