Chapter One: Brianna
Brianna wasn't really paying attention to her math teacher; she was reading a book under her desk. But she looked up when everyone started talking.
Mr. Denis wasn't standing at the front of the room anymore. When had he left? Bri could have sworn he'd been talking just a second ago.
She turned to Kate the girl sitting next to her.
"What happened?"
An expression of confusion danced across Kate's face.
"I'm…..not sure. Mr. Denis was just talking up there and he suddenly disappeared."
"What?"
"I don't know! He's gone! I was staring right at him, and suddenly he was, like, not there!"
Andrew, a boy sitting in the front row, got up and reached out to the place where Mr. Denis had been standing.
"Where did he go?" Andrew demanded, but no one was paying attention. People were talking and whispering and sending nervous glances around the room.
Andrew and his friend Fredrico were at the door now, opening it and peering out into the hallway. Some girl, Maria or something (Bri couldn't remember her name) got up and pushed him aside, stepping out into the empty hallway. Bri stood up, and followed the rest of the class to the doorway. The hallway was slowly filling with other students. Bri slid past a group of kids into the hallway. There was something eerie about the same hallway she'd passed through everyday for the past year, since she came to Coates Academy. The voices were hushed and slightly scared. No one was moving anywhere, people were just bunched together.
"Bri!" Bri jumped at the voice behind her.
"Taylor! You scared me!"
Taylor was a newbie at Coates Academy, having arrived just about three months ago. Brianna wasn't much better, she'd only been here a year, but she'd shown Taylor around those first days. The girls had become close, through conversations between classes, studying together, laughter and tears, but they also shared a secret.
Taylor looked like she might laugh at Bri, but was too caught up in the seriousness of the moment. She glanced down the hallway.
"What the heck is happening?" She asked.
"I don't know!" Bri looked around nervously.
"As far as I can tell all the teachers and counselors just disappeared," Taylor paused, "I asked some kids from different classes about it."
There was a scream from the down hallway.
Bri glanced at Taylor, and then they ducked into the nearest classroom.
Already in the room stood Caine Soren, Diana Ladris and Drake Merwin, the tree most dangerous and powerful members of the student body. The three faced away from Bri and Taylor, watching out the window as students slowly made their way out the doors into the schools well-groomed athletic fields.
Drake Merwin turned around first. Bri met his eyes, but was forced to turn away as they drilled holes strait trough her. He smiled, observing her inability to hold eye contact, which made Bri shudder slightly. Out of everyone at the whole school, Drake Merwin was probably the most dangerous and most definitely the creepiest.
Diana and Caine turned around. Though she wasn't close to any of the three, Bri still felt like she knew something about them. She didn't quite trust any of them, but she knew that they knew that she had it. The power. So did Taylor, Caine and Diana.
"What's going on?" Taylor asked, hoping Caine or Diana might know more than she and Bri did.
"All the teachers still disappeared." Caine said, in a self assured manor, as if he totally understood everything that was going on.
"So did all the adults, as far as we can tell" Diana confirmed, "We sent out some scouts to check the different floors, just to make sure."
Right on cue, Benno burst through the door.
Benno was a large, tall eighth grader. One of the school's bigger bullies. Of course, he worked for Caine. All the bullies seemed to.
"No adults on the third floor." He gasped loudly. He had obviously been running hard.
"Okay" Diana did some sort or mental calculation.
"We should send someone down for help at Perdido Beach, I mean, all the adults in the world couldn't have disappeared." She said.
"We don't need help!" Caine argued, "We can run things!"
Diana opened her mouth to disagree, but decided against it.
"I…I can call down to Perdido Beach" Bri pulled out her cell phone from her purse and flipped open the lid.
"Oh crap I haven't got service here." She looked up.
Caine went over to the teacher's phone attached to the wall next to the door. He put it to his ear.
"No dial tone..." He looked down confused.
Diana grabbed the phone from his limp fingers and dialed a number into it without listening for a dial tone. She held it up to her ear and listened for a while. It wasn't hard to tell she was in very strong denial of what she was experiencing.
"It's not…ringing…" She hung it back up on the wall.
Drake, who had been standing in the back the whole time, stepped forward. He went over to the row of five computers lined up against the side wall and turned one on.
"What are you doing?" Caine demanded.
"Email" Drake answered, sliding into the seat, "If we can't call people, we can at least email them. Maybe the phone line's just down or something."
Benno, still looking out the window, shuddered.
"Hey look! I think that's a teacher! Isn't that a teacher?"
Everyone in the room, including Taylor and Bri rushed to the window.
Diana was the first to speak.
"No, Benno, you idiot! That's not a teacher that's Eric!"
Eric was an extremely large six-foot-plus student. He was making his way through the fields towards the woods, flanked by a few of the lesser bullies who followed him around most of the time. Not that they were a challenge to Caine. None of the kids trudging across the field being Eric, Bri noticed had the power.
Disappointed, the six spread back out around the classroom. Drake returned to the computer, now on. He selected the internet icon, and clicked on it. Nothing happened. He clicked again. And again. And again.
"Internet's down." Drake mumbled.
"Some one go get Jack." Diana turned to Bri and Taylor. "You guys go get computer Jack and see if any adults are around."
Bri grabbed Taylor and rushed out the door, glad to leave the group of bullies, but afraid to without a reason.
Authors Note:
Thanks to everyone who reads this, I will update shortly. Please comment and tell me if you liked it or not...
~polymath78