I sprinted in Francis’s direction, Pete right ahead of me. We ran with no idea where we were headed next. Behind us, I heard shouts and grunts from the lacrosse guys we’d left behind. They tussled with wolf-Gwen and wolf-Mike in the blackness.
I’d like to think the guys took a stand. That they tried to hold back the wolves as Pete, Francis, and I ran. Maybe they tried running themselves and just bumped into Gwen and Mike right away. I felt bad in either case. But as I darted off, ignoring any pain, I understood that I could only focus on one thing from then on: surviving.
18
“Let’s get this straight,” I said. “How many werewolves are actually roaming the school right now?”
Pete, Francis, and I had found our way into the kitchen attached to the Bridgewater High cafeteria. We sat on the floor next to industrial-size ovens and steel countertops, back to using phones as flashlights.
“What do you mean?” Francis asked.
“I mean Blake, Macy, I don’t know who else. They all got attacked.”
“Yeah, but not bitten. They got clawed, roughed up. But it takes a bite to get turned.”
“Well, I guess that’s a relief.” With my life not in immediate danger, I felt a little more okay with being mad at Francis. “Roughed up? As in not dead?”
“They. . . Connor didn’t kill ’em. I don’t think he’s—”
“You don’t think he’s a killer?” I asked. “This is all, like, not that comforting.”
“Well I didn’t know!” Francis yelled. “I knew Connor was weird! I had a feeling Gwen and Mike knew more than I did! But I would have thought twice about hanging with them if I knew that Connor was trying to turn his friends into monsters.”
He breathed out, annoyed.
“I’m here now, aren’t I?”
“So what, Francis? Am I supposed to thank you for not eating my guts? I’ll do that right after I’ve thanked the other six billion people on Earth for also not eating my guts.”
“I’m sorry you don’t have many friends, Jackie.”
“This is not. Even. About. That!”
Pete rubbed his temples and spoke very quietly. “If you two don’t shut up, we are definitely going to get found.”
I got up to walk to another part of the kitchen. After a few steps, I turned back around.
“Can I ask about the full moon thing?”
“Huh?”
“Like, it’s not a full moon tonight, right?” I asked. “Don’t werewolves need the light of the moon or something?”
“I don’t think it works that way,” Francis said. “It’s more like they control it by willpower. Sort of like the Green Lantern.”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“I hate this night so much right now,” I said.
I began to pace around. My stomach growled. I hadn’t eaten anything since the lock-in started. Not even the pizza that Rosa made me serve. I looked around on shelves and cabinets before pulling down bags of tortillas and a huge sixty-four-ounce can of black beans. I took a large skillet off the wall and splashed some vegetable oil in it.
“Who wants quesadillas?” I asked.
“No power, Jack,” Pete muttered. “Electric stove. Try it. Won’t work.”
I frowned and took a bite of cold tortilla. Francis sat on a countertop, pushing buttons on his phone.
“Francis,” I said between chews, “Who could you possibly be texting right now? ’Cause I know we’ve been over this, but most of your friends are busy trying to kill us.”
“I’m not texting. I’m tweeting.”
“You’re tweeting.”
“Since that clip on the news, I’ve had a bunch of followers,” he said. “It keeps my mind occupied. Plus, I’ve tweeted some very nice things about you. ‘Jackie’s keeping it together.’”
“I’m speechless, Francis. This is the dumbest thing in the world.”
“I didn’t actually tweet that.”
Pete buried his face in his hands.
The pots and pans hanging on the kitchen walls trembled slightly. Pete lifted his head up. “Someone’s coming,” he whispered.
The kitchen door burst open before he finished his sentence. Connor, Gwen, and Mike. Fully wolfed-out.
“You didn’t think you could hide, did you?” Connor growled. He let out a lawnmower laugh. “Sense of smell, remember?”
19
Pete stood up and grabbed a large baking tray—the kind you can fit thirty cookies on. He moved slowly toward Connor. Gwen and Mike took to all fours and stepped in front of their leader.
“It’s all right,” Connor said. “Let him come.”
Pete swung the tray with both hands. Connor ducked and swiped at Pete with one paw, then another. Pete hopped back. Gwen and Mike moved in circles around the fighters.
We all watched as Connor lunged at Pete’s throat. Pete blocked the attack with his tray. It wobbled from the impact. Connor yelped and gripped his paw.
“I can do this all night, corndog,” Pete said. “Cross-country training.”
I have no idea where he got corndog from. I am funnier than my brother.
Connor made another pounce and knocked the tray from Pete’s hands. Pete doubled back, yanking ladles and spatulas from hooks on the wall and chucking them at the wolf. Connor batted them away with ease. He charged teeth-first at one of Pete’s arms.
I reached for my abandoned skillet. “Hey Connor,” I shouted, “Eat hot oil!”
I swung the skillet overhand. Vegetable oil drifted through the air, landing in droplets on Connor’s fur.
He cringed, expecting to feel the burn. For a moment, no one moved. Connor cautiously opened his eyes, confused. Francis, meanwhile, had grabbed the sixty-four-ounce can of beans. He huffed and tossed it underhand to Pete, who brought it down on Connor’s head. Connor crumpled on the floor.
“Holy crap!” I shouted. “Knockout!”
“You beaned him, Pete!” Francis hollered.
“Good one,” I whispered.
Gwen and Mike barked in anger. Their tails stuck out straight behind them. Mike stalked toward Pete. Gwen turned to me and Francis, baring her fangs. I looked to the walls, but there was nothing left to throw. The wolves advanced, herding the three of us together. In a corner of the kitchen, with no escape plan, I gripped Pete and Francis’s hands.
“Guys,” I said. From there I meant to say something really meaningful, but instead I threw up a bit of tortilla in my mouth.
Gwen and Mike arched back and prepared to pounce. A small rubber ball sailed through the air and pelted Gwen in the back of the head. She and Mike jerked around. The lacrosse team swarmed through the door and into the kitchen. They wore full protective gear and beat their sticks against the countertops like cavemen in Under Armour.
“I never thought I’d be happy to see a lacrosse player,” Francis exclaimed shakily.
“I am so sick of things flying across rooms and hitting other things,” I replied. “I’m gonna have nightmares. Just about that.”
Todd Fry entered the room with defenders to protect him on both sides. “No mercy, boys!” he shouted.
They weren’t in the kitchen to help us. But they weren’t coming after us, either. To the lacrosse guys, I don’t think it mattered that we were there. They clumped into two waves of five or six, each wave focused on one of the wolves.
Gwen hopped up on a large table in the center of the room. She took a few quick bounds and leapt off, knocking over two of the athletes. They seemed to land okay with all the padding. Gwen held their helmets against the ground, claws hooking around the grids across their facemasks. Mike charged at ground level toward some of the other guys. Sticks clattered and the wolves howled.
Pete, Francis, and I moved along the kitchen wall. We took turns stepping over Connor. He had slowly shifted back to human form after getting knocked out. He lay on the kitchen floor, clothes stretched out from the transformation. A lacrosse stick went flying above me and hit a shelf o
ver my head.
“Do you see what I mean?” I shouted.
We quickened our pace.
As we neared the exit, Mike turned our way. He shook off the three guys wrestling with him and made a final lunge at us. The lacrosse players grabbed his hind legs and pulled him back. He snapped his jaws and glared at Francis, the last one of us to leave.
20
We ran and kept running. We headed for as far away from the cafeteria kitchen as we could get. I felt like I could run three crosscountry races back to back. I moved fueled by pure relief.
The sky outside looked purple whenever we passed by a window. Grapefruit-colored ripples lined the horizon. The sun was rising.
I checked the time on my phone. 4:45 a.m.
“Think the police are here yet?” Pete wondered aloud.
“They could have gotten here hours ago,” I said. “But they would have needed a locksmith tagging along with them. And a battering ram to get through the front hallway.”
We retraced our steps. We figured that if nothing else, there might be the fewest surprises that way. The art room was empty. Splotches of dry paint covered the floor and the walls. A laptop lay broken in the center of the room. Its screen had snapped off of its body.
Further down the hallway, the door to the janitor’s closet was still open wide from when Pete and I got pulled out. Mop handles and spray bottles were scattered on the ground.
We hesitated before moving through the library. But I heard nothing—silence—when I put my ear to the door. We crept inside.
A few dozen books lined the carpet, but at first glance I didn’t see anyone around. Then, as we tiptoed through, it drifted through the library: snoring. Francis and I peeked through the stacks as Pete watched behind us. Kids slept quietly on the floor. Computer clubbers and poets alike! They used sweatshirts, backpacks, and in one case the Encyclopedia Britannica as pillows. We left through the library’s opposite end, taking care not to disturb them.
It wasn’t normal. But it made me feel like things were getting back to normal. I didn’t know it at the time, but a week later, the Bridgewater High Poets’ Society would publish a poem of apology in the school paper.
21
Occasionally during our run from the kitchen, we’d glance through the window of a classroom door and see students inside. Most of the time they were sleeping, like the kids we saw in the library—kids who had been lucky enough to miss the wolves or a lacrosse thrashing. Who probably even had fun during their lawless night locked up inside the school.
Once we arrived in the back lobby, we weren’t sure where to go. Pete took a short jaunt down the main hallway and found that large desks still blocked the front entrance. I looked down the corridor that led to the student council room and felt a pang of guilt.
“Guys,” I said, “Let’s try this way.”
We entered to see that most of the stud. co. kids had nodded off as well. Rosa was nowhere in sight, but Principal Weston still sat in the corner. Our footsteps shook him from his slumber. He started on a drowsy explanation of the last several hours.
“I said ‘no more kids out’ after you two didn’t come back,” he started. “She has got such a temper, that girl.” Pretty safe to assume he was talking about Rosa. “I’ve been in touch with the police.” Weston rubbed his eyes. “Should be coming in anytime now. Working on ways to open the locks.”
“Rosa,” I started. “Where is she?”
“Went to the gym,” he said, fighting a yawn. “Said she wanted to start cleaning up.”
I felt that pang of guilt again. “Guys,” I said, turning to Pete and Francis. “I’m going to head over there. Lend her a hand.”
“No way, Jackie,” Pete replied. “We still don’t know that it’s safe around here. My thinking is, we—”
I hushed him and motioned to the windows. Sunlight was beginning to really come through, bold orange waves of it. “Look outside, Pete. It’s over. You take a load off—I’m gonna go do my duty as a good student council member.”
He winced but didn’t argue. “You stay away from the cafeteria,” he said. “Just in case.”
Francis pretended to cry over the exchange. I stuck my tongue out at him.
“If you die this late in the game, it’s totally your own fault,” he said. We both grinned.
Rosa had her work cut out for her. In the growing daylight, the gymnasium looked like a freakin’ mess. Spilled drinks, torn-up decorations, a busted lawn dart set. Scattered empty pizza boxes that were definitely not my fault. So much junk all over the gym’s polished hardwood floor that I didn’t know where to start. But where was Rosa De La Torre?
I skipped across the empty cups and soda puddles, glancing left and right.
“Rosa!” I called out. “Um, clean-up crew’s here?”
My voice echoed throughout the empty gym. No reply. Did she go back to the student council room? I had taken the long way to the gymnasium, going around the library—we could have missed each other.
I walked onto the small stage where the Superchiefs had played a couple songs. “Gonna count to ten, Rosa!” I called out, sort of to her but mostly to myself. “Then I’m going to . . .” I trailed off and sat myself behind the band’s drum set. I took an extra look around and then tapped the bass drum pedal a few times with my foot. I didn’t really know what to do from there. I do not know how to play the drums.
I flicked one of the cymbals with my index finger, heard it ding, and felt a microphone cord wrap around my neck. I tried to pry it off me but it only got tighter. With sudden force, something dragged me off the chair and onto the ground.
I looked up, and my eyes met Rosa’s. “Deserter!” she spat. “You’ve betrayed student council! You betrayed me!”
22
I tried to speak, to give Rosa one of many reasons why it wasn’t really fair of her to strangle me to death, but nothing came out. The microphone cord stayed tight around my neck.
“No one ever says thank you!” she screamed. “People like you—you’re supposed to get it. And all you do is sneer!” Her hair was frazzled, her eyeliner smudged.
I kicked, blindly, and hit her ankle. She fell to one knee and lost her grip on the cord.
I whipped it off my head and staggered back, gasping for oxygen. Still dazed, I tripped over the chair behind the drum set, knocking half the set over in the process. Rosa stood up and leaned over me.
“I am sick of doing so much for this school and getting nothing in return,” she said coldly.
“At least this’ll look great on” cough “a college application,” I muttered. “That’s what it’s all about anyway, right?”
Rosa’s eyes bulged. “I am not. Just. Résumé building!” she shrieked.
She reached to the ground for the drum set’s hi-hat, two small cymbals on the top of a metal stand. She swung it like an axe a couple feet in front of me. I grabbed hold of a large cymbal on the ground next to me as Rosa geared up for another swing. She brought the hi-hat down against my makeshift shield. The harsh clang ran through my ears. She brought it down again, just missing a few of my fingers.
Rosa’s third swing was so forceful that she doubled back upon impact. I wrapped my hand around a leg on the drum-set chair and whipped it in her direction. She dropped the hi-hat to avoid it, and I managed to get up on my feet. As Rosa dodged the chair, a chain full of keys fell from her pocket.
“The keys!” I shouted. “You—you took Principal Weston’s keys!”
“I had to!” she replied. “Don’t you see? It was the only way to save the lock-in. I couldn’t let people leave. Couldn’t let the police in. We had to fix it ourselves . . .”
“No one fixed anything, Rosa! The school broke into pieces last night! Our treasurer got beat up by werewolves! Do you know how much fighting you could’ve prevented if you’d unlocked those doors?”
Rosa trembled, legs locked, arms shaking. Staring into her eyes, I saw one last thing snap. She ran at me, weaponless, but with a fury tha
t would have made the wolves jealous. I held my cymbal up between me and Rosa, clinging tight. She gripped the top of the rim, between my hands, and pulled the cymbal her way. The tug-of-war lasted for what felt like minutes. Finally my legs began to give out, too weak from the strain of the night.
Rosa yanked the cymbal away and knocked me over with a shove. I fell against the stage. She advanced and kneeled down above me, keeping my arms pinned with her legs. She raised the cymbal over my head—rim first.
“Bridgewater High will remember me!” she shouted. Which would be a really terrible last thing to hear.
“Put the cymbal down!” A voice I didn’t recognize. Rosa did not move to decapitate me, but she didn’t let go right away either. “Put it down, young lady. Now!”
I titled my head. Sheriff Brady ran across the gym with a couple deputies behind him. Principal Weston trailed at the back.
Finally.
Rosa slowly let the cymbal slip from her hands and roll off the stage. The rage drained from her face. As the police got closer, she just looked . . . confused. Her eyes widened as she noticed Principal Weston.
“My transcript,” Rosa whispered. “Principal Weston! Will this appear on my transcript?”
The deputies walked up to her. Seeing that the fight had left her, they gently raised her to her feet and guided her off the stage. I don’t think she even noticed as they slipped on her handcuffs.
“Will this appear on my transcript?” she asked again. It sounded more like a hushed chant than a question. “Will this appear on my transcript?”
I continued to lie on the stage, staring at the ceiling.
Lock-In (Night Fall ™) Page 4