I'm Thinking of Ending Things(44)

I’ve decided I have to keep moving. No good lying down, hiding behind this bench. I’m a target. I’m too visible here. That’s the first thing Jake would tell me if he were here with me. But he’s not. My knee is really sore. My head is still aching, and spinning. I almost forgot about it. It’s just there. Jake would tell me to stop thinking about the pain, too.

You never think you’ll be in a situation like this. Being watched, stalked, held captive, alone. You hear about these things. You read about them from time to time. You feel sick about the possibility that someone would be capable of inflicting this kind of terror on another human. What’s wrong with people? Why do people do these things? Why do people end up in these situations? The possibility of evil shocks you. But you aren’t the target, so it’s okay. You forget about it. You move on. It’s not happening to you. It happened to someone else.

Until now. I stand up, trying to ignore my fear. I creep down the hall, silently, moving away from the bench, away from the stairwell I came up. I try a few doors. Everything’s locked. No exit from this place. These halls are bleak. There’s nothing on the walls, no sign of student existence. I’ve been down these same halls so many times. They repeat themselves, turn in upon themselves like an Escher drawing. When you think about it like this, it’s almost grotesque that some people spend so much time here.

All the garbage cans I’ve come across are clean and empty. Fresh bags. There’s no sitting waste. I look through them thinking there might be something I can use, something that might come in handy, something to help me move forward, to help me escape. They are all empty. Just empty black bags.

I’ve made my way to what must be the science wing. Have I been here before? I look in through the doors. Lab stations.

The doors are different in this hall. They’re heavier and blue, sky blue. There’s a large banner at the end of the hall, hand-painted. It’s an advertisement for the winter formal. A school dance. They’ll all be in here together, the students. So many of them. It’s the first sign of student existence that I’ve seen.

Dancing the night away. Tickets are $10. What are you waiting for? the banner reads.

I think I hear rubber boots. Footsteps somewhere.

It’s like I’ve been given a drug. I can’t move. I shouldn’t move. I’m incapacitated with fear. Frozen. I want to turn and scream and run, but I can’t. What if it’s Jake? What if he’s still here, locked in like me? If he were here, that would mean I’m not alone, that I would be safe.

I can get back to the stairwell. It’s just across the hall. I can get up to the third floor. Maybe Jake is there. I squeeze my eyes shut. I make fists with my hands. My heart is thumping. I hear the boots again. It’s him. He’s looking for me.

I exhale in a burst and feel sick. I’ve been in here too long.

I can feel my chest tightening. I’m going to vomit. I can’t do this.

I dart into the stairwell. He hasn’t seen me. I don’t think. I don’t know where he is. Upstairs, downstairs, over, under, somewhere else. I feel like he could be hiding, waiting, in my own shadow. I don’t know.

I just don’t know.

AN ART ROOM. UPSTAIRS. A different hall. A door that isn’t locked. This could be anywhere. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt relief like I did when the door to this room opened. I close it behind me, very slowly, but don’t latch it. I listen. I can’t hear anything. I might be able to hide in here, at least for a while. The first thing I do is try the phone fastened to the wall, but as soon as I dial more than three digits it beeps at me. I tried dialing nine first and even 911. It’s hopeless. Nothing works.

The teacher’s desk at the front of the room is tidy and neat. I open the top drawer. There might be something in the desk that I can use. I quickly rummage through the drawers and find a plastic retractable X-ACTO knife. But the blade has been removed. I drop it on the ground.

I hear something in the hall. I duck down behind the desk, close my eyes. More time. There are bottles of paint and brushes and supplies lining the back and side walls. The whiteboards are wiped clean.

I wonder how long I can stay in here. How long can a person last without the essentials, with no food, no water? Staying hidden like this is too passive. I need to be active.

I check the windows. The bottom window opens, but only enough to let in a little air. If there were a ledge or something out there, maybe I would consider jumping. Maybe. I open the window the full couple of inches. The cold air feels good on my hand. I leave my hand there, feeling the breeze. I bend down and breathe in what small amount of fresh air I can.

I used to love art class. I just wasn’t any good at it. I desperately wanted to be. I didn’t want to be competent and successful in math only. Art was different.

High school was such a strange time for me. For some people, it’s a peak. I did the work and got high marks. That wasn’t an issue. But all the socializing. The parties. The attempts to fit in. That wasn’t easy, even then. By the end of the day, I just wanted to get home.

I was unremarkable in the ways that matter in school. It was the worst type of oblivion, for years. I was scentless, invisible.

Adulthood. Late blooming. That’s me. Or it was supposed to be. That’s when it was supposed to finally get better. I’d get better then, everyone said. This is when I would start coming into my own.