The Stories They Tell

Hello

A young looking female walked into the room timidly. She had lines of worry across her face, but strode across the room to a seat with confidence that seemed to come from deep inside her.

She dropped her bag down on the ground beside her chair without trying to cause too much attention, while grabbing a hair tie from her wrist. Carefully, she wrapped her hair into a tight ponytail, while stealing a glance around the room.

There was only one other person in the room and the young boy looked to be about the same age as the first girl in the room, 14 or 15 perhaps, but was a freshman and was in some of her classes. His name was Bryan, or was it Dylan? She didn't really bother to remember people's name's.

The boy took out earphones and blasted some rock music into his ears, while the young girl named Kelsey glanced around the room taking in the aspects of the foreign room before the others got there.

The classroom the two high-schoolers were currently sitting in was at the East Wing of Ridgefield High School, which was rarely ever used. There was four empty classrooms at this far end of the East Wing, the Band Room, and a few teachers offices. Most kids didn't even know that this part of the school existed, apart from the new, high-tech classrooms that made up the majority of the rich school.

But the room they were both sitting in had a dusty globe in the corner, an old looking chalkboard with cracked chalk on the metal edge, and scattered papers around the room on the floor. The floor was a dusky grey color, the ceiling had white tiles with some of them falling off, and old florescent light bulbs that were mostly cracked and unlit. This was the place that the flyer had promoted, but why was it not the cozy, warm, safety, feeling that was perceived when she had first read it?

With a burning curiosity, Kelsey stood up and walked around the room gazing at the piles of old textbooks littered across the floor, with a thick layer of dust, torn pages, and graffiti over the covers. She reached down and picked up what seemed to be an old geometry or history book.

"I wouldn't touch those if if I were you," came a voice from across the room. Kelsey stood up to address the source of the comment, but the book exploded in her hands, with all of the papers falling onto the ground with a quiet swish.No one had entered the room, so she presumed the advice came from the freshman that was sitting with the earbuds in.

With a groan of anger, Kelsey reached down and gathered all the fallen pages, and loosely put them back into the cover from which they fell out of. The inside of the front cover read, '2042' which meant the textbooks all around her were over a decade old, or older. Kelsey than gently rested the book onto the other stack of textbooks, cautiously so the other books didn't break or fall, then stood up to further inspect the classroom.

There were more stacks of old and damaged textbooks around the room, but she was careful in not touching any like last time. There was an old bookshelf in the corner of the room, with several novels that seemed to be fairly new, an old metal, teacher's desk, and an battered American flag hug in the adjacent corner of the room. There were also 2 desks slanted to the ground with broken legs, a stack of broken and extra chairs, and in the center of the room lay 12 chairs in a circle.

Before Kelsey got a chance to further inspect the room, in came a middle age man, carrying a broom, mop, and a large cardboard box. He shuffled over to the metal teacher's desk and dropped everything with a loud clang.

"I didn't expect anyone to be in here so early, how come you two are here?" asked the man with a high pitched voice despite his tall body structure.