CHAPTER 21
TREMORS
The morning was bright and beautiful. The sun rose up and lit the mesa like a candle. A soft warm wind drifted in from the north along with the smell of honeysuckle and pine. Birds sang in the cedar trees and cottonwoods while their needles and leaves shimmered and danced.
Of course, Tobias couldn’t see any of that due to his window being boarded up.
Ms. Gulp fetched him at 6:00 a.m. as usual. Tobias showered as usual. He brushed his teeth as usual and followed Ms. Gulp down the hall to the kitchen as usual. It was in the hallway where things began to get unusual. The school began to tremble. Pictures on the walls shook and the floor wobbled.
Ms. Gulp turned and looked at Tobias as if he were responsible for what was happening.
“It’s not me!”
Looking at the shaking walls, she yelled, “Quake!”
Ms. Gulp pushed Tobias aside as she ran to take shelter under one of the door frames. Tobias did the same as the ground and hallway swayed and groaned. In the distance, he could hear others screaming and yelling. The lights flashed off and then on and then off. Although it felt much longer, the shaking was over in a few moments and everything settled as if it had never been twitching in the first place.
The lights flashed back on.
Dust from the walls and ceiling floated in the air. Tobias looked to the left and saw Ms. Gulp cowering beneath a door frame on her knees with her arms over her head. She looked like a fat crumpled box. Tobias was going to say something smart, but he remembered that he was still supposed to be dumb.
Ms. Gulp stood. She dusted off her big bosom and stomach and smoothed back her hair, acting as if she had not been the least bit frightened.
“Now,” she said with a dry sniff. “Let’s hope there’s no significant damage to the school.”
Tobias felt differently. He hoped all the walls had crumbled and that students were currently running out of the school and down the mesa. But when they reached the kitchen, he could see quite clearly that things were still a lot like they always had been. Sure, a number of pans and jars had been shaken off tables, but the walls were still standing.
“Start cleaning things up this instant.”
Tobias began to pick up pans and sweep up spills. Ms. Gulp ran around like a chicken that had been swallowed by a pig that had been swallowed by a bull. She was talking to orderlies and bossing people around with more intensity than usual. Tobias decided to use the distraction to his advantage. He cleaned up a jar of flour that had burst and then picked up all the fruit that had rolled out of their baskets and bins. He pretended to clean his way right into the small room where Ms. Gulp usually worked on the pudding. Like the others, the room was messy. There were cans on the floor and at least three spills that needed cleaning up. Tobias carefully scooted past the spills, making his way closer to the cabinet where the secret ingredient was stored. He kept his eyes and ears wide-open, listening for Ms. Gulp and pretending to clean.
There was no doubt about what Tobias was going to do later today. He was committed to starting the fire that would hopefully bring in outsiders to rescue them. But Tobias knew it might be helpful to their cause if he also had a sample of what Ms. Gulp was sticking in their pudding.
He stepped closer to the cabinet.
He could hear Ms. Gulp in the kitchen yelling at an orderly to get the stove working. A small bead of sweat rolled down the tip of Tobias’s nose. The sweat surprised him. He knew he was nervous, but not that nervous.
Tobias reached the cabinet and pretended to wipe and clean right beneath it. The cabinet was locked, but it was an old cabinet with a weak lock. Tobias grabbed a potato peeler off the counter and checked to see if the coast was clear.
Nobody was coming.
Quickly, he jammed the peeler into the crack of the cabinet door near the handle and pulled it to the side. The clasp snapped and the door of the cabinet swung open. Tobias looked back.
He was still alone.
He turned, and there, sitting inside the cabinet, was a large dark container. Without wasting a second, he reached out, popped off the top, and thrust his hand inside. He grabbed a handful of whatever it was and pulled it out. He shoved the stuff into one of his front pockets as he put the lid of the jar back on with his other hand. Using his elbow, he hit the cabinet door and slammed it shut just as Ms. Gulp herself came walking into the room.
Tobias scrubbed the counter, trying to look as innocent as he could.
“What are you doing? Nobody told you to clean this room.”
Tobias tried to look surprised.
“Get out of here. What is it with you? You want to leave covered in pudding again?”
“Okay,” Tobias said dumbly, trying to get by her.
“Wait.” Ms. Gulp stepped up to him slowly. She eyed him with her hard eyes and then scrunched her tiny mouth. “What’s that on your face?”
Tobias just stood there, afraid to do anything. She smelled like glue and cough medicine.
“Are you sweating?” she asked.
Tobias smiled, knowing he looked guilty of something.
“Good,” she said. “It’s about time you worked hard enough to sweat. Now, go see where you can help in the kitchen. Go!”
“Okay,” Tobias said again, trying to sound casual but knowing he had been seconds away from pooping his pants.
There were plenty of things for Tobias to clean up in the kitchen. In fact, there was plenty for all the students to clean up in the school. The quake had knocked countless things off tables and walls. Some kids had gotten scraped up, and a pipe had burst in Severe Hall, making it necessary to hold class in Never Hall. Orrin made three announcements over the speakers, always promising that everything was fine. And talking as if an earthquake had somehow made things better.
Tobias was okay with all the confusion. The mesa-quake was a scary distraction. The more disruptive things were to the routine, the less likely he was to be noticed or missed.
In class, Professor Himzakity was completely uneasy. He kept going over the same bits of their lesson. And at lunch, he accidentally hit his head on a desk while bending over to pick up his pencil.
“This is not my day.”
Tobias smiled, knowing it was about to get worse.
The orderlies wheeled in the lunch carts, each one filled with food and drink and pudding. The two orderlies pushing the carts seemed more bothered than usual. Tobias looked out the corner of his left eye and saw Charlotte sitting four desks down. He nodded ever so slightly and she stood up.
It was time.
After Charlotte stood, Keith got up from his seat on the opposite side of the room. Charlotte walked down the row of desks toward the aisle where the carts were. Keith began walking straight down the aisle directly toward the food. When Charlotte reached the aisle, she dropped her pencil as planned. As she bent down to pick it up, Keith ran right into her. He stumbled over her and slammed hard into one of the lunch carts. The cart tipped over, crashing into the other and sending food flying everywhere. Professor Himzakity was hit in the face by a couple of sandwiches as pudding splattered against the floor and walls. Some of the students moved to pick up food or to get out of the way.
“What’s happened?!” Himzakity hollered.
Meghan pointed toward Keith as he lay in the aisle next to the tipped-over cart. “He tripped.”
“Clean it up!” the professor ordered. “Get some paper towels!”
Everyone began to scurry around picking things up. Some students ran to the bathroom in the hall to get paper towels. Tobias ran toward the bathroom as well, but instead of stopping, he kept running. He slipped behind a stone pillar and made sure no one had seen him. He then carefully traveled through Never Hall without being spotted.
At the corner where Weary and Never Hall met, Tobias hid behind a metal statue of two men—one man was labeled Hyrum Withers; the other had a plaque on it too, but the name was crossed out. Tobias remained hidden as four orderl
ies walked past going to different parts of the school. Once the coast was clear, he continued to creep.
Before he got to the cafeteria, he crouched down behind a large trash can. He knew getting past the lunchroom would be the hardest part. Once he had made it through, he could take the hallway to where the locker was that led to the library.
The cafeteria was empty.
There was no one at the long tables that Tobias himself had wiped off only hours earlier. The metal freezers at the end of the room buzzed calmly as light from the stained glass window colored the room in blues and greens and reds. Ms. Gulp and her staff were in the kitchen prepping food for dinner, but there was always the chance one of them would step out and spot Tobias walking through.
He got on all fours and scurried across the hall and behind one of the rows of tables. He crawled slowly, keeping low to the ground and remaining partially hidden by the table benches. Halfway across the cafeteria, he heard the kitchen doors swing open and someone come out. Tobias slipped farther under the bench and held his breath.
Through the legs of the table, he could see that it was Ms. Gulp. She was holding a plate of food and standing next to a woman orderly who had short hair and thin shoulders.
“This is a day to forget,” Ms. Gulp complained. “This mesa makes me uneasy. Someday, the whole thing might just tip over and kill us all. Like lambs before their fathers.”
“Don’t say that,” the thin-shouldered woman said.
“I’ll say what I want,” Ms. Gulp insisted. “Now you go meet Orrin in the front office and give him that list. Deliveries are coming tomorrow, and he needs to know who to let in.”
The woman walked off with quick, purposeful steps. Ms. Gulp just stood there until she was gone.
“Sometimes I don’t know who’s more pigheaded. The children or the staff around here. Telling me what to say. That woman could use an attitude adjustment.”
Tobias willed Ms. Gulp to go back into the kitchen, but he lacked any sort of mind control. Ms. Gulp walked closer and sat down on the bench almost directly across from where Tobias was hiding. He could see the side of her brown skirt and her fat knees that looked like unbaked cinnamon rolls. She slammed her plate down on the table above Tobias and began to eat. It sounded like someone had turned on a radio and tuned it to a station that played only uncomfortable noises.
Namnamnamanammam!
Specks of food and liquid were raining down. Tobias got gravy on his elbow, which stuck out from under the bench. Ms. Gulp stopped eating to belch.
BURRRRRRRRUUUUUUUP!
Her doughy knees shook as she expelled air. The noise echoed off the high ceiling of the cathedral-like cafeteria. The puffy blue animal on the stained glass window looked embarrassed to be witnessing such a thing. Ms. Gulp shifted her weight on the bench and something worse than a burp happened. Tobias would have given almost anything to plug his nose. The smell was unbearable, but he was too close to her to make any movement. His nostrils burned and he felt light-headed and sick. His throat tried to dry heave, but he bit his tongue and fought to keep it together.
Ms. Gulp continued to eat. After she was done, Tobias could hear her passionately licking her plate. She then burped again, got up, and returned to the kitchen.
Tobias didn’t waste a moment. He scurried beneath the bench and across the floor as fast as he could. He wasn’t as worried about getting caught as he was about getting stuck under a bench and having to watch and smell Ms. Gulp eat her second lunch.
At the end of the table, he bolted across the rest of the room and farther into Weary Hall. The dark lighting and plush carpet were a welcome sight. Keeping to the right, he maneuvered down the hall, passing door number seven and finally reaching the locker he was looking for. He popped it open and climbed inside. With a quick snap, he closed the door and exhaled.
“This better work,” he said to himself. “Nobody should ever have to watch Ms. Gulp eat.”
It was dark in the locker. It was also the first private moment Tobias had had since breakfast. He reached in his front right pocket and pulled out some of the stuff he had taken from the glass jar in the pudding room. He couldn’t see it very well, but it was cold and grainy. It felt almost wet and smelled dirty and sour. Tobias was tempted to taste it, but his better judgment kicked in and he decided not to. He put the stuff back into his pocket and began to work his way through the dark hidden passage.
He had a fire to light.
CHAPTER 22
SOMETHING IN THE TREES
Tobias knew the passage he was moving through well. He had traveled it a few times, and even though there were some twists and turns, it was pretty much a direct route to the library.
When he reached the end of the passageway, he carefully slid the back of the bookshelf over. There was no noise or movement, so he crawled out.
It was odd to see the library in the daytime. The windows looked massive, and long arms of sunlight reached in as if they were trying to fish out handfuls of books. Tobias had done almost all his exploring and mapping in the dead of night, so to see things clearly was weird. It was also weird that it was the middle of the day and he was in the middle of a library, and nobody was there. The lights weren’t even on.
It seemed sort of sad.
Tobias walked through the library and unlocked the front door. He pulled it open just enough to peek out. The halls were lit but no one was around. He slipped out the doors and down the hall to the tall tapestry with the goat stitched on it. Grabbing the bottom of the material, he pulled it up as quickly as he could. When the opening was big enough, he got on his belly and wiggled behind the material. He pulled it shut and took a moment to slow his heart rate while sitting on the narrow stairs.
“You can do this,” he encouraged himself. “You don’t want to be stuck here forever. And you definitely don’t want to be extracted, whatever that means.”
Tobias turned and climbed the stairs. At the top, the door was closed but unlocked. He twisted the knob and pushed the door out. The third-story halls were almost as dark as before. All the thick curtains were closed and the only light came from the lowglowing lamps. Down the hall, Tobias could see that the orderlies’ station was vacant.
He stepped cautiously onto the third floor and his eyes went directly toward Archie’s bed. Someone was still there and was snoring softly. Tobias reached for the chart hooked on the end of the bed.
79235 Archie.
Tobias knew he shouldn’t, but he wanted a better look. He stepped up to the head of the bed and bent down. The man lying there had a bald wrinkled head and twisted old ears. He looked like Archie dressed up as an elderly person. His nostrils were bigger and his cheeks fluttered as he snored.
“Archie,” Tobias whispered.
The old man’s eyes opened so quickly it caught Tobias by surprise. Archie just stared.
“Is it you?” Tobias asked.
Archie’s eyes widened and his nostrils flared slightly.
“What happened to you?”
The old man’s breathing weakened.
“Don’t worry. I’ll get you out of here,” Tobias insisted. “I promise.”
The corners of Archie’s mouth flickered. “Sandwich.”
“Yes, I’ll bring you a sandwich.”
Archie smiled. He then closed his eyes and rejoined the sleep he had previously been taking. Tobias stood up and moved from around the bed to the closest window.
He slipped behind the curtains.
In back of the curtains, he could see out into the bright sky. There were no bars on the third-story windows, and the view of the mesa was one Tobias had never witnessed before. The trees were green and the sky around the mesa stretched on for what looked like forever. He could see part of the thick brick wall that encircled the school and a small cobblestone path that ran through the vegetation below. Quietly moving his right hand, he reached for the window latch and was happy to discover there was no clasp keeping it locked. He pressed on the handle and the win
dow slid open with ease.
A warm breeze drifted in.
As he looked down, it occurred to Tobias that he might have been talking too big when he told Charlotte he’d have no problem climbing down. Charlotte was the athletic one, and even she would have had some trouble. Tobias leaned his head out the window. He could see the bars a couple of feet down on the front of the second-story windows.
“That should make it easier,” he whispered to himself.
Tobias slid the window all the way open and put one leg out. He shifted and turned, bringing his second leg out as well. His toes tried to find a toehold on the brick wall as he carefully lowered himself down. Resting on his arms, he closed the window behind him as best as he could to cover his tracks.
Tobias’s arms began to burn as he straightened them out to get lower. Clinging to the bottom of the third-story window, he looked down to find that his feet were still a few inches away from the security bars on the second-story window.
His fingers and arms were on fire.
Knowing there was no way he could pull himself back up, Tobias bravely let go.
He dropped a few inches before his feet landed on the top bar of the second-story window. Tobias hugged the side of the school as if it were the mother he had lost.
Pressing his body against the building, he lowered his left foot and set it on the next bar down. Repeating the process with his right foot allowed him to get low enough to lean to his right and grab ahold of the bars with his hand. From there it was like climbing down a ladder. Fortunately, the second-story window had its curtains closed as well. If anyone had been inside and looking out, Tobias would have been spotted for sure.
Tobias hung from the bottom bar on the second window and then transferred down to the set of bars on the ground-floor windows. It was these windows Tobias was most worried about. A lot of stuff happened on the first floor of Witherwood. He knew there was a high possibility that there would be someone looking out.