Another glorious morning at Greybridge High — also known as the seventh circle of educational purgatory. I rolled out of bed like a reluctant caterpillar, barely enough time for a speed-shower and a sprint that would’ve impressed Olympic scouts… if they were into half-asleep, flailing teenagers in mismatched socks.

As I bolted down the street, the bus — my one-way ticket to semi-punctuality — rounded the corner and disappeared like it was fleeing a crime scene. I stopped, panting and swearing under my breath, and kicked a stone with all the rage of someone who hadn’t had breakfast. Naturally, it bounced twice and fell straight down a storm drain. Typical. Sports and I have a complicated relationship — mostly one-sided and full of disappointment.

It was a twenty-minute walk of shame to school. Detention was basically guaranteed at this point, but there was a silver lining: I’d get to sneak a look at Greybridge Library. We’d figured out the coordinates from the clue pointed us there, and missing double PE — aka "State-Sanctioned Torture with Whistles" — was the cherry on top.

The library itself was a monument to 1960s architecture: a concrete cube of misery from the outside, like a giant cereal box that forgot the fun prize inside. But don’t let the brutalist façade fool you. Inside, it was all warm lighting, wood shelves, and the faint smell of old books — like a hug for your soul. As a kid, Fridays meant picking up a book, a VHS tape, and maybe a CD that I’d pretend to understand musically. The staff always smiled like they hadn’t given up on the youth of today — saints, really.

We’d traced the clue to one of the raised concrete flower beds outside the building. But as I rounded the corner that morning, I spotted a van — plain white, no logos, no markings. Suspiciously generic. The flower beds were now fenced off, and a crew of men were busy prepping tools. That wasn’t good. Especially since they were digging precisely where our next clue was supposed to be.

I slowed to a casual saunter, trying not to look like a very nosy teenager. The barriers were the opaque kind — plastic sheeting, not the usual wire fencing. I peered, but it was like trying to see through a gallon of milk. The men noticed me but offered nothing more than blank, coffee-deprived stares. Their jackets were just as anonymous as the van. No company logos. No helpful signs. Just vibes — and not the friendly kind.

Who were these guys? More importantly — were they accidentally about to destroy the next clue, or worse… were they after it?
At lunch, we reconvened in our usual fortress of semi-solitude: the library’s back corner, between local history and the dusty shelf of untouched encyclopedias.

“I’m telling you, no markings at all,” I explained. “Not on the van, not on their jackets. Nothing. It was like they spawned in from a glitch in the Matrix.”

“No signage either?” Mai asked, frowning.

“Not even a dodgy laminated ‘Men at Work’ taped to a cone,” I confirmed.

“Didn’t you ask them what they were doing?” Steve chimed in, naturally.

“Because that’s what a normal person would do,” Ali replied, rolling her eyes. “You, however, are not normal. You’re a professional clever dick.”

“Says the guy who once interrogated the caretaker about the suspicious smell in the cafeteria,” Steve shot back.
“Hey, that curry was a bio-hazard. I stand by it.”

I thought about jumping in with a clever retort — something sharp, something memorable. Instead, I settled for a half-smile and let the banter roll past like a missed joke in a noisy room.

“So,” Mai said, refocusing us. “They were digging exactly where we think the clue is?”

“Yep,” I said. “And the entire row of flower beds was fenced off. Looked serious.”

“That’s weird,” Steve said. “Usually the council posts signs. ‘Disrupting your life for your own good’ or whatever.”
“Or they slap a dozen stickers on the van to show they mean business,” Ali added. “What if they’re not council at all? What if they’re after the same thing?”

“Come on,” I scoffed. “It’s probably gas or water. You know how it is — the roads around here are basically Swiss cheese with traffic cones.”

“Yeah, but seriously,” Mai pressed, “what’s stopping anyone from just showing up, fencing off a patch of dirt, and pretending to dig something important?”

“Well… probably laws?” I offered, weakly.

“If someone sticks their neck out,” she shrugged, “who’s going to question it? It’s the perfect disguise.”
“Now I really wish we’d checked it out last night,” I groaned.

“Alright,” Mai declared. “We’ll head there after school. If they’re still digging, we’ll do the unthinkable — we’ll ask them.”
“Solid plan,” Steve said, knocking his knuckles on the table like a makeshift gavel. “I’m betting it’s just the council. When in doubt, blame bureaucracy.”

“For someone who’s thick in the head, that’s quite the deduction,” Ali said with a grin.

“Surprised you say that, Always got your head in the clouds.” Steve replied.

I exchanged a look with Mai. These two and their constant bickering — like Phil Mitchell and Kat Slater with less grey hair and more hormones.

“Alright, enough,” Mai cut in. “Have we all done Miss Francis’s history essay?”

Steve visibly cringed. “Ugh. Why would you bring that up? I was living in blissful ignorance.”

“Guess you’ll be joining me in detention then,” I said with a smirk.

Steve brightened. “Hey, silver linings. Did you hear about the musician who could only play by ear?”

Ali groaned. “Let me guess — he got a splitting headache.”

We all cracked up as the bell rang, calling us to history class and academic doom. For a moment, we weren’t clue-hunters or detention dodgers — just a bunch of mismatched teens laughing our way through the weirdest scavenger hunt of our lives.

(From a writing prompt about body part idioms. Part of a longer work)