Chapter Four: Fissures
As Meg headed down the stairs, she pulled out her lunch and hastily ate her sandwiches before sipping on her juice, trying to finish her food in the short amount of time she had left.
By the time she finished, she'd made it to class and the bell was about to ring. After making her way inside, she tossed her lung bag in the trashcan and turned to head to her desk, but she halted in the doorway since there was a ton of garbage on it.
Connie, who was leaning against the wall, smiled.
"I figured you would have been sent home," she said sweetly. "Since you weren't, we decided to give you a welcome back present."
Keeping her face blank, Meg neutrally began picking the garbage up and told herself that it wouldn't be this way forever, but the moment she took her eyes off the students who were sniggering all over the room, someone dumped an entire wastebasket over her head.
Meg squeaked, shoulders stiffening as she was covered in garbage.
Shivering a little, she unballed her fists and jerked the trashcan off of her head, and after shaking her hat and her hair free of the filth that had been dumped onto it, she turned around to see one of her classmates smirking at her.
"Why?" she asked, squatting down and picking up the garbage around her.
"What do you mean, why?" he asked innocently, blinking at her in mock surprise. "You're the trashcan now because I said so! Therefore I can throw garbage on you whenever I want, and you can't complain about it! Hey everyone, from now on, Meg Griffin is the classroom garbage so feel free to use her!"
Meg grit her teeth and angrily continued picking everything up, then swept the crud off her desk into the bin.
When she picked the wastebasket up and tried to carry it over to its usual spot, someone tripped her, and being the klutz that she was, she fell flat on her face and the trash went the flying out of her hands.
Unfortunately, the bin hit the teacher in the face just as he walked into the room.
"Oh, no!" Meg whispered, eyes widening in horror. "M... Mr. Smith! I'm so sorry!"
"You'd dare to do something so violent?" the man asked in a low voice, plucking a banana peel off his blazer and glaring from behind his glasses. "Starting from today, you're going to be cleaning the bathrooms for a month! And since you obviously have no respect for your teachers OR this school, you can go get started."
"Huh?" Meg asked. "What about the rest of class?"
"You can take home what we do for the rest of the day as added homework," he sniffed, curling his lip. "Now, go."
Swallowing when the muffled laughter kicked up again, Meg git to her feet and headed for the door without another word, head lowered.
After grabbing the cleaning supplies from the main office and heading for the bathrooms, she busied herself.
The next two hours were spent cleaning in total silence, but even though time was passing her by, Meg's bitter mood refused to lessen up at all. By the time she was almost finished, the final bell had long-since rang. She finally started mopping up the floors with a sigh, since it was the last thing she needed to do before she could leave, but just as she was going over the restroom floor with the wax, Connie and two other girls walked in.
"Meg... we're sorry," Connie said with a soft expression, catching her completely off guard. "It must have been tough cleaning all five of the school's female restrooms by yourself, so we decided to come help you with the rest of it."
"Um, thanks," Meg murmured, blinking in surprise, "but I've almost finished all of them."
"Is that so?" Connie asked, grabbing the mop clean out of her hands and intentionally kicking the water bucket over. "Oopsies!"
Meg's mind immediately started screaming at her in silent rage, scolding her for letting down her guard again.
This girl was, after all, the same one who'd stuck a razor in her hand that morning and had laughed while her friends had thrown her through a glass window.
"Please give me the mop," Meg stammered, stepping forward and holding out her hand.
"Shut up!" one of the girls sneered, shoving her. "Fat ass!"
Meg stumbled and unexpectedly slipped on the floor, and the next thing she knew, she'd cracked her head against the tile, almost knocking herself out.
Connie laughed when the two girls dragged her into a bathroom stall by her arms; then they ran out and slammed the door shut. The sound of something scraping against the wood caught her attention.
Dazed and seeing stars, Meg pushed on the stall door to find that it was jammed.
"Hey!" she cried, eyes widening as common sense came back to her. "H-hey! Let me out!"
"Since you don't want to leave school," Connie taunted from the other side, "you can spend the night in here!"
"Open the door!" Meg shouted, pounding on the door with both fists. "Let me out of here, Connie!"
"Oh, yeah, and supposedly there's a ghost in this part of the school," the blonde added snidely. "If you're lucky you'll be able to see her! Either way, I hope you enjoy sleeping in here! Have a good night, Meg!"
The sound of laughter and a closing door followed her words; then there was the click of a lock.
"Come back here and open the door right now!" Meg screeched. "Seriously!"
Not long after that, the lights unexpectedly went out, casting the windowless bathroom in total darkness. Meg flinched and immediately huddled against the toilet.
"I can't see anything," she whispered, stretching her arms out and touching the stall door. "Not even my arms."
Trying to figure out how to get out of the bathroom that didn't involve crawling on the floor and soaking herself in dirty water, she felt around for the toilet before climbing on top of it. Wobbling slightly, she gripped the edge of the bathroom stall and with careful movements, hauled herself up and slipped over to the other side.
She knew she'd gone the right way when she heard the sound of water under her shoes.
Holding her arms out, she cautiously made her way towards the wall and felt around for the bathroom door; when she touched the handle, she sighed in relief... but that relief was extremely fleeting, because the handle refused to budge when she attempted to turn the knob.
Meg pulled and struggled until it hit her.
They'd locked her in.
She kicked the door in frustration before she made her way over to the sinks and leaned against the wall.
Being careful to avoid the water around her, she slid down to the floor and buried her face in her knees, completely drained of energy. As she sat there, a scratching noise suddenly echoed through the bathroom from the direction of the door.
Meg's blood froze and she jumped before looking around with large eyes, heart practically flying through the roof: she didn't want to admit it to herself, but Connie had really rattled her nerves with her claim of a ghost lurking around the school.
She wasn't exactly a paranormal nut-case, but she had gone through enough inexplicable weirdness to have a firm belief in spirits and ghost-related things. There had been a few times when she had dreamed she'd seen Death himself. They'd been some very bizarre dreams indeed, but those particular experiences... real or not... had made her very jumpy when it came to paranormal activity.
Meg's heart leapt into her throat and she held her breath when a rattling noise filled the bathroom.
She felt goosebumps rising on her arms and neck when the rattling increased, but when the door slowly creaked open and a beam of light fell across her when, Meg's breath hitched in terror.
A silhouette with disheveled hair slowly peered into the black and tilted its head to the side in an odd manner; the only thing she could see in the entire form were two large eyes that stared directly at her.
Then the figure raised its arms.
Meg went nuts.
"NOOOOOOO!" she screeched, jerking her hat down over her eyes with both hands. "NO! NO, NO, NO! GO AWAY!"
"Merciful heavens!" the silhouette shrieked, jumping nearly a foot in the air. "Dear Lord... Meg Griffin, is that you sitting against the wall over there?!"
That voice... she knew that voice.
"N-n-n-nurse Anna?!" Meg stammered, heart thudding violently. "Oh, my God... you scared me to death!"
"I think it's the other way around, kiddo," the woman sighed, taking a deep breath of relief before letting it out and shaking her head. "I heard some weird noises coming from the bathroom and came to look around a little, but I wasn't expecting to hear you scream like that! What on earth are you doing in here?""
"I got locked in," Meg explained, feeling thoroughly confused. "I thought everyone had gone home."
"Nope," the woman laughed, shaking her head. "Dear Lord, you sure are lucky I found you..."
Getting to her feet and grabbing her backpack off the sink-inlaid counter, Meg stepped around the puddles of water and walked into the hall. The blonde woman looked at the mess on the bathroom floor, then rolled her eyes and shut the door. Pulling a set of keys out of her pocket, she locked it with a sigh.
"What about the mess?" Meg asked, making the woman chuckle. "Is it okay to leave it there?"
"We have janitors for a reason," Anna explained, giving her a half-lidded look. "Someone will clean it. You just head home."
"Okay... still, thanks," she sighed, giving the woman a small smile. "I'm going now."
Little did meg know that on the counter where her bag had been was her diary.
In the end, however, it wouldn't matter... because that night is when it happened.
The incident that changed things forever.