Running Towards the Light

Chapter 12 - Office Guests

I walked down the hall of my school in the direction of the office per my teacher's request. Well, more like order.

I hadn't done anything wrong. My teacher just wanted me to pick up some papers or something. I wasn't exactly sure what I was getting, seeing as my teacher's handwriting is impossible to read and he just kinda said to go do anything but be in his classroom. So I don't even know what he wrote down on the paper.

Mr. Wilson had handed me a paper that had what he wanted, so I guess I could look at that to see what he wanted, but then again his handwriting was a cross between cursive and just plain scribbles so I don't think this paper will be that much help to me.

I also wasn't sure where anything in the office was or even teacher-y-things around the school so I'm definitely going to need some help, which is why I'm heading to the office.

Of course I'd been in the office many times for both myself and my brothers, but because so many kids at my school got in trouble, we sort of had two parts of the office.

One part was a huge waiting area for parents and students so they could talk to the principal or do whatever they needed to do but generally us kids thought of this area as the Jail Room. This is because it takes ages to talk to the principal and you have to wait in the room for those ages and if you're there it's pretty likely you're going to get a lot of detentions or a suspension.

The second part of the office was pretty standard to most other offices. It had secretaries that handled stuff in the office and this is where you check in if you're late and stuff.

I pushed the door marked 'OFFICE' open and stepped into the room, looking around.

There were some chairs on one end of the office like in the Jail Room but on the other end there were just a bunch of desks and old monitors. My school didn't get much funding, so most things were really run down and outdated, the computers here were no exception. They looked to be made in the 90's.

I squinted my eyes, trying to get a better look past the barrier of desks that separated the room as I moved over to reach the barrier. There was no one here.

Shouldn't there always be people in the office?

"Hello?" I called out.

No response.

And that's just great.

I moved along the barrier of desks, still trying to get a better view of what was behind all of the computer screens just in case some old lady was there playing solitaire and ignoring me because she didn't want to do her job.

I groaned, still not seeing anyone.

I let my head fall on one of the tables in dramatics as I thought of my options because the way I saw it there were only three viable ones.

Number one would be to just go back to my class, admit defeat, have my teacher yell at me, possibly get detention and then sit through a boring lecture. Clearly, not a preferable one.

The second option would be to just try to read Mr. Wilson's handwriting and figure out how to get the things he wanted without any help from the office, something that might not be possible, but yet again if I don't want to die of boredom I might as well.

And lastly I could just sit here -in the empty office- till the last minute of class and then say no one was in the office.

None of them were great options in my opinion. But number two seemed the best to me seeing as one and three were very boring.

I sighed, moving to the end of the barrier where there was a little swing door to get into the other side of the room. The half-door had some sort of baby lock on it so I just lifted up the hatch and pushed my way through.