Time-Lost High

Rick McCauley and Harry Strauss stared goggle-eyed through the window outside the boy’s lavatory next to the gym. The familiar view of parking lot and athletic fields had disappeared. Replacing it was a seacoast, with a jungled section of land nearby. Even odder, the drizzly weather they’d been scrimmaging in minutes earlier down at the football field had become a cloudless, sunny day. Mystified, they turned to look at each other.

“Dude,” Rick whispered, “double-you tee eff?”

Harry, eyes wide in his dark face and mouth agape, could only shake his head in astonishment. “I have no idea,” he said. “Like, none at all.”

“Where’s the field?” Rick gestured at the bizarre scene. “The team? My car! Where’s my car? Where’s the lot? What happened?”

“No clue.” Harry stripped off his uniform and began dressing. “Let’s go check it out.”

“Um... yeah,” said Rick, moving slowly away from the window, mesmerized by the impossibility of what he was seeing. At last he tore his gaze away. After pulling on his school clothes he followed Harry toward the door. His stomach wanted to rise, as though he was at the top of a roller coaster hill starting down.

No one was in the hallway outside the gym. “Hey, hey!” Rick yelled. His voice echoed down the corridor.

“Annnnybody?” Harry shouted.

Rick grabbed his arm. “The office... let’s go to the office.”

“You have your phone?”

“Yeah.” Rick tried calling his mother at home. “No service,” he said to Harry, who was tapping on his own device.

“Same thing here,” Harry said. “No bars. Even 911 won’t work, I just tried it.”

They stared at each other for several seconds. Harry said, “Office.”

“Right.” They ran through the halls. Rick was beginning to feel frightened, but he wasn’t ready to admit it.

* * *

Of Fairfield High’s 1457 students and 192 staff, including teachers, paraprofessionals, secretaries and custodians, 19 adults and 148 students were affected by the Event, which occurred at 3:28 pm on June 18th.

By 3:00 that afternoon, most of the school’s teachers and students had left for the day except those involved in sports, rehearsing for the Drama Club’s upcoming play, or working in the shop.

Forty-two students and three coaches were outside on the football field and the tennis courts. It took a while before anyone in the school building realized they were gone. Harry and Rick were among the first.

* * *

Fairfield High’s office was deserted, but outside through the glass doors Rick and Harry saw several dozen students and teachers standing around in small groups, pointing and staring at the altered landscape. They hustled outside to find people conversing among themselves in hushed tones ranging from fearful to astounded to angry.

The boys soon learned that no one knew what had happened.

Harry said, “Dude, you want to take a walk around the side? See what the dealio is?”

“Um, yeah, I guess so.”

They slowly made their way around the building. The view remained the same on all sides: water, jungle, sky. At the back of the building they saw a knot of shop students exchanging incredulous remarks. Wes Yang was one.

Rick lifted a hand to wave at him and Wes waved back but said nothing.

Harry said, “You know him? Kind of a nerd, isn’t he?”

“He’s okay. I was just talking to him a little while ago.” Harry gave him a questioning look but Rick didn’t elaborate. Passing by the shop group, they soon discovered that the school sat in a huge circle three or four hundred feet in diameter. A chunk of the building on the western side was... gone, cut off as though some giant hand had taken a razor blade and sliced through it on an arc. Their path that way was blocked by what was left of it, so they turned around and went the other way. Most of the rest of Fairfield High seemed to be intact. To the northeast and east the parking lots were untouched, unlike the lower ones. The upper athletic field to the south was still present, but the one beyond that, the lower field, where the scrimmage had been taking place, was gone. Further to the northeast and northwest were segments of nearby roads. Beyond the road to the northeast in front of the school was one whole house, and a partial one.

Past the circular boundary was a completely unfamiliar landscape.

“Man, all that water,” said Harry. “Is it a lake? An ocean?”

“I dunno.”

“Where’d it come from?”

“I dunno!”

Water, jungle, sky.

Nothing else.

Rick, walking with his mouth hanging open, could barely take it in. At his side, Harry murmured, “This is like so messed up.”

Between one step and the next, Rick had a sensation of stepping down, and stumbled; he looked back but there was no dip in the ground or depression.

What the hell was that?

Around the front of the building they spotted a knot of kids about twenty feet away, talking excitedly outside the door leading to the auditorium, and he forgot about the odd feeling. Rick recognized most of them and remembered that they were working on Evita for the upcoming production.

“Hey, Latoya!” Harry called. He and Latoya Lennox had dated a few times, not seriously, before Harry tumbled to the fact that she was more interested in his status than she was in him as a person. He gradually stopped asking her out on solo dates and to group gatherings. They remained friendly in a guarded way.

Rick knew all this because Harry had told him, but he noticed that Latoya’s eyes lit up when she saw him. “Hi, Harry,” she said. “Rick.”

“Hey, Toy,” Rick said. She was undeniably cute: tall, with a wide mouth and high cheekbones. Striking, Rick would have said. From what Harry had said, though, she was a drama queen. Guess that’s a good thing if you want to be an actress. In any case, he’d never heard of her dating a white dude. Besides Harry, there were only a three or four other black kids in the school.

“Do you guys have any idea what’s happening?”

Harry said, “Not a clue, girl.” The other actors clustered around the three, talking all at once.

“Jeanine here says she saw a monster,” one of the actors said. He sounded dubious. Jeanine, who looked to be about 14, nodded. Her face, Harry saw, was very pale.

“It was frigging jigunda,” she said. “Like the biggest bat you ever saw.”

She isn’t making this up, Rick thought, watching her wring her hands. She’s flipping out. What is going on?

Harry said, “We just had a walk around the building, what’s left of it. The language lab and Mr. Farrell’s room on the second floor above it have been sliced off by... the, whatever.” He gestured. “The thing. It’s a big circle, all around the building... except for the cut off part.”

“What do you mean?” asked Ted Wilmot.

“The cut off part. Part of the building is gone,” said Harry. “Hey, Toy, can I talk to you a sec?”

“Uh, ogay.” They walked away a few yards.

“Come on,” Ted said. “What’s all that supposed to mean, Rick?”

Rick shrugged. “Dude, I don’t know,” he said to Ted. “It was outside the circle, I guess.”

Ted spread his hands. “The circle again. Circle of what?”

“Ted, man, what can I tell you? Inside a circle, everything is here. The building, part of the parking lot. Outside, it... it’s that.” He gestured again, to their bizarre surroundings. “That’s all I know. Harry and me, we were down on the field for football practice, and we came up to the building to take a whiz. Then, thud.” He shrugged again.

Ted looked around as if to an unseen audience. “Thud?” he repeated, his face screwed up in disbelief.

“Look, Wilmot, give me a break here.”

“What about that thing I saw?” Jeanine demanded.

Rick shrugged a shoulder. “Shout if you see it again, I guess. If it’s as big as you say, it’ll show up soon. Come on, Harry.” He started walking away. Harry said something else to Latoya, then followed him.

“Where we goin’?” he asked.

“I don’t know, just away from here. Let’s find some teachers to talk to.”

“Yeah, I don’t know if they’re gonna know any more than—” A piercing shriek cut through the air behind them, from the student actors.

They turned, and immediately saw the cause of the panicky cry without having to ask. It wheeled in the air above the school, an enormous bat-winged horror bigger than two automobiles, with a long crested skull and a beak just as long but filled with teeth. It was covered with a thin layer of pinkish feathery down, like a baby bird.

“That’s it!” came another shout from Jeanine. “That’s what I saw before!”

“What is it? What is it?” one of the actors demanded of Miss Tolland, who could only shake her head in mute amazement.

Rick’s first thought was, Sacred snot! She wasn’t exaggerating. His second was, in mute reply to the actor, It’s a goddam pteranodon!

His third was, It can’t be. I must be seeing things.

But if he was, so was everyone else. They pointed at the animal and whispered comments as it circled above them, barely flapping its wings. Riding the thermal air currents, Rick supposed, like a hawk or a vulture. It made no sound, but gazed with baleful yellow eyes at the group of people clustered on the ground. It swooped lower and they scattered, making for the building.

In later days—which were earlier days—Rick occasionally wondered how different his life would have been if the football team had been scrimmaging on the lower field. Or if they hadn’t been scrimmaging at all, given the weather.

At 2:20 that afternoon the bell rang signaling the end of classes for the day. On his way from his assigned locker to the gym to change for practice, Rick heard raised voices coming from a cross corridor ahead of him. One of the voices belonged to someone he knew: Wes Yang. They had gone to grade school together. The other voice, Rick saw, was that of Fred Trezzi, who was something of a bully.

Rick hated bullies. He’d been bullied himself during his freshman year by older kids who thought his love of dinosaurs was stupid. But after he put on a few inches and pounds, and started going out for football, the bullying stopped.

Wes remained the weedy kid he’d always been, though. He still got picked on.

Rick turned down the corridor. Ahead, Trezzi had Wes up against a bank of lockers. As Rick watched, he knocked Wes’s books to the floor.

Without saying anything Rick walked by and casually body-checked Trezzi.

“Oh, hey, sorry, man,” he said coldly, glaring at the other boy. Trezzi opened his mouth but Rick leaned forward. “What.”

Trezzi said something under his breath and walked away.

“Thanks,” said Wes, gathering up his books. His face was red with shame and rage.

“No worries.” Rick continued on toward the locker room without waiting for Wes to say more.

Rick thought about it later, following the Event.

There other things besides that, of course. If Joe Halas, the Flying Tigers’ free safety, hadn’t stepped on Rick’s water bottle, for example; or if Rick had stayed home that morning because of his hay fever. But Joe had stepped on it, and despite his runny nose Rick hadn’t stayed home, and the threatened thunder storm didn’t materialize—just a drizzle, not enough to halt practice. The sun broke through after a few minutes anyway.

Joe squashed the water bottle five minutes or so before Rick was due to take his afternoon allergy pill at 3:30, so he asked Coach Samuelson for a time out. Besides, he had to take a leak. Harry, one of the defensive ends, also needed the lav. The two boys, both seniors, trotted up the rise to Fairfield High School’s main building.

“You think we’ll take Warde this weekend?” Harry asked as they jogged into the building.

“Dunno,” Rick said. His allergy pills rattled in their plastic container. “If we can keep Ron Gansere from scoring we’ll stand a chance.” Gansere, tight end for the Warde team, was destined for a pro career. Even rival teams like the Tigers agreed about that.

Their voices echoed in the hall as they entered the school and clumped down the corridor to the boys’ rest room. Harry went inside while Rick paused at the water fountain to take his pill.

Thud. The bottom of Rick’s feet tingled.

He looked around. What was that?

Harry came out of the lav brushing water from his close-cropped hair. “You feel something just then?” he asked, frowning.

“Yeah, something. Don’t know what, though.”

The boys stared at each other. “Let’s go take a look around,” Harry said.

“I’m down with that.”

Outside in the hallway, the overhead lights went dark. They looked at each other again.

“Check it out, yo,” said Rick, bouncing on his toes. “ Power’s off.”

Harry glanced outside and grabbed Rick’s arm. “Wait.”

* * *

In the school auditorium, the rehearsal for Evita wasn’t going well. Latoya Lennox, considered by all (especially herself, in her rare introspective moments) to be the best singer in school, had the lead role. With a bit of makeup she made a fine Eva Perón.

Rehearsals usually went more smoothly, and Latoya was particularly frustrated that this one wasn’t, because she was using her phone to record it for her grandmother, Patrice, who was ailing and lived in a group home. They didn’t get to see other often, and Latoya knew her beloved Gramma loved to hear her granddaughter’s singing. But that was part of the problem.

Having vocal chops was one thing, but having the right co-star was another... and that Latoya didn’t have. Most of the other performers were decent—she knew all of them, had been on stage with them in eight or nine plays since their sophomore year. The problem was that Toby Carter, who had been cast as Agustín Magaldi, the singer who brought Eva to Buenos Aires, simply wasn’t right for the role. Every time he and Latoya shared the stage she could not help getting angry with him.

Toby’s timing was decent, and he could act reasonably well—but his singing voice, a weak tenor, simply wasn’t up to the part’s requirements. Before the rehearsal Latoya had sought out Marie Tolland, the teacher directing the play, to complain about him, but Miss Tolland hadn’t been supportive.

“I’m sorry, Latoya, but he’s what we have,” said the art teacher, not bothering to look up from her clipboard. “Next time find me a better singer and convince him to audition. Meanwhile, make it work, hmm?”

Latoya’s outrage propelled her through the rehearsal and added spice to her performance—even she knew that, despite her dissatisfaction. When she growled out one of her lines in a nastier tone than usual, she caught Alex Schroeder grinning at her from the orchestra pit. He sat behind his drum kit, idly twirling his sticks although Miss Tolland asked him several times not to do that because it distracted the actors. Latoya almost smiled back at him but refused to drop out of character. Instead she simply looked down her nose at him, eyebrows arched. His grin grew broader.

She and Alex played in a popular student hip-hop band, Foxhole, and had shared a stage many times. They had musical chemistry, she knew; when he was in the pit it came through in the school production. In fact, they had a Foxhole practice later that afternoon at his house over near the First Congregationalist Church. Latoya might have recorded some of that for her Gramma, but Patrice didn’t much like rock music. Show tunes were her jam.

“Let’s run through that again,” Miss Tolland said from her seat in the front row. “Toby, please pick up your cue a little faster, ‘kay? And try to project more fully.”

He nodded once. The lights went out. Voices rose in protest and irritation, and only Latoya noticed the brief tremor in the floor.

“That’s not me!” Ted Wilmot called from his position at the light board. Latoya heard him clicking switches, and saw the little work light on his baseball cap dance as he moved around. “I’m dead here, too.”

Someone on stage, Latoya couldn’t tell who, swore.

“Crap,” said Toby. “Now what?”

“Relax, everyone,” said Miss Tolland. “If it’s anything major the school’s generator will kick in.”

Moments later the lights flickered, died, flickered again more strongly, and came on steady. “Well,” said Miss Tolland. “You see? Power’s back.” They heard the deep rumble of the generator running in the basement.

A girl screamed in the hallway outside the auditorium.

* * *

Toby and Latoya hurried through the wings and down the stairs to the door leading to the corridor, but Ted was the first one through. “What is it?” he shouted. “What’s wrong?”

Latoya and the others crowded behind him as Miss Tolland pushed open the auditorium doors down the hall. A girl Latoya did not recognize was pressed against the wall, staring wildly out the window with one hand covering her mouth. She pointed a shaking finger at the glass.

“M-m-monster...” she whispered.

“You’re frikkin’ kidding me” said Toby, disbelief thick in his voice.

“There’s nothing out there n...” Latoya’s voice trailed off as she caught sight of the outside view. The school’s lawn sloped down to Unquowa Road, and across Unquowa were the same two or three houses. But beyond the houses was blue sky, empty save for some clouds, and a distant glitter of water near the horizon.

“Wh-aaa?” Latoya glanced at the speaker, Pammy Tallman, a striking redhaired junior who played Juan Perón’s mistress in the production. Pammy dug her cell phone out of her pocket (the cast wasn’t supposed to have their phones on them at rehearsals) and tapped at it for a moment. “Damn,” she muttered. “No signal.”

“What?” exclaimed Toby. “How’ll I play Fortnite? Man!”

Latoya felt gooseflesh ripple across her upper back. She shook her head. “Well, so what if there’s no signal? Whatever knocked out the power killed cell service, too. Big whoop.” But this was something else again, not a mere power outage. That water out there! What the hell was that all about?

Pammy, well known to her friends as a major Instagram user, was, Latoya noted, forced to content herself with snapping a few pictures. “What’s up with the lake? Where’d it come from? This is too weird!” Even before Pammy finished speaking, though, the reality of the situation was sinking in to Latoya. Perspiration gathered under her arms. Something massively odd had happened. How could that much water possibly appear out of nowhere?

Murmurs of astonishment and alarm bloomed around her and she suddenly couldn’t catch her breath. She shouldered her way out of the crowd and walked unsteadily back to the door leading to the stage. Inside, she sat on the steps in the partial darkness, in the familiar, beloved space she knew so well. She took several deep breaths.

Something told her that this production of Evita wasn’t going to come off.