Roamers

Chapter 1

     I remember when it happened. It was a normal boring Thursday. I always thought Thursdays were the worst days of the week because you were just waiting for Friday to happen. But now, I have an even greater reason to hate Thursdays; a horrible, traumatizing reason.
I went to school and arrived earlier than I usually do. Right when I went through the doors, I saw my best friend, Jesse.
"Hey, Beverly!", he shouted across the hall.
     "Jesse! You're gonna get us in trouble for yelling!", I replied, not realizing that I was just as loud as him. To this, he rolled his eyes and made a dumb face where he squinted his eyes and stuck out his tongue. That always made me laugh. Seeing the amusement in my face made him chuckle too.
After that we went through our day as we normally did. Went to all our classes, ate our lunch, and met up at the swing set at recess. We always used to meet at the swing set, it kind of symbolized our friendship. In second grade, Jesse came up to me while I was on that swing set. He told me that we should be friends because we both like to swing. I, of course, agreed and we have been friends ever since.
"Hey, Bev, do you think we'll ever stop being friends?", he asked suddenly, pulling me away from the memory of our past.
"Of course not! We're the only people on this planet can tolerate each other.", I replied.
"I guess you're right. But just in case, you have to make a promise.", he said in a quiet tone. He quickly stood up and raise his voice to almost a shout, "From this day forward, you, Beverly Ida Collins, must swear to always be my best friend until the day you die!", he said in a jokingly tone.
"I promise to you, Jesse Parker Andrews, that we will be best friends until the day I die!", I replied in an even more ridiculous tone.
I truly did know that Jesse and I would always be best friends, we're so alike and we always understood each other. He knew when something was bothering me, and he always knew how to make me feel better. And I did the same for him. I always knew when he needed my help and I knew how to help him. We were like the weird twins you see on television that can read each other's thoughts and know how to respond.
     After the weird speech at recess, Jesse and I went our separate ways to our classes, me to science and him to math.
     "I'll see you after school so we can study for our biology test together. But in the mean time, I have to go to the eternal hell that makes your brain burn and your heart ache with pain of a thousand swords, math class." He said in a very sarcastic tone. His comment made me laugh and I nodded in agreement.
     "See you after school, Jess", I replied, still laughing a little. I watched as he walked down the hallway to get to the classroom of Mrs. Schmidt, the Algebra II teacher. When he opened the door he looked back at me and made a hand motion that looked as if was hanging himself. I rolled my eyes back at him and walked in the opposite direction to my biology class.
     I always liked biology, it was interesting to see how the tiniest detail in our bodies can make us who we are. How the tiniest drop of blood can have thousands of genetical material in it, or how a cell can split into two by itself through the process of mitosis. I also really liked my biology teacher, Mrs. Shaw. She was a kind, doughy-looking woman with a plump face and delicate features. She was a very good teacher and always knew how to solve difficult conflicts, something I am also good at.
     On that particular Thursday, my class had been very quite, which was quite unusual for my biology class. I was working on my paper that I had to write that explained the cell cycle when Mrs. Shaw's walky-talky that the teachers only used for emergencies went off in a high pitched beep. Everyone looked up at Mrs. Shaw as she carefully listened to the person on the other end. Her joyful disposition was quickly replaced with a look of horror and concern, which worried every student in the room. We all looked around at each other, whispering our theories for what was happening. Every student had their own idea for what was going on. I heard everything from "a clogged toilet had exploded" to "aliens had captured the principle and are using him to breed a new race of aliens". I personally had absolutely no opinion of what was going on, and I didn't want to elaborate on something horrible that could be happening.
I was listening to Valerie, a girl who sat two seats down from me, blabbering on about how she thought Mrs. Shaw's creadit card information had been leaked when Mrs. Shaw ended her conversation and looked around at all of us. Everyone became silent, anticipating an explanation for the worrisome call on the walky-talky Mrs. Shaw had just experienced. Mrs. Shaw remained silent for a while, staring at the walky-talky as if she were looking for the words to explain what had just happened, but no words came.
After a long while, Mrs. Shaw cleared her throat and took a deep breath. "Class, the school is now in lockdown. Each of you need to get under your desk, push in the chairs around you, and stay silent so you are protected from any threat that might occur."
Students soon began to shout out at Mrs. Shaw, demanding an explanation for the worrying call. The class soon got so loud with the outbursts of my classmates, that I couldn't hear myself think. Feeling overwhelmed, I looked over to Mrs. Shaw, who also looked very overwhelmed, for further instructions on what to do. I could see the anger and frustration from the disobedient class build up insider her, I could tell she was about to burst.
"Class! This is a very serious concern and us teachers need to take care of it! I cannot take care of the situation when all of you are shouting and screaming for answers! The teachers don't even know what is happening, but we do know that the government ordered us to go into lockdown! Now you will do as I told you and get under your desks!"
After her speech, the entire class, including me, were shocked. We've never heard Mrs. Shaw yell like that, so we knew that it must have an important emergency. We all did as we were told and got under the desks, pushed our chairs in around us, and stayed absolutely silent. Mrs. Shaw exited the room and locked us inside while she walked toward the principle's office. We all stayed completely quiet for a good thirty minutes. We occasionally looked at each other and glanced out the window to see if anything changed, but everything was still. Completely still and normal. We started to wonder if was all a hoax or if we should go look for Mrs. Shaw, but we stay put like we were told, until, we heard the shrill, high-pitched scream of Mrs. Shaw from right outside the door.