"We just passed North Bend. Like less than a minute ago."
Phillip Conlee, a science teacher nearing his fiftieth birthday, talked into a cell phone. It wasn't an easy task on a moving train, with his signal going in and out constantly. This was the third attempt at making the call, and so far the most successful. The science teacher rubbed the back of his neck.
"Everything's fine. Yeah, the kids are just kind of keeping to their cabins. No, no the entire car is reserved, I shouldn't have to."
Conlee sighed. He looked out the window, watching the scenery go by. This stretch of the route didn't have much to look at, just an old train yard that led into a wooded part. It was a beautiful day though, without a cloud in sight. The teacher stopped enjoying the view and turned towards the door of his personal cabin.
"Yes I know their safety is of the utmost importance. I've been teaching for seventeen years, you know?" Conlee replied to the person on the phone. There was no point in arguing though. Not with this one, not if Conlee knew what was good for his career. "Okay, I'll do it. I can see if they're getting into trouble at least."
Without another word, Conlee looks at his phone and hits the end button. He raised his left leg a bit, leaning against the wall of the cabin for support while he bent his knee back and forth. This was the fourth year in a row he was taking the senior astronomy class on the camping trip, a staple at Ellenville High School. He was somewhat shocked upon learning that he would be the sole chaperone this year, but when he found out why it wasn't such a surprise. The kids were the ones who would be surprised, he thought to himself with a smile as he planted his foot on the ground and exited his cabin.
He could already hear the rap music booming from the back of the car, where the jocks and the cheerleaders congregated. Theirs were the only two doors open though. Conlee could see in the cabin across from him that Jessica Galvin and Joseph Washington were busy, talking close and occasionally kissing. He then let out a chuckle when he saw how uncomfortable it was making Hiroshi Misaki and Emily Trendell.
Mr. Conlee walked a few feet down the hall, to the door of the cabin that was connected to his. He took a quick look inside before opening it up. He gave the quartet of boys a quick smile.
"Everything alright in here guys?" Conlee asked.
On the left side of the room sat Daniel Talford and Jonathan Bonsall, both of whom were glued to their hand-held games to respond. Across from them were Steven Robson, who was off in a stare out the window, and Lawrence Kieffer, who was the only person kind enough to respond.
"Oh yeah, everything's great. Fantastic even. Aside from the fact that my so-called friends are across the hall from me, and I'm stuck here with a bunch of virgins," Lawrence quipped, looking up at his astronomy teacher with a fake smile, "everything's just peachy."
Conlee matched the smile with one of his own, it being just as disingenuous. The other boys in the car just ignored Lawrence's comments, which might have infuriated him even further.
"They're a lively bunch, huh teach?" Lawrence added.
"High school's almost over, Mr. Kieffer," Mr. Conlee said, starting to pull the door closed, "try not to give yourself an aneurysm."
With that, the teacher closed the door and shook his head. Lawrence was a smart kid, but his attitude was going to wind up causing his own demise. Although it must have been tough being cooped in there with people he never talked to, especially those three. Good kids, but a little to strange for the science teacher's liking. A few steps farther down and he found himself at the door of a completely different group of students. Upon glancing through the window of the cabin door, the science teacher took a double take and quickly opened the door.
"For God's sake Margaret, pull your shirt down." Mr. Conlee exclaimed, quieting his voice halfway through the sentence.
It was quite a scene in this cabin, Conlee thought to himself. Margaret Pasizt, who was busy pulling her blue halter top back into its proper position, and the giggling Karen Moseby, had the reputation of being the two girls in the class with the loosest morals, so to say. With some of the things he'd heard about them that was putting it nicely.
"Mr. Conlee, I'm sorry, but I saw the doubt in their eyes when I told them I had my nipples pierced." Margaret started in with a shrug, chewing her up in an exaggerated manner with her mouth wide open.
"Oh really?" Mr. Conlee replied, taking a look at the girls on the other side of the cabin. Down the line were Heather Somers, Tabitha Broeker and Kathleen Cowan, huddled together, clearly uncomfortable. Whether it was from the show that Margaret had given them, or the cramped seating arrangement, he wasn't sure. Possibly both, he thought. "And you just couldn't let it slide I suppose?"
"I don't like being called a liar, teach." Margaret replied, with a smile.
"She's called enough as it is." Karen added. Margaret responded with a jab to her friend's boob, which caused Karen to jump in surprise. "That was my tit, bitch!"
"How much longer until we're there?" Kathleen Cowan asked, her voice carrying an annoyed inflection.
"About an hour, maybe forty-five minutes. Hang in there." Mr. Conlee stated, closing the cabin door. "Oh, and no more flashing."
As he closed the door, he could hear Margaret tell him that he was no fun. The science teacher remembered a time when he was Phil Conlee, Van Halen's number one fan no matter what anyone else claimed. The band's logo was still tattooed on the back of his right shoulder, a fact he kept well hidden amongst his peers and students. It had been years since he'd been to a concert of any kind though, aside from those awful school assembly concerts that they made the entire high school attend. His thoughts were interrupted by a door almost smashing him in the face.
"Oh shh…" Linda Ramsey started, curbing her profanity when she saw that her teacher was standing there, "…I mean, sorry Mr. Conlee."
Mr. Conlee offered a smile. Linda was a good girl, a cheerleader, and genuinely nice and smart as well. "It's alright Linda. No harm, no foul. Was there anything you needed?"
"Just the restroom." Linda replied, offering a smile and starting past her teacher.
"How's it going in there?" Mr. Conlee asked.
Linda did a half turn, giving a shrug. "Going alright I guess. Nicole and I were just listening to some CDs. It's either that or have to listen to Fabio speak in horribly broken Italian to Brittany."
"Understood." Mr. Conlee remarked as Linda turned back and headed towards the bathroom. Conlee looked inside the window, seeing Fabio DeBello and Brittany Linton on one side, Fabio working his so-called magic and Brittany eating it up. On the other side was Jason Satterlee, sleeping against the wall of the cabin with Nicole Weeks seated next to him, listening to her mp3 player, nodding along to the music with her eyes closed. No need to disturb them, he thought to himself. Not when he wanted that music turned down at the end of the train car.
It wasn't just the music though. It was the obscenities that sometimes were even louder than the music itself. Conlee could tell the source of those obscenities by the voices, specifically the two that sometimes made his skin crawl. He never could stand kids who took the whole rap fad so seriously that they thought they had to talk like thugs. Conlee looked into the first room, seeing that they were both in there.
"Spencer, Panna…" Mr. Conlee started.
"P, yo!" Panna Phommatheth responded.
"P…" Mr. Conlee started with a sigh. In a relatively middle-class neighborhood, Panna Phommatheth, or P as he liked to be known by, came from one of the wealthier families. His grandfather owned over a couple dozen canneries in their native Thailand, as well as the United States and other countries. Panna liked to tell kids in his class that his family's money came from gang connections in Bangkok. "…if you could just keep the music down a little bit. You don't have to turn it off, just show some consideration.
"I didn't hear anybody else complaining, sir." Chris Olson replied, giving the teacher a smile. Mr. Conlee knew Chris' game all too well, and what kind of person he really was to know that his whole respect for authority was just a front.
Despite Chris' reply, Panna did turn down the volume on his laptop, although it was barely noticeable. The others in their cabin were Cesar Zamudio and Kevin Doherty, the football teams defensive stars at inside and outside linebacker respectively. Kevin was busy laughing at something he was watching on his phone to care about what was going on, and Cesar was in another world with his headphones on. Cesar was the type of kid that Mr. Conlee hated to see hanging out with someone like Chris Olson, but luckily for him school was almost over, and he was off to play Division I football at Washington State. If he survived this weekend, the teacher thought with a smirk.
"Thank you, Mr. Conlee!" A voice from the cabin across exclaimed. The teacher turned around to see Lisa Arcuri, sticking her head out with the usual bitchy expression on her face. "It's nice to see there's someone else who doesn't appreciate hearing Panna's music."
"Well damn, it looks like I forgot to bring my muzzle for this trip." Spencer retorted with a smirk.
Lisa gave Spencer the finger, even though he wasn't looking. Mr. Conlee stuck his head in Lisa's compartment to see her stuck with the two power couples. Michael Massena and Victor Lombardo, best friends and most popular guys in the class, and were dating Vanessa Grant and Melanie Chavez respectively. Conlee always found it strange that the two were such good friends, but were completely different. Massena's popularity was achieved not only through being athletic, but also because he was a genuinely good person, while Lombardo's was through being athletic, and using that to his advantage to intimidate. Even their girlfriends mirrored their personalities, as Melanie was known for being the queen bee, so to say. Vanessa just seemed to deal with it, more than likely because school was almost over. Mr. Conlee couldn't help but smile as he saw Mike and Vanessa, talking amongst themselves and laughing at private jokes.
"Everything alright in here?" Mr. Conlee inquired.
"How much longer I gotta listen to these bitches?" Victor looked from Lisa to his own girlfriend, who immediately smacked him on the shoulder. Victor raised his hand, which caused Melanie to flinch and Mike to grab his friend's wrist before Mr. Conlee could react.
"Chill out, Vic." Mike said.
Victor soon chuckled, wriggling his wrist free. The school's starting running back turned to his science teacher with a shrug. "I was just going to brush some hair from her beautiful brown eyes. Wasn't I, baby?" Victor asked, turning back to Melanie who forced a smile. Lisa rolled her eyes, as did Vanessa while Mike did his best to ignore it. There had been unconfirmed reports that Victor had hit Melanie before. Mr. Conlee believed it to be true. He shook his head, turning to leave.
"Try not to maim each other for another forty-five minutes please?" Mr. Conlee said over his shoulder, closing their door halfway.
Mr. Conlee was glad to get out of there, even if he could still hear the music and the chatter behind him. Hopefully he wouldn't have to see them for too much longer, he thought with a smirk. He still couldn't believe what the school had approved, but he was all for it. This would be the easiest chaperoning trip he'd ever been on, he thought to himself as he made his way back through the car, looking at the cabins on the opposite side. He knocked on the first door he came to, seeing Linda walk past him and giving a slight smile. Conlee turned his head and smiled back, hearing the door in front of him open. Turning back around, he was greeted by Erin Gerhardt.
"Hi, Mr. Conlee. What's up?" Erin asked.
"Not much, Erin. I was just going around, seeing if everyone was alright." Mr. Conlee replied.
"How much longer until we're there?" Lynn Siddique asked, which seemed to be the question of the moment.
"Another half hour to forty-five minutes." Mr. Conlee responded, closing his eyes as he pinched the bridge of his nose. It wasn't Lynn's fault for asking, but he never liked answering the same question more than once. The only times he would ever raise his voice in class were when someone wasn't paying attention and asked an already answered question. He opened his eyes back up to them, offering a smile. "Not much longer at all."
He watched as Selina Ruiz dug through her bag, pulling out a small pull bottle and looking back up to her teacher. "Advil?"
"No, thanks." The teacher responded, briefly holding his hand up. "You shouldn't have that either, ya know? It's my job to carry that stuff." Mr. Conlee said.
"I get migraines." Selina retorted, handing the pill bottle over to her friend, Christina Shaw, who looked awful. Christina opened the bottle and dumped out a pill into her hand. Mr. Conlee didn't necessarily like his students taking anything, but he understood why Christina might need it.
"Another long night?" Mr. Conlee asked sympathetically.
Christina let out a sigh, followed by a nod as she closed her eyes, leaning her head against the wall. Christina had been putting up with her cousin Benjamin, who was no farther than a cabin away, and his drug addiction that got him kicked out of his own house, and was temporarily living with Christina and her parents. Ben had already been to rehab once, and with his relapse, his parents refused to pay for it again. So he was going cold turkey, and Christina was the one who was relegated to dealing with it. For her, that meant little sleep and constant headaches.
"Well hang in there. There'll be plenty of time to sleep once we get to the site." Mr. Conlee said reassuringly.
Christina mustered up a return smile as her teacher shut the door behind him. Her cousin Ben was in the next cabin over, with his burnout friends. Mr. Conlee was a little bit surprised that there wasn't any smoke billowing out from under the door, although he did catch a slight marijuana smell. He opened the door, seeing Edward Bettes sitting on the floor against the wall, strumming on a mandolin. Mr. Conlee had to smirk at the sight. Edward was told that his guitar was too big and that everyone was to bring a backpack and a duffel bag no bigger than a backpack. Edward apparently found a loophole with the smaller instrument.
"Is there any reason it smells like a Grateful Dead concert in here?" Mr. Conlee asked, almost redundantly.
Michael Farra, class pot grower and main supplier, just shrugged his shoulders. "Got me, Mr. Conlee. Maybe you're having some flashbacks from your teenage rebellion?"
"Jesus, Mike. How old do you think I am?" Conlee asked, following it with a grin. "I was always impartial to Pink Floyd."
Farra gave him the old wink and the gun gesture, as across from him, Gina Neri started giggling, and her boyfriend Esteban Jimenez gave a scowl. Esteban was probably one of the most hated people in the school, only popular because he was a big guy and a star pitcher on the baseball team. The teacher had even heard Esteban and Edward get into fights on occasion. Edward, meanwhile, began playing strumming a more high-pitched version of the intro to the Pink Floyd song 'Money'.
"I swear I'm going to break that fucking thing…" Esteban muttered under his breath. "It's bad enough that crackhead over there's been shaking the whole damn time."
Mr. Conlee looked over to see Benjamin, now asleep, but indeed shaking. This would not be an easy trip for him, going through the withdrawal. Mr. Conlee also noticed that everyone in the cabin, except for Esteban of course, had draped their coats over Ben. Conlee let out a sigh, feeling bad for the kid.
"We'll be there in about a half hour, maybe a little longer. Let me know if he needs anything." Mr. Conlee stated to the room.
"Will do." Michael Farra responded. Edward responded by playing the intro to 'Goodbye Blue Sky', another song that Conlee recognized as being Pink Floyd. It caused him to smirk again as he left the room. The next room ahead was full of kids that Mr. Conlee actually liked, which was a first. They were considered to be the class nerds, or geeks, or whatever slang the kids these days used to describe smart, scholastically successful teens. So Mr. Conlee was a little bit surprised when he looked inside to see that they were playing the card game War, and seemingly having a great time doing it. Mary Saltman looked up and jumped slightly when she saw Mr. Conlee at the door, which prompted him to open it.
"Sorry, sorry. Didn't mean to startle you all." Mr. Conlee said.
"Hey Mr. Conlee." Douglas McTeer said, giving him a slight head nod. Anna Gwak, Patrick Kovalsky and Sarah Evans, along with Mary, filled out the rest of the cabin. They each gave their own short greetings. Mr. Conlee was relieved that there was at least one cabin where everyone seemed to be getting along and having a good time. The teacher leaned against the door frame, folding his arms over his chest.
"So, War huh?" Mr. Conlee asked. "I didn't know kids still played that."
"It's a time consumer, Mr. C." Anna stated, looking down at her pile of cards, obviously winning. The same couldn't be said for Patrick Kovalsky, who was forced to be a spectator for the rest of the game.
"Well you'll have to wrap it up soon. Only another half hour until we get there." The teacher said.
Sarah Evans, former cheerleader, leaned forward and reached around on the ground. Within about two seconds, Doug sprang into action, almost knocking over the tray table they were playing on. He grabbed a water bottle, presenting it to Sarah, who chuckled as she took it from him. Anna rolled her eyes.
"Smooth moves, casanever." Anna quipped, adding emphasis to the end of her made up word.
Doug quickly turned red, backing up into his seat and looking out the window. Conlee backed up into the hallway, starting to shut the door behind him.
"See you kids in a bit." He said, closing the door.
Conlee had one more room to check, the one that was directly across from him. Approaching the window on the door, he saw that Joseph Washington and Jessica Galvin were indeed making out, to the chagrin of Emily Trendell and Hiroshi Misaki. Mr. Conlee thought of himself as a considerate sort of guy, not one to laugh at the misfortune of kids, but the scene was just too much. Emily and Hiroshi didn't have many friends in the class, or any, and he doubted they talked to each other in there. That and Emily was the tallest girl in the class, easily a good 9 inches taller than Hiroshi. It was just an odd looking scenario, and Conlee didn't think he'd get anything out of them, so he just went back into his cabin.
As soon as he stepped in and closed the door, his cell phone started to ring. Conlee walked over to grab it off of the window ledge, taking a seat as he looked at who was calling. It gave him a slight tinge of paranoia, getting the call as soon as he walked back into the room, like someone was watching him and waiting. Nevertheless, he shook the feeling and answered his phone.
"Yeah? Yeah, I just checked, they're all in the car."
Mr. Conlee scoffed at the persistence in making sure that all the kids were alright. He knew that safety was paramount on these school trips, but it was getting a little ridiculous. But Principal Black was his boss, so he had to just comply and do as he was told.
"Everybody's okay. I can't believe the surprise that's in store for them. A weekend getaway to blow off some steam before graduation is a great surprise."
The big secret about the surprise was revealed to Conlee just yesterday. The school seemed like it was putting up a decent amount of money to give these kids a weekend to remember. No parents or guardians, but there would be rangers on the island just in case of trouble. That's what Conlee was told anyways. He still couldn't believe it, but who was he to question.
"So I guess I just see…hey, I think we're slowing down."
Conlee cut his thought off as he noticed that the scenery wasn't moving by as quickly as before. Just as the teacher was getting up, he noticed that there was a funny odor in the air.
"What's that? Pineapple…?"
Mr. Conlee was unable to finish that thought, as he felt his knees quickly go weak, and the rest of his body followed suit. He crashed down onto the floor, smacking his head on the window's ledge as he did and finding himself propped up against the wall, facing the door. His eyelids grew heavy and his vision blurry, but he was able to see a couple of people walking into the car, carrying what appeared to be guns. The last thing Mr. Conlee saw before blacking out was the masks that the people were wearing.