The dashboard clock in my mom’s car read 7:12 AM when she pulled up to the front curb of St. Beckons. The sun was barely up, the parking lot was completely empty, and the school building looked less like an educational institution and more like a abandoned set from a low-budget horror flick.
"So..." my mom started, leaning heavily on the steering wheel and squinting at the backseat. "Why exactly is your backpack so completely stuffed today? It looks like you're harboring a small family of raccoons in there. And why on earth did you want to get dropped off forty-five minutes before the first bell? Usually, I have to drag you out of bed by your ankles."
I adjusted the straps of my violently over packed backpack, trying to hide the fact that it contained three changes of clothes, a flashlight, a map, and an emergency supply of pop-tarts.
"Uh, I made new friends," I said, offering the most casual shrug I could muster. "We're... studying. Early morning academic enrichment. You know how it is."
My mom’s eyes widened so fast I thought her eyelashes were going to fly off. She gasped, clapping her hands to her chest like a Victorian lady experiencing a sudden bout of the vapors.
"Oh my god! Finally! Yay!" she squealed, her voice hitting a frequency that definitely vibrated the windshield. Then, just as quickly, her face dropped into a comically tragic, exaggerated pout. "Ugh, too bad it’s already the literal end of high school for you... You wasted four years being an invisible cynic, and now you finally find a herd? Classic." She let out a sharp laugh at her own roast.
Oh my fucking gosh…
I forced a dry, completely hollow laugh, staring at her with a look that screamed please let the earth swallow me whole right now.
"Oh, I know, right? Haha... Hilarious, Mom. Great timing on my part. Truly iconic."
"Oh, come here, you little college-bound girl," she sighed happily, leaning over the center console to plant a loud, aggressive kiss right on my forehead. "I love you, Sam! Have a wonderful, friend-filled day, sweetie!"
"Love ya too, Mom," I muttered, grabbing my monolith of a backpack. I leaned across the seat, gave her a quick kiss on the cheek to pacify her maternal instincts, and kicked the heavy passenger door open.
As I stepped onto the pavement, I heard her let out a dramatic, cinematic sigh from the driver's seat, dabbing at an imaginary tear.
"Wow... they just grow up so fast. One minute they're eating dirt, the next they're attending early morning study groups."
She slammed the gas and peeled out of the drop-off lane, leaving me standing alone in the crisp morning air.
Cue the opening credits music.
If my life were a cheesy coming-of-age movie, this is the exact moment the uplifting synth-pop track would kick in as the main character walks purposefully toward her destiny. Instead, the strap of my oversized green army jacket snagged on the door handle of a nearby trash can.
I unhitched myself, checked my watch, and turned toward the basement stairs. It was 7:15 AM. Time to see if the suicide squad had actually shown up.
I rolled up the sleeves of my oversized army jacket, trying to channel some sort of badass, renegade energy, even though my heart was currently hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a hand pale enough to belong to a corpse clamped down on my forearm.
"You are here," a monotone voice whispered right in my ear.
"Jesus H. Christ!" I yelped, jumping a foot in the air. I wrenched my arm away, my chest heaving as I glared at Mal, who was wearing a fishnet shirt under her school uniform and staring at me without blinking. "Do you have to spawn like a video game glitch? Seriously, my heart cannot take this before eight in the morning."
Before I could recover, a massive shadow fell over my right side.
"The hour of liberation has struck, Sam," Brad boomed, appearing so suddenly on my other flank that I executed a second, equally undignified jump. He was wearing sunglasses indoors and looked ready to charge a stadium.
"Oh my god–Stop doing that!" I hissed, clutching my chest.
Then Marcus materialized right behind Mal, wearing a smug grin and a leather jacket that looked suspiciously expensive. Right on cue, Tiffany strutted up from the side of the building, aggressively tapping on her phone screen, followed by Artie, who was desperately adjusting his backpack straps and already wheezing from the morning dew.
"We're actually doing this," Tiffany said, looking around with a mixture of disgust and genuine thrill. "I skipped my morning vanilla latte for this. If we get caught, I’m framing all of you."
"My heart rate is currently at 142 beats per minute," Artie whimpered, checking a digital fitness watch. "If it hits 150, I am legally in a state of medical panic."
"Okay, cut the chatter," I said, trying to take control of the situation. "Where is the car?"
Marcus smirked and pointed a finger toward the far edge of the empty parking lot.
There it sat. A 1982 wood-paneled station wagon that looked like it had survived a minor bombing. It was a faded, vomit-beige color, the rear bumper was held together with silver duct tape, and plastered right across the middle was a massive, neon-yellow bumper sticker that read: HONK IF YOU LOVE JESUS!
I stared at it.
"Oh. So you actually weren't lying about the rolling biohazard."
"I never lie about logistics, Miller," Marcus said, dangling the keys from his index finger. "She’s gassed up, the engine is mostly firing on all cylinders, and the local police will just think we’re a deeply religious family on a road trip. Let's move."
Cue the mental freeze-frame. As we walked toward that absolute monstrosity of a vehicle, I turned my head to look directly at the invisible camera in my brain.
Here we go. Look at this lineup. In every single 80s high school comedy, you are legally required to have these motherfuckers. Let’s break it down so you know exactly who we're dealing with:
One. The weird kid who I introduced to you earlier: Mal. She claims to see ghosts, she definitely sleeps in a coffin, and she’s currently trying to feed a stray crow a piece of old ham.
Two. The blonde, stereotypical jock boy who read exactly one philosophy book in freshman year and made it his entire personality. Well, maybe not the philosophy part in the traditional movies, but that part was added to our story to make it a little more unique. Meet Brad. Who, despite the gorgeous jawline, is surprisingly not being played by Brad Pitt.
Three. The stereotypical blonde, mean popular girl. You know the movie Mean Girls? Yeah, exactly like that. She’s rude, incredibly vain, treats everyone like dirt, and yet she’s somehow completely loved by the entire student body. That is Tiffany. Or Tiff, if you want her to tolerate your existence.
Four. The one normal dude, who is actually secretly a genius but it doesn't show in his grades because he's too busy using his intellect to hack the school's central heating system. In any standard coming-of-age flick, this guy is typically the main love interest of the main character. I don't plan on falling in love today, though. I'm just trying to avoid three hundred hours of campus scraping. That is Marcus.
Five. The nerd with allergies. He's a staple. We all know how he works. He’s heading to Harvard, he's allergic to basically everything except bottled water, and he has asthma bad enough that a strong breeze can take him out. But he’s a strategic necessity because he knows the state penal code by heart. That is Artie.
And finally, there’s me. The nobody. The cynical girl in the green army jacket who opened her mouth at the wrong time and somehow became the accidental mastermind of a teenage rebellion.
Marcus popped the trunk of the station wagon, and it opened with a horrific metallic screech that probably woke up every bird within a five-mile radius.
"Load up, casualties of the system," Marcus yelled, tossing his bag into the back. "Next stop, total freedom."
"Get in! Get in!" Marcus barked, swatting at us like he was trying to corral a pack of stray dogs. "It's 7:30 AM. In exactly seven minutes, the first wave of overachievers is going to pull into this lot, and half of them are professional snitches."
"Ugh, don't remind me," Tiffany groaned, sliding into the middle row and immediately laying down a sweater so her pants wouldn't touch the vinyl. "The 'Copy-and-Paste' brigade will be here any second. You know exactly who I’m talking about. The girls who wear the exact same oversized lashes, the exact same lip liner, and have the exact same facial expression like they're trying to calculate a tip in their heads."
"Dean Vance’s 'pets,'" I added, climbing into the passenger seat and slamming the door twice just to get it to latch. "The favoritism is so obvious it’s actually hilarious. The man treats them like they're the supreme court of St. Beckons, and we all know it’s not because of their stellar essay-writing skills. He just likes having a flock of big cheeked chicks! What a fucking pedo… "
"It's a textbook manifestation of superficial authority," Brad said through a mouthful of a protein bar, squeezing his massive frame into the way-back alongside Mal and a giant pile of gym bags. "He validates his own tyranny by surrounding himself with aesthetic compliance. It’s deeply tragic, structurally speaking."
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
"I saw one of them write down a freshman's name just for chewing gum too loudly on Thursday," Artie whimpered, hyperventilating into the middle seat next to Tiffany. "They have direct radio access to the front office! If Chloe or Madison sees us in this vehicle, our names will be on the Dean's desk before Marcus can even find reverse!"
"Then shut up and hold your breath," Marcus said, trying to figure out how to start the car.
"Dude, start the fuck-ass car! Don’t tell me you don’t know how! Great. Fantastic engineering, Marcus," Tiffany snapped, throwing her hands in the air. "We haven't even left the property and we're already experiencing mechanical menopause."
Before Marcus could fire back, Artie let out a noise that sounded like a deflating balloon trapped in a vacuum cleaner. His face went from its usual pale white to a vibrant, alarming shade of lavender. He clutched his throat, his red curls bouncing erratically as his chest heaved.
"Oh my god, bro!" Tiffany shrieked, pressing her entire body against the passenger side door to get away from him. "He’s broken! Marcus, your nerd is broken! I don't want a dead body in here! The smell will never leave the upholstery, and frankly, purple is not his color. I don’t want our crimes to be murder charges!"
Brad let out a massive, booming laugh from the way-back, slapping his knee. "It’s a somatic manifestation of existential dread! He’s confronting the void, guys!"
"Shut up, Brad!" Marcus yelled, violently twisting the key in the ignition. The engine just wheezed back at him. "Shut up! I’m trying to focus! Artie, stop dying, you’re ruining the vibe!"
Mal leaned forward from the shadows of the trunk space, her eyes reflecting the dashboard lights.
"If he expires, I get his pocket dictionary. The spirits say his essence will linger in the binding. It’ll make a great paperweight."
"Are you people completely insane?!" I yelled, spinning around in the passenger seat so hard my seatbelt locked up and choked me. "Give him the fucking inhaler! Are you stupid?! He is literally suffocating right next to you!"
"Well, I’m not touching his bag!" Tiffany protested, waving her manicured hands defensively. "What if his asthma is contagious? Or worse, what if he has generic brand tissues in there?"
"It's not contagious, you absolute moron, it's an upper respiratory crisis!" I shouted, reaching over the seat and violently grabbing Artie's neon-green backpack. I ripped the zipper open, dumped three pristine calculators, a box of wet wipes, and a thermos onto the floor, and grabbed the plastic inhaler. "Tiffany, take the piece of plastic and shove it in his mouth before we have to explain a homicide to the Dean!"
Tiffany rolled her eyes so hard I thought they’d get stuck.
"Ugh, fine! The things I do for social rebellion."
She snatched the inhaler from my hand, pinched Artie’s nose with two fingers like she was handling a piece of biohazardous waste, and aggressively shoved the plastic nozzle into his mouth, slamming the canister down.
Pffft.
Artie took a massive, shuddering gasp of medicine, his eyes rolling back as his lungs finally unlocked. He slumped against the vinyl seat, trembling and clutching his yellow legal pad like a security blanket.
"Thank... thank you," Artie wheezed, his voice three octaves higher than usual. "The pollen count in this vehicle... is historically hostile."
"Don't thank me, you ruined my morning mindfulness," Tiffany muttered, immediately pulling out a wet wipe to sanitize her fingers.
"Alright, the casualty has been resuscitated," Marcus announced, slamming his hand against the dashboard. The radio suddenly blasted to life, blaring a high-volume static mess of 80s synth-pop. "Everyone shut up. Attempt number two."
Marcus aggressively jammed the gear shift back and forth, but the transmission just made a sound like a blender full of loose gravel. The station wagon lurched forward exactly two inches, shuddered violently, and died again.
“Oh my–He still hasn’t started driving?!” Tiffany groaned.
The digital clock on the dashboard of Marcus’s mom’s 1982 wood-paneled station wagon read 7:40 AM.
Right about here is where the frame freezes.
Cue the record scratch.
Okay, so this is about where we actually began our descent into social suicide. It's Friday morning, we are trapped in a motorized dumpster, and the countdown to administrative execution has officially started.
The frame unpauses. The digital clock flickers, immediately jumping to 7:42 AM. Two whole minutes wasted while Marcus tries to play mechanic on a car that belongs in a scrapyard.. According to the St. Beckons student handbook, Section 4, Paragraph B, anyone not currently sitting in their designated homeroom desk by 8:00 AM is legally considered a fugitive. Or at least, that’s how Artie was treating it.
"Wait, Artie, what the actual hell are you reading?!" Tiffany shrieked, looking like she wanted to physically eject him through the sunroof.
"Oh no… We’re going to jail!" Artie whimpered from the backseat, clutching a giant, color-coded binder to his chest like a shield. His red curly hair was completely plastered to his forehead with pure, unadulterated sweat. "I’ve read the state penal code! Truancy leads to a juvenile record, which leads to a ruined GPA, which leads to me living in a cardboard box under the interstate! I have a severe pollen allergy, guys. I won't survive the outdoors! The street dust will claim my lungs within forty-eight hours!"
"Relax, Artie," Marcus said, not looking up from the cassette tape he was violently rewinding with a plastic Bic pen. "Technically, we’re still on school property. The Dean can’t arrest us for sitting in a parking lot. It’s a constitutional right to sit in a garbage can."
"He can if he looks over here and sees Brad trying to camouflage a stolen ten-foot fiberglass mascot with a beach towel," I muttered from the passenger seat besides Marcus, rolling my eyes so hard that I had practically sprained an optic nerve.
"It’s not stolen, Sam. It’s liberated," Brad corrected proudly from the way back, trying to force a giant, smiling fiberglass pirate head under a pile of filthy gym bags. His sleeveless letterman jacket showed off arms that were clearly built for carrying heavy objects, not stealth operations.
“Unbelievable…” Sam sighed.
"The rival school's mascot represents the oppressive chains of institutionalized sports culture and toxic masculinity. I'm making a statement."
"The only statement you're making is 'please give me a cavity search, officer,'" Tiffany snapped, aggressively checking her lip gloss in a compact mirror. "And if anyone gets mascot grease on my new leather jacket, I am calling my dad’s lawyer. I only agreed to this little field trip because Sam said we were hitting the country club pool, and frankly, the vibe in this vehicle is highly toxic. It smells like protein shakes and impending doom."
From the shadows of the far-back corner, Mal let out a low, unsettling giggle. She adjusted her dark eyeliner and pointed a vintage, completely disconnected rotary phone directly at Tiffany's head.
"The spirits say your aura is an ugly shade of corporate beige today, Tiffany," Mal whispered, her face inches from the window. "Also, the devil is standing right behind us."
I froze. I slowly looked in the side-view mirror, praying she was just doing her usual gothic-oracle routine.
She wasn't.
There, marching down the sidewalk with the terrifying, synchronized stride of a discount Terminator, was Dean Vance. His aviator sunglasses reflected the morning sun, his tie was perfectly clipped, and he was clutching a megaphone like a weapon of mass destruction. He was exactly fifty yards away, and his eyes were locked onto our station wagon like a heat-seeking missile tracking a target.
"Marcus," I said, my voice dropping into a deadpan monotone that barely concealed the pure panic flooding my system. "Start the car. Start it right now or I will personally throw you into the engine bay."
Marcus jammed the key and twisted. The engine gave a pathetic, wheezing sputter, like a lawnmower choking on a pebble. It didn’t start.
The Dean took three massive, synchronized strides closer. He was adjusting the volume dial on his megaphone. We were dead.
Marcus slammed his palm against the dashboard, letting out a string of curses that definitely weren't approved by the St. Beckon’s student handbook.
"Come on, you piece of junk! My mom swears by the power of Christ, so do something!"
"He’s raising the megaphone!" Artie shrieked, his voice reaching a pitch that could shatter glass. He scrambled to pull his knees to his chest, trying to compress himself into a ball of pure, untraceable matter. "He's going to use the siren function! The decibels will permanently damage my inner ear, and I need my equilibrium for the Harvard debate team!"
"If you don't shut up, Artie, I will personally damage your equilibrium," Tiffany hissed, frantically ducking below the window line and shielding her face with her designer bags. "If my face ends up on the school's newspaper associated with this rust bucket, my social equity drops to zero. Turn the key, Marcus!"
"I am turning it!" Marcus yelled, his knuckles turning white as he violently wrenched the ignition. The engine gave another pathetic click-click-wheeze, followed by a puff of smoke from the glove box that smelled suspiciously like burnt wire and old french fries.
From the back, Brad was still wrestling with the giant fiberglass pirate. "Guys, if Vance breaches the perimeter, I'll use the mascot as a shield. It's built to withstand stadium-grade vandalism. We can hold him off!"
"We're not starting a medieval siege in the school parking lot, Brad!" I shouted, watching the side-view mirror in absolute horror. The Dean was now thirty yards away. I could literally see the reflection of his perfectly manicured mustache gleaming in the sunlight. He was lifting the megaphone to his mouth.
"The vacuum of space opens for us," Mal whispered cheerfully from the corner, completely unbothered, as she began to draw a tiny pentagram on the foggy window pane. "I hope the afterlife has better radio stations."
"Marcus!" I screamed, grabbing the steering wheel and shaking it as if that would somehow help. "Do something illegal! Hotwire it! Use your nerd powers!"
"This isn't a movie, Sam! I can't just rub two wires together and make a 1982 engine magically cooperate!" Marcus fired back, sweating profusely as he gave the key one final, desperate, apocalyptic twist.
The megaphone crackled into life behind us, a sharp burst of static cutting through the morning air. "Attention occupants of the beige violation..." Vance's voice boomed.
And then, the station wagon engine suddenly roared with a ferocious, backfiring boom that sounded like an actual gunshot. The entire chassis violently shuddered, throwing the car into a wild, vibrating fit of life.
"Go! Go! Go!" everyone yelled simultaneously.
Marcus threw the car into reverse just as Dean Vance reached the back bumper. The wagon lurched backward, making a sound like a chainsaw hitting a metal fence, before Marcus slammed it into drive and floored the gas pedal. We shot forward, missing a concrete divider by what felt like two millimeters, and barreled out onto the main road.
Nobody breathed for a solid three blocks.
Finally, Artie let out a long, trembling sigh and collapsed against the seat.
"The Dean doesn't see us. Thank God the windows are tinted! If he actually saw us, he’d shout our names out according to the protocol in the disciplinary handbook. We’re ghosts, guys. Unidentified flying garbage."
"Yeah, well, we won't be invisible for long," I said, my heart still trying to exit my ribcage as I watched the school building disappear in the rearview mirror. "They might notice we are not in class the second the first-period bell rings and the teachers look at their seating charts."
Artie wiped his glasses on his shirt, suddenly looking a lot more confident.
"Actually, according to my calculations, a lot of kids are not going to be in class today anyway since it's peak flu season. Remember, we are allowed excused absences under school policy, but we just need to bring in doctor's notes or proof the next day." He paused, a surprisingly devious smile spreading across his face. "We can just make fake ones!"
I stared at him through the mirror.
"Artie. Are you suggesting forgery? The kid who was just crying about his Harvard application is now recommending corporate white-collar crime?"
"It’s not crime if it’s medical fiction," Marcus laughed, steering the massive wagon with one hand while using the other to finally eject the jammed cassette tape. "I have a high-resolution scanner at home and three different templates for the local clinic. I can print out official-looking notes before we even head back on Monday. Artie, you can forge the signatures since your handwriting looks like an actual doctor's anyway."
"It’s true," Artie nodded proudly. "My penmanship has been described as completely illegible yet highly authoritative."
"Great," Tiffany sighed, pulling out her compact mirror to make sure the near-death experience hadn't ruined her mascara. "So our criminal mastermind ring consists of a tech hacker, a guy who writes like a pharmacist, and a giant fiberglass pirate head in the trunk. If this doesn't get us into the country club, nothing will."