Alive

Hilda Junior High

"So, what do you think I need to know about this school?" I ask Ross. It is now lunchtime, and although I am pretty hungry, Ross thought it would be a good chance to show me around.

"Oh, only... everything." He jokes, smiling. I laugh.

"Really, I would just say that you need to know the layout of the school. There isn't much of teasing or anything like that. You might learn to watch out for some people, but it's not an every-man-for-himself kind of thing." He says after a quick pause, becoming slightly more serious.

I nod and respond, simply, "Okay." 

I am actually very relieved. As with every social place, or so I am programmed to believe, there is popularity and a little judgement, but I trust Ross. I believe him when he says that Hilda does not take it to the extreme with those things.

Ross begins to walk down a long hallway that extends from the outer perimeter of the lunchroom where we were talking. I follow him.

The hallway doesn't consist of much. Mainly just rows and rows of lockers, with the exception of a few classrooms. I make sure to check the screen that shows the teachers' names and subjects and lesson plans, and discover that I do not have any of those teachers.

I did not come down this hallway today, nor do I think I will for the entire year. My locker is not included in the many rows, and as I said, none of my teachers are in this hall.

"Ross, what is this hallway? I don't recognize any teachers or classes." I ask Ross. He walks fast and is pretty far ahead of me, but I think he heard.

"You shouldn't recognize any of them. These classes are strictly for kids to learn about the past. Or, the were. The past corrupted some kids a few years back. The idea of whatever happened killed some people from the inside out, so they're closed down. The staff just have never gotten around to cleaning up this hallway of the intense memories." 

Ross says all this so fast, and it's kind of hard to understand him, but the message is clear all the same: don't worry about the past. Focus on the present.

Even still, I find myself a little curious about what was so wrong with life that long ago. I try to shake the curiosity from my brain, but it sticks like glue. I guess now I know more about my personality: curious.

"Anyway, this is really only for short cuts through the school, or for the bunch of kids whose lockers are in this area."

Again, I nod, even though Ross can't see me.

Finally, the hallway ends, and the only way out of it, besides the way we entered, is a little opening into another hallway at the very end of this one. Ross makes a sharp turn, ready and prepared for everything this school throws in his path. Me, not so much.

The opening is small at first, but as we walk through it, it opens to become much wider, and here it is crowded. Even though the seventh graders have lunch, and other kids should be in class, this hallway is still pretty packed. I can tell it is a main-stream hallway.

Ross twists and turns around people, dodging psychos who come running down the hallway and carefully stepping around people working on projects. When we finally make it to the end of that hallway, where the chaos has subsided, Ross, for the first time since we started walking, turns around to talk to me.

"That was the main hall. As you can still see," He says, gesturing to some doors a few feet from us, "there are a lot of classes in this hall. So far, with the lunchroom right near the entrance, we have about an L shape. There is one more hallway down there." 

He points down a little ways to the right of him.

"That is the last hall with classes and lockers. That one is probably where to were this morning, so we'll just skip that part of the tour."

"Are there a lot of people in this school?" I ask finally, after having listened to his explanation.

"Oh, loads. But they tried to fit everybody into a couple of long hallways so they could have more room for the other things." He smiles a little as he says this, and it makes me immediately ask another question: "What other things?"

"C'mon, I'll show you!" He says, suddenly very excited.

He practically runs down the side hallway that we were once again talking in, and once again I follow. It's awhile before he finally speaks again, but when he does, he continues his explanation.

"So far, what I have shown you of Hilda, it creates a kind of H. Looking at a map, you can see two long, vertical hallways stretching parallel to each other, and then two horizontal ones connected to the verticals halls, right?"

I nod. I am now keeping up with him, so he can see me nod, but he continues almost before I show my understanding.

"Well, what I'm about to show you is on the map, but it runs off. It might not be that exciting; it's not a secret or anything. I just think it's really amazing because it has to deal with so much of our current technology."

"I think that sounds amazing." I say when he finishes.

He continue running, until we reach a set of double-doors. Ross pushes against them, appearing to struggle, but when he finally gets them open, my eyes go wide.

Inside is a huge room, about the size of my entire house, with a large conveyor belt type thing moving. It wouldn't seem that interesting, except that the machine is moving people in and out of large holes in the wall, and its shrinking things to later be bigger, and its breaking things down to the molecules and turning it into something else entirely.

Its crazy! I didn't know our technology could do that, and I am so excited! Ross explains that the belt transports students from one end of the large school to another in a matter of seconds. I can see what all the other parts of the machine are doing, and we spend some time gawking over it.

It takes me a moment to realize that this room is also a sitting lounge for students. I finally sit down, and Ross follows. We talk more about the machine, and our technology. We talk about what we could do, and what we already have down with our society's advancements.

Soon, we realize that the lunch period is getting close to ending, so we take a ride on the conveyor and make it back to the lunchroom as if nothing had happened. When the bell rings to signify that the period is over, we file out with the rest of seventh grade as if we had been there all along. 

Ross and I say bye to each other, and we each go to our separate classes. I sit through the rest of the day, content and happy and absolutely loving Hilda Junior High.