Missing Assignment

Chapter 9

I sit by the library and wait for Cody and Mars to show up, messing with the torn sleeve on Cody's sweater he gave me during lunch. I look up at the sound of a chip bag crinkling.
"Yo, where's boom boy?" Mars asks, as I stand. They pour the rest of the crumbs in their mouth and shove the bag in the trash.
"He's gotta be coming, he's-" My sentence is cut off by a loud bang from a locker around the corner before Cody swings around it.
"Blowing up his locker." I finish the sentence with a new ending.
"Not my locker, thought I'd leave the asshole in 205 a present." Cody replies, unbothered as ever. I roll my eyes.
"Whatever, come on, we gotta get to the abandoned school." I say, already headed for the door. Mars pulls my hood up on the way out, and Cody waves to his brother's car. It's an old Volkswagen, half rusted and practically held together with duct tape. Cody yanks open the back door for us, and we climb in. The window has a board of wood nailed in its place. Cody swings through the front passenger window, and Donny starts the car.
"Donny, what the hell happened to your car, man?" I ask, somewhat surprised the thing still runs at all.
"She's a little banged up, but her engine works just fine, looks aren't everything, y'know." He replies as if this thing is just scratched up or something.
"That not what I asked." I reply back since he still hasn't answered me.
"I'm surprised someone who can afford a big house can't afford to get his car fixed." Mars adds.
"Last time he took a car to the mechanic, they tore the whole thing apart. He won't trust any since then." Cody tells us.
"I know how to fix my own damn car! Cheaper too, those assholes will tell you anything to get more cash." Donny adds defensively.
"Yeah, only took a couple of shocks to learn." Cody jokes back, Donny smiles at him.
"And I only ended up in the hospital once!" He replies happily, as if that's an accomplishment.

It doesn't take long to get to the abandoned building. We could have walked if I wasn't grounded. The beat-up car doesn't look so out of place next to it, but Donny decides to stay behind to keep watch just in case. The door has a chain hanging from it, but the lock is already broken. It screeches as Mars pulls it open.
"Lady's first!" They say, gesturing inside. I laugh sarcastically as we walk in, and Mars pulls the rusty door closed behind us. I pull a flashlight out of my backpack as we start walking down the dirty hallway, there's cracks in some of the tiles with weeds growing through, some walls have graffiti on them, there's vines growing through broken windows in some of the classrooms, and some desks are tipped over or broken.
"Hey, that looks fresher." Mars says, pointing their own flashlight at a sunset spray painted on a wall, half covering another tag.
"Sunny must have been here." I tell them.
"That tag's old, plus Sunny's been everywhere." Cody replies, swiping his finger across the wall and showing the dust to prove his point. We turn down another hallway with old banners slowly falling from the top of the walls. Looking at some of the letters that hang down sideways, it seems like they were decorating for some upcoming sports events, the old mascots printed on the edges. One of the class doors has a large chunk of the corner missing. Inside, there's a classroom with art supplies, there's paint spilled on the floor and brushes scattered around. Next to the teacher's desk that is resting at an odd angle because a leg broke, there's a board with some torn pictures of a few of the students.
"It's weird how they just left everything behind." I say, thinking aloud.
"Maybe Chris was right about this place." Mars replies.
"You gotta stop reading those creepy stories dude, you're starting to fall for them." Cody replies.
"Yeah Chris is just making shit up like always." I add, remembering the time I refused to bathe for a month cause of some story Chris told about getting pulled into the drain back in second grade.
"I didn't mean it like that, I just meant maybe something really did happen here, bad enough everyone left and never came back for any of it." Mars explains.
"It does seem like they left in a hurry." I reply, walking out and into another hallway. There's a large corkboard next to a door with a few letter stickers peeling off the front that probably used to spell whatever that class was. Some of the papers that used to be stapled on the board have fallen around on the dirty hallway floor, but some still hang where they were left with tattered edges, there's a few random notes about prom, the chess club, and where to meet for tutoring, but most of the pages are old picture-day photos with the word missing writen underneath in big bold letters.
"Holy shit." Cody says. It's all any of us can say, staring at the missing posters of teens like us hung on a wall and left there in a building left to rot. It's like looking at a ghost of yourself, reading the names of people who no longer exist.
"Let me borrow your phone?" I ask, Cody hands me his phone and I lift some of the posters to take pictures of them, picking up a few from the floor as well and using the old staples to pin them back up as best as I can. I hand Cody his phone back after sending the pictures to myself.
"C'mon, I think it's time to go." I tell Mars and Cody as I start walking away. When we get back to the car, Donny slams his fist on the front dash to start it back up and drives away.