[Kokopelli25]

CHAPTER 2

The fifth day she was home, Ellie’s parents had planned to go out of town to see a touring company of some broadway show - they bought the tickets before they realized it was the same week Ellie would be home, but she assured them it was okay, they should go and enjoy themselves. It was only a couple hours away, but her parents decided to make a trip out of it, staying overnight at a fancy hotel and planning to return by the next evening.

As soon as her parents left in the mid-afternoon, Ellie started to get nervous. If she was ever going to take Natalie up on her dare, it would have to be tonight.

An hour after they left Ellie went into her father’s den and found his office keys on a hook where they always were.

An hour later Ellie made dinner and tried to calm her nerves by watching tv.

An hour after that Ellie threw away the dinner she had barely touched.

Four hours after her parents left Ellie went to her room to try to sleep. She tried listening to music, reading, anything to fall asleep, figuring if she did and slept until the next day then there’d be nothing she could do about the missed opportunity.

Sleep wouldn’t come, and by 3am she was still awake.

Part of her was glad, part of her was terrified - was she really going to go through with this?

A few minutes later she was dressed in the outfit she had been thinking about while lying in bed unable to sleep: an old t-shirt of hers she found at her parents house, a pair of jeans shorts, an old pair of flip-flops. She decided not to wear a bra or underwear, telling herself she’d be more likely to go through with the dare if she couldn’t stop “halfway”. She never went commando and was already feeling exposed and self-conscious.

Walking downstairs she grabbed her dad’s work keys and attached them to a bracelet around her wrist that already had her house key. If she wasn’t going to have any pockets, she didn’t want to lose the keys - it’s not like she was going to risk setting them down someplace.

The last thing she grabbed on her way out the door was her phone. She wasn’t planning to take any naked selfies, but she needed at least one photo of her in the school, at least showing her bare shoulders and face if she was to convince Natalie she had done it.

*******

Her old high school was half a mile from her house so she decided to walk. Set back from any road, separated by an athletic field and a parking lot, the older school was bordered by newer housing developments on three sides. The fourth side, the direction she was coming from, was less developed - a small lake and city park were the closest things to the school on this side; Ellie shouldn’t have any problem getting to the school unnoticed. A series of streetlights were always on, spotlighting the front of the school, but that’s not where Ellie was planning to enter.

Walking around the outside of the parking lot, Ellie approached the fence that separated the lot from the maintenance area; a small district, there were only a few school busses and other district vehicles. As Principal, her father had two master keys; one for all outside locks, like the one on the gate she stood before, and one for all outer doors, like the one 50-ft away she would be using.

As Ellie opened the gate from the public lot to the maintenance part of the lot, she wished she had grown up in a larger city with more crime - then her old school would likely have security cameras everywhere and she never would have been tempted to do this. Her dad always filled her in on any new equipment the school had purchased and he had never said anything about cameras. She even remembered asking him a couple years ago after a neighboring district had a break in and theft of school computers. He told her he almost wanted that to happen at his school so insurance would buy new ones. At the time he pointed out that if he couldn’t even afford new computers for his building, he wasn’t about to spend money he didn’t have on security cameras. As good as Ellie’s memory was, she forgot that the following year her dad told her how the school had received a tech grant to purchase some new computers and wireless routers.

Closing the gate behind her, she walked to the back door of the school. Connected to the maintenance bay as it was, not many students used it. As nervous as she was that night, it was only when she reached for the door that her hands started to shake. Until now she was just on a late night walk. As soon as she entered the building, she’d be trespassing. She probably wouldn’t get into trouble for that alone - everyone knew her and it’s not like she was going to steal anything, but if she was caught, even completely dressed, there would be questions and her father would certainly be angry with her.

Unlocking the door, Ellie took a deep breath and went in.