Heidi Kathryn Lohr

School: Darien High School
Grade: 10
3rd year at YWI
I like this camp because it gives me an opportunity to write and learn how to improve my writing. I’ve also learned the process of illustrating and publishing a book. I also like this camp because I get to see the friends I’ve made here again.

327

Where am I?

The last thing she could remember was falling asleep in the cafeteria. She hadn’t slept too well the night before, so she was practically sleepwalking the whole day. She was still sitting in the cafeteria, but something wasn’t right. Everything was so dark, and the table she was sitting at looked so rusty. She stood up, stretching her arms, and began to look around.

Some of the tables had their coverings ripped off, so all that was left was the metal frame. The chairs were scattered around the room like papers blown in the wind, some still upright while others seemed violently overturned. She thought she saw something on the walls, but it was too dark to see. Just then, her foot hit something that felt like plastic, and she heard something roll on the floor towards an overturned chair. Sitting on her knees, she grabbed the object and realized it was a flashlight. The floor didn’t feel quite right, though. The cafeteria she knew had tiles on the floor, and here the floor felt smooth, although she thought she felt peeling paint.

With a push of a button, the flashlight flickered to life. It wasn’t as bright as she’d like, but light was light. The tables and chairs were all rusted, and when she looked at the ceiling she realized why the floor felt strange. The tiles were all on the ceiling, and the painted wall of the ceiling was on the floor. It was as though the whole building had been flipped upside down. Other than the floor and ceiling, most of the doors were still in their original places, but a few were conspicuously missing, like the entrance to the canteen.

Then she looked at the walls, and saw the writing.

From a distance it looked like gibberish, but she came closer. It was written in this odd reddish brown substance. It didn’t quite look like paint, as far as she knew paint didn’t dry like that.

MEET ME AT ROOM 327

She had never seen a classroom with that number before. There was no room with that number, not even a custodian’s closet. There was room 326 (which was a Biology class) and 328 (a History class) but the only thing between them was…the girl’s bathroom.

She tapped her knuckles to her head and cursed her ignorance. Every room was assigned a number, even the bathrooms, although they weren’t labeled as such. But why was the writing telling her to go there? The bathroom’s specialness depended on how badly you had to go, and since she didn’t have to, there was nothing interesting there.

She turned her attention to the exit, and all over it was the same rusty colored substance that was used to write the message. She thought she heard a whirring noise on the other side of the door, but there weren’t any fans outside, were there? She gently pushed the double-doors, which slowly opened to the hallway outside. The whirring became louder, and she began to feel a faint breeze from the left of her. She turned off the flashlight, since it was bright enough to see outside of the cafeteria.

This hallway didn’t look too different from the last time she walked through it, but something wasn’t quite right. The hallway still had that ugly, greenish paint, which Sandy said looked like pea soup. However, the cold radiance from the fluorescent light bulbs made the hallway look a dull grey color. It was kind of like a hospital, almost. She had liked hospitals, once, and she had thought about volunteering there, but not anymore. Not since then.

At the very right of the hallway was an opening, and inside of it was a giant fan. It had never been there before, and it seemed to be sucking air out of the room. There was a similar fan in the waiting room of the nurse’s office, but it wasn’t that large. The grating in front of the fan blocked off the stairway she used to get upstairs completely. That meant she had to use the other stairs to the left, which she hated to use because they were always so crammed full of people. It didn’t matter now, since nobody else seemed to be here.

As she walked towards the stairs, she noticed that the hallway towards the school entrance was missing. All that was left was a discolored spot on the wall where it used to be. No way in, no way out.

Towards the door to the stairwell, she then noticed two chairs in the middle of the hallway. The chairs were haphazardly placed, looking like a feeble attempt to block anyone from getting to the stairs. They looked like chairs from the lunchroom; they were the same color as the two chairs she and Sandy used to sit in all the time for lunch. Kate and Sandy: friends forever, they always used to say at that table, friends forever.

Yeah, right.

Kate opened the door to the stairs and stepped in. Above her was the narrow, rectangular spiral that led up to the third floor. There was no room for two-way traffic here, but everyone insisted on using it. She had fallen on these a few times because of all the pushing and shoving, so that was why she tended to avoid this stairwell.

As she ascended to the second floor, Kate noticed that the way up to the third floor was blocked by a steel grating. That also was most definitely never there earlier in the day, either. She would have to go around onto the other stairs, if they weren’t still blocked by another stupid fan.

Sandy always liked going on these stairs, though. She said she liked to watch all the other students walk by with their heads down or chatting. Perhaps all that people watching was what made her late to her classes all the time.

Kate frowned. Why was she thinking so much about Sandy, all of a sudden? It’s been three years; just let it rest, already.

She opened the door to the second floor, which was a bit more difficult to push than she remembered. Was it rusty or something? When she looked into the hallway, she was surprised. Naturally, this hallway looked the same as the one below it, or should have looked the same, at least. Everything looked so old, like it had been abandoned a long time ago. The carpet had holes in it, and there were stains all over the wall. The air had a damp smell, like mildew, and that might explain the mold on the wallpaper, but not the puddles on the floor. Above her, all of the fluorescent lights had either been removed or broken. All save for one, which flickered in the darkness. It was right above the water fountain where Sandy had said something very strange to Kate during their first year at the school. After getting a drink, Sandy just turned around and told her that no matter what happened she’d forgive her. Kate was confused, but now it seemed to her as though Sandy knew what was going to happen half a year later.

She walked a bit slower through the hallway than she did on the lower floor. The feeling that something wasn’t quite right intensified, until it seemed to Kate that the feeling was radiating from right above her. She was at the girl’s bathroom, room 227, only one more floor and she would find out why she was here. There was water seeping in from below the door. Gross.

She was finally at the stairs to the third floor. Above her, there was only darkness, but she went up, anyways. On the way, she saw a drawing tacked to the wall of a bird flying above a house. It was a project that Sandy and Kate had done together for Middle School, but what was it doing here? That was years ago, they had been friends since Kate moved in when she was five.

The third floor was barely recognizable, only its shape was the same. The walls and floor were torn up, as though by a wild animal. There were no lights, only the mangled remains of the steel frame of the light bulbs, but the whole hallway was bathed by a dull, red light. All the doors were missing, only discolored squares on the walls told where the classrooms once were, like the hall to the school entrance.

There were crude drawings all over the walls in black paint. Just like all the times Sandy would come over to her house when they were six, and they drew pictures with finger paints and pretended they were princesses. They got in trouble once when they used the black paint all over the walls, drawing flowers and birds and stick figures. Both of them were grounded for a week. Kate was so absorbed in the drawings that she bumped into something cold.

It was a gurney, just like the one they used to wheel Sandy away with after the accident, just after Kate had offered her a mint. Sandy put it into her mouth and started to make gagging noises. At first she just thought her friend was making fun of her taste for peppermint, but then she realized something was very wrong. She screamed to Sandy’s mom, who freaked out and swerved over, and then the van hit them.

All she could remember after that was Sandy’s mom screaming, the shooting pain in her arm, and Sandy just sitting there, not moving, not breathing. It felt as though her mind just shut off, and she was just sitting there in the smoldering remains of what was going to be the car Sandy would drive once she got her license. It would seem that her dream of driving that car died with her.

The only door that wasn’t missing was the door to the girl’s bathroom. On it in that same reddish substance were scrawled the words ROOM 327. For a few seconds, Kate was afraid to open the door, not because she didn’t know what was behind the door, but because she knew Sandy was in there somewhere along with something that she did not want to face again.

She opened the door and shined her flashlight into the darkness.

Everything was rusted, peeling. Something was moving around all over the place, little drops of moisture, that made the walls and ceiling seem alive. The stalls were torn out, only a few pipes sticking out from the walls. In the very center of the room, bathed in a spotlight, was a mirror. She recognized it as the one she and Sandy played dress up in front of. She walked towards it, but the face in the reflection wasn’t hers. It was Sandy’s face, at least, how she would have looked now if she were still alive.

“Hello, Kate. I missed you so much!”

Kate wanted to cry, but she couldn’t. She wanted to hug Sandy, run her fingers through her blonde hair, but she couldn’t. They were separated only by a thin sheet of glass and the fact that one of them wasn’t alive anymore. But something wasn’t right, that wasn’t the smile of someone who was happy to see you.

“Did you come here to gloat about what you did?”

All of a sudden, Sandy’s voice started to change. “You little bitch, how dare you come here, weep about what you did!” It was Sandy’s mother now, in the clothes she wore to her own daughter’s funeral.

Her mother screamed at her at the funeral, probably to make herself feel better, but she had no idea what she was doing to Kate. All she could do was take the abuse, and even when her own father told her it wasn’t her fault she still believed that woman. Even though she swerved into the van’s path, even though she proceeded to make Kate’s life a living hell ever since.

“Admit it! It was your fault. Your fault! YOUR FAULT!”

“Stop it!”

The mirror shattered into a million pieces at her feet, and all that was left was the golden frame. Behind the frame stood the figure of a girl, covered in rust and blood, the vein patterns all over her moving around like the water on the walls. It took a few seconds before she recognized that face as her own.

“Hello, Kate,” the thing sneered, regarding her critically with those white, sightless eyes.

“What’s with the walls?” she asked, trying to get away from that creature by inching towards the door.

“Those are your tears. Don’t bother changing the subject, you chose to come here, and now you can’t leave until you know me.”

The door was gone, and all that was left was darkness. She turned towards the thing, but kept her eyes away from its mangled face, its all-penetrating gaze.

“Who are you?”

“I thought you already knew that. You made me, after all, and this whole place as well,” it started to shuffle towards her, “and you kept me in here, waiting for you, for so long.”

“I didn’t make you! I didn’t make any of this. Besides, the decoration’s really crappy, and-”

“Stop. Changing. The. Subject,” it hissed, “or are you afraid of confronting what you’ve done?”

“I didn’t kill her.” She was bunched in a corner now, curled up, but she couldn’t look at its face.

“But then why did you believe her? That old hag driven mad by her grief, the one who drove the car straight into the wrong lane? But then, why did she swerve, I wonder? It couldn’t have been that little bit of candy you gave your friend that she started choking on, could it? And why did she start choking? It was because you wished for it.”

“No. I don’t remember that.”

It seemed to be growing impatient, “Yes, you do. If you didn’t why would you be here? There was an argument, remember? It was on the way back from the mall.”

She remembered the argument. Sandy got a bad grade on her test and Kate blurted out something stupid, so they started screaming at each other. Sandy’s mom got fed up with it and forced them to leave. On the way back Kate kept thinking how stupid Sandy was being for misinterpreting what she said and yelling at her, and one thought kept crossing her mind.

I wish she was dead.

After a little while, she realized how silly she was being, and offered Sandy one of her mints as a token of friendship. Sandy took it, then started gagging, and for a few seconds Kate thought that she was starting the argument up all over again until she saw the panicked look on Sandy’s face. Then the car swerved.

“I didn’t mean it, I didn’t,” she sobbed as the creature looked on, “I didn’t want her to die!”

“You thought you did, though, at the funeral. You kept on thinking that, even now, though you didn’t realize it,” it had stopped mocking her, its tone becoming serious, “that’s why you don’t have very many friends, because you think you’ll hurt them, too.”

It walked towards her, the bloodstains fading, until it became simply a reflection of herself. Now that she knew the truth, she could bring herself to look into the monster’s eyes. However, when she looked up, the eyes weren’t her own, they were Sandy’s.

“Stop beating yourself up over something so stupid, it wasn’t your fault,” she whispered, putting her arm around Kate, “It was just a thought, that’s all. Even if it was, it doesn’t matter now.” She looked up at Sandy, her eyes filled with tears, “Why not?” Sandy smiled, “Don’t you remember what I said by the water fountain? No matter what happens, I’ll always forgive you. I’ve forgiven you a thousand times already, so stop with all the guilt.” Kate hugged her close, “I miss you so much.”

Sandy’s eyes began to water, “I miss you too. Kate, Kate, Kate, wake up this instant young lady! You are in a great deal of trouble!”

She raised her head from the table, and the face she was looking at wasn’t Sandy’s but that of Mrs. Birmingham, the frizzled old woman who taught Algebra on the second floor. “Everyone in the school has been looking for you! We thought that you left the school grounds. Come with me this instant, I’m sure the principal will have a few words for you!”

She followed the teacher in a daze, not really aware of where she was going. As she made her way up to the second floor, the mildew and stains were gone, everything looked brand new due to the recent renovation. At the third floor, the walls that were once covered with blood and blackness were now bathed in sunlight, with smiling people walking through them chatting happily. However, a few teachers who had probably helped look for her stared at her strangely when she walked past. The principal’s office was on the third floor, a few rooms down from the girl’s bathroom. On the way there, she stared at the door and smiled. It didn’t matter anymore, she knew she would be alright, and so was Sandy, wherever she was.