Nick made his way over to one of the five filing cabinets. I tiptoed over to his desk to see that Principal O'Doherty had left the computer on. I sat on the chair and searched through the desk drawers.
"God, it's the internet, it seems so long since I've used it," I commented as I saw a couple of news tabs open.
There were articles of people praising the good side of the social experiment, and there were articles that were supporting us, saying that it was awful that we had a government that would use students in an experiment. Not only as an experiment, but also in doing it without anyone's permission in exchange for the school getting extra state funding.
"Apparently they have a device that cancels out cell phone signals in our community," I paraphrased one of the points in the articles.
"That explains why my phone is now an expensive paperweight."
I minimized the articles and started to go through his computer folders.
"I think I found something."
I read through the papers of ring receipts and drawings. There was this weird microchip drawing on the side.
"What the hell?"
I started to read what the words on one of the other page out loud.
"When worn and the person is in the process of running away a burning sensation will kick in as part of the tracking device if the person wearing the ring is out of the desired perimeter," I paused and took off my ring and looked at the red ring around my finger. "Then it goes off on this scientific explanation. Can you believe this?"
Nick saw the red ring on my finger.
"When we went out for my birthday I knew I felt something on my finger, when we were walking away."
"Guess my wearing the ring on my chain just came in handy."
"Um…interesting, Nick."
I saw the receipts for the rings worn by everyone in our grade. I put it all back in the desk. Nick took my spot at the computer as I sauntered around with hesitant steps towards the room's closet. I turned the door knob and things came rushing out. Which made me scream and Nick jumped up to stop me.
There were so many letters and small boxes. I started to glimpse through the papers and noticed something about all of them.
"These were sent by our parents. He's keeping our mail because he doesn't want us to contact each other. Here's the letter Bridget wrote to her family," I commented, my voice sounding faint as I continued looking through the names on the envelopes. Were the letters I sent to my family in here? "He's keeping mail from coming and going out of here."
My heart pounded against my chest. My parents didn't forget about me after all, they just weren't receiving my letters. They still loved me.
"Found something else over here. We can't dial numbers outside of the gated area."
"I thought we already knew that," I said, as my fingers kept going through all the letters, searching for any of my mail.
"It's still information."
"Good point."
I made my way over to the empty wall behind the computer. I started to notice that the whole right edge of the wallpaper was loose. I touched it and the whole sheet of wallpaper fell off except for the left half of the wall, which seemed to be keeping the whole thing up. I covered my mouth with my hands and Nick turned around. When he saw what the wallpaper was hiding, his jaw dropped.
On the wall in magic marker were each pair written all over that part of the wall along with many other poorly written words. On the side there were a few notes all written in huge shaky marker letters. Some of the letters were tilted in different directions as he wrote on a slat. I was too afraid to read his other notes and just focused on the pairs.
"The first thirty six couples were hand-picked and the rest were by the computer," I commented as I read, noticing something. "It's by house numbers. Okay, maybe we should leave."
What made those thirty-six couples special? Why were Nick and I handpicked? Who thought to put us together?
My racing heart was making me sick to my stomach.
"Yeah, I think we should go."
When Nick was standing up by mistake he hit a key on the keyboard. All of a sudden documents popped up.
"Just print it and we can get out of here. This place is really freaking me out."
I put the wallpaper back up so it didn't look like someone had touched it. When it was done Nick put the keys back in the Janitor's room and we ran back home. The guards weren't there because of the shift changing.
That night Nick and I fell asleep reading the paper we printed out in a hurry on the couch together.
20
Nick
"Ah, Nick wake up we're going to be late for school."
I sat up and rubbed my head. Trying to get my eyes to focus. Rachel practically jumped over me on the couch to zip off into her room. She and I were still wearing the clothes from yesterday, we apparently fell asleep together on the couch. Seconds later she came out in jeans and her bright yellow sweatshirt that had some sarcastic remark on it. She was brushing her hair as she came out.
"Nick! Get ready already. Dear God how'd we fall asleep together again? Nick we're going to be late for homeroom."
"I'm not going to school today," I said, stretching on the couch, about to fall back to sleep.
"You're
