Alphabet Soup

Egregious

Egregious

        Susan nearly jumped out of her seat when the fire alarm began blaring in the middle of Biology. She let out a hiss of annoyance at the long streak of pencil lead trailing outside of the bubbles on her scantron. After finally making her best guess at a particularly difficult question regarding the Krebs Cycle, Susan felt like this test was taking every chance it got to make her attempts at making a decent grade in this course more worthless than a boat in the Sahara Desert. Around her, the scraping of pencil against paper was soon replaced by a chorus of groans and confused muttering. A third of the school at lunch right now. Since when did fire drills interrupt the sacred intervals when the students finally were free of the ennui that permeated all of their classes?

        The extremely irate class on ninth graders formed a roughly straight line leading to the door of the classroom, all the while flooding the room with the usual fire drill induced chatter. Susan’s One Direction centric conversation with her friend Beth was brought to a mercifully quick and abrupt end as the teacher managed to make his request for silence heard over the steady buzz of conversation and the deafening screeching of the alarm. Susan saw Mr. Montag’s sapphire blue eyes frantically scanning the crowd of freshmen in front of him as beads of sweat started to form above his brow, threatening to pour down his face in salty streams. Why was it so hot in here? Was the AC acting up again? 

        Susan wiped her sweaty palms against her jeans in disgust. School was like Hell for her thanks to the ridiculous amount of time she was forced to spend in classes which she quite frankly thought would never teach her anything worthwhile (Who actually gave a damn about monocots and dicots besides biology teachers and maybe botanists?), but that didn’t mean it needed to boil her alive. The uncomfortable desks that threatened to give her eternal back aches, the dull monotone of Mr. Montag’s voice that could make for an extremely effective lullaby, and the nearly endless, mind numbing droning about the ins and outs of photosynthesis were torturous enough, thank you very much. 

        Susan and her classmates marched out the door, leaving behind a ice cold linoleum floor and walls that were almost completely covered by pictures of fish, frogs, and rainforest canopies teeming with tropical birds. The hallway was already filling up with students and the pungent reek of body odor no doubt caused by the sudden increase in temperature. There was something else their too: something new, faint, and frightening. Wisps of light gray smoke were trailing out of one of the rooms down the hall. 

The smell of burning chemicals, so acrid that it made the inside of Susan’s nose feel like it was full of acid, began wafting through the hallway, causing a nearby cluster of students to begin wheezing until they were desperately gasping for breath. This was no drill. A wave of terrified, shrieking students crashed into Susan, threatening to bowl her over in their haste to escape the building. Susan tore her eyes away from the stream of smoke trickling out of the chemistry room. A river of students poured down the stairs. Terror stricken teenagers frantically shoved their peers out of their way as they sprinted out of their fifth period classes. Susan joined the mad rush to the exit to the building as adrenaline (or epinephrine as Mr.  Montag called it) began to flood her mind and body with terror and the overwhelming urge to flee from the predatory fire that was hunting for students to char beyond recognition. The stairwell was full of screaming students by the time Susan got there. It almost seemed like the last day of school ,except fear had replaced excitement. Susan could hear the fire now: it crackled behind her, promising to  burn her skin as stinging smoke began to snake its way into her defenseless lungs. 

        Susan began her descent down the marble stairs. Her classmates were crowded around her, pushing and shoving like wildebeests in the midst of a stampede, forcing her to viciously elbow her way down the stairs to avoid being trampled or smacked into the wall. When she finally reached the bottom floor, Susan bolted out the door as if she was being chased by a ferocious dragon. She the fire was just a rumbling in the distance now, but the fire alarm was still screeching on with all of its might; the danger was still present. Susan scurried over to a mass of students huddled together at what she assumed was a location far enough from the hungry flames to be safe. Susan stood, panting with exhaustion and taking in large gulps of fresh summer air to replace the smoke that had begun to find its way into her lungs, and watched as more students scrambled outside into the clean September air. 

        The alarm was still tirelessly screeching its long since noticed warning, but everyone outside of the building had fallen deathly quiet. Fire engines soon arrived on the scene. Firemen began to bring a sense of order back to John J. Gerwood High as they went around asking if anyone was not accounted for and offering calm words of assurance that the raging inferno would be dealt with. The school would be safe once more after their work was done. Susan let out a shaky sigh as she saw a team of men clad from head to toe in protective gear run into the now roaring blaze that had consumed the entire second floor of the building, trying to rescue the unlucky students who had been trapped after the fire had cut off their few escape routes. That photosynthesis test sounded pretty good right about now.