FRIDAY, 25 SEPTEMBER 1998 — EAST RACCOON ELEMENTARY — 10:00am
The bell rang.
Mrs. Calloway set her chalk down on the ledge beneath the blackboard. “All right,” she said. “Maths next. Don’t dawdle.”
Owen stood. His legs felt like they’d been filled with sand. His backpack dragged from one shoulder as he followed Michael toward the door. Around him, chairs scraped and voices rose and someone coughed and someone laughed too loud. He didn’t look at any of them.
At the door, he glanced back. Mrs. Calloway was at her desk, shuffling papers. She paused, pressed two fingers to her temple, then looked up and saw him. She gave him a small nod — the same nod she’d gave him at the start of the morning.
Owen turned away. The hallway swallowed him.
Lockers slammed. Someone shouted about a lost textbook. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead. Someone laughed and the sound hung in the air a beat too long. Owen walked. His backpack pulled at his shoulders.
Benny was already talking.
“Friday maths. Who decided Friday maths was a good idea. Fridays should be for — I don’t know — naps. Skateboarding. Not fractions.”
“You don’t have a skateboard,” Michael said.
“I have a cousin with a skateboard.”
“You have a lot of cousins.”
“I have exactly three cousins. They all have excellent stuff.” Benny was quiet for a moment. Then: “Fractions are a personal attack. They’re designed to make my life worse.”
“Fractions can’t be a personal attack. They’re numbers.”
“They’re not numbers. They’re a concept. A bad concept. Whoever invented fractions should be —” He stopped. “Wait. What class do we have next?”
Michael stared at him. “Maths. We just said maths. We’ve been saying maths for the last thirty seconds.”
“Right. Right. Maths.” Benny nodded. “Fractions. Personal attack. I’m on it.”
Maya was walking beside Owen. She hadn’t said anything since they’d left the classroom. She coughed once, a small dry sound, and covered her mouth with her hand.
Owen was half-listening. The noise of the hallway was loud but distant, like sounds heard through water. Benny’s voice, Michael’s laugh, the lockers slamming — it all reached him from somewhere far away.
And then Benny said, “Sherry’s been weird lately.”
Owen looked up. Sherry was ahead of them in the corridor, walking alone. She was moving faster than the people around her, her arms close to her sides, her head down just enough to avoid eye contact without looking like she was avoiding it.
“Weird how?” Michael asked.
“Quiet. She’s always quiet, but like... extra quiet. Like something’s wrong.” Benny’s voice had shifted slightly — still casual, still Benny, but with something underneath. “You seen her? The last couple days? She looks...”
“Scared,” Maya said.
Benny nodded. “Yeah. Scared.”
“Maybe she’s got the flu,” Michael said. “Everyone’s got the flu.”
“She doesn’t look sick.” Maya’s voice was quiet. “She looks like something happened.”
“She keeps looking at the door,” Michael said. “Every time someone comes in. Like she’s waiting for someone to come get her.”
They walked a few more steps. The noise of the hallway carried on around them — lockers, voices, someone coughing — but the four of them had gone quiet in a way they usually didn’t.
Then Benny said, “Maybe her cat died.”
“She doesn’t have a cat,” Maya said.
“Maybe she got a cat and it died.”
Maya looked at him. Benny held it for a moment, then shrugged. “What? It’s possible.”
You're terrible," Maya said, but she didn't smile this time. She was still watching the corridor where Sherry had been — a turn in the hallway, just past the water fountain, where the corridor bent toward the main entrance. She'd disappeared around it without looking back.
Owen looked at the empty corridor. She’d always been quiet. He wondered, briefly, who she was waiting for. Then the thought was gone, and he was walking again, and the noise of the hallway closed over him.
They reached the maths classroom. The door was open. Kids were filing in. Benny went first, already talking again. “I’m just saying, if fractions were a person, I’d fight them. I’d win. It wouldn’t even be close.” Michael followed. Maya paused at the door. She coughed again, covering her mouth with her hand. Then she went inside.
Owen followed. The maths classroom was smaller than Mrs. Calloway’s — no hamster, no flag, just rows of desks and a blackboard and a window that looked out onto the side of the school grounds. Grey September light came through the glass, pale and flat, and the fluorescent lights hummed overhead. He found his seat and the tiredness pressed him into the chair like a hand on his shoulder. His legs were heavy. His eyes wanted to close. He propped his chin on his hand and waited.
Benny dropped into the desk beside him. Michael turned around from the row behind. Maya took her seat on Owen’s other side. She coughed once, and covered her mouth with her hand.
The door at the front of the room opened.
The man who came in was stocky, with thinning red hair and thick glasses that caught the fluorescent light. He moved slowly, one hand brushing the doorframe. His steps were deliberate — each foot placed with care. He reached his desk and set down a stack of worksheets, then stood for a moment with both hands pressed flat against the wood, his head lowered. His breathing was loud enough that Owen could hear it from the third row.
When he looked up, Owen saw the greyness at his temples. The damp collar of his shirt. The way his eyes moved across the room without quite settling on anything.
“Right,” he said. His voice came out rougher than it should have. “Settle... settle down. We’re doing... algebra. Today.”
Benny leaned sideways toward Owen. “Fractions yesterday, algebra today. What’s tomorrow, geometry? They’re building up to something. It’s a conspiracy.”
Michael turned around. “You were literally just complaining about fractions. The whole walk here. Now you want them back?”
“That was different,” Benny said.
“How is it different?”
“Because I understood fractions. I didn’t like them, but I understood them.” Benny gestured at the board. “Letters don’t belong in maths. Letters are for English. You don’t see me putting numbers in my book report.”
“You don’t read the books for your book reports,” Michael said.
“I read the first chapter. That’s usually enough.”
Maya looked up from her worksheet. “You said that to my mum once. At parents’ evening. She still brings it up.”
Benny’s face went through a series of expressions in quick succession. “Your mum was at parents’ evening?”
“Everyone’s mum was at parents’ evening.”
“No, I know, I just —” Benny fumbled, uncharacteristically off-balance. “Your mum talks about me?”
“She said you were a charming young man with an interesting approach to homework.”
“That’s good. That’s a compliment.”
“It wasn’t a compliment,” Maya said, but the corner of her mouth was doing the thing it did when she was trying not to smile.
Owen was looking down at his worksheet. Algebra. Equations with letters where numbers should be. He was not good at algebra even when he was awake, and today he was barely conscious. The numbers blurred and reformed and blurred again.
“Jamie’s good at this stuff,” he said. It came out before he’d decided to say it. Quiet. Almost to himself.
Michael glanced over. “Your brother?”
“Yeah. He tried to teach me once. Said it was like a puzzle. You just had to find the right way in.” Owen stared at the worksheet. “I couldn’t find the right way in.”
Michael was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “My dad’s the same. With cars. He keeps trying to teach me how to change the oil and I keep pretending I’m interested and he keeps pretending to believe me.”
“Have you ever actually changed the oil?” Benny asked.
“Once. I dropped the wrench in the oil pan and he had to fish it out with a magnet. Took an hour. He still talks about it.” Michael pushed his sleeves up, then pushed them down again. The skin on his forearms was red and raw, the scratch marks visible in long, raised lines. “He’s supposed to be teaching me the transmission next. I’m going to drop something else. It’s a tradition.”
The man at the front pressed two fingers to his temple. Closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he looked confused — like he’d forgotten why he was standing there.
“Don’t look at me like... like that,” he said. “It’s not going to... bite you.”
Benny glanced at Owen. Owen didn’t glance back. He was watching the teacher’s hands — the tremor in them as he picked up the chalk, the way the chalk shook against the blackboard.
“This isn’t as bad as it looks,” the man said. His voice was slower now, the words broken up by gaps where he stopped and started again. “Don’t start... panicking before we’ve... even begun.”
He wrote ALGEBRA on the board. The letters were large and uneven, sloping downward to the right. One of them — the G — was almost illegible, the chalk line wavering.
The door opened again. Sherry Birkin slipped through without speaking. The teacher glanced at her but didn’t say anything. She took her seat near the front. She sat very straight. Very still. Owen noticed the way she didn’t look at anyone — and then he looked away.
“All right,” the man at the front said. He was gripping the edge of the desk now. “Let’s... let’s get started. My name is Mr. MacAllister. For those of you who... don’t know.” He paused. His brow furrowed. “You do know. You’ve... known for months. I’m your maths teacher. I know... I know all of you.”
Another pause. Longer this time. His hand drifted up to his neck and scratched at the skin there. The sound of it was dry and repetitive.
“Variables,” he said. “We’re... we’re doing variables.”
The lesson began. Mr. MacAllister started explaining something about moving the x to the other side, something about balancing the equation. His voice kept breaking up — pauses in strange places, words running into each other. He would stop mid-sentence and stare at the board, his mouth slightly open, before continuing as if nothing had happened. His head would tilt at odd angles when he was thinking. Once, he stopped entirely and stood with the chalk hovering an inch from the blackboard, his eyes moving back and forth across the equations, and he didn’t seem to know what he was looking at.
Owen tried to follow the lesson. He really tried. But the radiator was warm, and his chin kept slipping off his hand.
Then someone near the window whispered. Someone else giggled.
Owen looked up. Benny was already turned toward the glass, squinting against the grey light.
“There’s a guy out there,” Benny said. “Just... walking. Like he forgot where he was going.”
Michael leaned over to look. “Maybe he’s lost.”
“He’s not lost. He’s been walking in a circle for like five minutes. Watch. He’s going to do it again.”
Owen looked out the window. The school grounds were a narrow strip of grass between the building and the chain-link fence. Beyond the fence was the street, empty and grey in the morning light. On the grass, near the fence, a man was walking.
He was maybe thirty. His clothes were dirty — a shirt that might once have been white, dark trousers, one shoe missing. His face was turned away from the window. He walked to the fence, bumped into it, stopped, turned, and walked back the other way. His movements were slow and uncoordinated, like someone underwater. When he reached the far edge of the grass, he stopped again, turned again, and started back toward the fence.
Someone had a long night.
Jamie’s voice, in his head. The bus stop on Cedar Avenue. The woman on the bench, slumped forward, her hair hanging across her face. The way she had jerked — her arm snapping out at the wrong angle, the wet sound she’d made. Jamie steering him away by the shoulder. Nothing. Keep walking.
Owen looked at the man outside the window. He was still walking in circles. Still bumping into the fence. Still turning. Still walking.
The woman at the bus stop had moved the same way. Slow. Wrong.
The thought surfaced and then sank. He didn’t reach for it. He let it go.
“He’s doing it,” Benny said. “Told you.”
Someone near the front laughed. “Maybe he’s drunk.”
“It’s ten in the morning,” someone else said.
“It’s never too early,” Benny said.
More laughter. But it was the kind of laughter that didn’t quite settle — nervous at the edges.
Sherry was looking at the window. Her face was pale, her eyes fixed on the man outside. Owen saw her. She didn’t laugh. She didn’t whisper to the person next to her. She just looked, her hands still folded on her desk, her back still straight, and something in her expression was very still and very watchful.
“Leave the man alone,” Mr. MacAllister said. He glanced at the window, and for a moment his eyes seemed to snag on something. Then his face went blank — no expression at all. He blinked. “He’s... he’s not bothering you.”
His hand was shaking harder now. He gripped the chalk tighter and turned back to the board.
The lesson went on. Mr. MacAllister’s voice filled the room, but the pauses were getting longer. He stopped mid-sentence.
“And if ye move the — if ye move the —”
His hand went to his temple again, pressing hard. His other hand came up and scratched at his neck — the same absent motion, the same spot — and he made a low sound in his throat, something between a cough and a groan.
“If ye move the variable to the other side.”
Owen stared at his worksheet. The equation at the top read 3x + 4 = 16. He knew he was supposed to do something with the 4. Move it? Subtract it? The numbers swam and refused to settle.
Maya leaned over from the desk beside him. “You move the four to the other side,” she said, her voice quiet. “So you subtract it. See?”
Her finger touched his worksheet, close to his hand. Owen looked at her finger. Then at the equation.
“Oh,” he said. “Right.”
She smiled — small, tired — and turned back to her own work. Owen watched her for a moment. She looked tired. More tired than she had at the start of the morning. Her eyes were heavy and her skin was pale, and there was something about the way she held herself that was different — a kind of stillness.
She coughed. A wet sound, thicker than before. She covered her mouth with her hand. When she lowered it, she didn’t look at it.
Owen looked at her. “You okay?”
She nodded without speaking. He didn’t push. He turned back to his worksheet and tried to remember what she’d said about the four.
At the front of the room, Mr. MacAllister had stopped writing. He stood with one hand on the desk, staring at the blackboard. His breathing was loud — a low, steady rasp. His head turned slowly toward the class, his eyes glassy and unfocused. His jaw was slack. His skin was grey — not pale, grey — and the collar of his shirt was dark with sweat.
Sherry was watching him. Her hands had come apart on the desk. One of them was gripping the edge of her seat.
A girl in the front row raised her hand. A small girl with dark hair in a ponytail.
“Are you all right, sir?” she asked.
Mr. MacAllister blinked. It took a long moment for his eyes to find her — they drifted across the room, past her, back again. When he spoke, his voice was thick and slow, the words dragged out of him one at a time.
“Aye... lass.” He swallowed. His hand came up and scratched at his neck again, harder this time. “I’m fine. Just... a bit tired. Nothing for you... to worry about.”
He tried to straighten up. His body didn’t quite cooperate — his shoulders came up but his head stayed tilted. He picked up the chalk. His hand was trembling badly now. He turned back to the board and the chalk snapped against the blackboard, the sound sharp and sudden in the quiet room.
He stared at the broken pieces on the floor. He didn’t move to pick them up.
The girl in the front row glanced at the girl next to her. No one said anything else.
The intercom crackled.
Mrs. Kimura’s voice filled the room, thin and metallic through the speaker. “Mr. MacAllister, could you send Sherry Birkin to the principal’s office, please? Her mother is on the phone.”
Sherry stood. She didn’t look at anyone. She walked to the door, her back very straight, her arms at her sides. She closed the door behind her without a sound.
Benny leaned over. “Her mum? I thought her family was —” He trailed off.
“Was what?” Michael asked.
“I don’t know. I thought something was wrong.”
“Something is wrong,” Maya said quietly.
Mr. MacAllister didn’t comment. He was staring at the board, one hand pressed flat against the desk, his breathing audible. “Back to work,” he said. “Algebra... waits for no one.” His voice was slurring now, the words running together.
Owen looked at the door for a moment. Then he looked away. The warmth of the radiator. The drone of Mr. MacAllister’s voice. The numbers on the worksheet that still didn’t make sense. Owen’s chin slipped off his hand. He caught it once, blinked, propped it back up. But the tiredness was too heavy. It pressed down on him, warm and familiar, and his eyelids slid shut, and his head sank onto his folded arms, and the sounds of the classroom faded into something distant and soft.
He was asleep.
Ten minutes passed. He didn’t feel them go. He didn’t dream. He was just gone.
And then a hand was on his arm. Gentle. A voice, close to his ear.
“Owen.”
He opened his eyes. Maya was leaning toward him, her hand still on his sleeve. Her face was close. She looked tired — more tired than she had even a few minutes ago — but her eyes were focused on him.
“You fell asleep,” she said. Quietly. Not teasing. Just stating.
Owen blinked. The classroom swam back into focus. Mr. MacAllister was still at the board — staring at it now, not writing. The children were still at their desks. The man outside the window was still walking in slow circles. Nothing had changed.
“Was I out long?” His voice was thick.
“About ten minutes. Maybe a bit more. The bell’s going to go soon.” She paused. “You were breathing really slowly. I thought something was wrong.”
“I’m fine.”
“You keep saying that.”
He looked at her. She held his gaze for a moment — longer than she usually did — and then she let go of his sleeve and turned back to her worksheet.
Owen propped his chin on his hand. His heart was beating a little too fast. He didn’t know why. He stared at his worksheet. 3x + 4 = 16. He still didn’t know what to do with the four.
Sherry’s seat was empty. He noticed it without thinking. She’d been gone a while. Kids got called to the office. It happened all the time.
The lesson dragged on. Mr. MacAllister was struggling to speak at all now — his words came out in fragments, separated by long silences. His grip on the edge of the desk was turning his knuckles pale. The greyness had spread down his neck and onto his hands. His head kept dropping forward before jerking back up. He was fighting something — Owen could see it.
The man outside was still walking in circles. No one looked at it anymore.
Benny was staring at his worksheet without writing anything. Michael had pushed his sleeves up — the skin on his forearms was red and raw, the scratch marks raised in long, angry lines — then pushed them down again. Owen looked at Michael’s arms. Then he looked away.
Maya coughed. A wet sound, heavier than before. Owen looked at her. She was staring at the board, her eyes heavy. She didn’t look back.
Then Owen saw movement through the door.
The classroom door had a small window set into it — a rectangle of wired glass. Through it, a blur of motion. Someone running. Fast. A pale flash of hair. Whoever it was ran past without slowing down.
Benny straightened. “Was that —”
“I don’t know,” Michael said. “Someone running.”
“Who runs like that?”
Maya turned toward the door. But the runner was already past it, already gone down the hallway. The sound of footsteps faded into nothing.
Mr. MacAllister didn’t react. He was staring at the board, his lips moving but no sound coming out.
Owen looked at the empty rectangle of glass. Someone running. Fast. The way Jamie ran when he was late for the bus. The way kids ran when they were racing to be first in the lunch line. This wasn’t that. This was different.
Benny was still looking at the window. And then he said, “There she is.”
Owen looked up. Outside, beyond the fence, beyond the strip of grass, beyond the man who was still walking in his slow, mindless circuit — Sherry was running down the street. She must have gone out the front entrance, the same doors Owen came through every morning. Her blonde hair streamed behind her. Her arms pumped. She ran with a desperate urgency — like she had somewhere to be, right now, and nothing was going to stop her. The man on the grass didn’t even turn his head.
“Is that Sherry?” someone near the window asked.
“She was probably the one in the hallway,” Benny said. His voice was different now — the joking gone. “She has gotta be the one who ran past.”
“Where’s she going?”
Maya said nothing. She watched the street after Sherry had already disappeared.
Owen stared at the empty road. Sherry. It had been her in the hallway. Running. Not jogging to the bathroom. Not hurrying back from the office. Running like she was told to run. He thought of her in the corridor earlier — quiet, withdrawn, the others saying she’d been weird. He thought of her at the desk, gripping the edge of her seat while Mr. MacAllister deteriorated. He thought of the phone call. Her mother. Something had happened in that office. Something that had sent her sprinting out of school, through the front doors, into the grey morning.
He didn’t know what. He turned back to his worksheet.
The lights flickered.
Once. Twice. Then they went out.
The hum stopped. The silence was sudden and complete, a hole where the sound had been. The grey morning light from the windows was still there — the room was dimmer, but not dark. The shadows hadn’t changed. But the hum was gone.
Owen’s chest tightened. His hands gripped the edge of his desk. He knew this feeling. The lamp clicking off in his bedroom. The dark pressing in at the edges of the room. His mother’s hand on his hair. Did I scare you? But his mother wasn’t here. The hum was just a hum. The room was still lit. The grey light was still coming through the windows. But his heart was pounding, and he couldn’t make it stop.
The lights flickered back on. The hum returned. The room was the same as it had been five seconds ago.
Someone laughed nervously. “That was weird,” Benny said.
“It’s just the power,” Michael said.
Maya looked at Owen. She didn’t say anything. But she looked at him, and he saw something in her eyes — a question, or an answer, or just the fact that she’d known to look.
He let go of the desk. His heart was still pounding. He didn’t look at anyone. He stared at his worksheet and waited for the feeling to pass.
It didn’t pass.
Because Mr. MacAllister hadn’t moved.
He was still standing at the board, one hand gripping the ledge, the other hanging at his side. His breathing was loud — a low, wet rasp. His head was tilted at that odd angle, his eyes fixed on the class, but he wasn’t looking at them. He was looking past them, or through them, his gaze unfocused and glassy. His mouth was slightly open. His skin was grey.
He blinked. Slowly. Then he straightened up — or tried to. His body didn’t quite cooperate. His shoulders came up but his head stayed tilted, and his hand came off the blackboard ledge and pressed hard against his temple.
“All right,” he said. His voice was thick, the words dragging. “We’re... we’re going to...”
He stopped. His brow furrowed. His hand dropped from his temple and gripped the edge of the desk. His knuckles were pale.
“We’re going to... continue.”
He tried to turn toward the board. His leg gave — just slightly, a small buckle at the knee — and he caught himself on the desk. He stood there for a moment, both hands pressed flat against the wood, his head hanging. His breathing was louder now. His shoulders shook with each exhale.
The class was very quiet. No one was laughing anymore. No one was whispering.
Mr. MacAllister lifted his head. His eyes found the class. There was something in them now that hadn’t been there before. He looked afraid.
“I... I need...” He swallowed. His hand came up and scratched at his neck — harder than before, the fingernails leaving red tracks on the grey skin. “I need you all to...”
He stopped again. His jaw tightened. His whole body went rigid — his back straightening, his shoulders pulling back, his head snapping upright. For a moment he looked almost like himself again. His eyes were clear and focused and desperate.
“You need to go,” he said.
No one moved.
“Did you hear me? I said —” He stopped. His hand came up to his neck and scratched hard. He made a sound — a low, frustrated growl — and then his hand dropped back to the desk and gripped it so hard his knuckles went white. “I need you to go. All of you. Now. I need you to get out of this room right now.”
“Why?” someone asked. A girl’s voice, small and frightened.
“Because I’m asking you to!” He was shouting now, his voice cracking on the edges. “Because I’m your teacher and I’m telling you to get the fuck out of my classroom!”
The swear word landed in the room like a slap. No one moved for a long, terrible second. Mr. MacAllister had never sworn at them. Not once.
Then his face changed.
The anger drained out of it. The tension in his jaw went slack. His eyes, which had been hard and desperate a moment before, went wide and wet and terrified. He looked at the children — really looked at them, the way a person looks at something they’re about to lose — and his voice, when it came out, was barely a whisper.
“Please,” he said. “Please. Go. I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t — I can’t — please.”
His body shuddered. A full-body tremor that started in his shoulders and ran down to his legs. His hand slipped off the desk and he stumbled sideways, catching himself on the blackboard. The chalk tray clattered. A piece of chalk rolled across the floor.
“Go,” he said again, and this time the word came out wrong — too low, too rough, the voice of someone who was losing control of their own throat. “Go, go, go —”
And then he collapsed.
His knees buckled. His shoulder hit the edge of the desk and his body twisted as it went down, folding in on itself, and then he was on the floor with his head on the linoleum and his legs kicking and his back arching and his mouth open in a silent scream. His heels drummed against the floor. His hands clawed at nothing. His eyes fixed on the ceiling, unblinking, the pupils wide and wrong.
The class erupted. Chairs scraped. Someone was crying. Benny grabbed his bag. Michael was already at the door. Maya was pulling Owen by the sleeve, her fingers tight on his arm, and Owen was stumbling to his feet, his legs heavy, his backpack dragging from one shoulder.
Mr. MacAllister’s body kept seizing on the floor. His heels drummed against the linoleum. His hands opened and closed on nothing. His head turned to the side and a thin line of blood ran from the corner of his mouth where he’d bitten his tongue. The sound he made wasn’t a word — just a low, wet groan that went on and on.
Owen looked back. He saw the teacher on the floor. He saw the shaking. He saw the blood. He thought: he’s having a fit. He’s really sick. Someone needs to get help.
He was twelve years old and his maths teacher had just collapsed in front of him, and he was scared, and he wanted someone to tell him what to do.
“Come on,” Maya was saying, her voice tight, her hand still on his arm. “Owen, come on.”
The class emptied into the hallway. The door swung shut and Owen couldn’t see Mr. MacAllister anymore. The last thing he saw through the narrowing gap was the teacher’s hand, still twitching, still reaching for something that wasn’t there.
The corridor was bright and loud and wrong. Children stood against the walls, some crying, some just standing, their faces blank. Through the closed door, the sounds from the classroom had stopped — or maybe they hadn’t, and Owen just couldn’t hear them anymore.
Another teacher came down the corridor — the deputy head, Mrs. Barnes, a tall woman with a sharp face and quick footsteps. She looked at the children. She looked at the closed door. Her face tightened.
“Everyone stay here. Don’t move.”
She went into the classroom. She closed the door behind her.
The children waited. The corridor was very quiet. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead. The man was still outside the window at the end of the hall, still walking in circles. No one looked at it. Owen stood with his back against the wall, his legs heavy, his heart pounding. Maya was beside him. She hadn’t let go of his sleeve.
A sound came from behind the closed door.
Not a word. Not a scream. Something between a groan and a growl — low and wet, a sound that didn’t belong in a school. Then silence.
The door opened. Mrs. Barnes came out. Her face was pale. She closed the door firmly behind her and her hand stayed on the handle for a moment.
Then the bell rang.
Break.
Mrs. Barnes seemed to remember where she was. She looked at the children, at their faces, at the way they were standing against the walls. “Go on,” she said. “It’s break. Go.” Her voice was not quite steady.
The children scattered — some toward the playground, some toward the lockers, some just down the corridor. Owen stood there for a moment. Maya was beside him. She hadn’t said anything since the lights went out. She was still looking at the closed door.
“Come on,” she said quietly. She tugged his sleeve — the same gesture as before, but slower now, heavier.
Owen followed. His legs were heavy. The door stayed closed behind them. The man was still outside the window, still walking in circles. The grey morning light hadn’t changed.
They went to break.33Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmNBZcGaNcC
and then Add to home screen.