D.C. FALL (In The October Fall World) by K.K. Johns & Boyd Craven Jr. & LA Bayles

Author:K.K. Johns & Boyd Craven Jr. & LA Bayles [Johns, K.K. & Craven, Boyd Jr. & Bayles, LA]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Raventhorne Books
Published: 2024-04-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Tessa

Day 2

Tessa pedaled south on Nebraska Ave toward Duke Ellington School of the Arts, two miles away. Her legs pumped furiously as she wove in and out between stalled cars, some smoking hulks from the fiery crashes the day before. She made a quick left on New Mexico Ave, giving a wide berth to a random group of boys on the corner, who waved their arms and hollered at her to stop.

Ugh. Already the streets had an otherworldly feel. Like she’d stepped into a thriller movie set. She tried to calm her racing pulse even as her butt rose out of the saddle and she pumped the pedals like she was racing the Tour de France.

She knew MacKenzie would give her a piece of her mind when she got back. Tessa felt a small pang of guilt. Admittedly, her neighbor put up with a lot from her, but she’d be back so quickly, they’d barely realize she was gone.

An apartment building near the school had burned since she biked home yesterday, glass missing from most of the windows, belching clouds of smoke spewing into the dank morning sky. A bead of sweat rolled down the side of her nose, lodging on her upper lip. She shivered at the eerie silence and the creepy stillness of the stalled cars, as if the drivers just disappeared. People, mostly teenage boys and men, walked around aimlessly. Tessa avoided making eye contact as she sped down sidewalks, jumping curbs and barely slowing down to avoid trash cans and light poles.

Duke Ellington School of the Arts was a large, white, imposing building, surrounded by a black wrought-iron fence. The parking lot looked the same as it had the day before—cars parked in their spaces, a few stalled in the middle of the aisles. Tessa pedaled around to the back of the building, where the loading ramp and dock doors were. A truck remained in the bay; it had probably been offloading when the power went out. She coasted down the ramp and stashed her bicycle in front of the truck’s grill.

Running up three steps to the gray double doors, she pulled an old credit card of her mom’s out of her back pocket and looked around the street. Deserted. She inserted the card and waited until she felt the snap of the bolt releasing.

She’d learned this easy trick from one of her senior friends. They used this entrance to slip in on Sunday afternoons to work on their projects in the art room, using the only doors in the school that weren’t on an alarm system. Hidden from view, they brought snacks and hung out, talking for hours. He was the closest to a boyfriend Tessa ever had, and when he graduated and went off to RISD, the Rhode Island School of Design, she never heard from him again. When she finally got up the nerve to call, a girl answered his phone. She’d heard laughing and shouting in the background, like a drinking game was going on.

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