Chapter 1

The small rural school buzzed with chatter in the halls Monday morning, as word traveled quickly. It spread like a wildfire over dried brush, as stories were spun to explain the unexplainable. ‘It’s a joke, there’s no way,’ one person said in the hallway, ‘she must have lost her mind,’ another exclaimed in whispers. The building question on everyone’s lips was ’What would Chuck do?’. Warren was likely a dead man, and everyone wanted to witness the execution.

Linda’s morning was nothing special, as she happily finished teaching her freshmen science class. She mostly ignored the murmurs and the whispers on most days, but on that day, her head was in the clouds. She still buzzed from the activities of Saturday afternoon, following the Science Fair. The doubts she’d had from the previous week had vanished, and she looked forward to more sex and more Heat.

The next day’s aftereffects were much less than they had been following the snowstorm. She had been able to focus mostly on correcting assignments and doing smaller tasks like tidying up, although she still ate half the food she had at her house. She would have to commend Brittany and Warren for their terrific work when she saw them in the last period after class, of course. She was also curious about how everyone else had felt the next day. She’d checked the message app a few times, but things were silent.

She was practically humming as she walked down the halls between periods, only slowing down to give a knowing nod to Maggie as they passed. When Linda entered the teacher’s lounge, brown bag in hand, she didn’t even notice a group of teachers huddled around a table like the students in the cafetorium. They gabbed and giggled like the students they taught, each discussing the rumors of the day. When they saw Linda, they crowded around like hyenas to a wounded animal.

“What do you know?” Roy the shop teacher asked, his grey mustache bristling.

“Know what?” Linda asked, still unaware of the topic of the day.

“Warren and Brittany. There’s no way. You don’t know what happened?” Sheila asked as she dropped her English textbook on the table with a loud thud.

Linda looked at their expectant faces and knew she had missed something in her delirious state. “What are you talking about? What about Warren and Brittany? Is something wrong?”

“How do you not know your two best students are suddenly dating? Like, Brittany was dumped by Chuck, and suddenly she’s dating ... Warren, of all people,” Sheila said, studying Linda’s reaction for clues.

“Oh, they are? Huh. Didn’t know. When did that happen?” Linda said calmly, attempting to not give away any information. Neither student had told her anything, but she had noticed their fighting in class had stopped since the snowstorm. At first, she just assumed it was because of what had happened, but they had been spending a lot of time working on the formula together after school, so things might have gone further than she knew.

“Come on, you’ve got to give us something. Did you notice anything that happened between them during that snowstorm when you were all stuck here?” Roy badgered. For a teacher in his fifties, he acted like someone in their teens, Linda thought to herself.

Linda took a bite of her food in an attempt to think of a response that wouldn’t hint at any of the activities that happened that night. The last thing she wanted was for people to start poking around on the events of the last couple of weeks. Andrea had taken care of the security tapes already, so there was no evidence there, but they could have missed something that hadn’t been scrubbed clean.

“Honestly, it was a boring night. It’s possible they talked to each other at some point, maybe had a heart to heart or buried the hatchet, I don’t know. They are both smart kids and actually have a lot in common, especially academically. Maybe they finally found common ground.”

“I guess. Some of the others are a little different too, though,” Sheila added, which raised red flags for Linda, who took a bit more note of the conversation.

Linda quickly asked, “What do you mean?”

“Well, Darius seems way more distracted. Two of the usually quiet girls, Andrea and Maggie, are speaking up more...”

Roy jumped in, “I heard that Andrea even threatened Chuck while he was bullying Warren last week. Seemed to shock people.”

Linda thought fast, “Maybe they had a Breakfast Club moment or something; realized they are all people with feelings and emotions or something. Darius is juggling a lot, it seems, with basketball and school. Maggie, I don’t know her that well, but she has come out of her shell, and I think Andrea’s finally living in the real world, at least a bit more often. Plus, she won the Science Fair, so that should be a confidence boost.”

Linda was content with her answer and hoped it satisfied the gossipy teachers. She wanted to steer the conversation towards a more pressing topic, the drama room. She wanted to find the right way to bring it up without tipping the others off that they’d found the hidden room. There was something strange about a school hiding an entire room behind a fake wall for years, and she had to know more about it.

“Oh yeah, you did a great job running that. A real shot in the arm for the school,” Sheila said, as the gossip seemed to slow down for a bit. Linda decided to use this to her advantage.

“Thanks. I hope we can get other things going here, too, like some camps in the summer for STEM programs, or maybe get some of the arts programs to do something.” Linda paused briefly before asking the real question on her mind, “ ... like why don’t we have a drama club or program here?”

While older, Sheila had only taught at Madison a few years, having moved from Green Bay, so she thought it was a grand idea. Roy, though, having taught there for two decades, seemed to have a different view.

“No money in the budget for something like that,” he said very quickly, “program was cut a while ago, if I remember rightly. Good riddance, I say, keep the money where the school needs it.” He stood up and walked to the door, “Got hall duty; have a good rest of the day.” Just like that, he was gone. Sheila also excused herself on account of having papers to grade.

Linda sat befuddled at the response from Roy. It could very well have been budget cuts, but he certainly didn’t want to talk about it. She had figured if anyone knew about what had caused the room to be walled off, he would. She didn’t even really know when the program had shut down, Miguel only knew about the room from a senior years before, who could have learned it from someone else. They’d have to do more digging to find the truth.

“This place is a mess,” Maggie said as the cloth she used to wipe a shelf became instantly caked in old dust.