Stuck

A Story by haliewalton

Stuck is a story about a girl named Halie who gets stuck in school.

Stuck

I woke up at 7:20 A.M. My alarm didn’t go off, so I had only ten minutes to get ready and walk to school. What a great way to start off the day. I put on the first matching outfit I could find, brushed my teeth, and took a cereal bar out of our pantry before rushing out the door.

I caught up to my friend Lynn who lives down the street from me on the walk to school. It was weird, she always waited for me at my house. She was walking slowly and looked tired and tense, like she couldn’t sleep the night before. I knew something was bothering her. I hadn’t seen that look on her face since the day of the fourth grade talent show when she was supposed to juggle foam balls while tap dancing, which turned out to be a disaster. When I approached her, she didn’t even look at me. She looked pale.

“Lynn, what’s wrong?” I asked, worried about her.

“Nothing,” she said it so quietly that I almost couldn’t hear her.

“Are you okay?” I asked, even more worried than before. Usually, she would never shut up.

She started speaking a little shakily, sounding like she was going to cry, “Yeah, it’s just…”

“Just what?”

“You know. What everyone at school is talking about,” she said quietly again.

“No. What is it?” I asked her, getting a little impatient. I knew I shouldn’t have been impatient. I had no idea how she felt .

“Well, every year, on this date, someone gets stuck in school,” she said it nervously, shaking up a storm.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Something happens; I’m not quite sure what it is, to make someone, one person, stuck. They can’t get out unless someone else saves them.” Her eyes started to water up. She was tough, so I knew she must have thought it would happen. Maybe to her.

“Is it true?” I asked her, getting a little scared myself.

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“It happened to my dad,” as she said it, we reached the school.

We walked in, not speaking. I walked to my locker slowly, afraid of what might happen. I knew Lynn’s dad, and he did not tell tales. When I reached my locker, I tried to put in my combination. My fingers were fumbling, so it took what felt like ten minutes before it opened. This is going to be a long day, I thought.

By the time the final bell rang, I felt like I had been in school for years. I couldn’t stop thinking about the conversation I had with Lynn earlier. I was hoping that just maybe it was a joke, but I knew it wasn’t. Lynn was no actress.

I tried to get my books into my bag as quickly as possible. The sooner I left the better. But, when I turned around, nobody was at their lockers. In fact, there weren’t any lockers. All I could see was the old gray walls all around me.

This can’t be happening to me, I thought, Snap out of it Halie. But I didn’t. I was stuck and I knew it.

I looked around for anyone else because Lynn said that you couldn’t get out unless someone saves you, but I was definitely alone. I walked around the whole school twice, looking for some sort of sign that might help me get out. The only thing I found was a little hole in the wall at the end of the eighth grade wing, but how is that supposed to help me? I heard someone calling my name, but it could have been my imagination. I was terrified.

I stuck my pen through the hole, just to give it a try. Nothing happened, my pen was just stuck. I tried to pull it out, but it wouldn’t budge. I tugged at it one last time and heard a loud crack coming from the wall. It scared me, so I jumped back. Good thing I did because the wall came tumbling to the ground right before my eyes.

I ran outside so fast you would’ve thought a zombie was chasing me. I saw Lynn standing behind a bush, with something in her hand. It looked like a stick. When she walked closer to me, I saw that it wasn’t a stick, it was a screw driver. It must have been her who saved me.

“I just couldn’t do it,” she said, tears streaming down her face. I was confused.

“Do what?” I asked her. I started to walk towards her to comfort her, but she backed away.

“It was me,” she said, crying even harder now. Her voice was hard to understand.

“Of course it was you. You saved me! Thank you so much,” I said gratefully.

“No. That’s not what I meant. It was me who trapped you in there in the first place. I can’t believe I listened to him.”

“What do you mean? I don’t understand,” I asked. She would never do anything to hurt me.

“Last night, right before I went to bed, I heard this voice. I had no idea who it was or where it was coming from. It was all around me. It said that tomorrow, which is today, I had to go into the library at approximately 2:30, which is when school lets out. I had to pull this special secretive lever behind the tallest bookshelf. The voice told me that this would help me later in life. That if I didn’t do it, something bad would happen to me or someone I love. At first, I had no idea what all this was about, then it all went together and I realized that this year, I was going to be the monster. I would be the one to get an innocent person stuck in school.” When she finished, she looked green. I could tell it made her sick to tell me this.

I didn’t know what to say.

Lynn broke the silence, “I’m so sorry, Halie. I totally understand if you don’t want to be my friend anymore. I feel so bad for doing this to you.”

“I just don’t get it,” At that point, I didn’t know what to do.

“I don’t want to rush you. Just think about it.”

And that’s what I did. When I got home, I sat in my room and cried. I felt lost. I didn’t know what to do. Or what to say. It all came so fast. At one point, I thought I would just ignore Lynn and make new friends. But then I realized that I needed her. She had always been there for me. I couldn’t just abandon her after all we’d been through.

The next day, I got up extra early. When I went outside, Lynn was waiting for me, just like always. I told her that we had to be friends, and that I just wanted to forget about yesterday, pretend it never happened. And she agreed. I’m so happy I made that choice. We’re meant to be best friends.