Too (un)Cool for School

“Oh my god,” Emery muttered, wringing her hands as she stared at the ceiling. “Oh my god. I messed up the plan! What do I do?”

Catelyn watched her from where she was suspended upside down. Her long hair had fallen out of its ninja-esque bun and now ran in messy waves down towards the floor. Emery felt worse seeing it, pretty sure that she had yanked it when she had knocked them both through the hole in the ceiling.

Catelyn tried to get free of the rope wrapped around her legs, but only managed to swing herself violently back and forth. The rope had tangled around her when they fell through the ceiling, and now she was stuck, hanging upside down from the ceiling, too high up for Emery to reach properly.

When the rocking finally stopped, she looked queasy. “A ladder, Em. Go get a ladder. There should be one in the janitor’s closet, I saw him put it back earlier.”

Emery nodded, and when she spoke, her voice was much squeakier than it normally was. “Okay. I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”

“Where am I supposed to go?” Catelyn gestured at the rope she was tangled in. As if for emphasis, she wiggled, trying to get out once again, then gave up and hung limply. She pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. “Just hurry, my head’s starting to hurt.”

Emery nodded and pushed open the classroom door, glancing around.

The halls of the school were dark, the only light coming from the exit signs that glowed an eerie red above her. She took a deep breath and stepped outside.

The door slammed behind her and Emery yelped, heart pounding in her chest. She hoped that Catelyn hadn’t heard.

”You can do it, Em,” She muttered. “It’s not like the school is haunted, it’s just…dark. Really, really dark.”

Her footsteps echoed through the halls. She glanced back, over her shoulder every few seconds, half expecting to see something out of a horror story, but it was just her…alone in the school…in the middle of the night.

Her stomach hurt. This had been a dumb idea.

Why did they make this school so big?

It took her another three minutes to reach the door to the janitor’s closet. She counted the seconds in her head, glad that she had something to distract herself. When she approached the door, she tried her best not to look at the ‘No Students Allowed’ sign and instead stared intently at the doorknob as she tried to open it. The doorknob didn’t budge.

Of course it didn’t. She needed a key to get in.

But where to find a key?

Turning back the way she came, she made her way all the way back, past the classroom where Catelyn was still stuck and through the halls until the door to the principal’s office came into view. She could see the key through the window, so close behind the glass. Tantalizing. One of her English vocab words floated into her mind, like an unhelpful little gremlin come to torture her. Tormenting or teasing with the sight or promise of being unattainable.

She tried this door too. Locked, of course, and the new secretary had brought his keys home. Emery had seen him tossing them in the air when he walked to his car after school.

It wasn’t that she was spying on him, of course. She just so happened to walk through there to get home.

“What do I do?” She muttered to herself as she glanced at the keys.

You could break the door… A little voice in her mind replied.

“Are you crazy? I can’t do that!”

I’m not crazy. You’re the one who’s talking to herself.

Emery sighed and ran a hand through her hair. What to do…what to do…She had to get into the janitor’s closet somehow!

Wait.

She rushed back towards the classroom and burst through the door. “Catelyn, do you have a hair clip?”

Catelyn looked up, startled. “What? Did you get the ladder?”

“No, the door’s locked. I need something to pick it with. Do you have a hair clip?”

“Uh, yeah, but Em, I don’t think that would actually work…”

“Please, Catelyn, let me try it.”

Catelyn sighed and pulled a bobby pin from her hair, tossing it down to Emery. It missed her hand and hit her in the eye. “Ow!”

“Sorry!” Catelyn winced. “I’m upside down, it’s hard to aim.”

Emery rubbed her eye, then looked back up at Catelyn. “I’ll be right back. Hold on.”

Shen had already reached the closet again before she realized that she didn’t know how to pick a lock.

Vaguely remembering a video she had watched months ago, she bent the bobby pin into what she really, really hoped was the right shape and slowly inserted it into the lock. After a minute of pushing, she heard a little ‘click!’ Then another. Her heart was pounding. Was she really breaking into her school in the middle of the night?

Worse, were she and Catelyn really planning to vandalize the gym wall? She exhaled and twisted the pin. The lock clicked.

Reaching out, Emery turned the doorknob, and…the door slid open.

”Yes!” She cheered and jumped, adrenaline surging through her body. The door started to slam shut again, but she jammed her foot into the room just in time, then pulled the door open all the way.

The janitor’s closet smelled like Windex and bleach. Emery felt her head already starting to pound from the smell and grabbed the ladder, tugging it towards the door. It was heavy, and she found a newfound respect for the custodial staff, having to carry it through the school every time there was a leak or a ceiling tile shifted or they had to clean the windows or- She shook her head, trying to focus. Her gaze fell on one of the blue mats they sometimes used in P.E. Catelyn would need somewhere to land once Emery got her free. She grabbed the mat too, then tried to figure out how to carry them both back to her friend.

The walk back to the classroom was long and slow. Emery was carrying the ladder and kicking the mat along in front of her, so every few steps it would veer off course and she’d have to go around to kick it from the side, again.

By the time she made it back to the room, she was breathing heavily. With quite a bit of trouble, she opened the door. Catelyn’s face was turning red from being upside down for so long. She tried to hide it, but she was clearly relieved to see Emery back.

Emery slid the mat underneath where Catelyn was, then balanced the ladder up against the wall.

She took a deep breath. Catelyn seemed higher than she had been before, or maybe it was just that Emery hated heights.

But either way, she was going to save her friend.

She climbed the ladder up to where Catelyn was dangling and carefully reached out to loosen the rope. She felt herself almost fall two or three times, but finally, after a couple minutes of carefully fiddling with the rope, it untangled and quickly slid out from around Catelyn.

Catelyn screamed as she fell, landing with a thud on the mat. Emery winced, feeling her stomach swoop.

It took a second, but Catelyn sat up, hair wild. Her face slowly turned back to its normal shade. “You did it, Em! Come down!”

Emery tried to step down a rung, then clutched the ladder. “I…I can’t!”

“Em…”

The ladder shifted slightly and Emery clutched it tighter, panic surging in her chest. The ground was far, way too far away. if she fell, she could probably break a bone! She didn’t hesitate to tell that to Catelyn, who let out what sounded like a mix between an exasperated laugh and a puff of air..

“Come on, Em! I’ll hold the ladder for you.”

It took much more coaxing, but Emery eventually made it shakily down the ladder and was immediately crushed in a hug.

“You did it! I mean, I knew you could, but…you were so awesome! Even if you did get me stuck up there in the first place.”

The two girls looked up at the loose ceiling tile at the other end of the rope. There had been rumors going around for months that it was right under a hole in the roof, because it leaked whenever it rained.

Kids had been talking for months about how cool it would be to sneak in at night and write an insulting message on the gym wall, addressed to the visiting team the day before the big basketball game.

It had been Emery’s suggestion that they should be the ones to do it.

Catelyn picked her backpack up from the floor. “Come on, let’s go. This message isn’t going to write itself!”

Emery went to follow her, then stopped. “Wait. I don’t…I don’t think I want to do this.”

Catelyn turned. “What? It was your idea. And we’ll be, like, school legends if we do this.”

“Yeah, but…it just…it doesn’t feel right.” Emery’s stomach squirmed at the thought of vandalizing the school in such a big way. Catelyn must have noticed her expression, because she made her way back over to Emery.

“We don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. Just…why did you even suggest it? It didn’t seem like a very…you thing to do.”

Emery sighed, trying to find the right words to speak. “Everyone is just always doing cool things. All we ever do at our sleepovers is watch old movies. Everyone else always does things like toilet-papering people’s houses, and then people at school talk all about it for days, and…I guess I was jealous. I wanted to be the cool one, for once.”

Catelyn slid to the ground and patted the floor next to her. Emery reluctantly sat down next to her. “Em…you are cool. Do you know what you just did? You just broke into a school, picked a lock, and saved me from being stuck upside down from the ceiling all night! If that’s not cool, I don’t know what is.” She slung her arm around Emery’s shoulders. “Besides, I like watching old movies with you.”

Emery shrugged. “I guess tonight was kind of cool.”

“It was! That’s why you’re my best friend. I’m only friends with the coolest of the cool.”

Emery laughed weakly. Catelyn slung an arm over her shoulders. “Come on, Em. Let’s go home. We still have time to watch Parent Trap if we hurry!…Maybe we should go out the front door, though.”

“Wait.” Emery stood up and grabbed a sharpie from the teacher’s desk, determined. “There’s something I want to do first.”

The next day, when all the students filed into class, there was no news of a break in. No police around, no administrators on the prowl for troublemakers, no extra security. The only people who knew what had happened the night before were the two girls who stared at the ceiling, at the ‘E+C forever’ scribbled on the famously leaky ceiling tile in bold, black sharpie.