It had been almost exactly four years since I’d stepped foot in a real classroom. In this one, the desks were arranged in groups of four, facing each other instead of the front. Inspirational posters about working hard and making good choices littered the walls. Huge English textbooks lined two shelves next to the corner desk where stacks of papers and a computer sat.
Everything looked ready for the next class, as if winter vacation would end any day now and the students would file into their seats with backpacks full of books and minds ready to learn.
I laughed to myself. Yeah, right. Most people were varying shades of prick and that included teenagers too.
Kern wandered the classroom perimeter until he came upon a cork board displaying A+ student work. He ripped the board off the wall. The projects pinned to it went fluttering through the air onto desk surfaces and the linoleum floor.
“So you’re Gabbi.” He carried the board over to the broken window. Glass crunched under his shoes.
“Yeah, so what?”
“So…hi,” he said, glancing at me and then away. The others filtered in, Dylan and Corrina last, his arm around her shoulders.
Dylan kissed the side of her head and she hugged him around the chest. He whispered something in her ear, then suddenly his eyes glazed over and he lost control of his legs. She almost dropped him but then Laurel grabbed Dylan’s other side and together they controlled his fall to the floor.
Another memory-fever. Great.
“When did he get infected?” Laurel asked.
“A few days ago,” Corrina responded.
“Five days ago,” I said. “Leaf died five days ago.”
Corrina flinched.
Kern finished securing the board over the broken window and crouched next to Dylan. “Let me see. I was training to be a paramedic someday.”
Ano leaned against the wall. Not resting really, more like saving his energy. Jimmy sat nearby with Ricker and Maibe. Spencer was there too. They’d settled as a group in the opposite corner of the classroom, furthest away from the door and windows, behind the teacher’s desk, creating some privacy, a cave within a cave.
“What’s next?” I asked Spencer.
He shrugged.
“If we wait long enough, the Vs might go away,” Maibe said. “As long as they don’t find a way in.”
“So in the meantime we’re just supposed to trust those two?” I said.
“There’s more of us than there are of them,” Spencer said. “As long as no one else joins them.”
“So us now includes them,” I said, pointing at Corrina and Dylan. “When did they earn our trust?”
“They deserve it,” Jimmy said.
I scowled.
“Get over it, Gabbi,” Spencer said.
“Get over what?” I said, a menacing note in my voice. “What exactly am I supposed to get over? What exactly am I supposed to be okay with? People we hardly know, people who would as soon have ignored us in any other situation, suddenly telling us what to do as if they care what happens to us at all?”
“They do care,” Maibe said.
“And even if they do,” I said, turning on her. “So what? That doesn’t make them right! It doesn’t mean they know better than us or have the right to act better than us or that we’re just supposed to do what they say because they say so!” At each word my voice raised in volume and I knew without having to look that the others had paused and were watching me rant. This made me feel both embarrassed and angry and there was nowhere to go so I had to just sit and face it when what I wanted to do was run away until the horrible feelings melted away.
“What’s your problem?” Corrina said.
“You are,” I said.
A shadow fell across me and I knew without looking that Corrina stood over me now. I rose slowly onto my feet because I could not let her loom over me like that, as if I had already submitted to her will.
“What have I done?” Corrina demanded. “Exactly what have I done to make you distrust me?”
“What haven’t you done?” I said, anger working me into jitters. “When have you listened to what we had to say, when have you done anything other than judge and question our every move? I saved your goddamn life on that stage, when you were hanging from that noose. If it hadn’t been for us, you would have killed Maibe by now, and probably yourself and your boyfriend too—”
“You have no idea—”
“YOU have no idea,” I said, pointing at her. “Leaf died because of you.” I was so angry I was losing my words and I hated her even more right then because I knew I must sound foolish, like a petulant teenager, and I hated myself for letting myself down like that. “You have no idea,” I said again and turned my back on her and sunk to the floor.
Ano stared at me, daring my temper. He did not make me feel ashamed. He understood even if he didn’t agree. Ricker and Jimmy avoided my gaze. Maibe stared and when I stared back she stood up and walked away. Spencer looked out into the vacuum of air around us, absentmindedly scratching his knee—I hated how disconnected he seemed, as if he didn’t particularly care what happened to the rest of us now that Leaf was gone. I had no idea how to bring him back. I did not want the responsibility of making the decisions for all of us but I most definitely did not want Corrina to take that responsibility either.
Outside there was a rattle and scratching. A crack as the branch broke. Kern jumped to one of the unbroken windows and looked out. “They’re inside the courtyard.”
Ano rose from the floor in one fluid motion.
I pictured them tumbling in and surrounding the classroom door. We should never have come here. “This is your fault,” I said turning to Corrina again. “We should have gone back.”
“You wanted us to take the bike trail,” Corrina said.
Her words pierced me worse than any V bite could have.
“Hate me later,” she said, “when we have the time for that sort of crap.”
I sat stunned at the accusation in her words and the truth that rang in them. The Vs were about to attack and I was still hurling insults.
She ran over to Dylan and yelled back at me. “Do something useful with that bat.”
Faces began appearing in the frosted windows. One of them banged on the door once, then again, then harder. A splayed hand hit one of the windows and smeared yellowish fluid down the glass.
Corrina and Laurel tumbled a few desks in front of the door and I screamed at them to stop because the Vs weren’t going to come through that way, the door was sturdy and they were blocking our only exit to the outside with a maze of desks.
The first window broke. Maibe shouted. Kern ran to the V, grabbed a three-legged stool, and smashed it over the head of the woman clawing her way across broken glass. The wood splintered over her but did not stop her.
Her vacant eyes stared unseeing into the room and I thought—she wasn’t running for us, but away from something else that had scared her.
Kern took up a desk and threw it at the woman. It crashed onto her, pushing her back out of the window, but also enlarging the gap.
Two more Vs filled the hole, climbing over each other to get in. I raised my bat, ran forward, and connected with the head of another V. Blood sprayed and I tasted iron. The V behind him kept coming.
Corrina ran up with a textbook and smashed it across the Vs head. I waited for the V to move, but Corrina smashed the textbook down again and there was a crunch sound and the V twitched and went limp.
More glass sprayed around me and suddenly five Vs fell in and the classroom became overrun as others followed. I lost my grip on the bat. I dropped to the ground and looked for it. It had rolled near the teacher’s desk where Maibe fought off a V by herself. I scrambled up and ran for her. A yank on my ankle took me down hard. I hit my head on the corner of a desk. Sounds and light disappeared. All I could hear was the roar of wind in my ears. All I could see were black dots flashing on and off. A burning pain erupted on my leg. Everything swam away except for the shuffling feet between the metal legs of the desks and chairs that squeaked as people ran for their lives while mine was ending on the linoleum floor of a high school classroom.