The only thing worse than being taken to the principal’s office was finding the vice-principal there instead. The woman had earned herself the nickname “the harpy” a few months after arriving at Enigma High, and it wasn’t because of her looks. Having the displeasure of going to see her on several occasions, Will had a pretty good idea of what to expect.
An archaic metal clock ticked on the wall behind the empty desk, marking three minutes past the hour. Will could hear parts of the conversation between the vice-principal and the art teacher in the waiting room outside. Nothing good was said. On a slightly positive note, he had a good idea where the weak spots of the windows were, should he attempt to break out of the room. If the office wasn’t on the second floor, he was tempted to try.
The door opened, marking the end of the conversation outside. The vice-principal, a tall woman with short black hair and an ice gaze, calmly took her seat behind the desk. She couldn’t be described as thin, although she was by no means large, either. The old-fashioned business suit made her appear like a mob secretary of an eighties movie. Will wouldn’t be surprised if she took out a cigar from her top drawer and lit it.
“I knew you’d be back here, Mister Stone,” she said in a dry voice. Out of everyone Will knew she was the only person that managed to make “mister” sound like an insult. “I didn’t expect you’d be the one fighting. Needless to say, I’m very disappointed.”
“He started it,” Will said, with a lot less enthusiasm than a few minutes ago.
“Of course. It’s always someone else who started it. You just ended it for the good of everyone, right?”
Huh? Will blinked. That was a whole new level of cringe.
“So, what’s your version?” She opened the drawer of her desk and took out an e-cigarette and started vaping.
“He tried to punch me in the face, so I defended myself.”
“Hmm.” White smoke came out of her mouth. “You defended yourself. And in defending yourself, knocked him out on the floor?”
“I was lucky.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t do any serious damage. If Mister Ekham hadn’t regained consciousness, a lot more people would have gotten involved.” She took another puff. “They still could. It all depends on what his parents decide.”
Will remained silent.
“And just in case you’re wondering, I’ve already called your parents. Your father should be here in about an hour. I would have preferred if both your parents were here, but one must make do with what’s available.”
Great…
Will’s relations with his parents were already tense. It wasn’t that he did anything that made them mad, but he hadn’t done much they had approved of, either. The few times he’d wanted to discuss serious matters, they had been busy with work or the latest scandal on the news to notice.
“Still nothing to add?” the vice-principal asked.
“What more can I say? You’ve already made up your mind, same as all the other times.” Speaking his mind felt so easy for some reason. “I came to you and principal Barnes dozens of times and you didn’t do a thing. If you had, Daniel would have been alive.”
The woman’s e-cigarette trembled. After a few seconds of silence, she put it down on her desk, still not saying a word.
“Five,” she said at last. “You came to see us precisely five times. And bullying had nothing to do with what happened to Mister Keen.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because he told me so himself.”
It was Will’s turn to feel surprised. He knew that Daniel had gone to the principal’s office several times—with all the fighting he was involved, there was no way he wouldn’t be. Even so, he didn’t strike Will as someone who talked about his problems.
“What was it?” he asked.
“That’s not for me to say. Mister Keen was a very troubled young man. He used to say that he felt trapped here, as if he were in a cage he couldn’t escape. Both I and the school counselor had several long conversations with his parents on the matter. They were in complete denial, refusing to believe anything we said. I can’t remember how many times I suggested he go to a professional therapist. We have one of the best school counselors, but this remains a school. We don’t have the resources or expertise to deal with specialized matters.”
Felt trapped, Will thought. That was a rather prompt description of the time loops, as long as one knew how to connect the dots.
“Did he say anything else? Anything strange?”
“As a matter of fact, he once mentioned that—”
Restarting eternity.
“Huh?” Will blinked. So, the time loop wasn’t over after all.
Immediately, he checked his phone. Ten minutes remained till eight, just as all the previous times. Was it possible that the time loops were slowly deteriorating?
“You mind?” a pair of girls walked past. “Weirdo,” one muttered to the other as they entered the school.
“Hey, Will!” Alex said. “Heard—”
“Sure,” Will interrupted. “Get me a muffin.” He tapped his friend on the shoulder. “See you in class.”
Leaving the goofball dumbstruck, Will ran into the building. The first thing he did was go through the restroom and tap the correct mirror sequence. The next logical step was to go through the girls’ bathroom and check the mirrors there.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
It won’t matter, he told himself. No one will remember this at the start of the next loop. And still, he couldn’t force himself to do it.
The hell with it! He walked past the restroom door, heading directly for his classroom. There would be other loops to try it out. For now, there was something else he wanted to check out.
The stench in the room was eye watering. It was outright scary that only a few minutes could make such a huge difference. More shockingly, Will saw that he wasn’t the only one there.
“Will, help me open the windows,” a girl said.
Often referred to as Miss Perfect, Helen Kracow was a straight A student and the class representative. Come to think of it, she had been the only person who had shown a bit of sympathy to Will a few loops ago. With the exception of that, he barely knew her.
Wearing torn up jeans covered with stickers, one could mistake her for a delinquent. Of course, that only was until they started paying attention. It wouldn’t take long for anyone to notice that the tears were too precise, her shoes and shirts always belonged to an expensive brand, and her seemingly messy brown hair was always messy in exactly the same way.
“Sure.” Will made his way to the far end of the room and opened the window there. “What do they use for cleaning? Industrial solvent?” he cracked a joke than made him cringe inside.
Ten times out of ten, Helen had politely ignored any such attempts. Surprisingly, this time she responded.
“They need that after a nature mort session,” the girl replied.
“Right.” Will laughed a bit more forcefully than was necessary. He got the joke, just didn’t particularly like it. Although clever, there was a touch of high-class snobbishness to it, or at least he so thought.
Two by two, all the windows were opened, allowing some access to fresh air.
“We need to open the door as well,” Will said.
“Better not. The draft slams the door too much. When people start arriving, they’ll create the same effect.”
And the stench will last that much longer, he thought.
Leaning against the window frame, he looked at Daniel’s desk. Scribbles and carvings were everywhere. It was a mystery how anyone had allowed it to get so bad. The school had a zero-tolerance policy when it came to writing on desks or walls. Many had found themselves in the principal’s office for mere initials. There was no way Daniel's desk was overlooked. The only logical explanation was that he had received permission to write on it.
Casually, Will made his way to the desk. Most of the scribbles were numbers and drawings of wolves. Up close, they looked rather good. If they had been on a canvas or sheet of paper, they would have gotten an A.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Helen asked.
“Just looking,” Will replied.
Words crisscrossed over each other, making it difficult to read. After a while, though, he managed to spot something of interest: “in the nurse’s office” written beneath a rather good depiction of a hand mirror with the number twelve in it.
“I don’t think you should,” the girl’s tone hardened.
“I’m not hurting anyone.” Will didn’t look up. “Don’t you find this stuff interesting?”
“No.”
Large sections of gibberish covered the entire left section, along with song lyrics and random musings. Near the upper corner, Daniel had even written “Alex, you’re an idiot” in all caps. That broke the tension a bit, bringing a smile to Will’s face.
There are wolves in every corner, the boy read. That didn’t make much sense, although it was more legible than most of the rest. With the number of wolf scribbles, one could assume that Daniel didn’t like the creatures much. They were depicted as vicious and grotesque creatures, fangs bared, drool dripping from them.
Unable to find anything of interest, Will crouched to look beneath the desk. There he found the motherload.
WC b – 4, WC g – 15, N – 12, 3 - SBE
Beware coach!
The numbers could have been anything, but not the warning. As everyone knew, and Will had experienced in all the loops, one of the coach’s main responsibilities was to check the bathrooms. That, combined with WC, suggested that there was something on the bathroom mirrors. The “4” no doubt referred to the rogue that Will had now found. The “15” was probably another class in the girls’ bathroom and definitely worth checking out next loop, despite the risks. The N presented something of a riddle. It was tempting to assume it to be the nurse’s office, but that was a bit of a stretch. As for SBE, that remained a complete mystery.
A list of some sort followed underneath. Will quickly recognized the three “skills” that the rogue class had granted him. Next to each was the number one. Beneath them were nine more, clustered in groups of three. One could assume that those were the skills one obtained upon reaching the corresponding level.
You’ve been keeping a diary, Will thought, skimming through the notes and data left by Daniel.
How had he done so, though? The loops erased everything, so they should have erased the scribbles as well. Could it be there was a way to leave information behind?
As his classmates started to arrive, Will’s immediate reaction was to take a snapshot of the desk for later. Then he remembered it wouldn’t do him much good; there was no “later” between loops. The only things that remained were his memories.
“Thinking of changing desks?” Alex peered from the side. “Doubt anyone else would. I heard Daniel kept a stash of some new study drug beneath the desk.”
“There’s nothing here, Alex,” Will grumbled. “Just a few pieces of chewing gum.”
“You sure, bro? I can check—”
“Absolutely nothing.” Will quickly moved out from beneath. It was well known that if Alex got his claws into a secret, it didn’t remain secret for long. “Just wolves and monsters.”
“For real?” The goofball seemed surprised. “Pretty sus, that. Danny always had a thing for wolves, though.”
“I never knew about it.”
“Bro, you know nothing.” The other laughed. “You don’t even know who’s hooked up with who.”
And you no doubt do, Will thought.
“Seriously, you changing desks?”
“Why not? No one’s using it. Plus, it’s away from the jock section.”
“I feel you.” Alex nodded. “I wouldn’t, though. Bad luck. What if it’s possessed by Danny’s ghost?”
“Alex, you aren’t superstitious.” Will frowned.
If anything, his friend was the opposite of superstitious, explaining every UFO sighting and supernatural phenomenon by an equally absurd conspiracy theory. Everything in the world revolved round big corporations and coverups, including the new bathroom check policy. According to Alex, the policy had been in effect since the eighties—in Alex’s world, things always started in the eighties. Back then, it had supposedly been a lot more subtle, relying on plants ratting out their classmates. Supposedly, when the school was built, all the walls were covered with hallucinogenic chemicals to observe the effects they had on children. Due to budget cuts, the chemicals were not enough for every room, so the bathrooms remained as “clean” areas. Thus, students were discouraged from staying there for too long so as not to taint the results of the experiment.
Naturally, as with most of his theories, this had only been thought up a week ago.
“Just cause I’m not, doesn’t mean they can’t get you, bro,” Alex said. “And I don’t want you haunting me cause I didn’t warn you.”
“Don’t worry, you’re safe.” Will put his backpack next to his new desk.
“Aaart!” Jac shouted from the classroom entrance. His glance quickly fell on Will, upon which the annoying grin on his face faded away. “You changing desks, Stoner?”
“Why? Thinking of joining me?” Will asked back.
Since he had already beaten up the jock once, his confidence had shot sky high. Jace must have felt that, for he didn’t even attempt a reply, continuing to his own desk along with his friends.
“Catch you after class,” Alex whispered and quickly moved away.
“Sure.” Will kept looking at the group of jocks. There was no guarantee they wouldn’t try something before the teacher arrived. The situation felt remarkably similar to what Daniel had done while alive. Almost every class he’d trade insults with the jocks when he wasn’t outright fighting with them. There was no longer any doubt in Will’s mind that—
Restarting eternity.