Voices. Someone coming. Who the fuck is that? It’s gotta be midnight. Not really sure. Squealing, yelling. Who is that?
Straighten in the closet. Stretch my legs, but silently. Stand. Hands on the door, find the crack. Darkness. Red glow of the EXIT sign. Someone in the hall. Outside the lab. Muted. But squealing.
“Wwwwweeeee! What the fuck.”
A crash.
“Oww you motherfucker. You cracked open my knee again.”
Something I can’t understand. Someone else speaking.
Then Dyson again. I think that’s Dyson. “I don’t care I just wanted you to acknowledge it.”
Then another crash. Metal on metal. That’s the heating box in the hall.
“Oooowwwwww motherfucker!”
Considering. Considering. Dyson? Is that Dyson? Even if I yell they might not hear me. It always seems soundproof in here during the day. But I can hear them. Ok. I’m gonna do this. Who else is out there?
“Oooowwwwweeeeee!” Someone kicking the heating box. Kicking the shit out of it. That’s gotta be Dyson.
Ok. Ok. I’m doing this. Beats the alternative—getting let out of here by Miss Theobald in the morning. Fuck that.
Start banging on the door of the changing closet.
Not making much noise.
“Helllo!” Bang more. Slip my boots on. Kick. Kick the door with my boots. “Helllll-oooo?!”
Then it’s quiet out in the hall.
I kick some more. “Dyson?!!!”
Total quiet in the hall.
And I scream. “Let me the fuck out of here!!”
Followed by some rustling.
They’re in through the outside door to the film lab. In the hallway outside the developing room. These assholes have the master key. Their voices clearer now. And it’s definitely Dyson.
“If it turns out to be a cleaning lady I’m gonna kill her. You know I will.”
“Shut up.” Deep voice. “Just shut up.” Jared.
I grab Jenna’s panties. Stuff them in my skirt waist.
“Are you sure we should go in there?”
I bang on the closet. “I ain’t no cleaning lady!! Fuck!”
“Is that who I think it is?” A third voice. “Ha!”
“You want to get me the fuck out of here?”
And they’re opening the door to the film lab.
The lights switch on.
I bang on the closet door.
Dyson. “What the fuck!?”
“Get me the fuck out of here.”
“What.”—“Are you doing here?”—“Do you know.”—“What time it is?”
“What time is it.”
Rattling on the door. I can see them through the seam. Jared, Dyson, Spencer.
“Y’all having some kind of sleepover?”
Jared. “Nah, we were looking for you.”
“Well.” Kick the door. Jared flinches. “You want to let me out?”
He rattles the latch and padlock. “I don’t have a key.”
“Break it off!”
“With what?”
“Just kick it! It’s a tiny little lock! There’s probably a screwdriver if you can find Miss Theobald’s toolbox.”
“Where is that?”
“In the next room. In the print lab. She’s got a screwdriver in there. Just take the latch off.”
Jared hands Dyson the keys. “How’d you get in there?”
Dyson ignores the keys and throws himself against the door of the changing closet. The whole thing rocks back.
I get my balance. “Just get the screwdriver!”
“Don’t worry, I got this.” And Dyson slams himself into the closet door. The wood splinters.
He runs against the wall and springs off it. Into the closet with his arms braced. Spencer steps back. When Dyson hits the closet, the door breaks. It breaks.
It’s broken almost in two, part of it still locked to the closet.
But there’s a break. And it’s big enough for me to get through.
Jared and Spencer help me through the splintered opening. “Again.”—“What were you doing in there?”
I brush myself off. “I’m developing film.”
But Jared moves in close and looks at me. “Whose blood is this?” Then he looks at the back of my neck.
“Who did this?”
“Fucking—a pack of bitches. Four bitches.”
“Who.”
“Just some girls.” I grab my bag.
Jared is wiping my forehead with a wet rag. “Fuck me. You want ice?”
“You got some?”
Dyson turns off the water in the sink.
Main hall. Thick dark. Just the red of emergency EXIT signs and one light in the office. Spilling out weakly below a door. Jared goes first of the four of us. Then Dyson bouncing all over the place. Then Spencer. Then me.
Dyson vaults off the marble wall. Falls. Rolls. Rights himself. Slams into a trophy wall. Bounces back. Punches the glass. Cracks it. Resets on the other wall. Slams himself the fuck into the trophy wall. Big shards of glass. He’s bleeding a little. A few drops, looks like. From his face. And his hand. His face and his hand. Just a few drops on the floor. Kicks the glass. Some of it goes forward and slides past Jared about ten feet. Dyson kicks some smaller shards back the other way. Some of it hits my boot.
“Chill. Dyson Chill.” I kick the glass back at him.
Dyson grabs hold of one of the sets of double doors at the main entrance. He jerks them back, pushes them forward. The chains hold tight but he jiggles the whole thing violently. “Fucking mess with me!”
We’re at the doors to the lunchroom.
Spencer says. “Ice?”
Jared keeps walking. “Back door. Kitchen. Those are chained.”
“Oh right.”
We go around to the back of the cafeteria. My boots totally echo.
There’s a light on in the kitchen. Just enough to see. Jared’s key gets us in. I sit on the counter. Spencer brings me ice. I put it in the hood of my sweatshirt and pull the hood around on my neck.
Jared has his knife out. He stabs it into the steel countertop and makes a dent. “So. Who jumped you?”
The ice feels good. It hurts and that feels perfect. “Don’t worry about it.”
Jared again stabs his knife into the countertop.
“What are you guys doing here?”
Jared looks at Spencer. Dyson is picking up chairs and throwing them across the lunchroom.
Long hallway on the second floor. Those guys are running around. I’m going through my bag. There’s my Calc II book. There’s AP Bio, binder and book. Clear cover of the binder with a ripped-out page of some eukaryotic transcription going on. Pretty lovely stuff. Very stylish of me to decorate my Bio binder thus. And woe to the motherfucker who gets my textbook next year. Condition of cover? Perfect. Graffiti or markings inside book? No. Pages missing? Yes, definitely. Check that motherfucker front to back. Or you’re gonna have to pay for it. Feel around the bottom of my bag. Fuck. No phone. Those bitches took my motherfucking phone. Probably texting my friends telling them I’m a lesbian. If they post punk statuses I’ll just leave them. I won’t erase them. Too bad for their fun. Everyone in my contacts already knows I’m a freak. That’s how I roll you fucking bitches. So post away. Don’t assume that just because you live in fear that I do. Every secret is a weakness. Didn’t Napoleon say that? Check the back pocket. Fuck. My phone is definitely not here.
Dyson going “wwwwweeeeeeeeeeee!!” coming around the corner on the back tire of his bike, duct-taped flashlight spotlighting the space before him. Spencer is rolling around the carpet and Jared is rolling over him. Dyson rides circles around me and my bag, then goes toward the other two. He’s got a broom pole, handle from a mop, sticking out in front of his bike and he’s up standing on the pedals grinding them going faster and faster toward Jared and Spencer, screaming, howling something with no words, careening toward them standing on his bike and they hit, Dyson’s arms raised high like a runner crossing the finish line. The bike tire runs over Spencer. Dyson’s face hits Jared’s hip. They’re all rolling on the floor trying to outdo each other at screeching. You would think they’d have someone watching the security cameras in here at night. But I guess not.
I take out my Paul Frank notebook.
Those guys are screeching like hawks. Or a rubber belt in a bum car. Or peeling sheet metal.
“What the fuck y’all trying to accomplish?”
“Join us. We’re toiling in ecstatic bliss.”
“I don’t even think you know what toiling means.”
“We don’t have to. It’s like religious ecstasy. Don’t you go to church?”
“I try not to when I can avoid it.” But I’m standing up. I’m going to them. Boys rolling around on the carpet at school. Thank you Jenna for getting me into this. “What do you mean you’re toiling?”
“We’re getting our energy out!”
“I can see that.” I kick Jared in the stomach.
“Roll around with us!”
I sit.
Jared does a handstand, his face an inch from the floor. A red wristband, a black wristband. His hair touches the carpet. Dyson, seemingly dormant, springs into flight. He launches on Jared. They tumble together. Jared punching Dyson in the stomach. Spencer chants “punch—punch—punch” with every hit. Spencer punches himself in the face and falls back. They all seem totally happy.
Half an hour later I’m writing you. Scribbling in the Paul Frank notebook. I can hardly see.
Jared opens a Spanish classroom and turns on one row of lights.
Spencer hauls the last of several trips’ worth of frozen breaded pork units from downstairs. Also some mashed potatoes. He’s hunched over, dragging a large box up the incline of the back stairs.
Jared comes out of the Spanish classroom with three rolls of industrial paper towel. He throws them down and goes down the hall. There’s a janitors’ supply closet. Jared lets himself in. Light spills into the hallway.
Spencer is halfway down the stairs throwing the remaining boxes up into the hallway. Mostly mashed potatoes and veggies.
Jared is rolling a mop bucket toward us. He kicks the veggie boxes back down the stairs. “Those are fucking instant potatoes! What are you gonna do, boil water?”
A box hits Spencer in the face. “I thought.”— “That’s why.”—“You were making the fire!”
“I’m not gonna boil water! I just want some light.”
“Turn on the fucking hall light!”
“I want natural light.” Jared kicks over the mop bucket. Gray water floods the carpet. He rights it. Tosses in the paper towels. Unravels the top roll. Kneels.
Spencer comes all the way upstairs. “I guess we’ll just have pork then.” He breathes in deeply through his nose and looks at me with wild eyes. “And I guess.”—“All the rest of this stuff.”—“Was a waste!” He drop-kicks a box of spinach. It hits the ceiling.
Jared torches the paper towels in the mop bucket. “We cook now.”
Burned and still-cold pork units held over a paper towel fire. We’re using the clamp part of those metal clip-on lights to hold our food. The four of us shoulder to shoulder around the mop bucket.
Dyson smacks his lips. “I think I can eat fourteen this time.”
Jared. “Eat up. Soon these are gonna be in short supply.”
“Food probably tastes the same. I mean if we don’t die.”
“No one’s gonna die.” Jared kicks Dyson in the knee. Knocks him over.
Spencer looks nervously between me and Jared. “Eat your.”—“Fucking.”—“Pork.”—“Use your mouth for that.”—“And keep it shut on all.”—“Other accounts.”
“What?” Dyson rights himself. “What’s she gonna do?”
“Eat your pork. Here. Have some more.” Jared stuffs his own piece in Dyson’s mouth.
Dyson chews it and licks Jared’s fingers.
Jared says. “You animal.”
“How is.”—“Your pork?”
I nod vigorously. “Wonderful.” I was really hungry.
“Have some mayo.” Spencer holds up the industrial-sized jar.
I dip my pork into it. My hand fits all the way into the mouth of the jar. This pork tastes wonderful with mayonnaise. It does. It’s a little gross. But mostly it’s wonderful.
“So you never heat the veggies?”
“Look who’s gotten particular!”
I clamp my mayonnaised pork unit and hold it over the mop bucket.
Jared unrolls more paper towel and lays it on the embers. He lights the new paper.
I wave my pork around the mop bucket. Some of the mayonnaise falls off but that’s ok. “Wouldn’t toilet paper work better?”
“Smoke’s too black. Burning bleach. Carbon.”
“Tastes nasty.”
“What about the smoke detectors?” ““They’ve been disabled in this area.”
I shake my head. “Good grief, gentlemen, that’s a tad dangerous. What if there’s a fire.”