Survive

by Ashley Shannon

  The phone in her pocket buzzed and Drew reached for it quickly as she could. Secretly hoping it was Kimber, she went to answer it, but it was her father. Drew’s shoulders slumped as the phone continued to vibrate in her hand. Her head hurt and she couldn’t deal with him right now. The lecture she had received when she told him she had detention was enough.

  “What did you get detention for?” Her dad asked, stirring the spaghetti on the stove. For a single dad who raised a daughter on his own, he wasn’t a bad cook, but he wasn’t paying attention and the water started to boil over.

  “Dad!” Drew exclaimed. She reached over and turned down the burner. The pink slip she got from the secretary was in her pocket. She pulled it out and unfolded it, laying it on the counter for her dad to look at. It said that she was caught at the football game with alcohol. As a stand-up member of the American Armed Forces, her dad was not one to drink. It caused problems, he told her, impaired judgment and vision, as well as memory and other bodily functions. His speech sounded as if he had memorized from a pamphlet about teenage drinking.

  “Underage drinking.” He murmured as he pushed his glasses up to his forehead. “Drew I thought we talked about this.” His voice was kind but stern, with just a touch of confusion. Having one conversation with his daughter about the negative effects of alcohol should have been enough to turn her off of drinking. Apparently, he had been mistaken.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “It’s the girl isn’t it.”

  It wasn’t a question. Her dad intended to blame Drew’s mistake on Kimber.

  “Her name is Kimber, Dad.”

  Martin knew who Kimber was and what she meant to Drew. He knew that she called this Kimber girl her girlfriend, but it just didn’t sit right with him. It never had. Drew was not growing up to be the women he thought he was raising all those years. He didn’t know her anymore and he couldn’t figure out where he had gone wrong. Somewhere along the way, he had lost her.

  “And she was there, drinking with you, under the bleachers?”

  Kimber had been under the bleachers with her, but Drew didn’t want to tell her dad that. He would just end up hating her more. In the end, Drew told him the truth. The lecture of letting your friends make poor choices for you was shorter than she thought it would be. Little by little it seemed that her dad was starting to give up on her. Drew didn’t want him to give up on helping her, but she wasn’t sure she could continue to be the girl her father raised.

  Drew walked into detention and saw Eli sitting in the third row. The basket full of phones was sitting on the desk and Drew dumped hers in with the others. She ducked her head down quickly. Her eyes were still hidden behind her sunglasses. Sliding into a desk in the second row, Drew immediately put her head down on the desk. The wood was cool against her forehead. She felt herself starting to drift, but didn’t stop it from happening. Within a few minutes, she slipped into a light sleep.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The sight of what he hoped was his sister’s ex-girlfriend walking into detention made Eli feel enraged from the moment she opened the door. Drew’s head was laying on the desk in front of her. She was clearly hung over and after what Eli had heard about the night before, he wasn’t surprised. He dug through his bag until he found his heaviest textbook and slammed it against his desk. The loud smack it made woke Drew up. She snapped to attention and Eli couldn’t help but smile.

  He wasn’t usually a jerk. Eli might look like a tough kid on the outside and he came from the bad side of town, but that wasn’t who he was. Acting out towards Drew didn’t make him feel any better, but he saw it as a way to tell her that he knew what she did. He’d take any chance he got to let her know she messed up. Her eyes caught his and they stared each other down. Shame was written across her face. He could see it in the way the corners of her mouth turned down and in the way her eyebrows crinkled when he looked at her. Eli peered at Drew until she was forced to look away. At least she looked sorry, which to Eli meant something. It was a very small something, but something nonetheless.

  Kimber had come home crying the night before. Eli heard her in her room. He snuck in quietly and climbed in next to his baby sister, taking her in his arms and kissing her forehead. They didn’t say a word. He didn’t know what had happened until the morning. They had just laid together and he held his sister until she fell asleep. He couldn’t keep her from getting hurt, he knew this, but he could at least comfort her when she was hurting.

  Thinking of the tears Kimber had spilled over this ungrateful, drunk, waste of space made him clench his fists until his knuckles turned white. She wasn’t good enough for Kimber, Eli was sure of it. He released his fists and then balled them up again. The gesture helped him to let go of his anger. The school guidance counselor, Mrs. Walters, had taught him to picture holding the anger and hurt he was feeling in his hand. Then when he opened his fists he released the feelings and they were gone. It didn’t work exactly like she said it was supposed to. Mrs. Walters failed to recognize that it was much easier to just punch the closest object to him before releasing his fist. Feelings didn’t just go away, they persisted in your mind, demanding to be felt. Eli repeated the action a few more times until he felt calm enough to stop. When his mind was empty some time later the feelings would come back, with the same demands, but for now, they left.

  Mrs. Walters had taught him this technique when he had landed in her office for the same offense that landed him in detention. She asked him what Spencer had done to deserve to have his hand slammed in a locker.

  “He was disrespecting me.”

  Mrs. Walters mouthed the words as she wrote them down. She said she understood that it might be hard to deal with someone who was being disrespectful, but that it wasn’t his place to punish them. Eli knew that. He had spent his whole life trying not to act like a thug, but that day the rage boiled up inside of him, and everything he had grown up trying to suppress, was released. Since that day Eli spent at least some time talking to Mrs. Walters each week. They talked about his family and friends, his feelings, and his future. What he was going to do after school was the counselor’s favorite topic. Eli hadn’t considered going to college until he had gotten in trouble. Surprisingly, he had the grades to go and Mrs. Walters was trying to get him to apply.

  There was a crackle over the intercom.

  “Mr. Sales,” a shrill voice says, “can you come to the office please?”

  “I will be right there.”

  Mr. Sales turned to the class and smiled. “Well, I am being beckoned to the office. I shall return.” He picked up the basket and placed it in his bottom desk drawer, the put his key in the keyhole and turned it. Then he let himself out of the classroom door, and just like the desk drawer, he locked it. The click of the lock seemed to echo through the room. Eli glanced out the window, realizing that the punishment of being locked in a room with Drew all day was not at all fitting for his crime.

  An hour passed and no one said a word. Mr. Sales could be back at any moment and no one wanted to acquire any more time for talking when they shouldn’t be. It was weird, that Mr. Sales had left them unsupervised for so long. Eli figured he was probably flirting with the secretary, the only other employee who was required to be here on a Saturday. Eli had seen Mr. Sales turn on his charm before. He flashed his smile and touched the hand of whoever he was trying to win over. It was like a magic trick. Now you see it, now you don’t. It reminded Eli of a sleazy car salesman, who had just enough tricks to make a bucket of rust look like an amazing deal and get it off the lot before a customer could see what was wrong with it.

  Eli tried not to watch the clock as another hour passed and Mr. Sales didn’t return. He twisted in his seat, looking at the other students. No one seemed to think anything of Mr. Sales disappearance, but Eli was getting suspicious. The pregnant girl, who’s name Eli wasn’t sure of, was reading while Drew and Nolan were sleeping. When three more hours passed, all of them doing much of the same thing they had been, El
i couldn’t take it anymore. He quickly crossed the room and checked the lock on the door. They were still locked in.

  Drew woke up, rubbing her eyes and looking only slightly refreshed. Eli met her eyes, but she quickly focused her gaze somewhere else. That’s right, look away. Coward. He thought, getting on his knees and looking at the door knob.

  “Where’s Mr. Sales?” Drew asked the room, her question directed at no one specific.

  Eli stood up, pacing back and forth, trying to understand what was going on. The day was practically over. Their time had been served but they were still stuck in detention.

  “He never came back.” The pregnant girl answered when no one else offered up an explanation to Drew. She placed a bookmark to save her spot and then put her book down on the desk.

  “This is bullshit,” Nolan said, signaling to the rest of them that he had woken up. “I did my time. I’ve got places to be.” He walked over to the window, beginning to examine them, perhaps plotting an escape. Eli hadn’t thought of the windows as an option, maybe because they were on the third floor and one of them was pregnant. It didn’t really seem like an escape option. Besides, was that what he was planning, an escape? Could he get in trouble for leaving detention without permission even though his time was up?

  “The door is locked,” Eli says simply, his mind trying to puzzle out why they have been left in a room all day, without being checked in on. He hit the intercom button, assuming someone was still here to come and unlock the door, but no one answered.

  “Hit it again,” Nolan said, seeming to discard the idea of escaping by window, to sit on Mr. Sales’s desk. Eli assumed he was moving towards the desk to talk to whoever came across the intercom at the front of the room. Eli didn’t know Nolan that well, but he did know of him. In a small town high school everyone pretty much knew everyone else. Nolan had a reputation for being rough and arrogant with everyone but his girl, Sada. Rough around the edges might have been an understatement, even when compared to Eli. The last thing they all needed was Nolan running his mouth and pissing off the person on the other end of the intercom. But it didn’t matter, Nolan hit the button over and over but no one answered.

  Eli reached down and pulled the drawer he had seen Mr. Sales put their phones in. It was locked but rocked a little in a way that made him think he could get it open. He knelt down to his knees once again and examined the lock. Picking locks and letting himself into places he wasn't supposed to be was kind of a specialty of Eli’s.

  “Does anyone have a bobby pin I could borrow?” He looked from one girl to the other. Rion shrugged, her blonde hair sitting straight and loose. Drew reached her hand up to her head and pulled out a copper colored pin. Her arm extended towards Eli, but she didn’t get up, forcing him to walk over to her. He took it but didn’t say anything to her.

  “You could say thank you.” Drew snapped at his back.

  Eli stopped walking and clenched his fists tightly closed. One… Two… And release. But it didn’t work.

  “Whatever,” He said, wanting to turn around and clench his fists around Drew’s neck.

  The room was thick with tension, but no one spoke as Eli went back up to the desk. Each of them were getting anxious with a feeling of helplessness. He laid down on the floor so he could see the lock better. Bending the bobby pin so that it looked like a V, Eli put one end in the lock and began to twist. The sound of metal on metal was clear, but he couldn’t get the draw to unlock.

  The sound of metal slamming into wood came from just above Eli’s head. He jumped back, watching Nolan twist a knife into the drawer.

  “What the-“ Eli began, realizing that Nolan was trying to take the brute force way of getting the drawer open. “You could have hit me!”

  “Nah, I’m good with a knife.” He said, wiggling the knife back and forth, trying to dig it further into the drawer. Pulling on the knife, he tried to force the lock to break open, but it wasn’t working.

  “That’s not going to work.” Anger and frustration twisted through Eli and this time instead of opening and closing his fist, he punched the desk and swore.

  There was a noise in the hallway. Someone was out there and they had heard Eli. Nolan jumped from the desk and went to the door.

  “Hello? Is someone out there? We’re locked in here!” He yelled.

  Nolan brought a closed fist against the door and banged it to get the attention of whoever was on the other side. The noise was faint and Eli couldn’t hear it. Joining Nolan at the door, Eli placed his ear against the door and listened. The only thing he heard was the sound of his own breath as he exhaled. He strained to hear something.

  A huge smack sounded against the wood and the door shook. Something hit the door with the full force of a body on the other side. Nolan and Eli both jumped away in shock. Rion let out a shriek and knocked her book to the floor. Whatever was on the other side was breathing heavily, making a sound like a low growl. The door began to move as the being outside shook the handle, trying to get in. The two boys backed as far away from the door as they could. The hinges rattled as whatever was on the other side shook the door again. It twisted the door knob. Eli watched in horror as the knob turned, but the door didn’t budge. They stood quietly for a few minutes waiting for the door to open. Whatever had been trying to get in must have gotten frustrated and moved on when the door wouldn’t open.

  “What was that?” The pregnant girl asked. Eli still couldn’t think of her name.

  “I don’t know.” He answered.

  “Maybe it has something to do with that thing that happened at the college yesterday,” Drew spoke up. When they all turned to face her with confused expressions, she relayed what she had heard on the radio before she came in the school. At least what little she remembered of it.

  “That’s weird. I almost hit someone on the way to school today.” Nolan remembered how a man he hadn’t recognized was walking slowly and then had turned and looked at him with piercing yellow eyes. “He didn’t even see me coming and then when I slammed on my breaks he turned and growled at me. He sounded just like whatever that was banging on the door.”

  “Something is clearly wrong. We have to get out of here,” said Drew.

  “That is a brilliant idea. What do you think we have been trying to do for the past few hours?” Eli shot back at her.

  “Obviously you weren’t doing a good enough job because we're still here!”

  Eli walked over to where Drew was standing. He stood very close to her but didn’t touch her, his face right up in front of hers.

  “Do you think you can do any better?” He said quietly, his tone seething. His eyes shot daggers at Drew but this time she didn’t look away.

  “Guys, stop fighting, we have to figure out a way out of here.” The other girl spoke up, trying to play peacemaker. The two still stared at each other.

  “You’re probably too drunk to be of much use anyway.” Eli spat.

  The door knob began to jingle again, but this time when it turned the door opened. Eli turned, expecting that whatever had been there before to come rushing at them.

  “Oh my god, I found you.”

  A slim girl with dark hair opened the door and rushed towards Eli. He pulled her in for a hug. All the tension that had built up in Eli throughout the day was released. Now he felt how he was supposed to feel when he unclenched his fists the way Mrs. Walters had taught him. After a kiss on the top of her forehead, she pulled away from Eli.

  “Eli, thank god.”

  “Kimber, what are you doing here?” He asked, looking at his little sister in disbelief.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “That’s not the greeting I expected when I decided to come save your life,” Kimber said with a smug grin. She nudged her elbow into Eli’s ribs, pushing him just enough to make it hurt a little. Glancing around the room, she saw Rion, Nolan, and Drew were with her brother. She had known that Drew was going to be there, but she couldn’t think about that now. Kimber had come for her brother,
the others in the room were just bonuses. If it had been just Drew and Eli was at home with her, Kimber didn’t know if she would be standing there playing the hero.

  “Save my life? I didn’t know it was in danger.”

  “Yeah you wouldn’t, you’ve been locked up in here with these dangerous criminals.” Kimber joked even though it wasn’t really time for jokes.

  “What’s going on out there?” Rion asked, sitting back down at her desk now that it didn’t seem like they were in danger.

  “It's nuts. You wouldn’t believe the panic that has hit the whole town. Everyone is leaving.”

  “Why?” Asked Nolan. He was back perched on top of the teacher’s desk.

  “It all started when some Professor attacked Mr. Thompson.” Kimber toyed with the zipper on her jacket while she talked. She didn’t want to look at Drew but it felt weird not to. So instead she played with her zipper.

  “What does Mr. Thompson have to do with this?”

  “He took that group of wannabe science nerds up to the college yesterday. Some professor who had just gotten back from like, Asia, or South America, turn all feral on him and ripped his throat out,” she stopped for a dramatic pause and then continued, “with her teeth.” The reaction on everyone’s faces was enough to pull Kimber’s eyes upward. She had a knack for telling stories and this was just too good to not do it justice.

  “So, then, whatever the lady teacher has, Mr. Thompson has too. They ran through the college killing a bunch of people. Now a lot of people are sick and the whole town is on high alert. The army came in from Fort Dodge. They are telling everyone to stay in their houses and we can’t be on the road after dark and stuff.”