Trapped

Chapter 8

"Wait, isn't Johnny Walters supposed to be here right now?" Trevor's words broke the silence. I looked around in confusion and realized he was right, Johnny was nowhere to be seen.
"I can't believe it was him. I mean, after all the convincing he did to make us think he was innocent, I really wanted it to be true." I wasn't really mad, I was just... Disappointed. "You can all go home, we have our culprit." I told the group.
"But isn't the culprit still coming?" Maja inquired, she must have stopped listening in her state of fear.
"Johnny did it as part of his stupid prank." I explained.
"So we can go home? Please say we can go home, I'm getting really scared here." Phoebe said.
"Yeah, everybody leave." My demands were met in a matter of seconds, leaving only Gerald and I in the room.
"What do we do now?" Gerald inquired.
"We call Johnny Walters, now." I replied firmly.

"Hello?" Johnny's voice set me right off.
"I can't believe after all you said, all you promised to do to prove your innocence, you still lied to us! You're the same way you've always been, a liar and a con man! Every story, every detail to make it sound real, and none of it was. We should've listened to the warnings, everyone told us you were trouble, but I had faith, too much faith. So here we are, and you're still lying, you're still the same!" Gerald has to pull me away from the phone to silence my rant.
"Woah, woah, woah, why is she yelling at me?" He questioned, probably assuming Gerald was with me.
"Because you lied straight to our faces, a lot." Gerald told him, like he needed telling.
"Oh my god, the holding thing, was that today?"
"Don't play us like this anymore, Johnny! Just tell the truth." I demanded.
"Ok, the truth is I woke up this morning puking my guts out and didn't even go to school."
"There's always an excuse isn't there, isn't there?!" I screaming into the phone.
"Seriously, ask anyone in my class and they'll tell you; ask Janet even."
"Johnny, what do you expect us to do with all this evidence against you?" Gerald asked, sounding exasperated.
"I don't know, but it's not me and I'm tired of being yelled at, so I'm hanging up the phone." That left us with only dial tone, and once Gerald hung up the phone as well, only silence.
"We wait until tomorrow, I'm done with this for now." I said, answering the unasked question.
"We'll figure it out."
"I wish I could still believe that."

Wednesday morning was rough, I had no energy and no interest in continuing the investigation, but I forged on like the trooper I was. Though my mood was less than stellar the day was bright and warm, which made me hope good things were to come. What Gerald told me first thing in advisor crushed that hope, "The message on Ivan's page says, 'today'."
"So what you're saying is that the fire alarms are going to go off at 11:15 today." I concluded.
"Yup."
"And we're completely out of suspects."
"Pretty much, unless we really still think it's Johnny Walters."
"I don't think he's guilty, for a prankster he's pretty honest."
"I agree, which just makes this harder."
"Our only option is to frantically search the halls at 11:14." I told him and he nodded.

It was a surprisingly tense couple hours between 8:30 and 11:15, every passing minute making me wish we had more time. We were in English when 11:10 rolled around, so I raised my hand to ask for permission to leave. "Yes Violet?" Mr. Schneider asked.
"May I go to the washroom?" My tone was painfully urgent. 11:11.
"We're in the middle of a lesson, now isn't really the best time."
"It's an emergency." The excuse was all too familiar to both me and the teacher.
"If it was really an emergency you'd have run out of this classroom and explained yourself afterwards." The argument ended there and he continued on with his lesson about advertising. I watched the time inch past like it was mocking me, 11:12, 11:13... I could practically hear the alarms going off in my head. If it was really an emergency you'd have run out of this classroom and explained yourself afterwards. Well, it was an emergency. 11:14. I had to go for it, Janet depended on it. I burst out of the classroom and into the hallway, sprinting through every empty hall. I wasn't going to make it in time, I wasn't going to make it. Then I slammed into someone who was also running through the halls, it had to be the culprit, who else would be running through the halls just before the fire alarms were supposed to go off? I quickly looked at the person in front of me, the brown hair, the green eyes, the half sporty half slacker outfit, it was all coming together like a sicken puzzle. "Trevor?!" I cried.
"H-Hey Violet, what you doing around the halls at this hour?"
"I could ask you the same question." He tried to struggle out of my grip, but I was latched onto his shoulders like my life depended on it.
"I was just trying to defend Ivan, ok?" Wow, he cracked easier than I had expected. "He didn't deserve all the crap Janet put him through, she toned herself down this year because she found some actual friends, but I couldn't let her off that easily."
"Was it just Ivan she treated badly?"
"Well... No, she's said a few choice things to me as well. So my actions were completely justified!"
"So you're getting revenge for you and your friend, but you threw Ivan right under the bus?"
"I knew he was innocent and he would be able to defend himself, I just needed you to be thrown off the scent." He admitted.
"This sounds a lot more selfish than you're trying to make it out to be."
"It's not selfish! I'm not overreacting! Just shut up!"
"Hey, what's going on out here? Get back to class!" Mrs. Bernard demanded from the doorway to her classroom. Trevor ran away the second Mrs. Bernard turned around and I chased after him, I could absolutely not let him pull that alarm. As he approached the little red device on the wall next to the bathroom I made a desperate attempt to grab him, but just missed. I had lost, after all that work and ambition, I had lost. I waited to hear the blaring alarms that would taunt me forever... And I waited... And I waited... But nothing happened; in fact, Trevor ran right past the fire alarm and down the next hall, and the next, and straight into the office. "I was selfish, I overreacted, I fell to her level." He said before he turned to the secretary and confessed everything. Yeah, it was worth breaking out of class.