“Shit,” I say. “You better not have gotten me detention again, Alex.”
After a quick look around the room, he grabs my forearm. “C’mon! Let’s go.” Alex rushes us out of the exhibit, away from the blaring alarm, pulling me behind him.
I nearly trip again trying to keep up. “Where are you taking me?” I blurt.
“I’m rescuing you from the museum lady.”
Alex charges ahead down the hall. He reaches toward a door handle. Above the entrance is a sign that says CUMBERLAND SCIENCE MUSEUM ESCAPE ROOM.
“Alex, wait, no!” I say, but he’s already yanked the door open and is pulling me through.
I glance over my shoulder to locate Max, to see if he’s following me, when suddenly the door slams shut behind us. Alex and I are in a dark room with no windows. All I can see is a glowing red EXIT sign.
“Uh, where are we?” Alex says, flicking on an overhead light, revealing that we’re in a cavernous room full of science equipment. “It looks like Frankenstein’s laboratory.”
It’s true. The room is straight out of a sci-fi novel.
I yank on the door, to pull it open, but it’s locked. Then a robotic voice comes over a loudspeaker. “The famous scientist Rose Darwin has been kidnapped. Her robot, Isaac Newton, has been stolen and reprogrammed to attack hospitals and schools.”
Alex and I give each other a look.
The booming voice goes on, “If you do not solve the riddles placed throughout this laboratory within an hour, the robot Newton will begin attacking hospitals and schools. To stop the robot, locate the twelve keys to unlock the safe containing its remote control panel.”
“I’m stuck in here for an hour with you?” I say. I open my purse, pull out my phone, and send Max a text: Helllllllp!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Today
Freshman Class Trip
Earlier this year, I would’ve killed to be alone with Alex.
Now? I’d rather be taking an algebra test.
“I don’t get it,” Alex says, peering around the laboratory. “What is this place?”
“I saw one of these on TV,” I reply. “It’s an escape room.”
“A what?”
I put it in plain English: “We’re stuck in here until we figure out how to escape. Don’t you read signs on doors before you open them?”
“No.” Alex shuts his eyes. “Let’s get to work, then. I don’t want to be in here for a second longer than I have to.”
I sit on a lab table. “You’re the one who’s good at science. You get us out of here.”
“You’re lazy.”
“I’m not lazy. This is your fault for knocking me into the diamond display.”
“It’s not like you have anything else to do in here.”
“Actually, I do.” I pull my electronic Wacom sketchpad out of my purse. It took a couple of years to save enough, but I was finally able to buy one after receiving my fifteenth birthday money. I push the power button, and the new comic panel I’ve been working on appears. My character Nera is lying on her bed doing homework in her family’s cave.
“What’s that?” Alex asks.
I ignore him. He’ll make fun of it.
“What is it?” he repeats, looking over my arm. “A comic book? It’s pretty good.”
“Just a story I’m working on. A graphic novel, not a comic book.”
“What’s it about? An evil lady who throws gum at nice, unsuspecting boys?”
“No, but maybe you’re on to something.” I point my tablet pen at him. “That would be an instant bestseller.”
Alex studies my screen. “Is that girl living in a cave?”
Pleasure fills me. I love it when people can tell what I’m drawing. “Yeah. Nera grew up in a cave after an asteroid hit the Earth and destroyed most of civilization.”
Alex furrows his eyebrows. “She had time to move a bed into a cave before the asteroid hit?”
“In my story, people know for a year that the asteroid is coming and have time to prepare. Her family builds a shelter in the caves near their house in Niagara Falls.”
“And the asteroid destroys most of the world?”
“So far as Nera knows. When she finally leaves the caves, she discovers some clans living outside, and the clan leaders are descendants of the former president and vice president of the United States. Now they’re enemies.”
“I don’t think that’s plausible. I mean, the chances of an asteroid that’s big enough to destroy the planet actually hitting us must be in the millions.”
“It happens in my book.”
“I don’t buy it.”
“It’s just a story!”
“I’m only trying to help. I know a lot about science.”
Show-off. As irritating as he is, deep down I’m pleased Alex gave me feedback on my work. When I tell my parents about my drawings over dinner, they nod and then interrogate me about whether my homework is finished. Max always looks at what I draw, but he never gives critical feedback.
But Alex…Alex is telling me his true opinion. That’s hard to find.
He’s still annoying, though. “By the way, this is the worst field trip ever.”
Alex grins evilly. “I knew you’d hate it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Remember when you protested biology class because we had to dissect frogs, and I told you that it’s important to study frogs for the sake of science, and you were all like, ‘I hate science almost as much as I hate you, Alex.’” He mimics my voice.
“Yeah…”
“That’s why, as class president, I recommended the Cumberland Science Museum for our field trip.”
I shake my head. “You seriously suggested we come here to piss me off?”
“Worked, didn’t it?” he says with a laugh.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re obsessed with me.”
“Just getting even.” He crosses his arms over his white T-shirt. His face grows still and serious, and it dawns on me why he’s trying to get back at me. There’s only one thing that puts him in that kind of mood: baseball.
January–February
Freshman Year