Phoebe

Friday, I went to school as usual -- music blaring, Ivy talking, daydreams dreaming, thoughts flying. Tomorrow would be Saturday. Saturday meant the party. The party meant I would have to dress up. And for that to occur, Ivy was forcing me to leave school (via skipping -- God Alfie would kill us if he found out) and go to Macon an hour away to go clothes shopping -- seeing as the mall in Laurel, Georgia, was sadly limited in what stores it did have.

"You know what to do, right? When lunch ends, we'll meet on the horticulture hall."

"Okay, but I thought we were trying to leave school, not stick around."

Ivy opened the car door. "You don't think it would honestly be fair if we didn't give everybody the opportunity to skip?"

She left then, and I groaned. Oh no. Ivy was up to something. The bad thing was that I had no clue what she meant. The horticulture hall?

I spent the entire day up until lunch worrying. Daphne and Lorraine, the two girls who had stared at me in Trig class the first day, kept asking me what was wrong. Like in the two days since they'd plucked up the courage and introduced themselves to me at lunch, they knew everything about me. That was a laugh, but I didn't hold it against them; everybody wants to think that they know everyone else.

"Are you sick?" asked Daphne. She was a small redhead with blue eyes and freckles everywhere: a neat little row across her nose, dotted everywhere along her arms . . . all over.

I contemplated this and then decided to lie. Covering tracks.

"Yeah. I think I'm going to phone my dad in a bit and tell him to come pick me up." I moaned for added benefit, collapsed my head on folded arms, and then added pitifully, "Will you tell me what you did in Spanish Monday morning in Trig?"

"Oh you poor thing!" cried Lorraine. "Of course we'll tell you!"

I should be an actress.

Lorraine scribbled something on a scrap of paper. "Here. You can call if you want to . . . just in case we have homework. I don't want you to have to scramble together work at the last minute."

Lorraine was a blonde, but not in the "oh, she can barely tie her shoe" way, but in the brainy, soft sort of manner. She cared for others, always looked for the good in them. That was a trait I found to be amazing; I was a bit of a cynic, doubtful that good could be found in humans. The only way I could explain Lorraine was to compare her to a fictional character – Melanie Wilkes from Gone With the Wind. Melanie was a sweetheart through and through and/but strong when it came to supporting others.

She was so sweet that I almost felt guilty about the lie shortly to be followed by my skipping. But I smiled weakly, took the paper, and laid my head back down.

When the bell rang, Lorraine insisted on walking me to the front office, but I told her I would be fine and that she should just get to Spanish II. Lorie finally decided to comply, and I was free to run to the horticulture hall.

Essentially, Hall 10 was a greenroom. There was a set of thick double doors at the entrance . . . open those and you were in a jungle.

When I entered, I instantly felt the humidity rise. That's saying something considering Georgia is a center of high humidity and heat; there was nothing gross about it if you sweated, especially if the calendar declared it to be August, the worst month of the year.

"Phoebe," called my sister distantly. I looked for her through the tangles of peanuts and collard greens, hanging vines, a number of other plants I couldn't identify, and (strangely enough) pine trees, but couldn't find her.

But then a hand came out of nowhere and I screamed, ruining my self-declarations that I feared nothing.

"Shut up, will ya? Geez. It's only me!" growled Ivy as she emerged from the flowerbeds.

"Well, sorry. You shouldn't have jumped out of a jungle at me."

Ivy laughed softly but stopped suddenly. "Alright, enough. Come on, we got a job to do."

"And that job being . . . ?"

"Operation FireScare," she grinned, a bit manically I might add.

"Oh no. No, no, no. We are not going to do that," I declared, now knowing what she meant earlier about giving everybody the opportunity to skip. "It's bad enough that we're skipping."

"Stop being a baby. No one will ever find out it was us. Why do you think I picked the horticulture hall?"

"I don't know. Why did you?"

Ivy rolled her eyes. "We're going to hide in the plants after we pull the alarm."

"No," I stated firmly, "we will not be pulling anything besides the car doors open. You wanted me to play hooky and that's fine with me, whatever. But I am not going to commit a felony so that kids can get into a panic and miss class for five minutes."

"Fine. I'll pull the blasted thing. You just go sit in the car and wait on me. If we get caught, I'll take the blame."

I shook my head. "I'm not going to leave you alone. There's no telling what else might happen if I do."

And so it went on. Ivy crept out, pulled the bell, and it started chiming away. We hid in the many plants as the administration or whoever checked for fire throughout the school. I hoped to God that the school didn't use natural fertilizer products as the dirt/mud/muck smeared on my hands and pants' knees.

Once the alarm stopped and the students had returned to class, Ivy snuck back out and pulled it again. The same thing occurred -- thundering footsteps, teachers' shouting, and the blaring ring. We waited it out again, and then Ivy, tempting fate, did one last pull. After that, Ivy was done with her shenanigans.

"Let's go."

We loaded into Wiley and I hightailed it out of there until we reached the interstate at the edge of town.

"Okay, just stop at a rest stop or something along the way and we'll clean ourselves up."

I thought about what we just did, but the weight of it didn't really reach me; it all felt so surreal. I wondered how Daphne and Lorraine had reacted to the sudden buzzes of the fire alarm. Did Lorraine freak out? Had Daphne been one of the pushers that had annoyingly shoved people out of her way? She looked like she would be a pusher.

When I pulled into a rest area parking space, Ivy jumped out of the car and skipped to the building. I sat in the car, my hands not yet removed from the steering wheel.

It hit me then -- everything that had just happened. I was technically an accomplice. I could be in big trouble for just being with the person who pulled the alarm. That along with skipping was enough to have me looked by the board of education for expulsion. Not to mention possible jail time.

But no. I wouldn't go to jail. That wouldn't occur.

I went home. I was sick. No, Alfie hadn't heard me. Yes, I had been there since directly after lunch. I just decided to not go through the hassle of calling my father to pick me up so I drove myself home. Yes, I suppose that could be considered skipping. What was this about fire alarms? Have they caught the person responsible?

Yes, in no way was I guilty. Except, why did I like this feeling? This feeling of tension on my heart . . . adrenaline maybe finally catching up? Or just the possibility that I would be caught and have to wiggle myself out of trouble by talking? No matter what the reason, I loved this feel -- this in-danger feeling. I shouldn't.

There was something wrong with me, I decided as I joined my sister in the restroom.