Free Trapped by Michael Northrop Page A

banged on the hallway glass; the snow on the other side towered over his head and didn’t even hint at moving.
    “Who’s coming, snow gophers? Gonna burrow their way in? Gonna dig us out? We’re on our own for the foreseeable frickin’ future! ”
    Les was laughing quietly but hard enough that his face was turning red. “Snow gophers,” he repeated.
    Jason and Les, they were like friends all of a sudden. And I knew it was just because they both wanted the same thing, because I was being lame, but they had a few things in common too, aggression, mostly.
    “Let’s just wait a few hours,” I said.
    “Why?” Jason said. He was on a roll now. He had backup, and it was making him more confident.
    “Because,” I said. I needed something to slow him down, so I tried the truth. “Because I don’t want to get kicked off the team, alright? Anything happens in here, it won’t be too hard to figure out who did it. We’ll all get blamed. I’m not saying we shouldn’t do it, I’m just saying we should at least pretend to hold out a little. We go a day without food, who’s gonna blame us? We start breaking things down first thing in the morning — it’s like we couldn’t wait to do it.”
    Jason didn’t say anything for a second.
    Sports were pretty big at Tattawa. Most of us played something. Jason actually swung a pretty mean bat. “I just don’t want to get kicked off the team is all,” I said again, and that clinched it.
    “Yeah, OK,” he said.
    “What time?” said Pete.
    “One?” I said.
    “Twelve thirty?” said Krista.
    “Whatever,” said Jason.
    “You’re all a bunch of losers,” said Les.

THIRTEEN
    The snow gophers never showed, so a few hours later, we made our way toward the cafeteria. Jason was carrying a hammer and some sort of metal bolt, and Les still had his hat on his hand, like a boxing glove, from when he’d punched it through the window.
    Those two had been down to the shop, and Pete had walked through the halls to get to the second-floor bathroom, but the rest of us weren’t prepared for how dark the school was away from the glass hallway. It was daytime now, and it seemed like it should be light. But away from the glass hallway the windows were mostly covered, literally buried in snow, and the emergency lights were out now. In most places it was darker now than it had been the night before.
    It was a little better in the hallway leading to the cafeteria. Big windows looking out on the courtyard let in some light at the top. It also seemed a little warmer.
    “I think we’re over the furnace,” said Jason.
    Pete went over to a vent and put his hand to it. “Yeah,” he said. “Something.”
    We crowded around like it was an exhibit at a zoo: the North American speckled heating vent. A faint current of lukewarm air was lazily drifting out. It wasn’t much, but when you put your hand up to it and held it there, you could definitely feel it. I put both hands up and then pressed my palms against my face. It felt good.
    “Like the last gasp of a dying animal,” said Jason. And right then I realized why I’d been such a jerk to him: He had leapfrogged me. Definitely. Before yesterday, I’d been a step or two ahead of him. More popular, smarter, better athlete. But now, in this shut-down school, he’d taken the lead. All the things that people sort of held against him were advantages now.
    His dad worked some construction and was really maybe a step or two above a handyman, but he’d also taught Jason more about buildings than any of us would ever know. And Jason’s fatigue pants and sniper rifle T-shirt and that little whiff of violence hanging around him might have seemed a little ridiculous with late bells and assistant principals around. But now, lights out and on our own, it didn’t seem ridiculous at all.
    And what was I, a good basketball player? A streaky shooter with decent range? A B+ student, more or less? Now, that seemed ridiculous. So all of this was