Chapter 53 – Megan’s Folly – Erica Henson

On the ride to school I was being bombarded by text messages from Zoe. The timing of Zoe’s texts was what made this strange. It was early on a Tuesday morning. Zoe never sent me texts in the morning, hell, she rarely even texted me at all. She knew my living situation with Jackie and never bothered initiating conversation with me. It was always me chasing after her.

“What’s going on with your phone?” Jackie asked without taking her eyes off the road.

“It’s Zoe. She keeps telling me that I need to meet her at school. She says it’s an emergency.”

“Zoe… Zoe…” Jackie echoed.

“She’s the one in charge of the newspaper club.”

“Oh! That’ Zoe! You’re talking about Pay-For-The-Website-Or-Else-I-Quit Zoe. The only time I ever hear anything from her is when money is involved. She’s never happy to see me about it either.”

“She’s just a little rough around the edges. For what it’s worth she does do a good job running the school website.” I said in Zoe’s defense.

“She does, but hardly anyone reads the articles she posts there. The last time I checked out the school website she was featuring an article about how to properly care for school uniforms. She’s just as anal about that as the senior teaching staff is. Which, by the way, I have a meeting with them as soon as we make it to school.”

“Well, she has a vision for the future of the school. She wants things to improve. I’ll admit she can be over the top sometimes, but her heart is in the right place.” I said.

“Back when I was in school, the girls that used to police us like that would get on my nerves.”

“And now you’re the vice principal.” I reminded her. “Shouldn’t you be in agreement with Zoe’s stance?”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I 100% agree. It’s just now I’m the one that has to enforce these stupid old rules. I have to listen to our fossil-aged principal go on a rant about uniform etiquette every time the old man is spritely enough to stumble back into school. I’ll be relieved when the dinosaur finally kicks the bucket.”

As I was laughing at her frustrations I received another text from Zoe.

“Tell your friend to hold on. We’re almost there.” Jackie said.

We pulled into the school campus staff parking like a race car pulling into a pit stop. Jackie was already behind for her meeting and had to at least beat the staff to her office before they could. If she was like this as an adult I could only imagine how she was when she was my age. Another text notification buzzed my cell phone as I went my separate ways from Jackie. Zoe had a place on the campus she wanted me to meet her.

This place that she wanted me to meet her was out in no man’s land. She wanted me to meet her outside of the school, near the indoor swimming pool storage building. I couldn’t even say if the damn swimming pool was still used, the swimming club was disbanded some time ago. Her texts were promises of something unbelievable, but she wouldn’t tell me outright. She wanted me to see it for myself. All that I was seeing so far was a lot of unkept shrubbery hidden on the backside of the school.

“What’s so important you had to drag me all the way out here?” I asked her as I closed into her.

She was smiling as she came up to me. She grabbed my shoulders and shook me like a happy fool. This was unusual for her. She wasn’t the smiley-playful type. Normally she was the gloomy-distant type. The only times I ever got any affection out of her were completely random. Her mood often changes like the phases of the moon.

“You look lively. Now will you finally tell me what’s going on?” I asked.

“It’s over here.” She said, backpedalling and pulling me with her.

“What’s over here?” I asked.

“The secret I uncovered.”

“What sort of secret?”

“That’s the secret within the secret!” She said.

She brought me over to a grouping of bushes. It took me longer than it should’ve to notice the storm cellar door between these bushes. It was like it was camouflaged into the background of all this greenery and foliage. There was a long metal chain on the ground beside this door, and an open lock to boot. It looked like someone forgot to lock it back up.

“What is this?” I asked Zoe once more.

Zoe opened up the door, unveiling a massive staircase leading down into a dark unknown. There looked to be a door down far at the bottom but even with the morning sky above us it was hard to see the bottom. Zoe picked up a pebble from the ground and lightly tossed it down the staircase. The distant echo the skipping rock made as it hopped its way down gave me a new appreciation for the scale of this staircase. This brought me to a realization.

“This leads into the basement!” I said.

“What do you know about the basement?” Zoe asked with new fervor.

“Nothing… Not much, I mean. Jackie told me there was a basement. She stopped talking about it so I assumed she dealt with the problem.”

“What problem?”

“She said she was worried about people going into the basement. She said it was dangerous and off-limits. How did you find out about this?”

“Megan Schwinn,” Zoe said, “The fool uploaded a video of her going down into this place straight onto her blog. I found the location based on the scenery of when she was coming out of the basement. I recognized the swimming pool storage building in the distance.”

“Yuck, don’t tell me you actually watch that egotistical maniac’s videos.”

Zoe shrugged.

“I scrape the web for things that I can use to make content for the school website. I don’t like Megan, but some of the people that read my articles do.”

“How could she be so stupid as to upload a video of her going into a restricted area? Did she not realize it was off limits? There’s a chain and lock right on the ground.”

“She probably didn’t care.” Zoe said. “It’ll make for a great article on the school site.”

“No, we can’t.” I said. “We have to tell Jackie about this.”

“You want to go to the vice principal with this? Do you really think she would care?”

“I do! Like I said, she was worried about it before. Come on, let’s go tell her about the video.”

“Fine,” Zoe said.

Zoe and I were forced to wait outside of Jackie’s office. She was still caught up in a meeting with the senior teaching staff. When they finally came out the teachers all greeted me and Zoe kindly as they walked by. I tried my best to play the role of model student as I always did when in the front office. Jackie was the only one that could see straight through me. She realized something was wrong the moment she saw me and Zoe standing there.

“What is it?” She asked when the last teacher was out of the office.

“There’s something I think you should see. You’re not going to believe what Zoe found.” I said.

We went into Jackie’s office and sat down together. Zoe pulled her laptop out of her backpack to show us the video. The video started just in front of the storm cellar door. Immediately Jackie was taken aback. Zoe and I both noticed her jerk away from the screen of the laptop as if she were watching something obscene. The person shooting this film turned the camera onto herself.

“Hey bitches! It’s your favorite blogger here with another update!” Megan said into the camera.

Upon hearing Megan’s introduction Jackie hit her fist against her desk.

“That little shit!” Jackie hissed.

Megan turned the camera back to the storm cellar door.

“We found this scary looking staircase that leads to something beneath the school!” Megan said. “As everyone knows this school is haunted by the spirit of the Killing Cat. Maybe we’ll find something if we go down here? What do you think Candace?” Megan said and turned the camera on another girl.

This other girl swiped the camera away from her before a clear image could even be established.

“Get that stupid thing out of my face or I’ll break it.”

Megan turned the camera back on herself.

“Woo! Touchy! Let’s ask someone else.”

Megan turned the camera to a girl I recognized.

“What do you think, Brittney?”

“I don’t know what’s down there.” Brittney said. “Let’s just make it quick. I don’t want to get caught going down there by a teacher.”

Zoe laughed.

“What an idiot.” Zoe said. “If she really didn’t want to get caught then she should’ve stopped Megan from filming this.”

“Do either of you know who that girl is?” Jackie asked.

“That’s Brittney Jakeman.” I said.

“She’s the head of that gang, minus Megan.” Zoe added. “They call her Black Brittney. She’s just as egotistical as Megan. I can’t say I’m surprised to see them getting along. They’re birds of a feather.”

“That’s good to know.” Jackie said. “That will make things simpler for me.”

Megan and Brittney’s crew continued to stumble through the darkness as they looked around. It was hard to tell exactly what was happening with the camera shaking around so much. All of the girls were excited and playful like they were reenacting scenes from a teenage horror flick. As unsettling as the underground basement was, it didn’t seem to faze them all that much. Maybe it was because they were travelling as such a large group?

We saw the light from the camera strobe several dark rooms. The other girls were using the flashlights on their phones to help guide their way. It was only Megan that was putting effort into documenting this place. Of course she didn’t shut up the entire time her camera was rolling. She often turned the camera back on herself to illustrate her amazement to her would-be audience. In our case this audience consisted of me, Zoe, and the vice principal.

Megan filmed what looked to be a hallway with lockers. The people and their camera lights moved around so much that I couldn’t tell what was going on until she went into another room. This room was filled with clothing and costumes. It looked like theater equipment. I was aware that there used to be a theater club only because Jackie had told me about it beforehand. She rarely ever talked about it, or much of her high school days for that matter.

“That’s enough.” Jackie said. “I’ve seen enough.”

Zoe turned off the video and put away her laptop.

“This is what you were looking for before, wasn’t it?” I asked.

“It was.” Jackie said. “And I found it. I had someone lock it up. I thought that was the end of the problem. Apparently that isn’t the case.”

“According to Megan’s blog this was uploaded yesterday. What’s down there anyways?” Zoe asked.

“It’s nothing for you to worry about.” Jackie said. “Instead, I’ll reward you for what you found. You were telling me before that your newspaper club needed a new camera or something?”

Zoe smiled in excitement.

“Whoa, really…? You mean it?” Zoe asked like she couldn’t believe her ears.

“I mean it. These girls could’ve got hurt going down there. Thanks to your help I’ll be able to deal with this problem before it spreads any further.”

“Yeah, I was saying that the old club camera is outdated. With the new camera I was telling you about before…”

“That’s all well and good.” Jackie said. “I’ll see to it that this new camera gets funded. There’s still one more thing that I need you to do for me in exchange.”

“What’s that?”

“I want you to make a new article about the basement.” Jackie said. “I’m sure you weren’t the only one to see Megan’s blog post yesterday. It’s only a matter of time before more girls go down there to try to check things out. I need you to make very clear that the underground is off-limits, punishable by suspension.”

“I’ll get started immediately.” Zoe said.

Jackie dismissed her by waving her off with a smile. Zoe walked away with an excited smile on her face. Once Zoe was out of the room Jackie put her face into her palm. She rested both her elbows on her desk and shook her head while staring down. I went closer to the front of her desk.

“Well, at least Zoe managed to catch this quickly.” I said.

“Yeah, she did.” Jackie said. “This just never ends, does it? I’m going to have to deal with all those girls that went down into the basement. This is going to be a mess.”

“Maybe not,” I said, “Their leaders are Brittney Jakeman and Megan Schwinn. If you can get a message through to those two then you won’t have to even bother with the rest.”

Jackie thought about it for a moment, and then looked back up at me.

“First period already started, right? Find out which classes they’re in right now and have them called out. I know you’re not on office duty this period so I’ll make a call for you to stay here this period. After that I need to make another call of my own. Have them wait outside my office.”

“Okay.” I said.

The usual office assistant on duty for the first period was confused to see me supersede her in the front office. It didn’t take long for me to carry out Jackie’s wishes. Megan was the first to arrive. The fool was curious and confused about her reason for being called to the front office. The idea of an upcoming scolding was so alien to her that it didn’t even cross her ignorant mind.

Black Brittney on the other hand arrived in a different frame of mind. The moment she walked through that door she had an expression like she had seen her own ghost. Her expression, from what I could tell, was an expression of far greater fear than she had in that video of them down in the dark basement. They sat down together in the chairs outside of Jackie’s office. It was only as Black Brittney was sitting next to Megan did the tiny gears in her brain begin to turn.

When Jackie was finished with her private call she called for the three of us. Now that it was time for the two girls to go into her office Megan was beginning to drag her feet. I was following them in close behind so that she couldn’t turn to run if she got any bright ideas. When her foot dragging slowed to a full stop I gave her a gentle push forward. I pointed her to one of the two seats in front of Jackie.

“Go ahead and take a seat.” I said with a polite smile. “Normally I don’t work as an office assistant this early in the morning but this is a special case. I hope you don’t mind me sitting in on this as a witness to the evidence.”

“What evidence…?” Brittney asked as she sat down.

“I think you know what evidence.” Jackie said and then turned to Megan. “Unless you have something you’d like to tell your friend here?”

Megan began stuttering out a muffled response but she was cut off by Brittney.

“You actually uploaded that video?!” Brittney asked in a strained voice that sounded like she wanted to whisper, but came out almost as a shout.

“I…” Megan began to say.

Megan didn’t even have words to defend herself. I saw the sharp glow in Jackie’s eye as she recognized the weak link here.

“I’m very disappointed in you Ms. Schwinn. With the student council presidency riding on the line I didn’t think you’d be so reckless about school rules. The basement is off-limits to students. It is incredibly dangerous for anyone to be down there in the dark.”

“We… We didn’t know!” Black Brittney said. “We were just having a quick look around!”

“Irrelevant!” Jackie shouted, “The rules are the rules even if you don’t know them! Now I’ll have you two girls confess to me what it is you think you were doing down there, or you’ll both suffer the consequences.”

Megan sat up straight and let out an arrogant laugh.

“Don’t forget who my dad is!” She said defensively. “You can’t suspend me! Not after all the donations he’s given this school! All this posturing is pointless on me.”

Jackie leaned back in her chair, folded her hands into her lap, and put on a wide grin.

“Suspension…?” She asked in a laugh, “You think that’s what’s at stake here?”

Megan and Black Brittney didn’t have a response. They didn’t know what she meant. I didn’t either for that matter. Then there was a knock at the door. Jackie looked over at me and gestured to the door. I opened the door and let this person I had never seen inside. Megan and Black Brittney turned to look at this female police officer walking into the office. They both had jaw-dropped expressions of obvious shock.

“Thank you for coming, Angel.” Jackie said.

“I don’t mind. It’s nice to take off from my usual work routine sometimes.” Angel said as she came around to Jackie’s side of the desk.

Jackie stood up and waved her arm out towards this police officer.

“I’d like to introduce you all. This is Officer Angelica Morelli. She’s one of the police officers designated to come to our school in the event of something like this. Angel, these two are Brittney Jakeman and Megan Schwinn.”

Black Brittney and Megan remained frozen without so much of a peep between them. The only cue to see that they were still alive was the occasional blinking of their widened eyes.

“Nice to meet you two,” Officer Morelli said.

“Now,” Jackie said as she sat back down into her chair comfortably, “Let’s start this conversation back from the beginning, shall we?”