p.1
      School!? 6-8
      I never have had a normal childhood. When I turned 13 I was put into boarding school, away from the environment in which idealism was encouraged. Where it was okay for a kid to just simply be a kid. I barely knew my parents. It was like I was an orphan 20/7 but I still had parents. I bet it was that they didn’t want to deal with me after work, which is only 4 hours a week! Bottom line, my parents worked a TON.
********
     “Here you go kid,” said the guard. I looked up from the fake brochure the guard had handed to me. My head was still spinning since my parents had left me in this dungeon of a school. They said it was going to help my full potential. How would they even know my potential? On the metal door had my name, Boher, Jone and the writing looked as if the guard himself wrote it. The guard had huge buck teeth jutting out of his mouth and a large stomach. His hair was brown and his glasses were black. Considering that I had straight, pristine hair, a clean face and my head was meant for my body and a good sense of style, the guard looked……. slightly appalling.
       My clothes were already in the room so I looked around. The room had one tiny window and a small light was glowing faintly above the drab bed. I sat on the bed which was hard and had awkward indents in the mattress. Next to the bed was a small desk with lamp and a clock. One cheesey sign hung above the desk, “Believe.” 
     “Wow. What a fail. If I get out of here, I’ll believe in anything,” I thought. As exciting as it was to stay in the room, I stomped out of the room to roam the hall a bit. A few yards away was a board. Posted on it was a picture of the “school” with the year 1907. The building had only a few windows. The brick was bright red and the bushes and trees were neatly trimmed. The molding around the roof was Victorian style and the building was almost shaped like a fork. There was another picture of today’s building and it had seen better days. I groaned and moved on to a long corridor, probably the handle of the fork. Another kid was walking with a mask on their head and a jumpsuit with converse sneakers. The kid was mumbling.
       “Gotta get out……. Don’t believe.”
      p.2
       “I hear you, man,” I called. At least I thought he was a boy. His head whipped around and his eyes showed a mixture of agreement and desperation. He shuffled around the corner and then I heard an opening and closing of a door. I walked a little more. Then I heard a slight “tap, tap, tap, tap” of high heels. I started to panic so I quickly began to make my way back to my room.
       “Oh shoot!” I whispered. The uncoordinated feet of mine accidentally kicked the wall.
       “Who’s there?” A raspy voice demanded. I started into a sprint. The high heeled “taps” became more rapid.
        “Who’s there?” The raspy voice demanded once more. She said something more but I couldn’t make it out because I was already in my room. The high heeled tapping passed my room. I don’t know why that scared me so much. Maybe her voice or the sheer terrified reputation that builds up in this boarding “school”. 
      I felt a yawn coming so I laid down on the bed and went to sleep.
      I awoke to hushed voices saying, “He’s in there” and, “No, that can’t be him”. 
      I slowly and quietly got out of bed and went to the window.
         	“Open….you….100….year old…..window!” I hissed “BOOM! BOOM! BOOM”! A powerful foot was hitting the metal door.
         “No one’s in here. If he was he would be screaming. Let’s go!” “Tap, tap, tap, tap”. The heels were becoming fainter. Every second that I didn’t hear the taps I became more relaxed. After I built up the courage to, I opened my door.  I froze. There, outside in the hall was the last thing I wanted to see.
	“Affirmative. Ves, he’s here.”
A tall buzz cut woman stood before me. She wore a black suit with a tool belt. She clipped her walkie talkie to the tool belt with a fast zip! An impatient tap rung in the hall. 
      p.3
      “Oh my gosh!” I thought. “Not her!” 
      She yanked my ear down the hall and spoke in her weird accent, “Vou! Vou are vin vig trouble!”
      Another quick yank and I was standing in front of the corner that, just yesterday, I almost got caught rounding the corner. A mahogany door was labeled too, but in a more official way said, Gertrude Vennépilé. She took a small golden key out of her many tool pockets, turned the key and shoved me towards the door. I opened it and staring straight at me was a taxidermied moose head. Gross. Ms.Vennépilé took a seat behind a large rotunda shaped desk with great authority. The room was masked with dark grey wallpaper. One picture hung from a rusted nail. The picture showed Ms.Vennépilé sitting on the front steps of this “school.” No mistaking it for her. A lifeless plant hung meekly in the corner and a small shabby rug covered the floor. 
“The vules clearly state that no student vay come out of veir voom after 8:45 pm.” Ms. Vennépilé eerily says. “Detention and a vrade deduction are enforced vith matters vike vhis, Mr. Boher.” Ms. Vennépilé propped her legs up on her desk. 
      “Clank!” A metal cage door was heavily shut by a skinny guard. He had told me to not talk, wipe that look off my face or he’ll do it for me and if I survive, he will be here in 2 hours. Persistent to his orders I sat down on the cold, stained concrete. Like pretty much all the rooms here, it was dimly lit and had the bare necessities. For the next 2 hours I felt like a jail bird.
      “Hey, kid!”
I looked up to see a different guard, but the same guard that I saw me first day here.
      “What’cha doing in there?”
      “They locked me up!” I said innocently. “Can you get me out?”
      He replied, “Sure. Now let me find those keys……”
p.4
A moment later I was free, or at least as free as a boarding “school” kid can get.
      “Hey, you know where the bathroom is?” I asked.
      “Yeah. Go down the hall and make a turn at the corner,” he replied, without looking up from the ant crawling on the floor. I casually walked down the hall towards the first corner, but there were two corners. I decided to go right. There was a short corridor with one door. I turned the knob and gave the door a jerk while some dust floated to my nose.
      A few papers were littered on the floor. A great big stack of papers sat in the corner of the room. A metal desk was in the other corner. Picking up a piece of paper, I heard the guard whistling by. He stopped in front of the door, shrugged, closed the door and walked away. Close one. I looked at the paper, trying to read the sloppy handwriting. I looked more closely to realize it didn’t make any words. Hmmmm. I grabbed a piece of paper and hurriedly found my way back to my room.
      My room was blisteringly cold so I wrapped myself in my bed covers. The papers were on my lap but they felt awkward and something seemed to be hidden in them. I flipped through them and saw the seal of the “school” which was founded in 1932. I heard a rap on the door so I quickly shoved the paper under my bed.
“Come in!” I yelled.
      A bald guy with big 80’s glasses stuck his head in and placed a red tray of what looked like, my old school’s lunch. He started to close the door but before it close he called to me, “The chicken’s the bomb. And literally, it exploded in a kid’s stomach a few days ago.” He winked. I winked back but in that face that really means you feel you are about to puke.
      “Luggh. Eww! Yuck!” A pile of drool was on my pillow. It had been 2 weeks since I had found that piece of suspicious paper. Today was the first day of classes…yippee. I cleaned myself up, put the paper in my backpack and headed out into the halls. They were bustling, but the thing was, no one was talking. It was as if you had a jack-in-the-box without the jack. A 
p.5
blank expression was on each of the kid’s faces. My schedule had said I have first hour free. On the back showed a list of rooms, who taught in them and what the room number was. I scanned down the list until I found the library, so I can finally figure out what this paper says.
      After a brutal bumping of binders to the stomach, I made it to the library, room 47 and Mr. Arn was the librarian. A friendly man with grey hair and white-rimmed glasses came out.
“Hi!” He spoke very cheerfully. “Can I help you?”
“Umm. Yeah.” I replied. Should I trust this guy or what? I thought. I decided yes.
“Do you know what this is?” I thrust the piece of paper towards him. His eyes instantly lit up.
“How? Where? I’ve been here 42 years and haven’t seen it since the start!” he said.
“Where are you so happy?” Iasked.
      Mr. Arn eventually told me everything. From the part where this school got closed down for the abusive teaching style but kept going, to the part where he got lost the first day he got here. He was the only one that knew about this. Even the Vennépilé’s didn’t know that he knew. He ended by telling me to meet him here at 7 pm sharp and bring a blanket, pillow and the piece of paper.
      Do you know how scary a library is at night? Well it is especially at an old run down “school.” Anyways, it was 7:01 and Mr. Arn had just helped me set up in his office.
 	“You have the paper?” He called from his desk. I handed him the piece of paper. He pulled the shades down low and turned his desk light dimmer. He took out a pad of paper and a fountain pen. He glanced back at the paper every once and a while. After the soft ding of the grandfather clock struck 8, Mr. Arn cried, “Okay! Here the paper says translated, Dear Nicholi, everything is in place. The government hasn’t gotten a clue about this school. You are in good hands. Emerilis.”
      p.6
      “Who’s Nicholi and Emerilis?" I said.
      Mr. Arn seemed sad but spoke. "It's Headmaster Gertrude's Grandpa and Grandma. I figured out the letter by unjumbling the words because the letters are arranged in alphabetical order. The Vennepile's forced us to learn it because they were convinced someone was hacking into their letters. Now where did you find them, son?"
      I told him that they were in the basement part of the school, but I forgot where exactly it was. I asked him how he was going to get there and he replied Oh I know, very creepily. 
      “You ready?” Mr. Arn hissed. He had suddenly gotten very serious these past few hours.
      “Are you ready?” Mr. Arn hissed again. I was shrugging my shoulders and about to say not really, when he gave me a shove out from behind the corner we were hiding behind. The worst part about it was when I fell, of all people, I had to fall on Headmaster Gertrude.
 	I blurted out, “Oh my gosh! I am sooo sorry Headmaster Gertrude. Wait. Hellooo?” I looked back at Mr. Arn who looked back at me and gave me the, that’s your problem not mine look. Turns out I had fallen on her head and she lay unconscious on the floor. I waved my hands frantically towards the door. He got the message so we silently ran back to the library. The halls were even scarier at night. The floor boards creaked and somehow had gotten older since I had gotten here.
 	I slept in the library that night, woke up and went to the bathroom. When I was on my back to the library, I saw Headmaster Gertrude come up to me with a tall guard. The next thing I knew, me and Mr. Arn were being dragged off into the small jail cell.
 	“Vou are vired and vou are expelled!” Headmaster Gertrude pointed to Mr. Arn and I. Secretly, Mr. Arn and I were jumping with joy. We were back in the jail, which was actually good. But, you know the saying where you get kicked out of somewhere, that’s where this phrase actually applies. The guard booted us out.  
 p.7	
   Once outside, Mr. Arn had asked me if I had the paper and translation, and I said yes. We went straight to the police and told them. After 43 years of waiting, Mr. Arn finally got the Vennépilé’s busted. And for me, well, let’s just say my parents don’t work a lot anymore and I got $5,000 from the school’s extra funds. Now I am content with my public school where I can be a kid.
 
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 	“Dad! Tell the story again!” Jane Boher, my daughter, asks. I had just finished telling her this story. Her big, brown toddler eyes looked up at me in her best puppy dog face.
“No, it’s time for bed.” I say sternly. 30 years later, my family and I now live happily and, ironically, I am now a principal of a boarding school. 
“Good night!” I call to Jane and switch off her lights.
“’Night!” She calls back from under her sheets. “Or should I say, vood night!” I laugh and with that, I officially end my story.