[Kokopelli25]

CHAPTER 4

Reaching the end of the main hallway, Ellie had to decide - turn down a side corridor where the rooms were just as likely to be locked? Or head up to the second floor where there was a room she was pretty sure she could get into?

Standing naked before the stairwell, Ellie decided to walk up. With each step of a bare foot she grew more and more nervous. If being separated from her clothes by a long hallway was scary, it was nothing compared to being on a whole other floor from anything to cover up. Again she almost turned around, and again she willed herself forward.

Reaching the top of the stairs, she turned and walked back down the main hallway to a large room that was right in the center, across from a corridor that stretched to the back of the school. Unlike most rooms that only had a single door, this room had double doors, in fact the original double doors from decades ago. It wasn’t a classroom but a multipurpose room with a small stage at one end. Not nearly as big as the auditorium downstairs, this was where the speech team practiced, where different student groups met during lunch, and where Ellie had spent many hours hanging out with friends after school when the room was used as a lounge. She knew how to jostle the door handles, pulling on both doors at once. The wood around the old-fashioned deadbolt had worn down enough that if you opened both doors just so, they would open.

As Ellie stepped into the room, she saw the window blinds on the far side were raised. Although the lights were off and the hallway light behind her was minimal, she still shrieked and dropped into a crouch. This side of the school faced one of those cookie-cutter housing developments, though the school lawns and driveway meant there was a fair distance between the school and the nearest houses. Even though she knew there was no chance anyone had seen her, her mind irrationally told her that everyone window facing the school held someone with binoculars who was staring at her that very moment.

Refusing to stand up, she crawled along the floor between the chairs and tables, not thinking of the view she was presenting to the open doors behind her had there been anyone in the building to walk by at that moment. She reached the far wall, and drawing herself up onto her knees, she reached for the strings to the first set of blinds barely able to reach them. Had there been anyone outside (and on a ladder) they would have known Ellie was at least topless.

She finally managed to get one set closed; the next few went faster as she could stand behind a closed set and reach over to grab the strings to the next. She had blinds in her bedroom at home and knew to turn them so they angled up, preventing someone from the ground being able to look up and see between the cracks. Standing all the way up now, Ellie walked back to the door and flipped the light switches. Although the blinds effectively hid her from view, they weren’t flush to the window. If anyone -had- been outside, it would be obvious that the lights in the room had just been turned on.