Trapped (3 page)

An hour in, we were leaning over the metal framework of the chassis. Jason had the circular grinder and we were all wearing safety goggles. They were uncomfortable and wearing them might seem like a lame thing to do with no teacher around, but I sort of like having a matching set of eyes, you know? I just enjoy the whole being-able-to-see-and-not-being-deformed thing. There was a kid here last year with a messed-up eye. Now he was in juvie. It was a whole big thing.

Anyway, I was leaning in and waiting for the moment when Jason would go too far grinding off the rust and old paint and would put a hole in the tubing, so then I could call him a moron
again. But before he did, we heard this clacking, banging sound that had nothing to do with the metal tubing or the circular grinder or anything else we were doing. Someone was at the door, rattling the handle. Jason stopped grinding and we all shifted the goggles up onto our foreheads.

“Whoozat?” said Pete, looking over at us. The outline of his goggles was still stamped into the skin around his eyes. He looked ridiculous, but I guess I did too.

“One way to find out. It’s not exactly a secret we’re here,” I said, the noise of the circular grinder still ringing in my ears.

“Aw, man,” said Pete. “I told you we shouldn’t've busted that thing out.”

“What?” said Jason. “I’ve got to grind it down before we can repaint it.”

“Before
you
can repaint it,” I said.

“Whatever; we’ll just tell ‘em Holloway said it was OK,” said Jason.

We were all thinking the same thing. We figured it was Trever or someone like that at the door, and we were going to be in hot water for staying after in a full-bore blizzard and using power tools unsupervised. It seemed like we could probably get slammed for either of those things and that both of them together could add up to some real trouble. Again, we weren’t the kind of kids who went around chasing gold stars, but we weren’t the kind who thought detention was a badge of honor either.

And like I said before: I’d miss practice. That would suck and I’d be running laps for a week. Coach Kielty was always yelling at me as it was. The assistant coach told me it was because I had
“a chance to be something special.” But I didn’t know that for sure. All I knew was that Coach always seemed to have one-and-a-half of his two eyes on me.

Anyway, it didn’t occur to us until we got close to the door that it might be a student out there, and it definitely didn’t occur to us that it would be
that
student. From what I’d heard, he barely even qualified as one.

As we got closer to the door, the banging picked up. Whoever was out there was practically shaking the door off its hinges.

“Calm down,” I said. “Just chill.”

Pete got to the door first.

“Oh, crap,” he whispered back to us. “It’s Les Goddard.”

Les Goddard was bad news, like seriously. His full name was Leslie, apparently. Somewhere in this world, I guess, that’s a guy’s name, but this wasn’t that place. Maybe that’s why he was such a thug. He’s the kind of guy you just sort of assume is armed in some way. Maybe not with a gun or anything fully criminal like that, but with something improvised, something that a truly mean dude would find and keep, like a box cutter or a razor blade or just a hunk of metal.

Once he saw us, the door went still, and we heard him from the hallway. “Open up, ladies.” It came through the thick door at the volume of normal speech, but we knew it hadn’t started out that way. The guy was standing out in the hallway, shouting.

“Well,” I said, “I guess we should see what he wants.”

“Before he puts his hand through the window,” said Pete.

We were speaking under our breath, a little more than a whisper, because we were all right by the door now, just a foot
or two from the psychopath on the other side of it. I reached out for the handle and turned it.

“Hey, man,” I said, my voice deepening in some subconscious bluff. I stepped back as he pushed the door inward.

“Hey, loser,” said Les. “Who’s in here, just you three?”

“Yep,” I said.

Les stepped fully into the room, nodded at Jason, and said, “Hey.”

Jason and Les weren’t friends, exactly, but Les seemed to give Jason some credit for the whole military thing, the novelty T-shirts and fatigue pants and all that. All the stuff we busted on Jason for, basically. I think Jason — a nice guy who sort of played at being dangerous, if you ask me — found that a little flattering. I mean, Les really was dangerous. He, like, radiated danger.

We all knew him, in any case. He took shop too.

“What are you guys doing here? Early dismissal, you know.”

“Working on Jason’s stupid kart,” I said. I gestured toward the back of the room, where little bits of paint and rust still hung in the air. It occurred to me then, just a random thought that skittered in and out of my brain, that we probably should’ve been wearing masks to keep that stuff out of our lungs.

Les sniffed the air. Even over here, it smelled of burnt paint. “Yeah,” he said. “Heard the grinder.”

“What are you still doing here?” said Pete. He sounded friendly, almost casual. I’m sure he had to work hard to get the tone right, but the tone turned out not to matter. Up to this point,
Les had been almost friendly to us, but that wasn’t his style and he seemed to remember that now.

He answered the question with a grunt and a shrug. When his shoulders came back down, nice Les was gone and we were once again looking at the only sophomore the seniors were legitimately scared of. This was a guy who, according to one story, had been suspended for throwing a chair through a window in second grade. Who does something like that in second grade? Who’s that frickin’ strong? The most trouble I got in at that age involved rubber cement.

Something about Pete’s question had triggered the change in Les. I was thinking, what’s wrong with asking “What are you still doing here?” And then it occurred to me, and I had to try hard not to laugh out loud. I probably would’ve been knocked out if I had, but it really was funny.

He wouldn’t come right out and say it — it’s not the kind of thing you’d admit — but the reason he was still here was that he’d gone to detention. Even though there was none after early dismissal. I mean, of course there wasn’t; there were no late buses. He’d probably been going for a week and had gone again out of sheer force of habit.

I kept the smile off my face and looked off to the side.

“How you guys getting home?” he said, his voice cold now.

Long story short, he was looking for a ride. The main problem — apart from the fact
that Les was a psycho and none of us exactly wanted to cram in next to him for a long, slow ride through a storm that seemed to get worse every minute — was that Les lived in Soudley. That was a long haul, and Jason told him, as politely and delicately as possible, that there was just no frickin’ way. If it had been Pete or me, Les might’ve killed the messenger, but he accepted it from Jason with nothing more than a few F-bombs. And really, what could he do? It was all true. We lived where we lived, and he lived where he lived. And, man, it was really coming down out there.

“You might, uh,” I began. I was wading back into the conversation because I was a little scared of Les — I’ll admit that — but I also wanted him gone. And there was one other thing that was true: There were three of us and there was one of him. “You might want to go ask Gossell. He’s over by the gym or something. Trever says he’s in charge of all that stuff, coordinating the rides or whatever.”

“Yeah?” said Les.

“Yeah,” I said. “He might be able to hook you up.”

We were all quiet for a few moments. Les was standing there, thinking. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other.

“This blows,” he said, and left.

We listened to his footsteps fade away down the hallway, and then I reached out and swung the door closed.

“Total psycho,” said Pete.

“Yep,” I said. It was like you could feel the atmosphere in the room returning to normal, like in a movie after they seal the air lock. “He’s right though, it’s time to get out of here.”

“Wow,” said Jason, looking out the window. It was just white out there. It looked like a thick fog, but we knew it wasn’t.

“That is not good,” I said.

There was a little shuffling around as Pete and Jason checked their cells. Still nothing. Pete’s text was still in the
UNSENT/PENDING
folder, along with a second one from him and a new one from me to my mom.

“Think your dad might show up early anyway?” said Pete.

“Yeah,” said Jason. “Can’t imagine they’re doing much work in all this.”

“Maybe we should get over there,” I said, “in case he shows up.”

“Yeah,” said Jason. “In case he shows up early.”

In case he shows up at all.

There was a little circle of people in the hallway outside the gym when we arrived: four kids and one teacher, all standing near the double doors. It looked like a field trip just beginning to assemble. The three of us joined the group, bringing the total to eight. That was the most there would ever be. From here on out, the number would only go down.

I was feeling wired and nervous. Looking out the windows on the walk over, I’d been blown away by the view but also kind of relieved. There was something to look at again, instead of that blank white void we’d been looking at out the back windows of the shop. Out front, there was a wide front lawn and some trees.
The lawn was a solid field of white now, and the trees were covered in thick snow. Their limbs were bent under the weight, but at least I could see them. I used them to gauge distances and estimate where the empty parking lot was buried.

The slope beyond the school was just barely visible through the storm, climbing through the slanting snow up toward Route 7. There were no cars on 7, though. There was no movement at all except the steadily falling snow. No cars: That’s when I began to understand, and my nerves stretched tighter and tighter as I walked.

The sight of the little cluster of people huddled near the door an hour and a half after the school had shut down didn’t help much, apart from making me feel like we weren’t in this alone. I thought about my mom again. With my text still backed up on the runway, she had no way to know that I’d stayed after. Even if Pete’s phone got enough service to send the thing, there was a decent chance that my mom’s wouldn’t get it.

I should’ve tried to call earlier, before it got so bad, even just from the office phone. I guess I didn’t see the point. She worked till five, and I was supposed to get picked up at four. Home by four thirty, I figured, but that scenario was looking a little rosy at this point, and she’d be home from work by now. There’d been an ice storm a few weeks earlier, not even all that bad, and they’d sent her whole office home early. She’d definitely be home by now. I just kind of told myself that and turned the page.

The first kid I recognized in the little group was Les. He
wasn’t facing us, but we’d just seen him and I knew what he was wearing. He was standing just outside the little circle, as if he was trying to start a new ring but no one had joined him. I could tell from his body language that he hadn’t gotten good news, or if he had, he hadn’t cared for the way it was delivered. He wasn’t slouched and defeated; he was coiled up and tense. He looked like he was going to hit something, maybe the wall.

And there was Gossell — Mr. Gossell, Coach Gossell, whatever — and I wasn’t too thrilled to see him, either. He was running his hand through his beard the way he did in history class. He probably thought it made him look more manly or “distinguished” or whatever, but it just made me wonder why anyone would want to grow a beard. There were patches of gray in it that made him look old, probably older than he was, because other than the beard his hair was still dark. I guess once you’re old enough for any gray hair at all, there’s not much point in trying to minimize the damage.

On the plus side, there were girls. There were two freshman chicks, Krista O’Rea and her best friend, Julie Anders. Or maybe it was Enders. Really, it was hard to concentrate on Julie when Krista was around. It was hard to concentrate on anything.

Krista was wearing a blue wool hat, even though she was indoors: a blue hat and a sweater. She turned around at the sound of our footsteps. She had thick brown hair and her eyes were sort of blue-gray. Her skin had just a few reddish brown freckles here and there. But it wasn’t the colors as much as the
way it was all arranged. If I could include a picture here, I would.

And did I mention her body? Because I will, repeatedly. She wasn’t tall, but she had that awesome combination of just enough curves on a tight, athletic body. Soccer in the fall, hoops in the winter. Really, they shouldn’t let girls like her mingle with the general population, not in high school anyway. Half the time the guys here were so stuffed with hormones and frustration that we walked down the hallways stiff-legged and ready to burst.

Her eyes flashed past mine and sort of froze me in place. I read once that an avalanche can move so fast and hard that it will suck the air right out of your lungs. It was like that: one quick look that took the wind right out of me. I didn’t actually gasp, but it was only because I’d seen Krista before. Many times. She was on my bus route.

Just that morning, I’d spent about twenty quality minutes staring at the back of her neck on the bus, wordless and possibly drooling. Maybe that sounds creepy. It wasn’t active staring, it was more like, I don’t know, a trance. In any case, if I’d known she was over here waiting, I wouldn’t have spent so much time in shop.

Not that I would’ve said anything to her. She tied me in knots.

Now she was standing next to Julie, who was turning to say something to her. It was no surprise that they were together. It would’ve been more surprising to see the two of them apart.
They were the kind of best friends who had tons of pictures of each other in their lockers. Still, I wondered what they were doing here after school on a day like this. I wondered if I’d have the guts to ask.

The last member of the little circle, the one standing farthest away from us, was Elijah. His full name was Elijah James. I’d always thought his name would’ve been less strange the other way around: James Elijah. Not that you even needed a last name with a first name like that. There weren’t any other Elijahs around that I knew of. Maybe two hundred years ago there might’ve been.

He was a weird kid, in any case. He wasn’t exactly a goth, but those kids would’ve loved it if he had been. He was legitimately strange in ways they could only play at. He didn’t wear all black and mope around. He wore the same few ratty old sweaters and walked around with these clear, wide-open eyes, like he was seeing things you weren’t.

I remember, maybe like mid-September, I was walking along the hallway outside the library, and he was inside. He was always in there. I saw him through one of the long windows that ran along the door. It was just a glimpse. He was balancing a coin on the tip of his pen. The coin — I think it was a quarter—wasn’t wobbling. It wasn’t moving at all. It was like it was stuck on there, like it was welded. Elijah was just looking at it, balancing it.

He was a sophomore, like Jason, Pete, and me; but he wasn’t like Jason, Pete, and me. He was wearing a sweater with alternating bands of brown and tan. It made him look sort of like a
giant bleached-out bumblebee, the kind you find when you clean out behind a window screen. It always seemed like maybe someone else had dressed him and he hadn’t really noticed what they’d put him in yet. And now he was one of seven kids remaining at Tattawa Regional High School on the first day of the worst blizzard in the history of the continental United States.