For a while the stupid rolls kept running away from me until I figured out how to measure out enough colored tissue paper to cover a distance with a nice, hanging swoop. The worst was when a piece wouldn’t be long enough and I had to connect two sections of streamer with a piece of tape midstream. It never looked right.
On the day before Fresh Start Friday, I volunteered to make sure streamers were swooping nicely in the back lobby. I also re-taped any balloons that kids might have punched off the walls. (Tape a balloon in one place and it just begs to be batted away.) Francis was standing there when I finished up interior decorating. He tapped at his phone’s keypad.
“Where’s the rest of the pack?”
“Connor and Mike are at Connor’s house. Gwen gets her car back today. I’m meeting up with them in a few.”
Francis’s voice was flat. He started to look extra-eager to leave.
“You guys going to the lock-in tomorrow?” I asked. “Or are you too cool? I hear the school will tack on a whole six extra civics credits for no-shows.”
Francis didn’t respond at first. He avoided my eyes for a few seconds.
“. . . Maybe that would be a blessing in disguise though. I volunteered in the computer room at the public library for my civics credits last year and learned a lot. Interesting new curse words from the middle-schoolers playing World of Warcraft.”
“Jackie. . . .You should . . . just keep away from us tomorrow, all right?”
“What?”
Francis didn’t reply.
“I wasn’t exactly planning on applying for wolf pack membership,” I said. “Bridgewater High Student Council is actually super fulfilling.”
Francis glared at me.
“I mean it. Stay away.”
His phone began to vibrate. He took a quick look at the screen and then left without saying anything else. At some point I had let go of my streamer roll. It came undone as it wobbled along the hallway, leaving a long trail of red tissue paper behind it.
8
Pete and I drove to the lock-in together in the station wagon Mom and Dad had handed down to him. Pete’s a little bit country, and I’m a little bit rock and roll. Like usual, we settled on Ghostface Killah.
“There gonna be food there?” he asked.
“There’ll be pizza. Lotta pizza. I think some chips. They’re not going to keep us at school for half a day and not feed us.”
“You never know.”
I thought about explaining why you would know, but I didn’t. Pete reached into a cavity on the driver’s side door and grabbed part of a bagel.
“Is that the same bagel you were eating this morning?”
“Yup. Didn’t finish it.”
I looked away while he ate, gazing out the passenger’s side window.
“Your cross-country boys gonna be there tonight?”
“Gotta be,” Pete said, still chewing. “You know that.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m just sorta surprised that people are actually doing it.”
“Francis gonna be there?”
“I dunno. Yeah. Why do you always ask me about him?”
“I dunno.” He turned his head my way and raised his eyebrows a few times.
“It was never like that.” (It really wasn’t!) “We were just good friends. And anyway, we were like nine years old when we hung out. And I’m pretty sure Francis still hasn’t kissed a girl.”
“Uh huh.”
“Having a really good boy friend—like friend-who-is-a-boy friend—only seems weird ’cause I don’t have any girl friends,” I said.
“Come on. There’s . . . what’s her name?”
“Mira? Yeah. Yeah, Mira’s cool.”
“And at student council . . . you know, the web stuff.”
We both paused after that.
“You know, you realize, Pete, you just named student council instead of another human being. You’re not disproving my point.”
Pete chuckled.
“Well—yeah. You’re good at being you, though! You own it.”
“I do own it.”
We looked at each other and both gave a stiff nod. Pete turned up the music.
9
I honestly did try to enjoy the lock-in once Pete and I got inside. For a while, I even succeeded! I have to admit, all of Rosa’s planning paid off. By eight p.m. the Bridgewater High gym was a flurry of activity.
I got in line for a soda and watched the first student band, the Superchiefs, set up their stuff. Macy lined up behind me.
“Are we having fun yet, Macy?”
“You should try the indoor lawn darts. I’m three-and-oh right now.”
“Impressive.”
“Also, Rosa’s looking for you.”
I grimaced. “What for? What could she possibly be looking for me for?” I motioned to the waves of streamers along the gym walls. “I put those up! That was my job! They’re still up! My job is over.” I moved to the head of the line. “One root beer, please.”
Suddenly Rosa was next to me.
“Hiiii Jackie! Isn’t this going great?”
“Yep. Magical.”
“I think you did such a great job with the streamers and I would not even think about asking you to do anything else except Meredith was supposed to work the pizza station and she totally has the flu and I know this is super last-minute but it would be really awesome of you so do you think you can hand out pizza?”
I felt like I had been tricked somehow.
The view from the pizza station was pretty good when the lines weren’t too long. I could watch the trust falls, the lawn darts, the bad dancing. I was supposed to limit students to one piece of pizza, but after the third of my brother’s friends tried pleading for two, I gave in completely. The sooner we ran out, the sooner I could leave my station, I figured.
“Pizza, pizza!” I called out. “Extra slices for students with two hands.”
On the far side of the gym, I noticed a small cluster of students all staring in the same direction. Not talking. A few seconds later, the students behind them stopped talking and started looking that way too. Soon most of the kids in the gym formed a half-circle around one of the main doorways.
Gradually the swath of kids divided in two. The onlookers formed a pathway as Blake Golding stumbled onto the gym floor. His T-shirt collar was torn, like someone had yanked it hard from one side. One of the sleeves on his letter jacket looked halfway unstitched. His shoulder poked through it with every other step. Todd Fry and a few friends shoved their way through the crowd.
“Blake!” Todd shouted. “Man, what happened?”
Blake looked up like he was about to reply. His face was a mess of scrapes and scratches.
I stood atop the pizza station table to get a better angle. I noticed a winding trail of blood droplets behind Blake that must have come from the big gash on his cheek. I followed the trail with my eyes back toward the doorway ’til a hard thud broke my concentration. Before Blake managed to speak, he dropped to his knees and fainted outright in the arms of his bros.
10
I’m still not sure why things happened the way they did after Blake stumbled into the gym. Maybe all of us were sort of like the busted windshield on Gwen’s car. One extra push ran through cracks that were already there. And everything burst into pieces.
I don’t even know who cut the lights. Could have been one of the meatheads on the lacrosse team. Could’ve been Connor or Mike. Or it could have been anybody else at the lock-in. If I’ve learned anything from that night, it’s that you never really know what another person is capable of.
Within a minute or two of Blake’s collapse, the adults on the scene were all over him with a first-aid kit. Mr. Spragues, one of the guidance counselors, busted open some smelling salts. He and Ms. Anders, another counselor, got Blake up and walking again. The three of them took one of the gym’s doorways to the outside so he could get some air. Mr. Brown, one of Bridgewater High’s English teachers, got on his cell phone
, probably trying to reach the police.
The remaining grown-up, Principal Weston, got up on the pizza table as I lowered myself down. I began stacking empty pizza boxes as he attempted to address the students. Don’t ask me why. I was nervous.
“Everybody—may I have your attention. Remain calm. The police—everybody! Please—”
He struggled to be heard over the buzzing of nervous kids. Most students stood facing the inside of whatever clump they were a part of, ignoring the principal.
“We are contacting Sheriff Brady and the rest of the sheriff’s department. We’re going to make sure things are all right everywhere in the building, and then we’re going to get this back underway. In the meantime, we ask that you stay—”
A thought hit me: Oh god. The freakin’ wolf kids. I scanned the gym. Francis, where are you?
“—Those of you who would like to contact your parents—”
He couldn’t have, right?
Suddenly the door to the outside slammed shut. Whatever was propping it up must have fallen over. Mr. Brown knocked hard a few times and waved at Weston through the window.
“All right,” Weston said, slowly and loudly. He mouthed the words toward the people at the window, dangling a bunch of keys up for them to see. “Coming . . .”
And like that, it all went black. Every light in the gym, in the hallways outside of it—out. People started to scream, run, push. And I’m pretty sure I heard someone knock over my stack of pizza boxes.
A few kids ran to the outside door, but most of the noise traveled into the hallways. Everyone scrambled to keep track of a friend. I think Weston kept shouting stuff, but I doubt he had much of a plan at that point.
I hollered for Pete and got nothing. Someone running by clipped my shoulder, and I lost any sense of where I was. In the dark, no one direction made more sense than another. I bit my lower lip and started to run.
Something, probably a pizza box, took away my footing. I stumbled back. As I fell, a pair of hands seized my shoulders.
11
Jackie!”
The light from a cell phone dashed back and forth in front of my face.
“What . . . ?”
The stranger moved the phone away from my eyes. I made out Rosa’s up-do in the pale blue light.
“Rosa . . . ?”
“You all right?” she asked.
“Yeah. I think so? Better than Blake. I might have peed a little.”
She grabbed my sleeve and started walking.
“Where are we going? Should we take the pizza?”
She gave my arm a jerk. “Where do you think? Student council room.” She breathed angry breaths. “They are not taking this night away from me.”
Rosa paced back and forth against the student council whiteboard. The power was still out, but she had turned on a laptop. The glow of the screen lit her face like an artificial campfire. Principal Weston sat in a chair by the corner, patting his brow with a handkerchief and generally not looking like the person in charge.
“The police have been called,” Rosa said. “Blake’s outside. They’re coming to get him. It’s up to us to make sure that’s all they do. We need to show them that there’s no reason why this lock-in can’t keep going. I’m not going to let some stupid prank ruin our fresh start. I’m not going to let them embarrass me—embarrass us, or,” she looked at the principal, “the administration.”
Macy raised her hand. “Where are the other adults?”
The principal cleared his throat. “The keys were . . . misplaced in, uh, in the panic. I’ll let Ms. Anders, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Spragues back in just as soon as the authorities arrive and—”
Macy raised her hand again. “What if this is, like, serious? We don’t know why the power isn’t working, or—”
Rosa cut him off. “It’s a stupid prank by stupid kids!”
She breathed more angry breaths, then lowered her voice back to normal. “All we need to do is let people know it’s okay. We’ve got to be able to show the police that this is under control.”
She looked at Weston again. He nodded. Maybe he wasn’t sure what else to do.
“Macy. Jackie. First thing, I want you guys to hit the hallways,” Rosa said. “Anybody you find, ask them to head back to the gym. We’ll go in shifts. We want everyone back in one place, soon.”
Macy furrowed her brow. “What if people don’t listen? That was scary stuff, what happened.”
Rosa turned her laptop around so it shone in Macy’s face. “Be convincing. And if you see someone has the keys, grab them. We can’t get out any easier than people can get in. Principal Weston can’t even get the extra pairs in his office. All the doors were locked at the beginning of the—”
“Of the lock-in,” I said under my breath. “That name makes so much more sense now.”
In the faint laptop light, Rosa looked like she was turning a different color.
“And with the power out,” she continued, “we need actual keys. No way to get out electronically. Typing in a security code or anything like that won’t open the doors.”
I looked at Macy and shrugged. I still felt a little shaken from my wipeout on the gym floor, but I figured that the hallway recon party would be safer than staying in the same room as Rosa.
The halls were quiet. Macy and I walked around, knocking on classroom doors and using our phones like flashlights. Student council’s room was on the first floor, so we decided to work our way up.
Most kids must have decided to run for high ground. For a while, we got nothing. Eventually, we found a bunch of freshmen I half-recognized sitting on sofas in the faculty lounge. We dutifully told them to go to the gym. They nodded but didn’t move to get up.
“This is so dumb,” Macy said. I nodded. “I mean it,” she continued. “I’m getting out of here. I’ll figure out a way. Rosa can yell at me later.”
“Well, then she can yell at both of us,” I replied. “I’m not going back by myself.”
We took a turn away from the next row of classrooms and walked in the direction of the front entrance. Macy fumbled around her pockets for her car keys. As we neared the end of the main hallway, I stopped walking.
“Macy! I’m not sure we’re taking off anytime soon.”
Somebody—some group of people—had taken three teacher’s desks from elsewhere in the building. They stood blocking the path to the front doors like barricades, keeping us from reentering the outside world.
12
Macy grabbed the underside of one of the desks. She grunted and tried to lift. It didn’t budge.
“It must have taken like five guys to get that here before.”
She glared at me. “You wanna help?”
“So I can get a hernia?” I asked. “Come on, let’s get back to student council. They actually probably need to know this.”
Macy and I stated to sort of run-walk back. Running would have been like admitting we were really starting to worry.
“I’ve heard of lock-ins, but this is ridiculous!” I said. I gave her a fake grin but she didn’t smile back. And, like, what I said wasn’t that funny, but normally she’d at least have been polite. We were really starting to worry.
Two steps sounded out somewhere in the hall behind us as we approached the back lobby. Light and sudden, like a click-click. The noise stopped before we turned around.
“Hello?”
Nothing. The halls looked empty.
“Um, it’s student council?” That sounded weird. “Hello? It’s Jackie? Ballard. Jackie Ballard. You probably don’t—we’re asking people to go back to the gym? If you see people—”
Macy started walking again. “There’s nobody there.”
“Well then what was that?”
Click-click.
We turned back around but saw no signs of movement. Another click sounded against the tile floor, this time in the back lobby.
Macy tapped my shoulder as if to say, “Wait here.” She headed into the lobby.
&nbs
p; “Who’s there?”
The back lobby was a big, baseball-diamond-shaped space with three entrances: the middle hallway that Macy and I had just walked, a hall to the right that led to the student council room, and a hall to our left that led to the library and a few classrooms. Macy took a few steps to the right and squinted down the corridor. The clicks started again, faster, one after another. Like nails on linoleum.
“Jackie, run.”
Macy seemed to freeze in place as I moved. A black mass lunged at her, and she folded at the waist. Her body hit the tiles with a smack, the darkness right on top of her. I ran left without looking back. A long howl followed me down the hallway over my panicked, heavy breaths.
13
I slammed the library’s double doors behind me and rested my back against them, panting. My knees buckled and I slid slowly down ’til I was a pile on the floor.
All right. Gasp. What just happened?
It took several breaths before I realized I wasn’t alone.
“Get out of here!” someone shouted.
I looked up. Whoever had said it didn’t seem to be yelling at me.
“I mean it! Get out of here! We were here first!”
Two groups of kids, like eight or nine apiece, stood on opposite sides of the library. Several bookshelves separated them. Through the moonlight that shone in the library’s large windows, I recognized the speaker. Albert Sciuto ran the Bridgewater High Computer Club. We’d asked him for help a couple of times when serious website problems popped up. A kid on the other side shouted back at him.
“What do you mean you were here first?” The boy wore dark-rimmed glasses and a turtleneck sweater. He pointed to a sheet of banner-sized paper taped to the wall behind him. It said Bridgewater High Poets’ Society in thick, marker-written cursive letters. “We meet here every Thursday!”
Lock-In (Night Fall ™) Page 2