by Willow Page Delp
It was cold.
Piper was the embodiment of cold-resistant, sleeping without covers on cool sheets as she sweat through her pajamas. She was always sweltering — tying her dust-colored hair into a ponytail as perspiration gathered on the nape of her neck, slashing off the sleeves of her school uniform, keeping the ceiling fan spinning twenty-four-seven — much to her roommate’s chagrin.
When Opal saw the fan on, she would grumble, retreat into an oversized hoodie, and bury herself in her blankets, like a tunneling animal. Their arrangement was built on the fraught compromise, temperature-wise, but the balance was never mutual agreement — something closer to a ceasefire.
But, this morning, even Piper had to admit it was cold.
Weather, she presumed — there must be some sort of freak storm, and with that thought, she slid down the ladder, making her way towards the window.
There was only one window in each of the girls’ dorms, and its window curtains were invariably a pale pink, matching the rug on the floor. A dainty, ballet-slipper pink — unlike the navy-blue curtains in the boys’ dorms. Unlike Opal, Piper loathed those window curtains — and, as usual, she yanked them aside, waiting for the sunlight to stream through the glass.
It was dark. The digital alarm clock blinked oh-six-five-four – precariously close to sounding off – but, as the minutes crept on, the morning was still pitch-black, the sky clogged with clouds. Piper could make out a thick blanket of white snow on the ground. It was like one of those optical illusion pictures, where you could see one thing or the other — black and white, in sharp contrast, with the lines swirling. Dizzying.
She turned off the fan.
***
Opal didn’t believe it, but Opal did not believe anything. She did not believe in ghosts, zombies, werewolves, or the black sky against the mounting snow. It was still falling, like a steady march — slow, but determined. Resilient.
“Some sort of practical joke,” Opal said, dismissively. She sat on the bottom bunk and swung her legs, her feet not-quite meeting the floor. “It’s April, after all. I checked the weather last night, and it’s supposed to be a sun-shower today.” Her head was tilted in a slight defiance, as if daring the sky to have the audacity to argue.
“What does it say now?” Piper asked, and Opal detached her phone from her charging cord, reading the screen with a growing confusion. She frowned. “WiFi’s down. Data isn’t working either.”
“Do you have cell service?”
“Let me try … No. Nothing.”
“Snow screws with, like, the power lines,” Piper said, pushing aside the anxiety building in her stomach.
“Yeah,” Opal said, bobbing her head. Piper chose to ignore the glitter of panic in her eyes, and sank down onto the bed next to her, pulling at the frayed strings of the sheets. They sat in silence for what seemed like hours — the alarm clock ticking, the time dragging on. Without the morning sunlight, time seemed to be an indefinite concept: an hour as long as a minute, a minute as long as an hour. Piper’s eyelids began fluttering to a close — until the sound of the loudspeaker in the hallway cut across the quiet, bleeding through the dorm room door.
“Classes are cancelled until further notice. Teachers will be unavailable.”
They both looked at each other. “No school,” Piper said, forcing a weak smile.
“We should get food,” Opal said.
***
The cafeteria was chaotic.
There were dozens of students in the room, pushing and pulling, the throng pulsing with desperation. As the dorms were all on the ground floor, it had been an uphill walk to the cafeteria, at the top of the school, and while climbing the spiral staircases, Piper hadn’t imagined anything like this.
The voices were hard to pick out individually, but she could make out a general gist from what she heard — a frenzied search for food, but most of all, treats— the ice-cream machine had already been broken, and the bags of assorted candies displayed on the shelves were gone in moments. It was somewhat unnerving, the bestial nature of it — like wild animals, fighting and snapping at each other.
Piper watched with horror, instinctively grabbing onto Opal’s hand to make sure she didn’t get trampled in the mob.
“We can probably get some fruit cups, or something,” Opal said. “We have a mini-fridge. Plus, everyone’s just grabbing the chocolate and stuff.”
There was something unsaid in her tone: her dismissive sneer, spoken with the same inflection she used when referring to her classmates. Piper wondered if she was the only person Opal liked – she was the only she ever seemed to want to spend time with.
They retrieved their rations and walked back, holding as many fruit cups as they could carry between the two of them. Opal’s mini-fridge, brought from home, was in-oft use for midnight snacks – as she was generally awake far later than the cafeteria closed – and they squeezed in the fruit cups.
Through the hallway door, they heard loud arguing. It was their hallmates – Lila and Daisy, roommates due to apparent cluelessness from the room assignment committee. Piper couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she assumed they were the same redundancies about one of them stealing the other’s clothes. Neither Piper nor Opal bothered remembering their last times: there was only one Lila and one Daisy in the school, after all, and they were both mundane enough that there was no idea to remember more than what was strictly necessary.
“How long are we gonna be stuck here, you think?” Piper asked. “People are at each other’s throats.”
“When Daisy kills Lila, and they have to call in the cops,” Opal replied dryly, holding her hands over her ears.
***
The snow, curiously, had kept falling. The sky shifted from blue to black, coloring like a bruise, but the white snow never changed. Food foraged from the cafeteria and the vending machine kept Piper and Opal from starvation, but leaving seemed out of the question.
The food had even seemed to refill, strangely enough – the cafeteria seemingly refused to empty. The salad bar was always full the next day, and there were always at least a few milk cartons and pre-wrapped sandwiches. Opal questioned it at first, but then, when the answer was nowhere to be found, she ate uncomplainingly.
The nurse’s office had been raided early on. Empty pill bottles littered the linoleum floor, and when Piper tried to retrieve her emergency inhaler, she discovered it had been stolen. Opal and Piper shared a bottle of Tylenol and a handful of cough drops between themselves, and menstrual products were communally owned by the girls, stored in their RA’s room.
Piper had not realized how old the school was, but as the days passed, the age began to show.
The Golding School for the Gifted had been run ragged by two centuries of inhabitation with little, and without the distraction of classes, it was increasingly evident. The floors creaked, the toilets clogged, and the wall clocks were either hours behind or hours ahead. It was more dilapidated than anyone had realized – and slowly, but surely, falling into shambles.
Piper and Opal’s hallmates had all become closer, playing card games and trading books to pass the endless stretch of time. Lila and Daisy were the one exception, it seemed – each of them liked the others, but both despised each other, and their endless bickering was the subject of much irritation from all in their proximity. Like their present situation, it became another thing that the students could not stand, but had to endure nonetheless.
***
Of course, things had to erupt.
The girls rarely left their dorms. Although the boys’ dorms had been a subject of tantalization – with no parental guidance, they could all go wherever they wanted – the opportunity had been somewhat underutilized, opposed to expectations. Romantic inclinations had been curbed by the school’s present nature: the pitiful amount of sunlight, the constant chill, and the way each day seemed to last forever. And of course, many girls had no interest in boys whatsoever. All in all, the girls’ dorms were highly concentrated, and it was doomed to reach a fever pitch.
It was morning when the shouting started – or, at least Piper thought so: it had become hard to tell. She and Opal were both waking up, yawning, when they heard the noise.
It was like thunder – loud, sudden, and foreboding. Piper half-remembered the rule of thunder she had heard as a child: count the number of seconds between the clap of thunder and the strike of lightning, and… something about the distance. It had been such a long time ago since she had thought about thunder and lightning. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard a storm.
Opal rolled out of bed, sliding her glasses on and walking into the hallway, her expression unreadable. Piper followed her. There was a draw to the noise – something different, for once. Dangerous, but exciting.
Lila was grabbing Daisy by the forearm and shouting at her. Daisy was fighting back – trying to wrangle herself from Lila’s grip, shouting back, but there was a distinct whimper of fear in her voice. Daisy was far smaller, and Lila’s biceps pulsed as she held on to the other girl.
It was obvious who had the upper hand – obvious to everyone watching the spectacle, as girls lined the hallway, watching the incident like a gladiator fight.
Lila punctuated her words, again and again, with “you stupid bitch!”. Cursing was nothing, but the way she pronounced bitch felt dramatic. She wasn’t calling her the word as an insult, it seemed, but she genuinely believed that Daisy was a dog: a subhuman creature, for who asshole or whore would not suffice.
After another round of the spat insults, things shifted. Lila picked Daisy up – and, while she was kicking and screaming, the girls watched, in perplexed horror. Lila marched towards the stairs – eerily methodical, as if it had been premeditated.
She walked up a flight of stairs. The window was just barely cracked open, and, with one hand, she wrenched it entirely open. And she threw Daisy out.
She threw Daisy out. She threw Daisy out.
Offhandedly, Piper thought about how they were both fourteen.
Later, Opal and Piper could not recall what had happened in that moment, or how anyone else had reacted. There was no when Lila had thrown Daisy out of the window, into a bed of snow, there was a before and after. It was their own equivalent of BCE – Before Daisy. It was a storm of chaos, lightning splitting the dorms.
It was Opal, staring into Piper’s wide eyes and grabbing her hand, tighter than she had grabbed anything else. “We need to go,” she said, in a low voice, bringing her into their dorm room.
“Go?” Piper asked. Every method of escape had been tried – besides the windows. They were all either unbreakable plexiglass or too high off the ground to be safely tested. Daisy had become the first.
Opal slammed the door shut. “Barricade the door,” she said, flicking her hand towards the back door. Piper dragged the dresser in front of the door, effectively locking it. It wasn’t the time for questions. Opal was staring intently at the floor.
“I found this the other day, when you were looking for your inhaler,” she said, “It didn’t seem safe – no, it’s not safe. But I don’t want to get thrown out of a fucking window, so.”
Opal yanked the pink carpet aside, to unveil a patch of birch-colored wood – lighter than the rest of the floor’s deep brown. She stomped on it, with one foot, and the planks collapsed, unveiling a misshapen hole in the ground, no more than a few feet wide. Piper gasped, but Opal simply picked up an empty plastic water bottle from the trash, and threw it into the hole.
There was a long drop to the bottom, and an eventual plunk.
“Escape,” Opal said.
Piper stared at her. “Jesus, Opal, I have so many questions –,”
“But you have so few options,” Opal said, cutting her off. “Pack a bag, Pipes. I’ll pack mine. We’re gonna need supplies.”
Pipes. Opal couldn’t remember the last time she had heard Opal – or anyone – call her that.
Minutes passed – of quiet, hurried packing. For once, the time was precise – Piper felt every single second pass as she packed, her heart hammering in her chest. It was best not to think about the future, she presumed, just to think about the now, of trying to cram in as many pre-wrapped sandwiches in her zippered backpack pockets, to try to fold clothing to make it as small as possible, to delay the possibility that they would both die in the Golding School of the Gifted.
“Ready?” Piper asked. Opal nodded.
And so, they jumped together, into the dark.
© Willow Page Delp
Willow Page Delp (they/them) is a writer, reader, book reviewer, and disability advocate. They can be found at @wxddo on Instagram.
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