Trapped by Michael Northrop

Author:Michael Northrop [Northrop Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-545-33249-1
Publisher: Scholastic
Published: 2011-08-21T04:00:00+00:00

NINETEEN

The first thing I felt when I woke up Thursday morning was the cold. It’s not that I was cold so much as that I knew it was cold around me. Have you ever left your window open overnight or anything like that and woken up with your room way too cold? It’s weird because it actually makes it more comfortable to be curled up under the covers. Just knowing it’s cold out there makes it feel better to be warm.

So there was some of that going on, but there’s only so comfortable you’re going to be after spending the night on a hard tile floor. And it wasn’t a little cold in here. It wasn’t leaving-your-window-open-in-April cold. It was wicked cold. The air was a sharp slap against the side of my face, waking me up, telling me that the last of the heat had drained away overnight.

I reached out from under the blanket and touched my cheek. My monster zit was bigger now, more tender, a little hill of sore flesh and pus pushing up through the side of my face. And there was one other thing bothering me: It might not sound like much, but I hadn’t been online for like two solid days, and it was starting to freak me out.

The last time was Tuesday morning, before school, and that was just to answer some e-mails, respond to some comments, and play a few games: just the morning maintenance stuff. By now, I’d have a ton of e-mails and comments and posts. Everyone would be checking in, seeing if I was OK, and stuff like that. Plus, my energy counter would be completely topped off in Mafia Wars — if I didn’t use it, it wouldn’t refill, which was just a huge waste — and my ship would be fixed by now in Scurvvy Piratez. I don’t know why it bothered me so much. I guess when you’re trying not to think too much about the big, real stuff, the little virtual stuff has to carry the load.

I heard a noise and looked over: Jason was picking through his stuff. He’d found one glove and was looking for the other. He hadn’t seen me yet. I looked out the window. I guess I’d sort of been avoiding that, too. Pale gray light filtered in through the falling snow. You don’t know that it’s been snowing all night, I told myself. You’re just making that assumption. But somehow I did know.

I remembered something that Andy had said on the radio late last night. “These things blow themselves out. They always have.”

Of course, his voice was hoarse and he still hadn’t had any good news to pass on when he said it, but I still found that kind of comforting.

I looked to the back of the room. I couldn’t see Krista. The girls had pushed their backpacks and extra stuff into a little wall back there, like sandbags in a flood. I couldn’t see them behind it, but I was pretty sure I heard whispering coming from that direction.

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