Life was weird.
I needed to ask him questions when I met him again. If I met him again. He wouldn’t answer just because I wanted him to, though. I’d have to pry it out of him, like dancing the entire Nutcracker Suite in exchange for his frickin’ name.
I snorted but quickly got rid of my smile just in case anyone was watching me and wondered what my deal was.
And then I noticed it. A sound piercing the air, loud and cutting the quiet with a sharp ring that made me wince.
“What the hell?” I said to myself.
I yanked out my earbuds, finally realizing what it must be.
Was that…?
A fire alarm sliced into my ears like nails across a chalkboard tenfold, and I sat up, trying to listen for voices to hear if this was real or a drill or what.
“Don’t run!” the librarian, I would assume, called out. “Walk and exit the building like you’ve been taught.” And then a shout. “No running!”
“Wait,” I said, clutching my phone and gathering up my backpack. “Wait!”
I knew how to get to the stairwell, but I wasn’t sure about the exit. It was one floor down, but after that, I thought it was down the hall and to the right at the end of the lockers? Maybe?
I heard the heavy library doors open and close repeatedly, and I yelled, “Wait!”
Hugging my backpack to me, I grabbed hold of the railing and barreled down the stairs as fast as I could, but the earbud cord dangling from my phone caught under my step, and it was yanked out of my hand, pummeling to the end of the first landing. It tumbled off somewhere, and I fell to my knees, dropping my bag as I pawed the ceramic tile, trying to look for it.
There wasn’t a real fire, right? It was just a drill.
Waving my hands all over, I found the cord and yanked it to me, but the phone wasn’t attached anymore. I slammed my palm onto my thigh in frustration. “Dammit.”
Screw it. It was replaceable, and if anyone found it, it had a lock code, so they couldn’t get in.
I left my shit on the floor and made my way down the rest of the stairs, the alarm still blaringly loud.
But I didn’t hear anything else. There were no voices, no movement, no doors being slammed… Was everyone already gone?
My heart started to thump harder. What do I do? Shit!
Half the school was in the lunchroom. They would’ve just gotten out through the exit in there. The rest of the school—everyone in classes or the auditorium—wouldn’t be gone yet. Right?
“Hello?” I called out.
I waved my hands in front of me
, trying to veer in the direction the doors were in, but I walked right into something hard and hissed at the pain in my shin. I grabbed hold of a wooden chair that had been left untucked from the table in the rush to get out.
My hands finally found the wall, and I scaled them down until I found the doors that led into the rest of the school. Opening one, I stepped through.
“Hello!” I shouted again. “Can someone help me? I don’t know my way out!”
The alarm pinged again and again down the hallway, and I inhaled through my nose, smelling smoke.
No. I paused. Not smoke.
It was a cigarette.
Had someone been smoking in the school?
But then my face fell as I breathed in the faint scent that reminded me of the last time I smelled that.