August was soaked to the bone. The growing storm had choked out the morning sun, transforming day into night. He stood beside a concrete curb and watched as the school bus rounded the corner of the rain-soaked street, its twin headlights cutting through the downpour like lighthouse beacons.

He hadn’t slept much and was still delirious from the night before. All he could see was that face—a nest of squirming tentacles and eyes of infinite blackness. It sent a shiver down his back, or maybe that was the chill of the rain. He couldn’t be sure.

After the bus wheezed to a halt, he stepped inside. The bus was warm and damp, filled with the chatter of students and the musty smell of wet clothes and cracked polyester seats. He found a place to sit near the middle, letting his waterlogged backpack drop onto the floor.

The bus traveled along a winding road that hugged the coastline. As it gained speed, August watched beads of water splinter into competing river paths on the bus window. He imagined them racing one another towards the metallic corners of the window where their journeys quickly ended. Without warning, the bus abruptly lurched to a stop and kids cried out in nervous shock. Outside the window, August could see men in white hazmat suits gathered on the beach. They were hauling something out of the water. Large tarps and black vehicles obscured much of the scene, but August knew what it was. It was all real, he thought.

The bus driver announced that they had to take a detour. At that moment August noticed his backpack was gone. When the bus had stopped, his backpack had slid forward, colliding with the feet of a girl seated in front of him. She turned around in her seat, holding his backpack, and their eyes met. Her name was Georgia, and August knew her only in passing—a quiet, but excitable girl with black curly hair and a quick smile.

“Sorry about that,” August said, reaching for his backpack.

“It’s okay,” she replied, smiling slightly. “We have first period together, right?”

“Yeah,” said August. “And fourth period.”

“Oh, right! I guess we just never sat next to each other.”

“We sit pretty close...” August didn’t want to look like a loser and point out that he sat two desks over in first period, and one back in fourth period. He had also sat three desks over in seventh grade, two up and one over in sixth grade, five over in fifth grade, four over and one back in fourth grade, three behind in third grade, two over in second grade, and right beside her in first grade. That’s where he first met her—and knew he would never forget her.

She was still smiling. “I’m Georgia.”

“August,” he said, motioning to himself.

“So, what’s in there, bricks?”

August chuckled nervously. “Something like that.” He had completely forgotten the rocks. He really did need more sleep. For a moment, Georgia’s smile put him at ease.

The moment was cut short when the brief interaction didn’t go unnoticed. Trent Westler, a greasy-haired kid with a five o'clock shadow, glared at August. Held back two years, he had been a problem for quite a few kids, but August had mostly stayed off his radar. In fifth grade he had put a tack on the teacher’s chair, a joke that was as antiquated as it was stupid, leading to a small pool of blood and a week suspension. In seventh grade, Trent threw firecrackers into the girl’s bathroom leading to a shard of porcelain slashing a girl’s leg. That was another week. Trent’s crew exchanged dark looks, whispering among themselves.

When the bus arrived at school, August stepped off and was immediately met by Trent and his friends. “Hey, brick-boy,” Trent sneered. “What’s in the bag, huh? Building a real house to live in?”

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August tightened his grip on his backpack. “Just leave me alone, Trent.”

Trent’s eyes narrowed. “Or what?” He shoved a thick finger into August’s chest. “You think you can talk to Georgia?”

Trent’s crew began circling August. He was being surrounded. Most of the students had scrambled inside to avoid getting wet and the bus had moved on, leaving them alone in the dark, pouring rain.

“You and your small-brained idiot friends don’t scare me,” said August defiantly, rainwater dripping from his chin. He knew the trouble he was in, but he didn’t care.

“Are you sure about that?” spat Trent, shoving August to the ground and sending him splashing into a muddy puddle. August dug his fingers into the mud and could feel his fists tighten. Before he could act, a voice called to them, muffled by the rain. It was the principal, he was standing in the doorway to the school and he ordered them all inside. August did nothing, still laying on the ground, and watched the gang of kids turn and walk towards the school steps, still chuckling under their breath as they shot mocking glares back at him.

August sat in his first period class, barely registering the drone of his teacher's voice teaching something about long division. Trent and his conspirators sat in the corner, just behind him, their legs propped up on the empty desks beside them. They wanted to give off the impression that they weren’t interested in learning. It was true. They weren’t. August had enough trouble concentrating in class, and didn’t need the added stress of being a target of Trent’s harassment. Just being a teenager surrounded by an uncertain ocean of lost people just like him, seemed at times like an insurmountable gauntlet. To August, it was unnecessarily cruel that the moment in your life when you’re growing the fastest, changing the most, you’re thrown in with swarming sharks just as confused as you are, and then told that you also have the added burden of memorizing the quadratic equation.

August turned and noticed Georgia sitting beside him. His concerns melted away. He looked at the way the light caught her hair. He took in the shape of her nose, admiring the curve between it and her lips, and then again between her lips and her chin. He imagined them as valleys between the softly rolling hills of a country he would only visit in dreams. Maybe in those dreams he could be rich, and then he could afford to take her there. First class.

August shook his head. He couldn’t focus, he was sure from a lack of sleep, and his mind continued to drift, thinking back to the creature from the night before. As the storm outside the classroom intensified, lightning briefly illuminated the window as thunder rattled its frame and shook the school down to the foundation. Just as August's thoughts seemed to settle, a low snap echoed through the building and the power abruptly cut out, casting the room into darkness.

The teacher paused mid-sentence.

"Everyone, stay calm," she instructed, her voice wavering slightly as she held her hands out to settle his classmates.

The students exchanged nervous whispers, uncertainty rippling through the room. He could hear Trent and his friends shift behind him, never willing to waste an opportunity for some kind of braindead incivility. The emergency lights flickered on in the hallway, sending a single slice of light into the room.

Through the single window, illuminated by intermittent flashes of lightning, August saw it—a silhouette against the storm-lit sky. It was the creature. No one else seemed to notice, but for August, instinct took over.

Without a second thought, he bolted from his seat, pushing past startled classmates in the darkness, and dashed out into the hallway. The school corridors were dimly lit by emergency lights flickering sporadically, casting twisted shadows along the walls.

Behind him, August heard the echoing footsteps giving chase. Not the creature, he thought. It was the bullies led by Trent Westler, their mocking laughter cutting through the darkness. They closed in as August sprinted past rows of lockers, his breath ragged, heart pounding.

As he rounded a corner, Trent's voice boomed out, taunting and cruel. “Where ya going? We’re not done with you!”

Rounding a corner August bumped into one of the bullies, Trent and another closed the cage behind him. "Well, well, look who's running scared," sneered Trent, blocking August's escape, his back against the lockers. Thinking quickly, August slipped the strap of his backpack down his arm, and gripping it tightly, swung it viciously at Trent.

The impact was solid, a dull thud that reverberated through the dark hallway. Trent staggered back, clutching his jaw, a look of shock and pain contorting his face. Blood trickled from his mouth.

“You’re gonna pay for that!” one of the boys shouted. The group surged forward, and August turned and ran. The corridors of the school blurred around him. He burst through the first door he found, skidding to a halt in the dark, concrete space. It was the boiler room. It was mostly empty besides mops and buckets and other janitorial equipment, and a maze of pipes stretching in every direction. The pipes were a dull green now, and had been painted over so many times to control rust that each chip revealed a new color like a cracked jawbreaker, stretching back a hundred years to the founding of the school.

He spotted a janitor’s closet and ducked inside, then he did his best to slow his heavy breathing. He could hear them just outside. “Lock him in there!” came a voice, and then he heard the sound of something being wedged against the door.

August was in pitch black darkness. He forced his shoulder against the door, but even with all his strength, it wouldn’t budge. The cramped space became suffocating.

Water began to trickle in from above, but it did not fall. The water pooled above him, as if inverted by gravity. The relentless torrent from above started filling the cramped closet, a sheet of cold water just above his head. Panic surged through him as the water continued descending, threatening to engulf him.

“Help!” he shouted, banging on the door. “Someone, please!”

Crawling onto his back, he took a large breath, and the water swallowed him completely.