When Push Comes to Shove Back

by Irvine, Janet M.

• ISBN13: 9781463432805
• ISBN10: 1463432801
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-07-26
• Publisher: Textstream

Excerpts

I can't stay here much longer. I'm freezing. I can't go home and I can't go back to Joe's. And I definitely can't sit in class. I've got to find somewhere warm to be alone so I can think, so I can try to figure this out.The only place I can think of, where I could be totally alone, and warm, is in another of my hiding spots above the gymnasium. It is an absolutely secret spot. I discovered it one day after school when I wanted to see a basketball game and I didn't have the dollar to get in. One of the janitors showed me how to have a private seat to see the game.Like I said, the school is old and the gym is, like, two stories high. Around the top is a metal walkway, like a catwalk or something. It has a bit of a railing and it goes all the way around the top of the gym, way up, two floors up, where absolutely no one bothers to look. From the amount of dirt up there, you can tell that no one ever uses it. It must have been used for lights or something years ago, but it's nothing but a relic now. You can sit on the metal grating and get a bird's eye view of the games from up there.The only way to reach this spot is through an old janitor's storage room on the fourth floor. If there were other ways to get there, they have been sealed off over the years. If I want to go there, I have to get from the side door of the school to the fourth floor and then all the way down a long hall to the storage room door. The door might even be locked, I don't know. If I get caught in the school while skipping classes, they'll call my house and there will be hell to pay. Not only that, but I have to figure out what I'm going to do. Soon. I haven't got time to fool around with phone calls and parents and teachers and rules that make no sense when your sister is fooling around with a drug dealer who has her brother by the balls.But I can't stay here or all I'll have is frozen balls anyway.I decide that the best time to try to get in without being noticed and make my run for the hiding place is right after the announcements. There are always a few stragglers who have been to the bathroom or to their lockers or delivering attendance sheets to the office, so I won't look too conspicuous. The teachers will all be in their classrooms getting ready to start their classes and the principal and vice-principal usually head back to their offices once they feel that there isn't going to be an uprising or a riot or a mass exodus or whatever it is they imagine happening if they aren't out cruising the hallways in the morning.I go round to the side door and wait. The wind is colder here than it was up against the building and I am shivering uncontrollably. I just about scrap the idea when I hear the drone of morning announcements end. I wait for a few more minutes. I wait until I think Jordan and Tesiak have retreated to their offices. I wait for the calm of busy classes beginning behind closed classroom doors. Then I make my move.The door squeaks loudly as I try to open it carefully. Forget that. I pull it open, hurry in, and climb the stairs two at a time. By the time I get to the fourth floor, I'm panting. I stop to catch my breath. So far so good. I just have to get down the hall, past how many classroom doors? I peer through the window in the door that separates the stairwell from the hallway and count. Seven doors. Crap.With everyone now in class, the hall is quiet and deserted, none of the anticipated stragglers here. Damn. Although running up the stairs seemed to work, I can't run down the hall. Someone would investigate feet pounding past a classroom door when everyone who might possibly be inclined to run should be sitting in class.I enter the hall and hold the door so it doesn't slam shut. Slowly, I begin my quiet walk toward the door at the end of this very wide, very long hallway. Past one classroom door. Past two, three. I stay to the left side of the hallway because there are only two classroom doors on that side. I stay near the wall because it feels safer, even if I know that doesn't make sense. I can hear the voices of teachers issuing instructions and the rustle of books and papers, as students settle down to work. Step by quiet step, I focus on the last door on the right.I reach door number five, my homeroom, and one of the two doors on the left. I speed up slightly to get past it fast when, suddenly, the door swings open and slams me in the face, hard. I don't utter a sound as I reel back against the wall and grab my nose. I'm stunned and I struggle for a second not to sink to the floor as blackness threatens to close my vision. My face feels like it's been hit by a semi. Blood runs into my mouth and onto my shirt before I can wipe it away with my sleeve. I don't think. I just react. I have to make it to the door at the end of the hall. I take a deep breath, push the door back towards its opening, and prepare to sprint to the janitor's storage room. I push myself away from the wall as the classroom door hits its frame, and with my face throbbing and every muscle straining, I thrust myself forward - right into the arms of Matt Carver, who was on his way to exchange a text book at his locker when he very nearly decked me with the door.Hardly missing a step, I wipe my nose again, grab Matt's arm in one hand and put my other hand around the back of his neck. Half pulling, half pushing, I propel him down the hall and into the storage room. No locked door. Matt doesn't make a sound. He can't find his voice. His eyes are locked open as he stares at me, still holding a book in his hands, as if his life depended on it.One look at his face and I realize almost instantly that he thinks this is part of my threat, that I am executing my promised revenge. He is still trying to process his abduction into a storage closet when I grab him again, open the smaller, lower half-door on the opposite side of the room, and push him out onto the catwalk.He freaks. I mean he really freaks. He starts to shake and he turns this grey colour that can't be anything normal. He steals himself against the wall. His eyes are wild. He looks back and forth for a way to escape. And all this time, not a single sound. I realize, suddenly, that Matt thinks I'm going to push him over the edge of the catwalk and send him plummeting to the gym floor below.Before I can get my head around that, a senior gym class comes streaming into the gym from the locker rooms. I push Matt down into a sitting position against the wall and motion for him to stay quiet. I sit facing him. We are both breathing heavily. I'm sweating like a pig. Now what? Shit.Of all the people I could be sitting with right now, on a catwalk above the gym, facing the biggest problem of my life, Matt Carver would be my last choice. Shit, Shit, Shit.