Free Hour 23 by Robert Barnard

chair.
    “We’ve been told to remain here,” Nurse Lowell said sternly.
    “Says who?” Jared groaned. “Principal ass chaps?”
    Nurse Lowell slammed her hand down on her desk. “That’s enough. I know that it’s been a hard day and there’s a lot of confusion, but that doesn’t give you all an open invitation to be disrespectful wise-asses.” Nurse Lowell covered her mouth quick, shocked by her own profanity.
    Kevin Dobbs sat on one of the nurse’s beds and scanned the room. “Wait a second—where are Britney and David?”
    Rachel Epps yelled “Hey” from a corner opposite of Kevin before anyone could give him an answer. “I just got off the phone with my mom. She’s trying to pick me up, and she said there’s a cop out there who isn’t letting her through?”
    “So what?” Nurse Lowell said.
    “So, um, shouldn’t you be able to do something about that?” Rachel asked.
    Nurse Lowell said, “Do I look like a cop? Do I look like I direct traffic?”
    “Hey, lady,” Jared hollered, “you gotta’ let us out if our parents are outside, trying to pick us up. It’s like, in the constitution.”
    “Shut your mouth, Jared,” Nurse Lowell fumed. “You don’t dare refer to me as ‘lady’—”
    “This is bullshit,” another girl exclaimed from across the room. “Total bullshit.”
    The room erupted into arguing and yelling.
    Nolan and Chloe sat together in their corner, staying out of the fray.
    “My dad will know what to do,” Chloe said, staring down at her cell phone screen. Her hands trembled. “I’ll keep trying to get a hold of him. He’ll know what to do…he’ll know what to do.”
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

SIX
     
    The only sound between Dana and the lonely road ahead of her was the dull buzz of her car’s engine. Her Prius hummed and whizzed down Pigeon Hill as it approached the outskirts of East Violet below.
    Dana’s driving was cautious and careful; the accident in town she witnessed earlier left her rattled. She treated every intersection she passed as if a police car may materialize from thin air.
    Each time Dana blinked, or took a moment to shut her eyes at a stop light, the ghastly image outside of Henderson High would reappear. Two small legs, almost neatly crossed, with two clean white stockings, save for a drop or two of blood. The way they led up to a skirt, to where the rest of a body should be. Dana hadn’t seen anything nearly as gory in a scary movie, let alone in real life. It left a sour knot tugging deep inside of her stomach.
    Almost home, Dana thought.
    She couldn’t wait to cuddle up on her couch with Elliott. Maybe instead of hawking over her iPad and the morning news, she would nuke a cup of hot chocolate and watch The Price is Right . Something, anything, to take her mind off of the Coopers down the street or the stray legs on the pavement outside her school. No, it would just be her and Elliott shouting the price of canned yams at her television set.
    Whump-whump, whump-whump, whump-whump …a helicopter passing overhead snapped Dana out of her daytime television daydream. Up ahead, blocking the road into town, was a wall of police cruisers and SUV’s.
    Dana braked, slowed her car down to a crawl, and approached the road block. Within moments a fat, older officer, nearly busting out of his uniform and vest, waddled towards Dana’s window. He waved his hand in a plunging motion, signaling for Dana to roll her window down.
    Dana pressed a plastic switch on her door, and the car window slid down.
    The officer grumbled, “Ma’am, I can’t let you through unless you live in town.”
    “Oh, sure, sure.” Dana fiddled through the briefcase on her passenger seat and pulled out a clutch. “I live just over on Oak.”
    “That’s great. I’m gonna’ hafta’ see some I.D. saying so.”
    “Well, of course. That’s what I’m doing, I mean. I’m looking for it right now.” Dana dug clumsily through the clutch. She flicked past credit cards,