Chapter LIII:

"And Holy Hell Breaks Loose"

Elliott was nervous. She was nervous because everyone else on campus seemed to be nervous. Everyone was twitchy and short tempered. Something was brewing, she knew, but she had no idea what. And neither did anyone else. The good feeling between the cliques that Jimmy had secured only a few days earlier had now completely evaporated, and the hostility had returned. The Greasers and the Preps hated each other more than ever. The Jocks were giving the Nerds a harder time than usual. It had only been yesterday when Jimmy had been expelled, and already everything was spiralling down.

Something was getting ready to kick off. Something big.

Elliott stayed in her room, watching out of the window. She was most certainly not going to risk her neck out there today. It was like her first day again; watching the other students torturing each other from the safety of her dorm room. Although on her first day she hadn't been able to do it for very long seeing as Mrs Peabody was on constant patrol. Mrs Peabody wasn't around today. In fact, none of the faculty were around. There were no Prefects patrolling the grounds and classes had been cancelled. These things only added to the tense atmosphere in Bullworth Academy.

Was Gary going to make his move today? He had seemed unusually serene yesterday taking that Jimmy had been expelled. She had expected him to be bouncing all over the place, but he was just normal. Well, whatever passed as normal for Gary anyway. Their brief talk had upset her a little, but even though she had said goodbye to him she knew she was going to see him at least once more before all this was over.

Elliott looked away from the window and towards her current hiding place for the pregnancy test. She had moved it around about five or six times, terrified of it being discovered. Currently it was in one of her shoes in the closet. She couldn't put it off any longer. This wasn't going to go away. She sighed, and then moved to the closet.

'You can do this,' she muttered, reaching into the closet for the brown bag that contained the test. 'You're going to do it and it's going to be negative. Nothing to worry about. You'll laugh because you were so worried.'

Her spoken reassurances to herself did little to help, but she forced herself to move to the bathroom anyway. The dorm was empty apart from a few girls downstairs so she didn't have to worry about being interrupted. She quickly shut herself up in one of the toilet cubicles and took the box out of the bag. She turned it over and quickly read the instructions on the back.

'Pee and wait a minute.' She murmured. 'Sounds simple.'

Elliott readied herself, staring at the box for a moment. It would have been nice to have someone with her, but there was no way she could go get Beatrice now and tell her that she had lied about taking it. Although it would be funny if it turned out she was pregnant after she had said she wasn't…

No, that wouldn't be funny at all.

With a shaky exhale, Elliot began to open the box, but was stopped by a shrill scream coming from downstairs.

'Boys!' one of the girls squealed.

'That's right, ladies!' Johnny Vincent's voice rang out. 'This is Johnny Vincent's dorm now!'

Lots of squealing and banging followed, mingled with male laughter. Elliott stuffed the box into her pocket and hurried out of the bathroom, running along the corridor to the top of the stairs. She peered over to see Hal and Peanut laughing crazily, covering the wall with green spray paint.

'Mark this place!' Johnny ordered. 'This is our dorm now! Make sure everyone knows it!'

Elliott hurried back along to her room. What the hell were they thinking? Where the hell were the Prefects? Where was Mrs Peabody? There was no way she was risking going past them to go outside, but they would more than likely make their way upstairs sooner or later and she didn't want to be hiding up here when they did. Yelling from outside caught her attention and she ran to the window, clumsily pushing the blinds aside to see out. She stared in disbelief at what she was witnessing.

The whole campus looked like a war zone. Everyone was fighting. The girls were fleeing their dorm, dodging firecrackers and stink bombs. All the cliques were out there and were beating the crap out of each other. It was absolute carnage.

Was this what Gary had wanted? To get everyone fighting? Surely not. What on Earth would he achieve by getting everyone to fight?

'Peanut, go see if anyone's upstairs!' Johnny ordered. 'This is our place now, everyone needs to know that!'

'Sure, Johnny!' Peanut replied keenly.

Elliott ran for the door. She glanced both ways down the corridor. She could try running past the Greasers, but she knew from experience that they were pretty quick. She knew they wouldn't beat her up, but still she didn't want to get in their way. She could hear Peanut coming up the stairs, so she ran for the door that led up to the attic. She hurried across the musty attic to the window. She looked down and felt nauseated by the height, but the sound of Peanut climbing the stairs to the attic got her moving. She clumsily climbed out of the window and down the wooden trellis.

Elliott didn't feel much safer out of the girl's dorm. In fact, she felt even more anxious than trapped inside with three psycho Greasers. At least in there she didn't have much of a chance of being hit by stray fists or flying firecrackers. The sensible thing was to get as far away from the school as possible, so she ducked her head and ran towards the gates.

She felt like she was in some war movie. Various things soared over her head as she ran; stones, rocks, bricks, balls, anything that could inflict some sort of damage. She risked a quick glance up and saw three Nerds beating down Kirby Olsen with yardsticks. She was too busy watching them to notice that the school gates were currently locked, so she slammed right into them and landed on her backside.

'What the…?' she started, and then saw the heavy chains tangled around the gates. Elliott got to her feet and shook them, but there was no way they were going to open until the chains were off. She pulled the bars, but that did nothing to aid her. The sound of sirens filled the air. It hadn't taken long for the police to catch wind of what was happening.

At the gate she was just another target. She realised that when a brick missed her head by inches, and instead sailed through the bars and into the road outside. She looked around wildly for any decent hiding place, and she settled on the school. She looked worriedly at the dozens of brawling students between her and the building and took a deep breath before breaking into a sprint.

'Elliott!' a nasal voice yelled. 'Elliott! Come give us a hand!'

She looked around in bewilderment to see the three Nerds who had been beating Kirby now struggling to drag him to a nearby bin. She hesitated, registering the peculiar scene, before carrying on across the campus, dodging flying fists and kicks. She ran up the steps and burst through the doors, slamming them behind her.

The building was dark and quiet. The only sound was of the brawling students outside, but now they all sounded distant and ghostly. Elliott stayed where she was, leaning against the door and breathing heavily.

What the hell was that? She had never seen so many people go completely insane so quickly. She had known something was going to happen but on this scale… It was absolute mayhem out there. Someone was going to wind up dead at this rate. There was no way Gary could have started a riot on this scale; she refused to believe it. No one could. The only way she could explain what was happening out there was simply just that everyone was insane. Bullworth Academy: School For The Downright Psychotic. Sounded about right.

A thump from upstairs caught her attention and she glanced up. It seemed to have come from the Principal's office. Crabblesnitch must be here, he was always here. Surely he would be able to calm everyone down? Had he even noticed? It was likely that he hadn't as he didn't seem to notice the amount of bullying that went on from day to day.

There was another thump, and Elliott ran towards the stairs, still out of breath from her sprint into the building. She ran into the reception, expecting to see Miss Danvers, but it was deserted.

'Hello?' she called. 'Is there anyone in here?'

No answer. She tentatively moved towards the door of Crabblesnitch's office. She knew it was prohibited for anyone to go inside without permission, but these were special circumstances. She reached out for the handle.

'Well, you were the last person I expected to show up.'

Elliott whirled around to see Gary standing there. His eyes were wide and a huge grin was plastered on his face. He looked completely wild. Upon seeing him she knew that he was behind the riot outside, and that everything was going to way he wanted it to.

'What the hell is going on, Gary?' she demanded angrily. 'It's chaos out there!'

Gary giggled. He sounded manic. 'I know! Isn't it great?'

She stared at him. 'Are you kidding me? Those kids are going to kill each other out there!'

'Who is that?' Crabblesnitch's voice boomed from his office. 'Get in here and untie me at once!'

Elliott's eyebrows shot up. 'You tied up Crabblesnitch?' she cried.

Gary giggled again. 'It's hilarious, isn't it?' He waved a hand to her and began to dash away, moving in quick jerky movements. 'Follow me.'

'Gary!' Elliott yelled after him. 'Ga-' She sighed and hurried after him. Her head felt fuzzy.

Gary was quickly moving along the corridor and she knew he was headed for the History room. She caught up with him and grabbed the back of his sweater.

'Stop!' she ordered. 'Just… What the hell are you doing? Are you completely out of your mind?'

'It's a possibility,' he replied, still grinning. 'But you must be just as out of your mind for waiting until now to ask me that. Now come on, you don't want to miss this-' He started away again but she pulled him back.

'You have to stop this before it really gets out of hand,' she told him. 'This is… Jesus Christ what the hell are you thinking? Is this what you wanted? All this time you just wanted a school wide riot?'

He shook his head. His eyes seemed glazed over. 'No, no… it's much more than that, Elliott.' He grabbed her arms. 'They're mine now. All of those brainless morons are right where they're supposed to be. Now all I need is for Jimmy to show up and-'

'Jimmy?' Elliott yelled. 'Jimmy will kill you!'

Gary just shook his head and pulled her towards the History room. 'Seriously, you'll want to see this-'

She tried to pull away from him. 'Get off me! You're insane!'

He gripped her arms tightly. 'Come on, Elle, play the game!'

She struggled with him, trying to pry his hands off her arms. Finally she managed to shove him back and she backed away, shaking her head.

'You're a freak!' she yelled. 'I can't believe I…'

Elliott trailed off, looking at Gary. His grin had gone and he was frowning at something on the floor. She felt a heavy, sick feeling in her stomach and followed his gaze. Between them, on the floor, lay the box containing the pregnancy test that had fallen out of her pocket during the struggle. Quickly, Elliott snatched it up. Gary stared at her silently.

'It's not mine,' Elliott said. 'It's… I…' She stopped. 'I thought I might have been but I…'

He continued to stare at her, saying nothing.

Elliott licked her lips nervously and rubbed her forehead. 'It's not…' She couldn't think up of a good lie, and it was frustrating because she had always been good with lying on the spot. She sighed heavily. 'Call this off, Gary. Please.'

He glanced to the History room beside him, taking in a deep breath. 'In there.' He said in a quiet voice. 'We can talk.'

Elliott breathed out in relief and nodded. 'Okay.'

Gary held open the door for him and she went inside. She turned to speak to him, just to see the door slam behind her. Her eyes widened and she moved to it, peering out of the small window. She watched in disbelief as Gary locked the door from the other side.

'Gary!' she yelled. 'What the hell? Open the door!'

He looked at her through the glass. 'I'll be back.' He told her, and then disappeared out of sight.

Elliott pounded on the door, kicking it angrily. 'Gary you bastard!' she yelled. 'Open the door! Open the fucking door!'

She rattled the handle but the door wouldn't budge. She strained to see along the corridor through the window, but she couldn't see around the corner. She kicked the door one last time and leaned against it. A moment later and she heard the thump of the entrance doors opening, followed by yelling. She tried to see out of the little window and was just about to bang on it again when the intercom system crackled into life.

'Your attention please!' Gary's voice cried over the speakers. 'Jimmy is complete human trash!'

Elliott kicked the door angrily. 'Bastard! She yelled, before whirling around and looking for another escape route. She ran to the window and hauled it open.