United Seventh Grade

3

  The bus had stopped at the end of a dirt road, leaving a cloud of fumes that smelled like rotten eggs. The seventh grade stood together, holding our backpacks and suitcases. A sign, made of cheap plywood and black spray paint, was nailed to a tree on the other side of the road. It said, “7th Grade THAT WAY” with an arrow pointing towards a narrow dirt path.

  We were in the middle of nowhere. The only sounds we heard were the sounds we made ourselves, diffused by a gentle wind that blew softly. It was a beautiful day, but I began to feel my anxiety creeping up on me from deep inside. I had the realization that we were abandoned. Ahead of us was nothing but a small path through the woods, and behind us, a rocky dirt road lined by trees. If anything happened, who would know? Who would come to save us?

  “Nines, let’s stay close to Elliot,” Julian said to me after we got our bags. For some reason, we felt safer being near the forest ranger’s son. We walked around a group of girls and stood next to Elliot.

  “So, what do you think of this?” Julian asked him.

  “To be honest with you, I don’t know what to think right now,” Elliot answered.

  The luggage had been handed out, and the group stood, waiting for some kind of sign that we should go. As if someone had heard our thoughts, the bus’s engine started up again, the door and luggage compartment slid closed, and the bus began to pull away. Julian and Elliot looked at each other and shook their heads.

  They watched as the bus backed up and turned down the road.

  “I looked,” Julian told Elliot. “There’s no way there could have been someone in there.”

  “NASA,” Elliot said. Nothing surprised him anymore.

  Samantha and Nicky showed up next to us. We all felt safe with Elliot.

  “I guess we should start walking,” Sam said, her eyes scouting out the path ahead.

  “I guess we should,” Elliot decided, and bravely led the seventh grade into the wilderness.

  We walked mostly in silence for the first twenty minutes, lugging baggage and taking in the surroundings. Tanya’s voice was completely gone, which was a blessing that no one overlooked. We were in the mountains, and the path led us first through a grassy meadow, then narrowed into a cool, leafy forest of trees, and finally out to a rocky lookout point where we could see for miles.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  Everyone looked at each other, hoping somebody would have an idea.

  “We’re pretty high in the mountains,” Elliot said.

  “What’s all that smoke?” I wondered.

  “It’s just clouds,” Elliot explained. “They’re lower than the mountaintops.”

  The group reassembled at the lookout point. Everyone sat down and took a break, eating snacks we saved from the bus, and checking up on each other to make sure we had not lost anyone. We had been walking for two hours.

  Mark came up from the trail, carrying Nicky on his back. She was exhausted, and looked sad and forlorn, her head resting heavily on Mark’s shoulder.

  “What’s the story?” He called out to Elliot.

  “Well, we must be pretty close. They couldn’t send us much farther than this. It would be too remote, and you can’t have buildings that far from a road. It’s just impossible.” He was trying to sound hopeful, but he feared that his voice was showing the truth: that he was worried about nightfall.

  “So we should just keep following the same path?” Mark asked him.

  “Yes. Do not, under any circumstances, let anyone go off the path!” Elliot shouted with a serious tone.

  Mark answered, “Got it.”

  We rested for a while, and then rounded the bend back into the forest. Soon, the path became wider. We followed it down past a waterfall stream, and into a clearing. There, in the distance, was our school.

  It was a group of houses, all different sizes. It reminded Sam of the summer camp where she and Elliot had spent so many days. There were many dirt roads around it, which gave hope that we might be closer to civilization than we thought. It was Julian who made the connection first, always thinking like a spy. He picked up his feet and shuffled up over a few roots and boulders to catch up with Elliot.

  “It was another distraction,” he wheezed to Elliot’s shoulder. His asthma was kicking in, and he wasn’t used to the strenuous exercise.

  Elliot turned his head and looked down at Julian questioningly.

  “The trail. They want us to think we’re farther away than we really are.”

  “You are so right. Good thinking!” Elliot replied, and the two boys sped up to get a closer look at their new home.

  Sam squinted to read a crooked wooden sign nailed to a fence. It said, “Sunnyside Farms.”

  Brian was behind her. He said, “It looks like an abandoned campground or something.”

  The buildings were made of wood and stone, probably taken from the forests surrounding them. There were big glass windows, and one building had a deck that stretched out of what must have been the dining hall, filled with circular tables and chairs.

  The seventh graders had all arrived, and were roaming in and out of the buildings, which were rustic, but not too old. All of the doors were unlocked. It was clean, and everything worked. It was obvious that people had been there recently to get the school ready for us.

  It was Mark who finally stepped out into the central courtyard and shouted what we had all started to notice.

  “There’s no adults here!” he shouted with joy. “We’re FREE!” He did a little dance, and a few of the boys ran over to give him a big high five. The boys outnumbered the girls three to one. That is one of the reasons our class was so completely annoying.

  At first, I didn’t believe we were alone. I was sure that the adults were here somewhere, in the office. Or perhaps they had gone into town for supplies, and we arrived earlier than expected. But I was wrong. We were completely alone, on top of a mountain, in the middle of the forest.

  Everyone broke out to explore the grounds, and find places to stay. There were two buildings filled with dorm rooms. The beds were made, bathrooms stocked with supplies. It was sort of like a hotel.

  Most of the girls chose to stay in the Holly House, which had a big center room equipped with a huge TV, and bright, pretty bathrooms. The boys were happier in the Lookout Lodge, because it was decorated with a hunting theme, and giant stuffed deer heads lined the halls.

  Samantha put her things in one of the rooms. She was sharing a room with me. She didn’t really want to stay so closely tied to all of the other girls; they were just too catty for her. They talked about things that were meaningless, like gossip or rumors. She slipped away to explore the camp on her own while I was unpacking. She was starving.

  She went straight to the dining hall. It was a big, open room filled with round tables and plastic chairs. In the back was the kitchen. Sam was dying to see what there was to eat.

  The kitchen looked like any other restaurant kitchen. There was a walk-in refrigerator, giant stoves, and a dishwashing line set up to handle a crowd. She walked through the kitchen, looking up at the pots and pans, and eyeing the knife rack, which she noticed was empty. She suddenly felt the urge to find a knife for Elliot. She knew how upset he was that he couldn’t bring the ones in his survival kit. She rummaged through the utility drawers, hoping to find some kind of sharp kitchen tool. Nothing. The sharpest thing in that kitchen was a butter knife. She took one anyway.

  Finally, she looked closely at the food. There was fruit, apples and bananas, eggs, bread, cereal and milk for the mornings, frozen pizza, hamburgers, hot dogs and ice cream, a few frozen dinners, and some things for kids with certain dietary restrictions. That was it. Sam felt a knot in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t want anything here. They had taken away her family, her friends who were back in eighth grade, her phone, her things, and now they were taking food out of her mouth! She felt overwhelmed. She wasn’t sure if she could take it anymore. She wondered exactl
y how to get in touch with the principal, send him a message that she was having an emergency. She looked around for a camera or something, anything that might be a way for them to see her, but she did not see anything.

  She sat on the kitchen floor, her hand grasping the handle of the butter knife, and began to cry.

  Sam sat that way for at least ten minutes, feeling miserable, and hoping that someone, somewhere was watching her, and would see that she really needed help right now.

  She sat up when she heard a loud noise in the dining area. The double doors opened with a bang, and in marched half of the entire population of the Lookout Lodge. The boys, she thought, and rolled her eyes to no one. She wiped her nose with her sleeve, pushed herself up off the floor, and walked quickly out of the kitchen.

  A line of boys passed her on her way out, all of them smiling as if they had just won the lottery.

  “You cooking dinner, Sam?” Mark snickered as she walked past.

  “Not for you,” she answered, and headed towards the door.

  “Hey, Sam,” Brian called out, and touched her sleeve. “Have you seen Elliot? Where is he now?”

  Sam shrugged. “I dunno. What do I look like, his keeper?”

  “No, silly. I’m just concerned is all. No one’s seen him in about an hour, and we want to have a meeting in the Lodge tonight. If you see him, will you tell him?”

  “Sure,” Sam assured him, and headed outside. She knew where he was, of course. If she knew him, which she did, he was walking the perimeter of the camp, looking for a way out.

  The year his Mom died was the year that Elliot’s behavior problems started. He started hating grownups, doing everything he could to prove that they were stupid and that nobody had any idea what they were talking about. To him, nothing really mattered anymore. He was always angry, angry at the world for being so cruel.

  One day, Miss Handler was teaching the class about the circulatory system. She was explaining how the heart works, and saying that today, modern medicine can heal almost anything.

  “That’s not true. Why don’t you shut up, you stupid frogface,” Elliot blurted out from the back of the room.

  Miss Handler was stunned. She picked up the telephone and dialed the office. Soon someone arrived to escort Elliot out. They placed him in a small storage room, which was a makeshift office, to wait for the principal, because, apparently, Principal McThorn was very busy in his real office dealing with another issue, and there was a line of kids in the waiting area. The window in the little room was open, and Elliot could feel the cool breeze of the outside world coming in. He wanted to get out of there, out of the prison they called school, but the hinges on the window were designed to keep it from opening all the way out. A safety feature, he laughed. He sat and stared, waiting for the principal to come and sentence him to the latest punishment. Then, something came over him. He needed to escape, get away from this suffocating world of people who didn’t understand him. He looked through the drawers of the desk in the room and found a small metal staple remover. It fit perfectly into the screws that held the window hinges in place. Within five minutes, Elliot was walking down the street towards the Taco Bell.