I listened hard. “I can’t hear any music or voices or anything. We must be far away from the gym.”
“Well… what do we do?” Ben cried. “We can’t just stand here!”
My mind whirred. I squinted into the darkness, hoping to make out the shape of a door or a window. Anything!
But the blackness that surrounded us was darker than the sky on a starless night.
I pressed my back against the cool tile wall. “I know,” I said. “We’ll keep against the wall.”
“And?” Ben whispered. “And we’ll do what?”
“We’ll move along the wall,” I continued. “We’ll move along the wall until we come to a door. A door to a room with a light. Then maybe we’ll be able to figure out where we are.”
“Maybe,” Ben replied. He didn’t sound hopeful.
“Stick close behind me,” I instructed him.
He bumped up against me.
“Not that close!” I said.
“I couldn’t help it. I can’t see!” he cried.
Moving slowly—very slowly—we started walking. I kept my right hand on the wall, sliding it along the tiles as we walked.
We’d only taken a few steps when I heard a sound behind me. A cough.
I stopped and turned around. “Ben—was that you?”
“Huh?” He bumped into me again.
“Did you cough?” I asked softly.
“No,” he replied.
I heard another cough. Then a loud whisper.
“Uh… Ben…” I said, grabbing his shoulder. “Guess what? We’re not alone.”
13
We both gasped as the lights came on. Dim and gray at first.
I blinked several times and waited for the light to brighten.
But it didn’t.
I stared out. We were in a room! A gray classroom. My eyes moved from the black chalkboard to the charcoal-colored teacher’s desk. To the dark gray student desks. The pale gray tile walls. Then down to the black-and-gray patterns on the classroom floor.
“Weird,” Ben muttered. “My eyes—”
“It’s not your eyes,” I assured him. “The light is so dim in this room, it makes everything look gray and black.”
“It’s like being in an old black-and-white movie,” Ben declared.
Squinting into the dim light, we started edging toward the classroom door. “Let’s get out of here,” I suggested. “Before the lights go out again.”
We were halfway across the room when I heard another cough. And then a girl’s voice rang out. “Hey—!”
Ben and I both stopped. We turned as a girl about our age stepped out from behind a book cabinet.
She stared at us.
We stared back at her.
She was kind of cute, with short, straight black hair and bangs across her forehead. She wore an old-fashioned-looking V-necked sweater, a long, pleated skirt, and black-and-white saddle shoes.
I opened my mouth to say hi. But no sound came out as I noticed her skin. Her skin was as gray as her sweater. And her eyes were gray. And her lips were gray.
She was like the room. She was in black-and-white too!
Ben and I exchanged confused glances. Then I turned back to the girl. She clung to the side of the cabinet, eyeing Ben and me suspiciously.
“Were you hiding back there?” I blurted out.
She nodded. “We heard you coming. But we didn’t know who you were.”
“We?” I asked.
Before she could answer, four more kids—two boys and two girls—jumped out from behind the tall cabinet.
All gray! All in shades of gray!
“Look at them!” one of the boys cried. His eyes bulged as he stared at us.
“I don’t believe it!” another boy shouted.
Before Ben and I could move, they rushed forward.
All shouting and crying out at once, they stampeded across the room.
Surrounded us.
Grabbed us.
Pulled at our clothes.
Pulled us. Screaming. Laughing. Shrieking.
Pulled out my shirt. Ripped my sleeve.
“Ben—!” I screamed. “They—they’re going to tear us apart!”
14
“Look! Look at this!” a girl cried. She held up my shirtsleeve.
Two boys tugged at the rest of my shirt.
I dropped to the floor. Tried to squirm away.
But they had us surrounded.
A girl pulled off one of my shoes.
Ben swung his fist hard, trying to fight them away. His hand smacked the blackboard, and he cried out in pain.
“Stop!” I heard a boy shout over the cries of the others. “Stop it! Get away from them!”
I kicked out with both feet. I saw Ben swing his fist again.
“Stop it!” the boy screamed. “Get away! Come on—stop!”
The kids backed away. The girl dropped my shoe. I grabbed it off the floor.
They took several steps back, moving in a line, staring at us.
“The color!” a girl exclaimed. “So much color!”
“It hurts my eyes!” a boy cried.
“But it’s so beautiful!” a girl gushed. “It—it’s like a dream!”
“Do you still dream in color?” a boy asked her. “My dreams are all in black and white.”
Tugging on my shoe, I climbed shakily to my feet. I struggled to straighten my khakis and tuck in my torn shirt.
Ben rubbed the hand he had smacked. His blond hair was matted with sweat. His face was bright red.
“Tommy,” he whispered. “What’s going on? This is crazy!”
I stared at the five kids lined up in front of us.
“No color…” I murmured.
All of them were in black and white. Their clothes, their skin, their eyes, their hair—no color at all. Only shades of gray and black.
As I struggled to catch my breath, I studied them. And realized they didn’t look like modern kids, like kids from our school.
The girls all wore skirts, long skirts down to their ankles. The boys wore big-collared sports shirts, tucked into baggy, pleated pants.
Like in an old movie… I thought.
And all black and gray.
We all stared at one another for a long while. Then the boy who seemed to be their leader spoke up. “We’re all sorry,” he said. “You see, we—”
“We didn’t mean to hurt you,” the girl beside him interrupted. “It’s just that… we haven’t seen color for so long.”
“I just wanted to touch it,” the girl with black bangs across her forehead added, shaking her head sadly. “I wanted to touch color. It’s been so long. So long…”
“Did you come to help us?” the first boy asked softly. His gray eyes locked on mine. Pleading eyes.
“Help you?” I replied. “No. No, we didn’t. You see—”
“That’s too bad,” the girl with black bangs said, frowning.
“Huh? Too bad?” I didn’t understand. “Why?” I asked.
“Because,” replied the girl, “now you can never leave.”
15
“Hey—we’ve already scared them. They think we’re a bunch of crazed savages. Don’t try to scare them even more, Mary!” the boy scolded.
“I’m not!” she insisted, crossing her arms over the front of her gray sweater. “I just think they should know the truth. I think—”
“The truth?” I interrupted. “What’s going on here? This is a joke—right?”
“Yeah. Go ahead. Wipe off the gray powder from your face and tell us it’s a joke,” Ben chimed in.
The girl named Mary bit her bottom lip. I saw a tear form in her left eye. It brimmed over and ran down her gray cheek. “It’s no joke,” she choked out.
“Give us a break!” Ben groaned. “Just make the lights brighter, and—”
“That won’t help!” the boy cried angrily.
Mary turned to him. She wiped the tear from her cheek. “I really thought they came to
help us,” she said in a quivering voice. “I really thought that finally…” Her voice trailed off.
Another girl put her arm around Mary.
I shut my eyes for a moment. Squinting into the gray was giving me a headache.
“Will someone tell us what is going on?” I heard Ben demand.
I opened my eyes to see all five gray kids moving across the room toward us.
The leader was a little taller than me. He had wavy black hair, and big black eyes that crinkled at the sides. I saw a small gray scar above one eyebrow. He had broad shoulders beneath his gray T-shirt. He was very athletic looking.
The girl beside him was tall and very thin. She had long gray hair that fell straight down her back. She had sad gray eyes.
“I’m Seth,” the boy said. “This is Mary and this is Eloise.” He pointed. “Eddie and Mona.”
Ben and I introduced ourselves.
“We didn’t mean to frighten you,” Mary repeated. “But can we touch your colors? We haven’t seen color for so long. We just—” Her voice cracked. She turned away.
“Uh… Ben and I have to get back to the dance,” I told them, eyeing the door. “You see, we’re on the Decorations Committee. And a banner tore. And—”
“You can’t get back,” Seth said. His dark eyes narrowed on mine. “Mary told you the truth. You can’t get back.”
“That’s stupid,” Ben replied, shaking his head. “We’re in the old building—right? We’ll follow the hall till it leads to the new building. The gym is right downstairs.”
Eloise coughed. I realized she was the one I’d heard when the lights were still out. She wiped her nose with a gray tissue. She appeared to have a cold.
“You’re not in the old building,” she said hoarsely.
“Then where are we?” Ben demanded. “The basement?”
The gray kids shook their heads.
“It’s a little hard to explain,” Seth said.
“Well, we’ll find our way back,” I told them, starting for the door. “I mean, the school isn’t that big. We won’t be lost for long.”
“You’re not really in the school,” Eloise said, wiping her nose again.
“Excuse me?” Ben cried. “This looks a lot like a classroom to me. See? Desks? Chairs? Chalkboard?”
“Let’s go,” I said. I gave him a little push toward the door.
“Sit down,” Seth ordered sharply.
Ben and I were nearly to the classroom door.
“I said sit down,” Seth repeated.
“You’d better listen to him,” the girl named Mona warned.
Seth motioned impatiently to two desks. “Sit.”
I swallowed hard. I felt a chill of fear over my entire body. I didn’t understand what was going on here. And I didn’t really want to understand.
I just wanted to get away from this gray room and these black-and-white kids.
They moved across the room toward us. Their expressions were tense. Seth held his arms stiffly at his sides, as if ready for a fight.
“Sit down, guys,” he insisted.
“Sorry. Some other time,” Ben replied.
He and I both had the same idea in our heads.
We both turned and ran at the same time. We made a mad dash for the classroom door.
I got there first.
I grabbed the door handle. Turned it. And pulled.
“Come on! Come on!” Ben cried frantically.
“It—it won’t open!” I shrieked.
The door was locked.
16
In a total panic, Ben grabbed the doorknob and bumped me out of the way. He tugged with both hands. Then he lowered his shoulder to the door and tried pushing it open.
But the door didn’t budge.
“That door won’t open,” Seth said calmly.
I turned. Seth still held his arms tensely at his sides. The other four gray kids stood on either side of him, their eyes narrowed at us, squinting at us through the dim gray light.
“Why—why is it locked?” I stammered breathlessly.
“It isn’t a door we can use,” Mary replied. Another tear glistened on her pale gray cheek. “It leads to the world of color.”
“Huh? Excuse me?” I cried.
“Whose idea is this little joke?” Ben demanded impatiently. “It’s not funny, guys! Not funny!”
I could see that Ben was about to lose it. I put a hand on his arm, a signal to calm down.
I had a feeling that these kids weren’t joking.
“How do we get out of here?” Ben demanded. He banged a fist against the door. “You can’t keep us in this weird gray room. No way!”
Seth motioned to the desks again. “Sit down, guys,” he pleaded again. “We’re not trying to keep you here. And we don’t plan to hurt you or anything.”
Ben glanced at his watch. “But—but—”
“We’ll try to explain,” Mary offered. “You really should try to understand what has happened.”
“Especially since you will be staying here with us,” Eloise added.
Another cold shiver ran down my back. “Why do you keep saying that?” I asked.
They didn’t reply.
Ben and I dropped into desk chairs. The three girls took chairs across from us. Eddie crossed his gray arms and leaned against the blackboard.
Seth pulled himself up onto the teacher’s desk. “It’s hard to know where to start,” he said, running a hand back through his thick black hair.
“Start by telling us where we are,” I demanded.
“And then tell us how to get to the gym,” Ben insisted. “Make it short—okay?”
“You’ve come to the other side,” Seth said.
Ben rolled his eyes. “The other side of what?” he asked impatiently.
“The other side of the wall,” Seth replied.
Eloise sneezed. She pulled a wad of tissues from the bag at her side. “I can’t get rid of this cold,” she sighed. “I think it’s because there’s no sunlight.”
“No sunlight?” I cried. “The other side of the wall?” I let out a loud groan. “Will you all please stop talking in mysteries?”
Mona turned to Seth. “Start at the beginning,” she said. “Maybe that will help them.”
Eloise fumbled around in her gray bag. Finally, she pulled out a pack of tissues and placed them on the desk in front of her.
“Well, okay,” Seth agreed. “The beginning.”
Ben and I exchanged glances. Then we leaned forward to listen.
“The five of us were in the very first class at Bell Valley School,” Seth began. “The school opened about fifty years ago, and—”
“Whoa! Wait a minute!” Ben jumped to his feet. “Tommy and I aren’t morons!” he declared. “If you went to school fifty years ago, you’d be at least sixty years old!”
Seth nodded. “Guess you’re good at math, huh?” It was a joke, but it sounded bitter.
“We haven’t aged,” Mary explained, straightening her black bangs with one hand. “We’ve stayed exactly the same age for fifty years!”
Ben rolled his eyes. “I think that elevator took us to Mars!” he whispered to me.
“It’s all true,” Eddie said, shifting his weight. “We’re frozen here. Frozen in time.”
“The elevator must move between your world and ours,” Mona said, gazing back at it. “No one else has ever come here by elevator. It’s not how we arrived.”
“I don’t understand,” I confessed. “None of this makes sense to me. The elevator was boarded up. Hidden. Why did it bring us here?”
“It must be the only connection between our worlds,” Mona said mysteriously.
� “This is all crazy. We’re missing the dance,” Ben whispered.
“Let them finish the story,” I told him. “Then we’ll go.”
Seth stood up and began pacing back and forth. “The first class at Bell Valley School was pretty small,” he told us. “There were only twenty-five of us. It was a brand-n
ew school, and we were kind of happy to be the first ones in it.”
Eloise sneezed. Mona said, “Bless you.”
“One day, our principal announced it was Class Photo Day,” Seth continued. “A photographer came to take a group photo of our class.”
“Was it a color photo?” Ben broke in. He laughed. But no one else did.
“School photos weren’t in color in the nineteen forties,” Mary told Ben. “They were in black and white.”
“We all gathered in the library to take the photo,” Seth continued. “All twenty-five of us. The photographer lined us up.”
“I recognized him right away,” Eddie broke in. “He was an angry man. An evil man. He hated kids.”
“We were all in a crazy mood,” Mona added. “We were laughing and joking around a lot and pretending to wrestle. And the photographer became furious because we wouldn’t stand still for him.”
“We all hated him,” Eddie chimed in. “The whole town knew he was evil. But he was the only photographer around.”
“I’ll never forget his name,” Eloise said sadly. “Mr. Chameleon. I’ll never forget it. Because… because a chameleon changes colors—and we can’t.”
“Mr. Chameleon?” Ben snickered. “Didn’t he used to hang out with Mr. Lizard?”
“Ben, stop—” I pleaded.
I could see that Ben didn’t believe a word of Seth’s story. He kept making jokes. But Seth and the others looked so solemn, so bitter.
Staring at their old-fashioned clothes and haircuts, at their sad, gray faces, I believed them. They were the vanished kids, I realized. The lost class of 1947.
“The photographer lined us up in three rows,” Seth continued, pacing back and forth, hands shoved in his gray pants pockets. “He stood behind his big box camera. It had a drape on the back that he stuck his head under. Then he raised the flash high.
“He told us to say ‘cheese’. Then the flash went off with a loud CRACK!”
“But it wasn’t a normal flash,” Mary broke in. “It was so bright… so bright…” Her voice trailed off.
“So bright, we couldn’t see,” Seth continued, shaking his head. “The room—the library—it disappeared in the flash. And when we could open our eyes, when we could see again… we were here.”