Disappearing Act

It takes only one spark to begin a raging fire.

Day Two

 

Danielle takes a deep breath and heads into the crowd of students in the courtyard. She sees now that they are not one large mass, but several clusters facing each other in circles. She searches for Chloe, weaving among the groups several times before she finally finds her.

On sight, Chloe grabs Danielle by the sleeve and drags her onto the paved pathway. “It’s so cold,” she says, hunching her shoulders and rubbing her hands together.

“Come on, over here,” Danielle suggests, walking towards a patch of sunlight around the corner of the Basen building. She extends her arms, basking, once she is in the sunlight.

Chloe follows suit. “Oh, sun, feels good,” she says, as if she has just now put together the connection between sunlight and warmth.

From here, they can see about half of the view offered by the cafeteria. Danielle breathes deeply, sighing, and then wrinkles her nose. It smells like a sewer. “Ew. Smell kinda ruins it,” she comments, grinning.

Chloe laughs. “It does, but you get used to it.” She glances over at the students, and then seems to recall something. “Come on,” she says, lightly grabbing Danielle’s sleeve again. She lets it go after a few moments, and approaches a tall guy, with tanned skin and buzz-cut blond hair. She hands a note to him wordlessly, and then walks away.

Danielle follows her. “Who was that?”

“This guy I have a huge crush on,” Chloe says, conspiratorially. Her face is serious.

Chloe talks to some others, and Danielle hangs back, not really catching any of the conversation. She feels a bit pathetic, like a puppy following its master around.

“Too cold, let’s go inside,” Chloe eventually declares.

“Agreed,” Danielle replies, and they head into the Halder building.

Chloe stops at the double metal doors, but Danielle continues and walks around to the door they used to exit last class. It’s unlocked, so she runs through the auditorium to the metal doors and opens them for the ones waiting in the lobby, like Al had the day before.

“Oh, I was just saying I was wondered where you went,” Chloe says, laughing.

Danielle and Chloe sit down together. “So, who’s the boy?” Danielle asks.

“Just some kid,” Chloe responds.

“How long have you known each other?”

“A few months,” Chloe answers, looking sheepish.

Danielle grins. “You guys friends?”

“Yeah, sorta.”

“So you just decided that when you came back to school, that was when you were going to do it.”

Chloe smiles, but doesn’t say anything. There’s a pause. “Oh! Check out my bag,” she says suddenly, opening her backpack and pulling out her “my brown bag” assignment. It’s white instead of brown, with doodlings all over it. She turns it onto its side. “These are some of my favorite quotes,” she says, indicating the neat writing in several different colors. Most of the quotes are about friendship and love. “I especially like this one,” she says, pointing. “And this one…and…ah whatever, I like them all.” She grins.

Danielle smiles back, and wonders at the fact that Chloe had enough free time to draw all over the bag. She pulls out her own, blue, crumpled, and plain, but doesn’t speak.

“Okay, I’m going to call attendance,” Ms. Grey announces suddenly. “But you can only respond in three ways, okay? The first way to respond is ‘Yeehaw!’” The students laugh quietly. “The second way to respond is ‘I’m here and I’m ready to party!’” Ms. Grey gives the peace sign for this response. “The third way to respond is ‘Ow!’” She yells the “Ow!”, but it doesn’t come out sounding like she’s hurt; it’s a high-pitched, exuberant thing that Danielle doubts she can mimic. “And when you respond, you can’t be like ‘Ow,’” Ms. Grey continues, using a low and bored-sounding voice. “You have to actually say it like ‘Ow!’” She uses the high-pitched one again. The students laugh again, still quiet. Ms. Grey begins to take attendance.

There seems to be equal parts “yee-haw”s and “I’m here and I’m ready to party”s, with very few “ow”s. When it gets to Chloe’s turn, she’s one of the first ones to use “Ow!”

Danielle ends up choosing “Yee-haw!” mainly because it’s the simplest one to say.

Afterward, Ms. Grey begins calling students to present their bags. Danielle is surprised to learn that Electric Eva is also a writer, who is currently working on a book that she hopes to someday publish. She makes a note in her mind to somehow befriend her and ask her about that. Chloe presents, and while Danielle thinks she should be remembering the things that Chloe is saying, her words slip out of Danielle’s mind as soon as she speaks them. There are a lot of pictures, and not much that seems unique.

When Chloe gets back to her seat, Danielle rifles through Chloe’s bag, pulling out a picture of her at some sort of prom with a boy and a few girls. “Who’s the boy?” Danielle asks.

“My ex-boyfriend,” Chloe replies, her voice heavy with contempt.

Danielle looks at the picture again. Such a shame; the boy looks cute. “What happened?” she asks quietly.

Chloe either doesn’t hear her or pretends she doesn’t.

Blake the Bok Choy also presents, and claims that he has only ever lost one game of monopoly.

“Did you only ever play one game of monopoly?” Ms. Grey asks, making the students laugh.

Blake grins. “No, I’ve played more than one.”

“Oh, okay,” Ms. Grey responds, grinning. “Oh – sorry for interrupting. Continue.”

A few more kids present unmemorable bags, and then Ms. Grey turns down the lights and projects a course syllabus onto the wall, launching into a boring description of the class.

Danielle begins to hear the same noises from yesterday coming from above. She glances up. No one else does. To make herself feel less crazy, she nudges Chloe, who looks over. “What are those sounds?” she asks, gesturing up.

Chloe looks up, too, then. “Huh. That’s odd. I don’t know.”

Danielle feels relief, knowing now that she isn’t the only one hearing it.

Chloe shoots her hand up without a second thought. Ms. Grey calls on her. “What are those sounds coming from the ceiling?”

All the students in the class now look upward, finally taking notice.

“Oh, that?” Ms. Grey asks, hearing it, too. “I think it’s just that this auditorium wasn’t built so well. Instead of hiring guys who specialize in constructing auditoriums, they just hired some random construction guys and told them to build one. So it kind of just shifts sometimes. And because it was built badly, birds and things can get in. That answer your question?”

“Sure,” Chloe responds.

Ms. Grey goes back to her presentation.

Danielle and Chloe continue listening. The sound is a strange clunking and clanking, odd in that it is loud yet peripheral.

“That doesn’t sound like birds,” Chloe comments.

“No kidding,” Danielle replies.

When the presentation is finished, the teacher has the students get out of their seats and begins leading them on a tour of the auditorium. She identifies the area where they sit as the auditorium; apparently, the entire place isn’t the auditorium, even though it is. She identifies the stage, the pit between the stage and the auditorium, the stage door, the apron (the bit of stage still showing when the curtain is closed), the catwalk, the grid, and several others. While gathered on stage, Danielle carefully explores behind the teacher’s back. She glances behind the left teasers (curtains that cut off the stage from the wings), seeing a small staircase leading to a door to the hallway. She glances behind the traveler, a curtain against the back wall.

“What’s back there?” a large girl asks her.

Danielle looks. “Wall. There’s just a bit of space, between it and the curtain,” she concludes.

“Oh,” the girl replies, sounding disappointed.

Ms. Grey then leads the students out the metal doors, into the lobby. She has Blake Bok Choy hold the door open so that it won’t lock on them. “This is the front of the house,” Ms. Grey says. “Well, actually, it’s the lobby of the Halder building,” she amends, getting some giggles. “But!” She holds up one finger significantly. “When we’re putting on a play, this place transforms into the front of the house. The front of the house is the area where you would typically get your tickets and wait to enter. Alright, let’s – actually, let’s go through the other door, easier to get to what I want to show you next that way. Blake, go inside and run around to the other door, in case it’s locked and we can’t get in.”

Blake nods and jogs back into the auditorium, the door swinging closed behind him.

As they walk around to the door Danielle had used to enter the auditorium not too long ago, a strange feeling of significance rushes through her. She wonders if her situation has finally sunken in – she’s in a new place, she’s becoming a new person, she’s going to spend at least two years of her rapidly approaching future here. She ponders this, but she still feels uneasy surrounded by the unknown.

The class arrives at the other door, and Ms. Grey tries to open it. “Aw, shoot,” she says; it’s locked. She waits a few seconds. After about ten, she peers through the window in the door. “Blake?” she calls. She waits some more. “Blake, open the door!”

A half-nervous, half-amused murmuring passes through the students.

Ms. Grey huffs and walks around to the double metal doors again. The students follow her and watch as she pulls on this one, too; it is also locked. “Blake!” she yells.

Now the students are starting to feel alarmed. Why isn’t Blake answering? They expect him to burst through the door at any moment, apologizing, but he doesn’t.

Danielle imagines the kid running too quickly, tripping, and smashing his head against an auditorium seat, knocking himself out. This amuses her at first, but then the thought that he might need medical attention occurs to her.

Ms. Grey sighs, resigned. “Alright…Briana. Go to the Basen building and tell the office that I’m locked out of the auditorium,” she says.

“’Kay,” Briana replies, turning and walking out the door.

The students begin to murmur louder. “Where is he?” they ask, or “What happened?”

Danielle pushes to the front. “Why don’t you have a key?” she asks Ms. Grey.

“I do. It’s inside,” Ms. Grey replies, rolling her eyes.

“What about a janitor? Would he have a key to the auditorium?”

Ms. Grey nods. “He would. Where could we find a janitor now, though?”

Danielle shrugs. “I’ll go look.” She takes off before the teacher can object. Ms. Grey starts to yell something after her, but then sighs and doesn’t.

Danielle heads downstairs, towards her Spanish class, and begins searching the halls at a steady jog. She goes around in a circle, and then manages to find a janitor while he’s exiting a girl’s bathroom in a rather smelly part of the hallway that contains both that bathroom and a door labeled as the Girl’s Locker Room. “Hey,” Danielle greets.

The janitor smiles pleasantly. “Hello,” he replies, and then tries to go around her.

“Ms. Grey needs you for something. Do you have keys?”

The janitor shifts his weight, causing his keys to jangle in the process, in the middle of Danielle’s question. “Yep, sure do.”

“She’s locked out of the auditorium,” Danielle explains, and then recalls the potentially passed-out boy. “Come on,” she urges. She jogs forward, waits for the janitor, and then just settles for a brisk walking pace.

When they arrive in the lobby, the students’ voices have risen to a dull buzz. There are two official-looking men standing by the double metal doors, potentially the principal and vice principal. They aren’t doing much other than standing.

“Open this door,” Danielle instructs, leading the janitor to the one they were supposed to go through in the first place.

The janitor searches for the right key, then unlocks it after a couple seconds of difficulty. Only a few students take note of what’s happening.

“Door’s open!” Danielle announces, holding it with her foot. The crowd comes around the corner then, and they all enter the auditorium; Ms. Grey, the students, the two important-looking men, and the janitor.

Danielle immediately begins looking for Blake lying face-down in the middle of a walkway. She doesn’t see him. “Blake?” she calls out.

The others quickly catch on, and begin shouting his name as well. A full-scale search launches itself, students checking all areas of the stage, the seats, the control booth, the dark corners.

Danielle searches the stage after her initial walkway scan. She pats along the traveler to see if he is hiding behind it, but she encounters wall wherever she pushes. She searches the wings, and then backstage, and he isn’t there either. She looks under the apron; nothing.

She glances upward, wondering if he’s on the catwalk or the grid. The stage lights shining down on her mesmerize her for a moment because of their beauty, but she doesn’t see anyone up there. That could easily be because most of the catwalk is dark, however.

“How do you get up there?” Danielle yells, pointing up, to Ms. Grey over the clamor of searching students. Many of them hear her and ask as well, eager to explore above the theater.

“We’re not going up there,” Ms. Grey states firmly. She walks over to the wall and turns all the lights on full-blast. It illuminates a decent portion of the grid, but not all of it.

“What if he’s up there?” Danielle asks.

“Yeah, what if?” the students echo.

Ms. Grey sighs. “Alright, I’ll go up there. But you’re staying down here.”

Neither Danielle nor the students can argue this.

Ms. Grey speaks to the official-looking men, who give her a flashlight. Then, she climbs up to the control booth. Danielle watches her disappear, then reappear high above. All the students crane their necks upward to watch as she clicks on her flashlight and walks slowly toward the grid, checking everywhere.

Danielle sits down cross-legged on the stage and then gazes upward. The room goes eerily silent, except for the strange clanking noises and the sound of Ms. Grey’s footsteps.

After a thorough search, Ms. Grey begins walking back across the catwalk to the control booth. “He’s not up there,” she speaks downward.

The student voices erupt again. “Where could he be?” “He can’t just disappear.” “Did we check over here?”

When Ms. Grey gets down from the control booth, she glances toward a door, opposite the door she had meant Blake to open for them. It leads outside. Danielle follows Ms. Grey’s line of vision and sees it as well.

Ms. Grey walks through the students to the door, opening it. “Blake?” she yells. The students quiet, listening for him to respond. “Blake!”

There’s no answer.

Ms. Grey sighs, shaking her head, and closes the door. “The only possibility is that he went out this door, because we would have seen him if he had gone out the stage door and heard him if he went out the double doors,” she announces. “I’m sorry to say it, but I believe he ditched class.”

An air of disappointment falls over the students; ditching class isn’t all that exciting. Ms. Grey goes over and talks to the two official men, probably telling them that Blake left class and possibly school grounds unauthorized. The two men leave, along with the janitor who has been watching this debacle. Danielle smiles, glad to know he enjoys a good mystery, too, even if it isn’t his job to solve it.

Ms. Grey makes a few phone calls, and then starts writing passes for all the students, seeing as the bell rung quite some time ago. The students weren’t able to hear it; at that point, they had been making too much of their own racket. Danielle gets her pass, and then waits for Chloe. They exit together.

“What do you think happened?” Chloe asks.

Danielle pauses, and then shrugs. “I don’t know. But I don’t think he ditched.”

“But the teacher said he would have had to,” Chloe retorts.

“Blake doesn’t seem to me like a troublemaker,” Danielle states.

Chloe stares at her shoes as they walk in silence. “But if that’s not it, what could have happened?”

Danielle has no answer.

 

…

 

The rest of the day passes by in a blur. Danielle’s classes seem unimportant, and in Spanish’s case, annoying. She’d forgotten to do the homework the previous night, which was a brilliant way to start the year. Then, the teacher assigns so much so quickly that Danielle misses a large portion of it and has to ask the teacher to repeat herself several times. Students turn and give her looks again. This puts her in a foul mood, enough even for one of the girls in front of her to ask “Are you alright?” in response to her facial expression. Danielle nods, certain that she can’t respond verbally or she’ll explode.

By the end of the day, her mood has tapered off. She tries to find Chloe in crowd of students that reassemble at the end of the day, but there are too many to sort through and she gives up after circling the entire group at least three times. She sees someone sitting leaned up against the oak by the road where the busses come up, and decides to follow suit. She sits on the side of the tree to the person’s right, which might make them feel awkward, but she isn’t really concerned.

When bus 10 pulls up, Danielle remembers it as Chloe’s bus right as she spies her walking toward it. She gets up, abandoning her purse and backpack, and runs over. “Hey,” she says.

“Hey,” Chloe responds, sounding startled. “Where’s your stuff? Are you coming on the bus?”

“No, I found out the number of my actual bus,” Danielle replies. “I just wanted to…here,” she says, handing her a slip of paper that contains various ways of contacting her; her phone number, email, and screen names.

“Thanks,” Chloe replies without looking at the paper, a perplexed expression on her face. She gets on the bus, and Danielle returns to the tree.

It’s a long wait until bus 14 shows up, which Danielle ends up killing by listening to her music. Though, blessedly, when it does arrive, the middle-schoolers are already on. She pauses her music briefly to get on, and then quickly turns it on again as she sits, glad to let her mind go blank at the day’s end.