The grease lining molted metal wasn't anything North Kingsley hadn't encountered before having worked summers at his family's auto body shop. It was the rotting stench of forgotten gym clothes, half-drunk cans of Red Bull, and general crumbs of what once was food though, that was slowly pushing him over the edge. Slinging an arm over his mouth, the senior fought back a gag, not willing to extend his Friday detention sentence out by having to clean his own puke.
Stepping away from Locker 893, North caught his breath and blinked back the responsive tears flooding his eyes. He'd only been in the sub-basement's hallway a couple hours, tasked with cleaning out the long-abandoned lockers before they were to be hauled out and the entire basement converted into a computer studio. The rubber gloves his old social sciences teacher, Mr. Caynes, had shoved into his chest were no longer their glowing yellow. Stained black at the fingertips from mold and red in the palms from rust, and hopefully not his own blood, North cautioned a guess at how much longer they would last him. He still had an entire row to clean out after all. Nudging his glasses back up his nose with his wrist, North considered 893 passable in cleanliness and turned towards 894.
The lock was jammed, door refusing to move an inch after North entered its override code. Furrowing his brow, the teen planted a booted foot to the wall of metal, yanking with all the strength his body could afford him. Which apparently wasn't much, but enough to nudge the door loose and send him flying to the ground. Hitting the concrete with a thud, North hissed as all the air left his body, groaning as a stack of textbooks and stationery quickly rained down on him and landed in solid thumps on his chest. Pushing them off, North grimaced at the tackiness of their covers, hazarding a glance up and rolling his brown eyes at yet another empty and spilled over Red Bull can.
His class year had just missed the great Fall of the Machines. In the spring of 2015, a system-wide failure lead to the vending machines dispensing items completely for free. Something the student body had taken advantage of until their principal cottoned on a month later. During that time though, students had no qualms about stocking their lockers with the free food and drinks, the favored item of them all being Red Bull and War Heads. North had stumbled across more than a couple bags of the sour candy, sorely tempted to swipe one but also wary of their long past expiration dates.
On his feet again, North dragged the overflowing wheeled trash bin back to his side. Dumping the fallen books and rainbow highlighters, he sighed to himself as he reached onto the tips of his toes to clear out the top shelf of the locker. He didn't pause to take stock at what he was throwing away until the glossy cover of a chemistry textbook caught his eye. Glancing down at the open bin, every other item lining the thing was at least a few years old.
Dented papers.
Warped paper clips.
Rusty staples.
An essay draft dated October, 2016. The month before these lockers were last in use.
The textbook didn't fit in. Especially when North flicked to the copyright section and found the edition had been published that very year, 2019.
"What the hell?" He mumbled to himself, brassy voice echoing in the empty room. Flicking the ends of the pages, North flipped through the book only stopping when he made out the insane amount of pen lining the edges of the paragraphs. The page he stopped on was a couple hundred pages in, content he recognized as only being a month old.
Thought of the day: Fuck. Emotions. And while we're on this train of thought, fuck aqueous solutions.
Scribbled a couple inches lower was:
Ca(OH)2 <----> Ca2+ and 2OH- .... Shocker.
The handwriting bordered on illegible. Spacing between words varied, as did the swooping G's and S's that attempted to eat the letters before it. North thumbed over the ink on the page, as if a single touch would make the words wash away. It didn't. Risking a look around, North pulled out his phone to check the date. August 31st. He tried to remember the readings due for the week, giving up when he drew a blank.
"I need to start paying attention in class," He grumbled to himself, focusing his eyes on the turning edges of the page as he flicked until the margin notes ended. Page 367.
Gay thought of the day: I officially like the new haircut. The shagginess of Mr. Doubtful will be missed, but the crew cut is a classic.
A crude sketch of a boy slumped over his desk was etched onto the page. Hood crooked against his neck and a crumbled worksheet on the verge of rolling off the desk idling beside his turned cheek.
North couldn't help but chuckle at the picture. It was pretty good, if you ignored the chunkiness of the lines. He checked the neighboring page, covered in more doodles and barely legible repeating phrases.
Is today the day? was the most prominent. Each repetition was marked with the time.
9:03
9:05
9:09
9:13
9:17
9:21
9:22
9:28
9:36
9:37
9:40
9:45
9:52
9:57
10:01.... shit. I missed it.
North checked the inside of the textbook's front page, hoping to find a name. None rested against the white backing and he frowned. Sat at the top of the bin was a thin-tipped purple highlighter. On a whim he uncapped it, hovering just above the page.
Was he really going to write a complete stranger a message?
This was, essentially, a complete breach of privacy.
Then again, who the hell hid a textbook filled with love declarations and mindless doodles in an abandoned school locker?
Biting his lip North sent another fleeting look down the empty hallway then hunched over the book, scribbling out a message.
Dear Distracted Diary Dude,
Might want to get a new hiding place. Lockers are being removed. Thanks for the entertainment during detention though.
With Amusement,
Captain Clean-up.
It was dorky and he probably shouldn't have admitted to reading the thing but North brushed the feeling off. Tucking the highlighter between the front cover and first page, North returned the textbook to the top shelf and worked on clearing out the rest. For a moment he pondered reading more about the mystery writer, ultimately shaking off the idea. He was distracted enough as it was. This was probably nothing, never going to go anywhere.
Slamming locker 894 shut North didn't spare it a second glance, pushing the strange textbook to the back of mind where he assumed it would remain forever.
YOU ARE READING
YOUR ONE LAST LINE |✔️|
Short Story*Watty's Shorts Winner, 2020* While cleaning out empty lockers during detention, North Kingsley comes across a battered textbook filled with off-beat and personal messages written in awful handwriting. On a whim he writes them a message back. Days...
