“I often wonder if I had been in school that day if any of this would have ever happened? Most days I’m glad that I wasn’t there, and everything did happen…most days.”
-Alianna’s Diary. Sept. 5th
Jaius stood there gazing through half-closed eyes as he attempted to brush his teeth. He felt like he had gotten absolutely no sleep at all, but at least he and Anne had seemed to make up. His stomach began to sour as he looked at his iphone which read 7:30am. Only fifteen more minutes till the bus got there, and then twenty-five more till he’d have to enter the Dungeon again. Myriad thoughts of the torture that the other kids would visit upon him flew through his head. The physical forms: wedgies, being thrown in the locker, being pushed down, those hurt, but the pain usually went away in fifteen minutes or so. The mental forms of torture, however stayed with him. They just continued to stack up inside him, threatening to crush him from existence.
Knocking at the bathroom door brought him out of his dreary musings.
“Jaius, come on we’re going to miss the bus!” said Anne.
“Um’ Cumin.” He replied, trying to speak around the toothbrush.
He rinsed out his mouth, heaved a heavy sigh, and then opened the door. Anne was standing just off to his left at the top of the stairs. She waved her hand at him and mouthed “Come on.” He picked up his back pack from where he had set it in the hallway and slung it over his shoulder. It seemed to get heavier with each new day at the dungeon. How much longer till the weight of that place buried him forever?
Anne’s bus came first today. She grabbed his hand and squeezed it before she got on. She didn’t say anything, but he knew what she meant. He squeezed back, and then she headed onto the bus. She found a seat near one of the windows that was facing him, and turned to look at him as the doors closed. She put two finger’s together and placed the tips on her forehead, she then brought her hand down in a crisp salute. He returned the gesture with a slight grin. She always found someway to bring that grin out of him before they parted ways for the day. “I really was a complete jerk to her yesterday, I got to find a way to make amends.”
Five minutes later he saw his bus coming down the street toward him. The doors shut behind him and it was like they shut behind him all the things that brought him peace and happiness. He moved halfway down the aisle and found an empty seat. Most other kids shoved him out of the seat if he tried to sit with them. A quick glance around the bus revealed the Bellows and their clique in the back of the bus, and the rest were kids that were trying to find a seat each day that was closer to the back, or kids that tried to find one furthest away. One last fact filtered into his mind as he turned to sit down, none of the faces that he had seen belonged to Alianna. He had assumed that she rode the bus to school in the morning too, but it turns out that she probably got a ride from her parents. He had been nurturing a slight hope that they could sit together. If they were both to be tormented, perhaps sticking together would lessen the blows. He knew it was a pipe dream, she would endure far worse then she had been if she was seen teaming up with him. Plus she was different then he was. She was tormented because she had royally offended Keri Bellows in some fashion. Where Jaius just seemed to have a bull horn permanently fixed atop his head that shouted “Pick on Me!” to anyone who came upon him.
He shook the pipe dream from his mind’s eye and put in his air pods and watched Sherlock Homes from his iTunes library. He didn’t even get to the first scene before his earlobe began to flutter back and forth. After a minute the air pod fell out.
“Having fun Steve?” said someone behind him.
“Meh, it passes the time, plus I get a free movie out of it.” Said Stephan Pennington.
Jaius dove into his imagination to escape the painful reality of that bus ride. He placed himself in the scene from Sherlock Holmes where Holmes is fighting the giant in that underground arena. Jaius imagined that he was Holmes and that Steve Pennington was the Giant. Just like Holmes did in the movie, Jaius calculated the amount of damage each of his blows would inflict on Pennington and how long it would take him to recover.
The fact that his earlobe had stopped moving brought him out of his reprieve. He saw kids moving past his seat an block of ice started to form in his stomach. He turned and looked out the window and swallowed hard. They had arrived at The Dungeon. He sighed heavily, got up from his seat, and joined the condemned as they queued up for another day of torture.
His first period was a study hall with Mr. Dullus the history teacher. He had done all his homework already, so he sat there drawing swords on a piece of paper. He had always found swords to be fascinating. The way they glimmered, the damage they could do to someone. He often pictured all those who had picked on him as gladiators when he pretended he was Maximus in the Collasuame. He would picture himself cutting them down. Only in his imagination though, he knew he could never hurt someone in real life. This is the main reason he had never learned to fight, he was afraid of the pain he might cause someone. If it was one thing that Jaius understood, it was pain.
“McFarlan” Mr. Dullus bellowed.
Jaius looked up from what he was doing. Mr. Dullus was holding three books up from his desk.
“Yes Sir.” Said Jaius.
“I need someone to take these books back to Mrs. Shafer down in the art room, and you’re my man.”
Jaius heard a bunch of snicker’s after that was said. They were quickly silenced by a slicing glare from Mr. Dullus. He had spent many years in the military and every kid knew that he could kill a man with an eraser. You learned very early on not to mess with Mr. Dullus.
Jaius got up, gathered his stuff and headed up to Mr. Dullus’s desk. Jaius had learned very early on, never to leave his things unattended at the Dungeon. He took the books from Mr Dullus and the hall pass that he handed him.
“No distractions now McFarlan, give Mrs Shafer the books and then hightail it back here.”
Jaius nodded his head. “Yes Sir, I’ll come right back.”
Once in the hallway the silence enveloped him, and he welcomed it. Out here, alone, he could imagine that there was no one else but him. No one who could hurt him, like everyone but him was permanently on the absentee list. He started to become aware of the dark path those thoughts began to form and shook his head to clear them from his mind. He took his time going down the steps to the lowest level of the Dungeon, it gave him the most time away from the other kids. He heard someone coming up the flight just below the one he was on and the tranquility of solitude vanished. He glanced over the rail and saw one of the Nuns coming up the steps below. He froze for a moment, feeling like for some reason that he was in trouble, but remembering his hall pass he began to move just as the sister turned the corner and started up the steps he was on. She paused on the first step when she realized that she was not alone. Her lone eye locking in on him like the cross-hairs of a weapon.
“Out of class McFarlan?” Said Sister Justina.
He froze again as she spoke, her tone could freeze even the most self assured student in their tracks. Sister Justina only had one eye, her other covered by a black patch. Jaius had heard that she had lost it in “The War”, he couldn’t remember which one, but the story he had heard was that she had had to walk fifty miles to the nearest town with only one eye. She was tough as nails. There was a rumor, whispered in locker rooms and dark corners, that even Keri Bellows could not stand before this gaze.
The paralysis left him as he remembered his hall pass. He grabbed it and held it before him as if it were a shield. She looked to the note, and then took it from him. She squinted her eye, scouring the paper for any sign of forgery. Jaius ’s mind was flooded with scenes from the Terminator movies where the terminators would scan their surroundings looking for targets.
Finally satisfied that the document was authentic, she handed it back to him.
“Very well McFarlan, move along to Mrs. Shafer’s room and do not dally. I don’t want to see you there when I reach her room on my rounds.”
He took back the paper. “Yes Sister Justina, I will.”
She scrutinized him for a moment more and then gave a curt nod and moved past him up the stairs.
He let out the breath that he had not noticed he was holding in, and jumped down to the landing and then proceeded to jump the stairs two at a time till he reached the bottom-most landing. He moved into the main hall and turned toward the cafeteria toward a secluded row of lockers that were the inheritance of the sixth graders when they first arrived. Just past those lockers, on the right, was a solid wood door with a wood plaque on it that read “ART ROOM.” He had never been in this room before. He had had Art in sixth grade here, but due to renovations in this hallway they had had to use an alternate room for class. After sixth grade, Art was an elective, which he had never chosen to take. He wasn’t coordinated enough for it and the kids had laughed and made fun of his efforts. Mrs. Shafer had tried to stamp that out as best she could, but it still happened often enough for him not to want to go back again. It was probably cluttered with smelly art supplies and the walls covered with the remains of halfhearted efforts.
He knocked a couple of times on the door. When it opened and it was like a portal to another world. The first thing he saw was Mrs. Shafer standing in the doorway. To her left he could see the beginning of a table and then beyond, covering a large part of the floor was a painting of a.dragon rising out of the ocean with its front claw turned palm upward and a silver sphere floated above it. And on the wall across from him was a picture of a woman in a wooden boat. Her dress was of medieval fashion and her face looked so forlorn. Next to that, at the bottom corner of the next wall was a scene where a large, gilded globe that looked to have once rested on top of a large pillar was falling down upon some mountains and causing a cataclysm as it crashed to the earth. He stood with his mouth hanging open. This was the absolutely coolest classroom Jaius had ever seen. Mrs. Shafer raised her eyebrow at him, and he slowly came out of his stupor.
“Can I help you?” She said, showing a slight hint of a smile, a rare facial expression among teachers at the Dungeon.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Shafer. Mr. Dullus sent me down to return the books that you lent him. Her eyes flicked to the three books he carried and the smile widened.
‘Oh yes, he told me yesterday that he’d be returning them this morning. Thank you for bringing them…I’m sorry I don’t believe I know your name.”
“Jaius McFalan Mrs. Shafer.”
She put her hand to her forehead and nods. “Yes, I remember now, you were in my art class last year when we were in room 208. I had never met someone with your name before, and so it stuck with me. How did your parents come by it?”
Jaius grimaced inwardly, the truth was that his parents had wanted to name him after some guy in the Bible named Jairus and the clerk at the hospital left off the “r” from the birth certificate. At first they were going to complain but after a little debate they found that they liked Jaius better. This reason had always sounded lame to him, so he had another response prepared.
“They read it somewhere and liked it a lot, ma’am.” It was the truth too, they had read it.
“I see, very interesting indeed. Hrm, come to think of it if you add an R after the I, but before the U, then you’d have the same name as a man from the Bible, Jairus.”
Jaius groaned inwardly.
“Why aren’t you in my class this year, Jaius?’
“I took Computer lab instead, I’m not a very good artist.”
“No one is a very good artist when they are young Jaius. Some people have to work harder at it then other’s but that doesn’t make them sub par. In fact, sometimes taking the slower approach makes you appreciate something more.”
“Yes ma’am, I’ll remember that. Mrs. Shafer, why are there so many different types of paintings around the room?”
“Well, each year the senior class gets their own piece of floor or wall to paint a picture that means something to that class. Come in and I’ll give you the nickel tour.”
Completely forgetting Mr. Dullus’s admonishment to not dally and Sister Justina‘s warning about finding him here, Jaius steped into the room and followed Mrs. Shafer around as she described each picture. There were a number of album covers from the 70’s and 80’s, the names of the bands seeming somewhat familiar to Jaius. The lady in the boat that he had seen from the doorway was titled, the Lady of Shallot, some kind of old poem. When they got to the one in the corner, where the cataclysm was being depicted. He asked which class had done that one.
Mrs. Shaffer paused for a moment before answering.
“That one is a bit of a different circumstance then the others. That is the work of just one student. Her name is Alianna Oaksen, and I think she is in your grade?”
“Yes ma’am. We ride the same bus home now. Why did she get her own place on the wall?”
“To be honest, she was the first one who ever really showed an interest before their senior year. She spends a lot of time down here, and as a teacher it is my job to support the academic ventures of my students.”
“You like her better then the other kids too, huh?” He said right on top of her last statement. There was the slightest pause before she answered that told Jaius that he had hit pretty close to a mark.
“I like all of my students the same, Jaius, even the ones that haven’t been here for a while.” That hung in the air for a few moments of awkwardness, as it sunk in that she was talking about Jaius.
‘Speaking of Alianna though, I hope she is felling better, I had been informed that her mother called in and said she was sick today.”
An icy chill ran through Jaius. All that crap that was done to her on the bus last night seemed pretty traumatic, he found himself hoping that she was OK.
He looked closely at the picture that Alianna was working on. It was of this large sphere that was crashing down on the shore of some peninsula. There were intricate carvings on the sphere that made it seem translucent, and there was a fiery, molten, substance pouring out of holes in the side of it. Trailing away from the globe was a enormous stone pillar that had broken into three pieces that stretched all the way to a range of mountains in the background. It almost seemed to him that this globe had been some kind of lamp. As he continued to stare at it, he found himself being drawn to those mountains. The sky just above them was lit with yellows and oranges, as if a large fire was burning behind those mountains. He began to wonder what land lay beyond those mountains, what the people were like, and what tragedy had befallen them.
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“Its called The Destruction of the Great Lamps.” Said Mrs. Shafer after clearing her throat. “She is copying it from this book.” She held a soft cover book down so he could see it. It said Tolkien, The Illustrated Encyclopedia. She then opened the book to the page that Alianna had been using. Jaius glanced from the book to the wall many times, trying to estimate how close she had come to getting it right. He had to admit, she had a good bit of talent. The flames highlighting the background were especially close to what was in the book. As he stared at those flames he found his mind wandering once again to what lay beyond them.
His musings were disturbed by the sound of foot falls in the hallway. They sent ice flooding through his veins. They were too heavy to be one of the students. The distinctive clap of the shoes on the tile floor left only one possibility, one of the Sister’s was coming this way. He knew which one too. All color left his face so quickly that Mrs. Shafer grabbed his shoulders asking if he was alright.
“Sis..Sister Justina co..coming this way. She..she told me that she better not find me here when she made her rounds. I’m a gonner Mrs. Shafer, save yourself” he said trying to be brave.
Mrs. Shafer nodded her head. “Alas Jaius I am the teacher and so I must think of my students first when there is danger.” She hid it well but Jaius thought he detected a small bit of mirth riding the undercurrents of the heroic image she was putting forth.
“Quickly go hide in the back of my storage room.” She pointed to a door opposite them which was slightly ajar.
He didn’t waste time to inquire further, the instinctual need to survive took over and it drove him quickly into the storage room and shut the door. Once the door was shut he backed into the far corner and hunkered down.
The footsteps stopped outside the Art room and he heard Sister Justina speak.
“Good morning Mrs. Shafer, is there someone in this room with you? I thought I heard you speaking to someone.”
“Good morning Sister, no there isn’t anyone in this room with me.” Jaius heard her place a strong emphasis on the word “this.” “I have a bad habit of speaking to myself sometimes, it comes from years of talking to students who are unresponsive or not present.” Jaius could imagine the joke leaving her mouth and floating through the air on wings of mirth. When there was no response from Sister Justina, he then saw the joke hit the Sister’s force shield and crash to the floor in a burning heap.
“Hrm.” was all the sister said. “I have just been informed that the Suit of Armor that we use for the mascot’s costume has gone missing. I am letting all the teachers know individually to be on the look out for it. Theft of any kind will not be tolerated here at St. Pious.”
“That’s terrible Sister, I hope it wasn’t any of our students that did this.” Said Mrs. Shafer, with genuine concern.
“I hope not either, for their sake's. We are looking especially closely at those students who are not in school today, they would have the best opportunity to pull this off I would think.”
Mrs. Shafer hesitated a fraction too long at that statement.
“Do you know of someone who might be involved Mrs. Shafer?”
“N..No Sister Justina, I am just in shock that one of our students might have done such a thing.”
Jaius understood why she paused. Alianna was one of the students that were out today. She’s probably safer then any of the boys who were absent. This caper smacked more of boys being rebellious then what a girl might do.
“What if she was the only one absent today?” the thought sent waves of concern coursing through him, which made him pause. “Why am I worried about her?”
“I am appalled as well Mrs. Shafer. If you notice anything suspicious in your students' actions today I expect to know about it as soon as possible. No anomaly is too inconsequential not to be reported.”
“Yes Sister, I will be sure to report any odd behavior.”
“Thank you Mrs. Shafer. Have a blessed day.”
Jaius heard Sister Justina walk from the room and continue down the hall. Moments latter the door to the supply room opened and Mrs. Shafer stood in the doorway.
“Jaius, how well do you know Alianna, do you know if she really is sick today?”
Jaius didn’t answer. He felt a connection to Alianna, like kindred spirits going through the same hell, and would like to say he and her were friends, but he also didn’t want to lie to a teacher.
“I don’t know her that well Mrs. Shafer, as to whether she was sick or not I..”
He paused again, he didn’t know what had happened after Mrs. Oaksen had picked her up last night, but if what had happened to her had happened to him instead, he knew he would be sick for the rest of his life.
“Jaius, what is it? What do you know about why she is absent?”
“I..I got to go Mrs. Shafer, Mr. Dullus will do worse then Sister Justina would have, if I’m not back to his class soon.”
She came into the storage room and knelt down before him. “Jaius McFarlan, tell me what you know about why Alianna isn’t here today. I am only trying to look out for her, not get her into trouble. I‘ll give you a note for Mr. Dullus.”
Jaius gulped, but he could hear the sincerity in her voice and so he told her everything he had witnessed the previous afternoon.
As he was finishing he could see tears starting to run down Mrs. Shafer’s cheeks.
When he was done, she wiped at her eyes.
“I love children as a general rule, but those Bellows make it harder and harder to keep that rule. What she ever did to Keri Bellows that warrants the treatment she gives her is beyond my understanding.”
“They spent a half hour looking for those pages Mrs. Shafer. I get the impression that Alianna likes books, but isn’t that a bit much.”
Mrs. Shafer helped him to stand up. “That was not just another book, Jaius, it was probably Alianna’s most special possession. Oh that poor child.”
“I better not find out that you had any part of that business, Jaius.” She said and he could see the flash of anger that briefly escaped her eyes.
He actually turned a bit green at the very thought that he would dare visit upon someone like Alianna the torture he himself received.
The anger left Mrs. Shafer as soon as it came. She saw the reaction to those words and knew what it meant. “Oh Jaius, I’m very sorry, you receive the same treatment don’t you?”
Embarrassment flooded through him, but he found himself shaking his head. Mrs. Shafer gave him a large hug and then led him out of the storage room. She went over to her desk and wrote something on a slip of paper. She then came over and handed it to him. It was a note to Mr. Dullus, telling him that Mrs. Shafer had needed Jaius to help her move something and that was why he was late getting back.
“Thank you Mrs. Shafer, I better get going now.” He turned to leave but she called out to him.
“Jaius the new semester begins next week, and you can pick a new elective then if you want. If computer’s interest you that is fine, but you are welcome to join my art class if you wish. Not a lot of those students who harass you choose art as an elective. They think that it is useless. Plus I usually allow my art students to come down here during the study halls to work on their projects. It would lessen the amount of time you had to be around those other students.”
Jaius turned and a small smile touched his lips.
“Thank you Mrs. Shafer, I’ll think about it.”
He then turned and left that unique room behind.
He took the back stairs up to the second floor. They were the ones which were back the way he had heard Sister Justina come. If she had used them to get down to the basement then it stood to reason that she probably wouldn’t be on them now.
When he got back to Mr. Dullus’s room he saw Mr. Dullus’s face begin to turn red, and so he knew he had to act fast. He hurried over and handed Mr. Dullus the note from Mrs. Shafer. He swiped it from Jaius’s hand, but his color returned to normal as he read the note. He dismissed Jaius as if he didn’t realize he was there. Jaius stood there shocked by Mr. Dullus’s reaction for a moment. He returned to his seat a few moments later, not wanting to disrupt Mr. Dullus’s musings and incur his wrath.
The rest of the day was pretty normal for him. People called him names as he went down the halls, being tripped and falling unceremoniously in front of a group of pretty girls. Who proceeded to laugh at his misfortune. Having Brute cologne poured all over him in the locker room after gym class and the guys calling him Brute man. His last class that day was another study hall in the Library. Since Ms. Fulton saw every student in the school at one time or another, it was hard for her to know the names and faces of everyone. A lot of kids used this to their advantage to sneak out of her study halls and goof. off till the bell rang to go home.
Jaius thought that today he would try it too. Especially since Steve Pennington was in the library that day and was walking Jaius’s way carrying his chair. The image of Pennington sitting behind him and flicking his ear the whole period was what really drove this abnormal behavior in him.
He grabbed his bag, got up and skirted around the other side of the library from Steve, who was so stunned by Jaius evading him that he stood frozen long enough for Jaius to reach Ms. Fulton’s desk.
Ms. Fulton looked up from the book she was reading, the title at the top of the page said A Wrinkle in Time.
“Wasn’t there a Star Trek episode named that?” he thought, even as he stammered his question to her.
“Ms. Fulton, could…could I go down to the Art room? Mrs. Shafer said it would be OK so I could work on my Art project.” He didn’t see this as a lie since it was mostly what she had said that morning.
Ms. Fulton squinted at him and realizing that this wasn’t one of the student’s that were known to make trouble, she nodded her head and wrote him out a pass.
Relief flooded through him. He had done it. He had escaped one of the tortures that had plagued him. A slight hope bloomed inside him. Perhaps Art class held the salvation he had been craving.
He walked down the back staircase again, and was too lost in his thoughts to see Steve Pennington and another boy sneak into the hall after him. He also didn’t see them heading down the middle stairwell, since he was going down the stairwell at the far east of the building.
He got down to the basement and started walking past the sixth grade lockers toward the art room. Just before he got to a break in the row of lockers, Steve stepped out in front of him, and out of the corner of his eye he saw the other boy Peter McGinniy, move from an alcove on the other side of the hall to stand behind him.
All the hope of an escape from the disgusting routine he had to endure every day left him as he saw his doorway to respite blocked by the Troll that had just emerged in front of him.
“Hey McFart-land what’s the idea of running out of study hall, and just as I was bringing my chair over to hang with ya. Man that was pretty rude.” He herd Pete laugh behind him.
“ I think there's only one thing to do, eh Pete.”
“I think your right Steve”
“Sorry Pious but you need to learn not to be so rude to people.”
He knew what was coming, it happened to him at least every other day. Pete took Jaius’s bag from off his back, and Steve opened an unlocked locker nearby and shoved Jaius in. He then shut the door. He heard them rummaging through his bag, as they usually did, but Jaius had learned the hard way to keep anything valuable or personal in his pockets. They checked the bag but tossed it down when all they found were school books.
“Lame bag Pious.” Said Peter. “Come on Steve, let's go to the weight room till the bell rings.”
“Meh, alright.” Steve punched the locker door that Jaius was in, which rang loudly inside the locker. “I hope you learn your lesson Pious, I’m getting tired of teaching it.”
Their laughter echoed back down the hall to him as they went away.
His usual tactic at this point was to yell and bang on the locker till someone, usually the janitor, let him out. At this moment, however, something inside him was urging him to be still and wait. This feeling had never arisen before in him and so he decided to wait a bit before yelling for help.
A few minutes went by, and just before he was about ready to ignore the voice and start yelling out he heard the doors to the center stairwell open and the voices of two girls as they entered the hallway. They walked past the locker he was in, but stopped at one close by. One of the girls was Keri Bellows, the other was one of Keri’s followers, he thought her name was Alison.
“I said I wanted a look at the diary Alison, not a trip to the sixth grade herding pen.” Said Keri with irritation.
“I keep it in my younger sister Megan's locker, Keri. Alianna might be able to get into my locker, so I thought it would be safer here.”
“Fine, whatever, just get it.”
Jaius heard a lock being fumbled with and then the click of the latch being lifted up.
“Here it is Keri, what did you need it for?”
“Alianna wasn’t in school today, which indicates to me that the odds are good that she told her Mom about yesterday. I know she just blew the whole thing all out of proportion. This will teach her what happens to tattle tales.”
“I wanted to speak to you about yesterday, Keri.”
Jaius heard a book slam closed.
“Yes?”
“Well, I mean, well…”
“We’re friends Alison, you can speak openly.”
He heard Alison take a deep breath.
“Well, it was just that book that you threw out the window, it wasn’t just an ordinary story book.”
“I know, it was a particularly badly written romance.”
There was a pause before Alison began again.
“It was very special to her, it…”
“I don’t care Alison. It could have been written in gold lettering for all I care. It's done and we are now moving on to something else.”
“Yes Keri, you're right, I’m sorry for bringing it up.”
Keri’s tone became soothing. “No need to apologize Alison, we’re friends, remember.”
Jaius noted a funny inflection in Keri’s voice whenever sge said “friends” but he couldn’t figure its meaning.
“Yes, here it is, the entry where she talks about having a dream of Jim Kurtz in a suit of armor astride a horse. Then she opens the face-plate and kisses him. This will be a great video for YouTube, TikTok, instagram, and anywhere else we can show it.”
“You said you had something planned but hadn't told me yet.”
There was a long pause.
“You can trust me Keri, I’m so through with Alianna, I wouldn’t dream of telling her.”
“I know that Alison, I just hadn’t gotten around to talking to you yet. It's simple. Greg Parker and a few of the other Eighth grade boys, have taken the suit of armor that the mascot wears and hid it backstage in the prop room. Tomorrow, we’ll be changing how we treat Alianna. We’ll let her think we're sorry for all the things we've done to her and that we want her to join us. We’ll tell her that Jim has expressed an interest in her. Then we take her backstage where there will be the armor on top of one of the saw horses that will be made up to look like a real one.”
“With Jim inside the armor.” Alison said with confusion in her voice.
Keri heaved a heavy sigh. “No, Alison, Greg is bringing in a bag of Manure from his dad’s farm tomorrow. We’re going to fill the armor up. We’ve already lined all the joints and the holes with wax paper to hold the suit together, and keep the smell inside. When she lifts the face plate, well she won’t be able to smell anything else for a week.”
“Wow, I can’t believe you were able to get all of that done without any of the teachers or sister’s catching on.”
“I’m the Eight grade class president, and the captain of the J.V. cheerleader squad. What suspicion can I draw?”
“Wow, you are amazing Keri.”
“I know. Anyway, I’ve gotten what I need from this. Come on, the bell will be ringing soon.”
“I’ll put it away and meet you upstairs, I have to make sure it's buried enough in the clutter of my sister’s stuff that she doesn’t find it.”
“Suit yourself, practice is at 6pm, tonight.”
Jaius heard Keri walk away and the doors to the middle stairwell close.
He felt his legs starting to go weak as the sheer magnitude of what was going to happen tomorrow started to sink in. They weren’t trying to torture her anymore. They were trying to destroy her.
A noise brought him back to the here and now. It was someone crying. He listened at the slits in the locker door. It was Alison. What had he missed that had made her cry.
“Oh Ali…Oh I am so sorry. God forgive me Ali I didn’t know this was what would happen. There is no way you could forgive me for what I’ve done, there is no way I can go back now anyway. No way I can go against my Mom.”
“Was she calling Alianna?” She couldn’t be that stupid.
Jaius looked out through the slit, and could see Alison from the shoulder’s down. She was cradling a book to her chest.
“Oh, she was just talking to herself.”
He then saw her put the book into the locker and then shut the door and lock it. She turned toward him and he moved back from the slits and held his breath. He saw the light that filtered in through the slits dim briefly as she passed.
When he heard the doors to the center stairs close, he began counting. When he reached 120 he started shouting and banging on the locker. Ten minutes later the Janitor opened the door and let him out. He had hoped Mrs. Shafer would come and free him, but the Janitor said she had left early today. He ran to where the buses picked the kids up, only to find that the one he rode home had already left. His heart sank when he looked at his iPhone 3:15. He’d missed it by five minutes.
He had to get a hold of Alianna. First, though, he called his Mom to say that he had missed the bus. She yelled at him for that, and told him he’d have to wait for his Dad, who would pick him up at the McDonalds that was down the block from the school. As he walked down the block toward the McDonalds he opened up the Instagram app on his phone and tried to find her there. He spent a half hour looking, but could not find her. Is it possible she was the one teenage girl in the U.S. that didn’t have a Instagram? He tried all the other media sites he could think of, but there wasn't anything. He tried finding her phone number on White pages, but all he could find was one for Oaksen Construction. He tried calling that but got an answering machine. He thought about leaving a message, but if this was her Dad’s business he didn’t want some stranger to get this message.
About 5:30, his dad came into the McDonalds with a stern look on his face. The ride home consisted of his dad lecturing him about being responsible and being where he needed to be on time. Then things went from bad to worse when he walked in the door and there was Sis with a big smile on her face as she held a letter out to their father.
“Look Dad, our report cards for the semester came. I opened them cause I wanted to see if I had gotten that A in Math.”
Jaius had never been served a death warrant before, but he felt pretty confident that this was pretty close to what it felt like.
Anne looked up at him, with sympathy in her eyes, from where she was doing her homework at the kitchen table.
“Well, let's just take a look at those.” said his Dad.
They had dinner, then his dad took him into his study and lectured him for two hours about how he needed to get good grades, and go to college if he was going to make anything of himself. He was then grounded for a week, which meant he had to give up his, laptop and PSP. All he was left with was his T.V and his iPhone. Neither of which could aid him in getting a hold of Alianna. He had no idea how to get out of his house to her house because every time he even tried to sneak downstairs to watch TV he always tripped or made a noise and got caught. What a crappy time for report cards. He had to tell someone what was going on. So he asked Anne if she’d join him in his room. He told her everything that had happened. She said that she felt so helpless, she offered to help him sneak down to the garage and help him get out the door at the back of the garage. After trying to plan it out, Jaius decided that it put Anne in too much risk of getting in trouble. He then came up with the solution. He’d just find her early tomorrow morning, before first period maybe, and tell her everything.
Jaius that’s insanity! You’ll be signing your own death warrant.” Said Ann with genuine concern.
“This is bad Anne, this isn’t just them teasing her, they are trying to ruin her. I got to do this