Detention sucks, I think to myself as I sit in the musty classroom. The only other living thing here is the detention monitor, Mr. Lanoli. If you can call him living. The man is eighty-seven years old, but looks like four hundred. In fact, I bet he played tag with dinosaurs. I sit in my desk, head propped on top of my folded arms. When is this ever going to end, I think to myself, looking up at the clock. Suddenly, Mr. Lanoli surprises me. He stands up from his desk and says, "I'm going to get some more coffee. I'll be back in a few minutes." And he leaves. I spring up from my desk. Finally, a chance to escape. I think about the windows, but I wouldn't be able to close them from the outside. Carefully, I sneak to the door, cautious of any other teachers. Looking both ways, I tiptoe out, careful not to make any noise.

After a few minutes of sneaking around, I hear voices up ahead. I peek around a corner, and spot Mr. Lanoli talking to one of the other teachers. Luckily their backs are facing toward me. My feet seem as loud as thunder when I tiptoe behind them, but they keep on talking, and don't turn around.

At last, I spot the door. Large metal doors with rust spots covering them never looked as welcoming as they did now. I sprint to them, arms outstretched. Freedom! As I run, I push the doors wide, running through. At the same moment, I hear an alarm sound and a voice behind me saying, "Mr. Parker, you had better not be trying to leave!"

The alarm is a high-pitched shriek that vibrates in my teeth. I’m halfway through the doorway, one foot on the cracked sidewalk and the other still on the school’s linoleum, hovering in a pathetic state of mid-escape limbo.

"Mr. Parker!"

The voice belongs to Vice Principal Miller. He’s standing right next to Mr. Lanoli, who is calmly sipping a fresh cup of coffee. Lanoli doesn't even look surprised; he looks like he’s watching a movie he’s already seen a thousand times.

"I... I thought I heard a cat," I stammer, slowly pulling my lead foot back inside. The heavy metal doors groan as they begin to swing shut, sealing my fate. "A very loud, distressed cat. Out here. In the parking lot."

Miller’s eyebrows disappear into his hairline. "A cat set off the perimeter alarm, did it?"

He gestures down at the floor. I look down and realize I’m standing directly on a pressure-sensitive mat I’d never noticed before—a little parting gift from the school board to keep kids like me from doing exactly what I just did.

"Back to the room, Parker," Miller sighs, pointing a finger down the hallway. "And since you have so much energy to burn, you can spend the next hour helping Mr. Lanoli reorganize the storage closet. It hasn't been touched since the dinosaurs he supposedly played tag with were in diapers."

My stomach drops. Mr. Lanoli finally looks at me, a tiny, mischievous glint in his milky eyes. He doesn't say a word, just turns and begins the slow, agonizing shuffle back toward the classroom.

As I trail behind him, defeated, I realize the "escape" only lasted forty-five seconds. Now, I’m not just in detention; I’m on manual labor duty. I look up at the hallway clock. It’s only 3:15. At this rate, I’ll be eighty-seven myself by the time I get out of here.

Would you like Chapter 3 to focus on the secrets you find in the storage closet, or should Mr. Lanoli surprise you by being an unexpected ally?

For once. In my life. I inspected it. Yes, the school. And something was off. I mean, in the usual way we all did it. Running to class praying not to get our butts kicked and even when we have time, what's the use? It seemed to scream at me, like I was it's next prey. I wanted to hit the life out of Mr. Lanoli and make a run for it. But I knew that would cost me another detention and an escort to the storage closet by his right and just. Oh please like I'm already NOT suffering. You must be joking if you don't know who I'm talking about. Luckily, we reached the closet and he decided..."I'm going to get another cup of coffee," he said in his raspy voice," You start without me." And this time I didn't bother to escape. The closet felt more like a room. A stuffed room. Though it seemed to glow among the objects. I took a closer look then. It went blank and dark

I don’t know how long the darkness lasts.

It feels like someone unplugged the world. One second I’m staring at this weird glowing… thing in the closet, and the next I’m floating in pitch‑black nothingness, like a cosmic fuse had blown. Then fwump--light slams back into my eyes. I’m lying on a cold floor. Not the school’s linoleum. This is stone, old stone, like it belongs in castles or creepy basements from horror movies. I sit up fast. My head spins like a malfunctioning carnival ride. The room around me is huge: way bigger than the storage closet. The walls are lined with shelves, but not like in the storage closet. These are old, ornate shelves holding jars, hundreds of them, glowing faintly.

Great. I’ve been kidnapped by Dr Frankenstein.

A soft shuffle echoes behind me. I whirl around.

Mr. Lanoli is standing there.

Kind of.

He stands straighter, eyes sharp and bright. His wrinkles seem less like age and more like cracks in something, like old leather. “Mr. Parker,” he says, and his voice is no longer raspy, but smooth and strong and practiced. “You weren’t supposed to open the door.”

“I didn’t open anything!” I protest. “It opened at me! There was glowing!”

He ignores the jar. “The closet is a gateway. A very old one. And you’ve stepped through it.”

I blink. “So… I’m not in trouble?”

“Oh, you’re absolutely in trouble,” he says. “But not with the school.”

He steps closer, and for the first time ever, I notice something impossible: a faint symbol glowing on the back of his hand. The same symbol I saw glowing on the object before everything went dark.

“What is this place?” I whisper.

He sighs, like a man who’s been waiting a long, long time for this moment. “This,” he says, “is the part of the school no one remembers. And now that you’ve crossed the threshold… you’re part of it.”

A jar on the shelf rattles violently, and something inside it growls.

I swallow hard. “Can I go back to detention now?”

Lanoli smiles. “Oh, Jared Parker,” he says. “Detention was the easy part.”