Anne
"So when are you guys gonna show us the trap door?" Penelope asked.
We had to be in detention from the end of classes to one hour before dinner. The one hour was for completing our homework and dinner lasted for another hour. Right now we were stuck on the second day of detention.
"Well we are stuck in detention for the whole day and if we miss classes the teachers will know so like never" Aidene deadpanned.
"Not if we do it at night" I said, the sudden rebelliousness startling me and the people around me.
Aidene shook her head in disbelief and probably to show of her newly colored red ends.
"Okay" Aidene said, a smile forming on her lips.
Penelope looked absolutely confused and if anything a little smug.
"Ever heard of the scouts? And not to mention they lock all the entrances to the main school building halfway to dinner" Penelope said smugly.
"I have heard of the scouts and I really wish they would give out cookies but they don't. But aside from that I can sneak you guys out at night but we need the keys to the main building"
Penelope looked like a deflated balloon probably because she was proved wrong.
"I can get the keys but.. I am going to have to miss dinner," Penelope said.
"Great if you are okay with missing dinner?" Aidene's question was answered with a nod.
"Why don't you take Anne with you? She's like a ghost probably can phase through walls or something?" Aidene said, surprising me.
I exchanged a powerless look with Penelope but one look at Aidene and I knew I couldn't say no. I watched as Aidene wrote down the plan on a piece of crumpled notebook paper with water stains.
"Five easy steps" Aidene said with a smile.
"Easier said than done" Valentina said with a worried look.
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PLAN: .
Step 1: Penelope and Anne steal the key. .
Step 2: We wait for Aidene to come to our dorm at 11:00 pm .
Step 3: Get out of the dorm (ps Aidene wouldn't specify how she just kept saying "Trust me")
Step 4: Enter the main school building and check the trapdoor. .
Step 5: Return to dorm .
______________________________________________________________________________________
I watched as Aidene, Valentina and Roy headed back to their dorms to get ready for dinner. Leaving Penelope and me behind to get the keys. We had exactly two hours before they start to take the attendance before curfew where they would notice we were missing and start a search.
The first hour everyone would be roaming around the school and the second one everyone would be at the dining hall.
"Please tell me you have a plan" I said, shooting an exasperated towards Penelope.
"According to what you guys said the door is in the record room. There are only two copies of that key. One in the principal's office and the other is with Mr. Hughes" Penelope said as a matter-of-factly.
"Mr. Hughes?" I asked, never having heard of that name.
"He's in charge of all the staff who are not teachers like the cooks, maids, librarians etcetera" .
"Let's flick his, not the principal's," I said, a little too afraid of the corpse.
Penelope just nodded.
But then I realized something, "Okay, sounds great, but where do we find this guy anyway?"
Penelope seemed to think the same thing.
"Well I don't recall seeing him around anytime except for that one $%#&@* time I snuck in fireworks for New Year."
"Fireworks aren't allowed?"
"They are but only the teachers are allowed to handle them. And you're not supposed to tie small ones to someone's coat apparently.."
We made a plan to split up and search a half of every floor each. After about half an hour we got nothing.
"Does Mr. Hughes even exist?" I asked, this time more skeptical.
"He does but he is like a $%^%^ ghost." Penelope answered and then her eyes brightened and she looked directly at me.
"Aidene said you were like a ghost. So where would you be?"
"That makes no sense and I don't think that's gonna work" I said slightly annoyed, as I watched the other two of our group plus Roy walking away from us.
Splitting up wasn't helping. Gabe Hughes was actually a ghost. We had asked every staff member who we came across and they told us where they saw him last and by the time we were there he was gone. Cliché much?
We wasted a lot of time. I looked down at my watch. We had only 45 minutes left before dinner got over and we needed to head back to our dorms.
The scouts took attendance before we entered the dorm. They asked our name and then they would check our names on the attendance book therefore we needed to make it before the finished attendance and the whole attendance barely took 15 minutes seeing the scouts knew everybody (How? I have no idea. They're elves probably, or some other fantasy creature with knowledge or whatever).
"%^&* this. Do you know anything about him? Apart from his name and his post" I desperately asked Penelope.
"Heard he has a case of OCD and that he is not the most beautiful person in the world" she replied.
"That does not narrow things down much..."
"It's all we have to go off of so let's hope he's doing something like wiping his door knobs or something."
"Let's just start with the dustiest part of the school which is either the attic, library or the roof and I don't think he's at the roof and he is definitely not in the attic."
"This place has an attic?" I asked.
"Why would they need an attic if they have so many rooms?"
"It's not really an attic, it's the top most floor which is locked and not used. Only half of it though, the other half is teacher's quarters all separated by a wall. Northern stairway leads to the teacher's rooms and the southern leads to the empty attic" explained Penelope.
"So let's check the attic...?"
"Nope, it's always locked."
"Then why did you give that speech about where the attic was?" frustrated, I asked.
To add to my annoyance she only shrugged and walked away. I stood there for a moment before running and catching up to her.
"Library" Penelope said curtly.
"The ^&#*$ ! Why are we going to the library?"
"It's one of the messiest places and the library is the last room to be locked...ergo if he was locking the doors the last place he would be in is the library."
"THIS IS ABSOLUTELY USELESS!" groaning, I dragged myself behind Knight.
We had been searching the library for ages.
"Only fifteen minutes left for us to return to the dorms," I said.
I tried to walk past what felt like the millionth book shelf. Notice I said 'tried'?
Penelope held me back with her hands pushing me behind the shelf and placing a finger over her lips, the universal sign to be quiet. She then pointed towards a nearby shelf.
Penelope was right. Mr. Hughes was not the most beautiful person in the world. Hughes was a short man who seemed big due to his.... lets say roundness (I guess you could say he was... huges... Sorry). A huge bald spot on his head surrounded by a ring, a sort of unsightly halo of black scraggly hair, making him look like a very ugly and rotund angel.
His black beady eyes were bloodshot. His pale vampire like skin made his red face look like a light bulb. All put together with a tight fitting (I'm very sure that he was turning purple) chocolate brown suit.
Penelope pointed towards his belt were a set of keys hung.
"Any ideas?" I asked.
"Run and grab"
What?
She did just that she ran at him and pulled the keys off leaving him in a state of shock for a few seconds after which he started yelling. I ran at him just like Penelope but this time shoving him, his weight making his fall harder.
I ran behind Penelope, who was navigating through the labyrinth of a school, with a very angry, wheezy Mr. Hughes on our tail.
"Come back here, you little miserable twerps," He yelled in an adenoidal voice.
"I am gonna need your names and dorm numbers" he said, wheezing after a short while but we didn't stop, we just kept running. We needed to return to our dorms, we were already out of time.
Running through the school lawns I turned back to see if he was still behind us. Dead. Dead. Dead. We are so dead. I thought, that singular word and the phrase running through my head in a repetitive pattern, when I was sure we were out of range from him.
We stopped in front of the ignis building, the sound of our heavy rattling breath reaching my ears. Bending over and placing my hands on my knees I watched Penelope stuff the keys in the pocket of her hoodie.
"Where were you guys? Attendance was over a minute ago and what is your name? Need it for the attendance" the last question pointed at me. I turned my head to the owner of the voice. A tall boy with red feathery hair glared down at us with his hazel eyes.
"And why do you both look like you guys ran a marathon?" he said clearly getting agitated with us not responding. Well excuse me! I am a human and last I checked humans need to breathe which I wasn't doing much while running.
"Well first off all Captain Hawkins we lost track of time and since we lost track of time, we ran so we could get to this #$%!#% place and therefore we are out of breath" Penelope glared back.
"Anne Gray" I said once Penelope was done.
"One of the new ones?"
I nodded
"Cool it Knight," The captain of the ignis house said, raising his hands up in surrender.
"And watch your language..." he muttered as we headed back into the building.
We walked up the stairs, the silence broken by Penelope.
"Don't worry Hughes doesn't know our names and I am pretty sure he didn't catch our faces, we were running too fast for him." She said in a reassuring voice.
"Yeah I could tell he was not exactly excelling in PE classes back then," that brought out a small chuckle from the broker. It felt weird referring to her as "The Broker" after everything we did together.
We opened the door to our dorm to be greeted by a relieved Valentina.
"You guys made it. Did you get it?" She asked.
With a small nod of her head Penelope took out the keys. Valentina let out a sigh and headed toward her bed and reached under a jacket which laid on it.
"Got some food for you guys, Aidene is going to get the rest and there is a problem," She said, pulling out a lumpy object wrapped in tissue papers.
"How did you get it out of the hall?" Penelope asked, emitting a question out of me.
"What do you mean how?"
Penelope explained how a group of students had started sneaking food out of the cafeteria two years back and that led to food fights in the dorms, which wasn't the cleanest or hygienic thing in the world. So taking food out of the cafeteria was forbidden.
"We learnt that the hard way after we were caught by a few scouts," Valentina said.
"Of course they let us go since we were new and everything so... Aidene.... umm... had a plan. To keep it short we created a little trouble," Valentina said.
"So Aidene is getting us more food when she gets here?" Penelope asked, pulling out one of two sandwiches from the tissue wrapping and handing the other to me.
"Only two more sandwiches, we need to keep our energy up for tonight" Valentina said.
"Come to think of it..." I said taking a few bites of the sandwich and taking a whole minute to swallow it.
"...how is Aidene getting here and how is she getting us out?" I asked.
The air tensed around the room.
"That's the problem, she didn't," Valentina supplied.
A vague memory pulled at the back of my head, fuzzy due to my sleepiness at the time the memory took place but whatever it was I had a feeling none of us were going to like it.