The Release

The face started to shift toward her and Lucy put a hand on the back of the dead woman’s head.

But as the face rolled into view, Lucy scrambled backward. The woman had no face; there was just a giant gaping hole where her features used to be.

It was the pounding that woke her.

Vigorous strikes of a hammer against wood. Thunk-thunk. Thunk-thunk. Thunk-thunk.

Grant mumbled and his clothes rustled in the dark as he fumbled around, trying to sit up.

Then they heard the creaking of footsteps on the roof, the dragging of material across the tar, a crash, and then more hammering.

“He’s on the roof,” Lucy said, sitting up, rubbing her eyes.

“What’s he doing on the roof?” Salem asked sleepily.

“He’s on the roof!” Lucy said again and shot up, stumbling forward, kicking an empty juice bottle, and reaching for the lights. When she hit the switch, the room lit up brightly and they all groaned and covered their eyes, squinting and adjusting. Grant and Salem looked at her, failing to grasp Lucy’s urgency. “He’s blocking us in. He’s taking away our escape route. Between the gates and covering our roof access? We will be stuck in the East Wing.”

“You think he knows we’re still here?” Grant asked, standing up and stretching.

“No,” Lucy shook her head. “I think he thinks we bolted.”

“Good, then we’re safe!” Salem let out a long breath.

“No,” Lucy said again through clenched teeth. “We’re not safe. And we are definitely trapped.”

“We need to get the stuff we dropped when we were ru

Salem confessed that she had dropped the loot from the locker cleanout on to the blue couch in the journalism room. “But I suppose we can’t go in there now…it’s lost forever.”

Lucy opened the door slowly, just a crack, and waited for the hammering to start to open it wider. “Grant...unlock the journalism lab.”

“Are you crazy? Spencer’s right up there,” Salem put an arm out as if to stop Lucy. “I want the stuff too...but we should wait.”

“You’re right. You’re right,” Lucy nodded. Then she turned to Grant, “Unlock the woodshop instead.”

He nodded and worked fast, sneaking out into the hall, with the hammering above them as a beacon of safety. Grant let Lucy into the workshop and then took off down the hall, ru

Salem was sitting on a couch, her knees tucked up, waiting. Her hair was matted on one side. Lucy shut the door and set the board down across the floor. It was a perfect fit and it blocked out their light. Since the door opened outward, this was the board’s only purpose, but it gave Lucy a small bit of relief about keeping their light on during times when Spencer, on patrol, could see it.

The hammering stopped, but they could still hear Spencer on the roof, his heavy feet walking around the perimeter of the East Wing. Lucy imagined he was exploring for other points of entry. If the stairs in the boiler room were the official roof access point, then Lucy knew that he would take care of that too. She had to give Spencer credit, if he wanted his school secure he was doing everything in his power to make that happen.

When Spencer resumed hammering, Grant singularly recovered their blanket and hand sanitizer, a box of Kleenex, a deck of cards, and an assortment of sweatshirts and pill bottles. He shifted in and out of the journalism room swiftly and undetected.

Then they sat back.

“What do we do?” Salem asked.

“We wait,” Grant answered.

They pulled out the deck of cards and played a lazy game of Go Fish; Salem had to be told she won and she barely registered the news before dumping her wi

When everything had been silent for a long time and they were certain Spencer wasn’t returning, they darted across the hall to assess the damage. The ladder was still on its side on the ground, the tables tossed over too. Where the room used to glow with the light from the open hole was now dark. The skylight had been covered with long slabs of wood, but not just the hole they had created—Spencer had nailed wood over the entire plastic skylight section, blocking the sun entirely, and preventing them from recreating their escape route on another section.

This time, there was no a

Darkness fell over their second night.

They wouldn’t have known it was dark, except their phones broadcasted the time for them. Lucy’s phone had a live background that displayed an open field and a sun moving across the sky throughout the day. The background was now darkened shadows and stars, a crescent moon. Her battery life was now at 5%. The phone hadn’t succumbed to its low-battery or cracked screen. It was a miracle.

Every once in awhile they thought they heard something outside, but they couldn’t tell if it was inside or outside or from which direction. Their cubby was insulated.

They devoured another round of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and drank bottled water. They discussed the problems of where to pee and decided that the faculty bathroom mere feet away was too risky. So, Grant set up buckets in the woodshop—each of them claiming a ca

“When should we turn out the light?” Lucy asked. “Just to be safe?”

Nobody responded.

“Patrick Miller,” Salem said the name slowly as if it had just come to her—as if she had been trying to remember it for ages.

“What?” Grant asked. He stopped playing basketball with the torn up pieces of poster paper. He had been lobbing them upward and trying to land them in a paper cup on top of the refrigerator. “What about him?”

Lucy turned on her belly so she could face Salem and propped herself up on her elbows.

“Patrick Miller was a crush I had sophomore year. Right after I got back from Texas. Just this total goofball. Moved here from somewhere in the South and had this thick Southern accent. Do you remember him at all?” Lucy shook her head. “He played piano and wore a tie to school sometimes for no reason. And he was totally unpopular, but I liked him. I felt like I should maybe go on a date with him anyway, even though I was nervous, didn’t know what people would say. How silly does that sound...but I thought it would be too big a risk to my social standing. So, then he started dating Brittney Phillips and I just got pissed.”

“The cheerleader?” Grant asked. He resumed his paper-shooting game. Aim. Shoot. The paper bounced off the rim, the cup toppled over and fell to the floor. He looked at it like he wanted to pick it up, but didn’t move.

“Yeah, that beautiful, perfect little cheerleader. Who—on top of being the only cheerleader who could pull off stunts—was also like super nice? And she took calculus. Super nice calculus taking cheerleader. Ugh. And she really liked him, you know?”

“I don’t remember her dating anyone,” Lucy said. Just to say something, anything. Just to be a part of the conversation, but she knew better than to question Salem’s recollection of events.