Feelers pt. 5

Time passed. It felt like hours, but it might have only been twenty minutes or so. Grant and I exchanged a little bit of small talk, about ourselves, our classes, but I think both of us were too nervous to relax into any sort of easy conversation. He trailed off from talking about his dog and turned his head towards the office door. It was so dark I couldn’t see, but his “shh!” sounded like it was no longer pointed in my direction, but towards the door. I shifted my position to ease the cramp in my legs and then strained to hear what Grant did. I heard the click-click of heel taps out in the lab coming closer to the office door. Mr. Devius wore metal heel taps on his old-fashioned leather shoes. You could see them from the side, making up for the edges of heel that had been worn down.

“I really think we should move further back, behind the curtain,” I breathed. “Right now!”

“I think you’re right. If we can do it without making any noise!”

“I’m going to crawl,” I said. “I’m afraid I’ll bump into something and knock a jar off or something.”

“Okay,” Grant said. “Good idea,” and we both shuffled back further into the depths, the dirty curtain brushing over my head like an used gym towel. I shuddered and held my breath.

“Over here!” Grant hissed. “Some boxes we can hide behind. Hurry!”

The metallic snick of a key being inserted into the locked doorknob made my stomach clench. I told myself that I was being silly, absolutely ridiculous. Mr. Devius was a teacher, for goodness sake! Teachers have to be fingerprinted and go through background checks. They can’t do anything suspicious or outlandish without getting into trouble. We couldn’t possibly be in any real danger. The only danger is that we might get hauled off into the principal’s office, get detention for cutting class if Devius really wanted to hang us. Was there a penalty for being in the teacher’s office without permission? There must be, but surely nothing in proportion to the fear we were both suffering from! Instead of being found out like little squirrels hiding away, we should at least have the respect of facing him standing up and taking the punishment. I started to say, “Oh Grant, this is…” but he suddenly clenched my wrist with a pressure that hurt enough to shut me up.

The door slowly swung inward, staying open for several seconds. Long enough for me to hear that the lab was now empty. Class must be over, and the next class wasn’t due in until after lunch. I heard a wheezy cough and the ghastly fluorescent light switched on. Then I heard the door shut and the soft click of heels as Devius strolled over to his desk.

I can’t explain it, but I understood why Grant clenched my wrist to keep me from talking, from revealing ourselves. I’d never really felt evil before. But now, was it an odor? A coldness? Or was it something I couldn’t sense but was making all the small hairs on the back of my neck stand up and my face grimace? I guess I’d sort of felt that way all the other times I got close to the man, but it seemed greatly magnified in this small closed-in space that belonged to him.

Devius was rummaging around on his desk now, muttering things to himself that I couldn’t quite make sense of. I turned to look at Grant. Now that the light was on and filtering softly through the curtain I could see his face, but couldn’t understand Grant’s stricken look. He made a small movement with his hand and flicked his eyes down at it and then back up to mine. I looked down and saw a white corner of paper held between his thumb and forefinger. The letter! Grant had forgotten to put Mr. Devius’s letter back on the desk! I just hoped he wouldn’t miss it until we could return it.

The rummaging was getting more serious now, with drawers opening and shutting and with folders sliding around. I heard him make a sound that could have been a small chuckle, or it could have been a growl. One of the cabinet doors opened, and through the curtain, dimly, I saw the silhouette of our teacher pouring something out of a bottle into a glass beaker and sip it. He went back to his desk and sat at the chair. I heard papers rustling and then the scratching of a pen, accompanied by a continual mutter, occasionally clear enough for me to hear what he said.

“It’s GOT to work! There’s no excuse! Incompetents, all of them. Am I missing something? Fresh eyes, maybe…” Devius trailed off into incoherence again.

Finally Mr. Devius folded up the papers he’d been writing on, slid them into a portfolio that he tucked under his arm and let himself out, shutting the light off and closing the door with a definite push. It must be lunch time. My stomach growled as I stood up. Grant led the way back to the door, with me holding on to the back of his tee shirt. He flipped on the light.

“What are you doing? We have to get out of here, now!”

“Hold on, this might be our last chance to take a quick look. I want to see what was in that bottle he was drinking out of!”

While Grant opened that cupboard door, I looked at the desk. Grant’s science book, the one he had left in the lab was lying there, along with a copy of the form that teachers fill out when they need to send someone to the office. It had both our names on it and said, “Cutting class.”

“Look at this!” Grant said. He held up a short bottle of ugly green glass with a cork stopper in it. Or maybe it was ugly green just because of the lighting. A clearish liquid swirled around inside the nearly full bottle. He pulled the cork and sniffed.

“Whew! This isn’t alcohol, I don’t think. It smells really weird! Here, smell it!”

I put my nose near to the side of the opening and waved the odor toward me, sniffing, just like they had showed us in class. It was the way to smell unknown chemicals without scorching your nose hairs or passing out.

“Pretty weird,” I said. On an impulse, I picked up an empty smaller bottle lying randomly on a shelf and poured some into it from the greenish flask. I hoped Devius wouldn’t notice that any was missing, as I screwed the lid on the small container and slid it in to join the other jar my backpack.

“Huh! There’s my book!”

“He’s going to make you pay to get it back. And he’s filled out a cut slip on both of us!”

“At least that means he thinks we took off!”

“Maybe,” I said, thoughtfully. “So, let’s go?”

“Yeah,” he said, but pausing. “You know, that was kind of scary, but kind of fun too. You didn’t act scared or cry or make a noise. Andie, let’s have lunch together, and maybe we can hang out sometime.”

It was funny, but I’d sort of forgotten about Grant being the boy I’d been drooling over for the last few months. I guess the excitement sort of drove those thoughts out of my head for awhile. “Sure,” I said. “That would be cool,” and brushed back from my face my too-long bangs that had escaped my hair tie. Grant laughed.

“We’d better wash up when we get out. You just left a streak of dirt across your forehead!” He started to grab his textbook.

“Wait! You can’t do that! He’d know we were in here!”

“You’re right.” Grant slowly put it back where it was. “Darn it! I just know he’s going to make it miserable for me!”

I checked to make sure everything was in order and reached out for the knob. Grant put his finger on the switch, waiting for me. I went to slowly turn the knob, but something was wrong. Very wrong. It wouldn’t turn. It wasn’t stuck or stiff. Somehow, it was locked from the outside.