When Sequoia drops me off at home later that afternoon, I don’t even bother going inside. I wait for her to drive away, then I hitch my bag up my shoulder and start walking down the street.
I know I could ask my mom to borrow the car, but she’s still pretty ticked off about me stealing it yesterday. Plus, she might ask where I’m going and I’m not sure I want to explain. I’m not sure I could explain.
As soon as I walk through the front doors of Southwest High ten minutes later, all the familiar sights and sounds and smells hit me at once. The last bell rang about five minutes ago, so the hallways are packed solid with people. I’d almost forgotten how crowded it is in this place. The Windsor Academy is so spacious. There are six grades instead of four but each class has only a hundred students in it. The entire Windsor student body is barely the size of one class here.
Falling into my usual routine, I bow my head and shove my way through the masses toward the stairwell. I know exactly where I’m going. I just need to see it. I need to say goodbye. I need to know my newspaper is in good hands. Then I can move on with my life.
I need closure.
The smell of these hallways always made me feel sick and the ugly tile floors always gave me a headache, but today the effect hits me harder than usual, and by the time I reach the second floor I’m breathing only through my mouth and fighting back waves of nausea.
I pass by Ms. Mann’s science classroom and peer inside, remembering how only half of the microscopes even worked. I pass by my old locker, laughing to myself when I notice the door is gone in this universe, too.
Thank God, I don’t go here anymore.
Thank God, I hit my head and found myself living a better life.
I turn the corner and head toward the newspaper office. I can see the display case up ahead. The one where we keep our three Spartan Press Awards. I used to pass it every day. I used to stop and stare into the glass at those gorgeous three statues standing so proud and tall. Like they were carrying the weight of the world and hardly even noticed. The sight of them was enough to cheer me up on even my lowest of days.
I can still remember how it felt to hold the first one for the very first time. To see that tiny gold plate with the words “Southwest Star, editor in chief Kennedy Rhodes” engraved in it.
I felt just like that golden woman on the pedestal.
I felt like I could conquer the world.
But as I approach the newspaper office, my feet start to drag and a ripple of unease passes over me. There’s something very strange about the display case.
The trophies inside look … different. They’re not beautiful gilded women standing atop podiums, reaching their arms to the sky. They look like weird lumps that some child crafted out of gold play dough.
I urge my feet to move again, running to the case and pressing my hands against the glass. Then I see the banner strung across the top, and my entire body goes numb.
Congratulations to Our State Wrestling Champions—5 Years in a Row!
Wrestling?
Those are wrestling trophies? But this is supposed to be a newspaper display case. It belongs to the newspaper. We use it to show off our trophies and our best issues, and anything else devoted to the Southwest Star. Why is it suddenly filled with wrestling stuff?
Did they move our display case?
Did they move the newspaper office?
I hurry to the door marked with the number 212, my home for the past three and a half years. Or at least it was. In some other life. For some other me.
School is out, so the newspaper team should be assembling here any minute. With a deep breath, I pull open the door and step hesitantly inside, instantly bombarded by all the memories I made within these walls. Thousands and thousands of them clobbering me at once. The time we misspelled a word in our front-page story about teen literacy. The time we were so desperate for an extra article to fill out the sports section, we invented a badminton team. The time Horace’s game overheated one of the computers and the hard drive melted. The time we challenged the yearbook staff to an epic, cutthroat battle of Taboo and lost.
The time Laney and I accidentally walked through that door for the very first time.
Ever since then, this place has been a refuge for me in the middle of this chaotic building. A place where my voice mattered and my opinion was important and my words were read.
That one twist of fate is what set my whole other life on course.
Now, it’s someone’s else fate. Someone else’s course.
I glance around the classroom, the unease inside me growing by the second. There’s something very off about this place. It feels so … so …
Sterile is the word that pops into my head.
The computers are still lined up in the same formation, the carpet is still in desperate need of replacement, but the room? It lacks a sense of purpose. A sense of life.
Where are all the scribbles on the whiteboard? The hundreds of story ideas thrown out by staff members. Where are all the issues hanging on the walls? The team’s proudest moments on display. Where are—
Just then, the door bursts open and a group of five or six boys tumble inside, talking animatedly while stuffing chocolate in their mouths and sipping soda from plastic cups.
They stop when they notice me and look to each other for an explanation. But none of them seem to be able to give one. Finally, one boy—clearly their leader—pushes his way to the front, and as soon as I see his face my mouth drops open.
“Horace?” I ask in disgust. “What are you doing here?”
He seems to startle at the sound of his own name and studies me for a long moment. “I’m sorry, do I know you?”
I roll my eyes. “Horace. It’s me. Kennedy…” But I immediately catch my mistake. Of course he doesn’t know me. I’m a stranger to him. He never sat in my newspaper club and made annoying jokes while he used my computers to play his stupid Excavation Empire game. Laney and I never stayed up late at night plotting his demise … or, at the very least, his removal from the paper.
He was never a constant nuisance to me because I never went here.
“I’m sorry,” Horace says in his usual haughty tone. “I don’t know any Kennedys. You know, except the president. But he’s dead.”
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
“Now, if you’ll excuse us,” he goes on. “We have a meeting in here.”
I watch in shock and disbelief as the boys disperse throughout the room, taking seats at the computer stations.
Wait, what are they doing?
What meeting could they possibly have in here?
OH. MY. GOD.
Is Horace the editor in chief of the newspaper?
No. That can’t be. I will not allow it. I’ll file a complaint. I’ll stage an intervention. I’ll destroy this place before I let Horace take charge of my newspaper.
I’m about to voice my dissatisfaction right then and there, when suddenly one of the machines finishes booting up and I hear a familiar sound. That obnoxious synthesized melody that used to play over and over again in my nightmares.
I turn and stare at the monitor, a strange gurgling sound coming from the back of my throat.
“Is that…” I ask, struggling to get the words out. “Is that Excavation Empire?”
The boy—a short frumpy kid with glasses—glances up at me in annoyance. “Uh. Yah.”
My gaze whips left and right, watching in horror as all the screens light up and that annoying seven-note song reverberates around me in surround sound.
When I speak again my voice is a shattered replica of itself. “Is this an Excavation Empire club?”
“Yeah,” Horace mumbles from his station, taking a sip of soda. “And I don’t remember your name on the invite, so…” He makes a clucking sound and tips his head toward the door.
“B-b-but you can’t,” I stammer, getting flustered. “You can’t do that. This is the newspaper office.”
Horace flashes me a strange look from the top of his computer. “What newspaper?”
I stomp my foot in frustration. “The Southwest St—” But my voice cuts off when I remember that I named it the Southwest Star. I changed the name from the Southwest News after I became editor in chief. After I wrote that story about the football coach siphoning the funds and won us the first Spartan Press Award and saved the paper from …
A bitter, cold frost settles in around me, chilling me to the bone.
From closing.
From folding.
From ending.
“The school newspaper,” I say meekly.
Horace scoffs at this, taking another slurp of soda before saying the words that I know will haunt me forever. “This school doesn’t have a newspaper.”