School by Nathaniel Hardman (top reads .TXT) 📕

A moment later, the knob turned just as a heavy weight slammed into the door. Suzy and the others held, but the door was opened a sliver. She gave a shout and heaved back against the door, which gave a satisfying click as it re-closed.

Suzy had her back braced against the door now, and she could see Jeff pounding through the pattern in double-time. He wasn’t that far off.

On the other side of the door, she heard a muffled, “Chay!” and the doorstop shot out from between her feet to go skittering across the floor. The doorknob started turning again. Suzy put a hand under the bottom of her shirt and used it to grab the knob. It burned her hand through the shirt, but she held on anyway.

Abruptly, the door knob stopped trying to turn. Suzy looked through the frosted glass and couldn’t see anything. They had left. Or, Suzy thought, with a twist in her gut, they had backed up.

She glanced back at Jeff; he was almost done. She put her ear against the window and could just make out the chant of, “Sish chay, sish chay, sish chay...” coming from a whole chorus of voices.

Suzy ducked down and braced her back against the door again. Her mind raced. There had to be something they could do to reinforce the door. “Jeff!” She yelled again, “You gotta –”

The door exploded inward.

Suzy had a split second of terror as she flew through the air, the wall rushing toward her face. Then everything went black.

Jeff saw Suzy hit the wall, and ALMOST, he ran to her. Instead, he gritted his teeth, shuffled through the last foot of the pattern, raised his wand, and even as the guards came pouring into the classroom, Jeff yelled, “Oqur!” and completed the spell.

Everyone froze as the inch-thick ripple shot from Jeff’s wand to the wall. For a second, it seemed to work, and something leapt in Jeff’s belly. One wall of the classroom turned from the sterile painted white to mortared grey stone.

But the spell didn’t spread. One wall had switched, and that was it. The happy something in his belly turned to lead and dropped.

One of the guards yelled, “Chaw bors!” and a ripple shot toward Jeff’s wand. Reflexively, he dove out of the way, into a bruising jumble of desks.

He heard more yelling, and something fizzed over his head. Jamal fired a spell, then got blasted into the wall. Jeff scrambled behind a desk that was on its side and tried to think. The guards had been so nice for the last few weeks. He had almost thought of them as his friends.

Something tried to jerk the desk away from him, and he had to hold on to it to keep his cover. Not his friends now.

Turning to the side, he happened to see Suzy, still unconscious, next to the wall. His eyes narrowed, and his jaw clenched. It was time to try something bold.

Jeff had to look at the whiteboard to remember the words, then he began a frantic whisper-chant of “Caoshsz zggshuoqu,” as fast as his mouth could move through the awkward syllables. He only had a few moments; then one of the guards grabbed his cover desk from behind and hurled it aside.

Jeff looked up, and their eyes met for one brief second. Then he said, “Oqur,” and his brain seemed to explode with the sound of the thunderbird’s scream.

FORTY TWO

When Suzy opened her eyes, nothing made sense. For one thing, she was lying on the floor of the classroom with Nacho leaning over her, and he kept asking, “Suzy, are you okay?” Also, for some reason, he was holding her hand.

She pulled away from him, vaguely disgusted. She looked around. It was like a tornado had gone through the classroom.

“Suzy? Are you okay?” Nacho asked again.

She remembered Jeff and the switching spell.

She scrambled to her feet and rushed drunkenly to the window. She saw the orange sky before she got there, but she ran to the glass anyway and looked out in despair at the alien world. She closed her eyes and rested her head against the glass.

“Suzy?” Nacho asked.

“Yes, I’m fine.” Suzy finally responded.

“Yeah, um, I think the guards are starting to wake up.”

Suzy spun. “What?” Finally, she registered the unconscious forms all around her, the entire class and a half-dozen alien guards. Near the doorway, she saw Shen groan and sit up. “What happened?”

“Jeff used the thunderbird spell. Oh, and the switch spell didn’t work all the way.” He gestured to the stone wall.

One of the guards rolled over, and Suzy jumped. The alien pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. Suzy shot her eyes around the room in a sudden panic, not knowing what she was looking for, but sure she didn’t want the guards to get up, take away the wand, and lock them in the class forever.

“Here,” Nacho said, holding up a handful of black wands. “I took these from them.”

Suzy blinked. Then she grabbed a wand, aimed it at the guard, who was shaking his head groggily, and said, “Choshoythmu!” The spell hit him in the head, and he collapsed on his face. She repeated the spell over and over till the guard wasn’t even twitching.

“Do the other ones,” she commanded, pointing at the other guards, who all seemed to be waking now. Thankfully, the other students were also rising now, and soon, all of Nacho’s stolen wands were passed out and put to use paralyzing guards.

“How come it didn’t knock YOU out?” Suzy asked Nacho distractedly. She noticed that Jeff was finally sitting up, clutching at his head and moaning pitifully. What are we going to do with these guards, she thought, beginning to panic. What are we going to do with OURSELVES?

“I was behind