Trapped by Michael Northrop Read Free Book Online Page B

don’t think it will,” said Jason. His dad worked on houses for a living.
    “You don’t think what?” said Krista. “That it will start back up again?”
    She was talking to Jason now. Even in the dark, you couldsort of hear which way she was facing. I don’t think she knew about his dad, but she probably heard the confidence in his voice. It was the sound of someone speaking from experience rather than someone just thinking out loud. And I’m sure that Jason did know more about it than me. He was my friend, but it still sort of stung to be cut out of the conversation like that. I pictured Krista’s face, her eyes open wide in the dark, her soft body leaning against the hard wall.
    “Yeah,” said Jason. “I think it’s pretty much done without power. I mean, it’s not electric heat, but it needs electricity for other stuff.”
    I couldn’t tell if Jason didn’t know what that other stuff was — if he was just thinking out loud like me — or if he did, but didn’t want to sit there explaining it to the rest of us. I tried to think what he might be talking about: switches, fans, pumps? I had no idea. It made me think of some big, old factory somewhere, like the kind of place where kids lost their fingers during the Industrial Revolution.
    “Well, OK,” said Pete. “So it won’t relight. Can’t we keep it from, like, clicking off in the first place?”
    “You mean, like, the thermostat?” said Julie. “Like at home?”
    “Yeah,” said Pete. “Couldn’t we, like, open a window next to it? The heat would keep going then, right? Does anyone know where a thermostat is?”
    No one did. At least no one said so. I realized that we hadn’t heard anything from Les for a while. I wasn’t even sure he was still over there. I hadn’t heard Elijah either, but I wasn’t too concerned about where he was.
    “Wait,” said Pete. He said that a lot. “We can use my flashlight app to find one.”
    It seemed like a good idea to me. Find a thermostat and keep it cold. Of course, it wasn’t.
    “Won’t matter,” said Jason.
    “Why not?” three of us said at once.
    “Hello?” he said. It felt a little unnecessary.
    “Yeah?” we said.
    “The thermostats are electric.”
    “What does that mean?” said Julie, and then she got it. “Oh.”
    No power, no heat.
    “Well,” said Pete. “We are really and truly screwed.”
    I tried to think of something to add, but I couldn’t even do that. I felt angry and helpless and stranded, all at the same time. And then I heard a laugh. It was soft and sort of under-the-breath, but someone was definitely laughing. At first, I thought it was Les and I was going to tell him to shut his face. He can’t punch what he can’t see, right? But then I realized it was Elijah, and that just creeped me out.
    A few seconds later, Les joined in.

NINE
    How long could we be stuck here? That was the question now. How long, like, conceivably? We had no power, no lights, and the heat was already leaking out of the building through a thousand cracks and seams and windows.
    “It’s only for one night,” said Julie.
    “Tops,” said Pete. “The snow could’ve stopped already.”
    “We’ve got jackets,” said Krista.
    The talk continued along those lines. The tone was: It’s not so bad. The tone was: This too shall pass. The tone was: Forced. It was like listening to your mom trying to cheer you up when you knew she didn’t really believe what she was saying.
    Still, we were going through the motions. If you just started listening now, you might think that we were talking about an overnight camping trip, and a coed one at that. The more wetalked, the more we sort of talked ourselves into it. It wasn’t so bad.
    I mean, there was obviously not going to be school tomorrow, so it’s not like people would be piling off the buses and tripping over our cold, sleeping bodies. We’d just wait for the storm to taper off, go home, warm up, and spend the day on our couches with