Summer glanced out the door. A blanket of snow covered the ground and the branches of the bare trees. Above her head, the heater was whining. Its noise increased in pitch with every minute that passed. She glanced down at her phone, waiting for her dad to respond to her text.
SUMMER: Where are you?
DAD: I’m on my way
Summer glanced around nervously. She had already been in the school long enough. She wasn’t even supposed to be in school without the supervision of a staff member. But the club meeting had ended twenty minutes ago. She could have waited outside without getting in trouble, but it was way too cold to stand out there. Plus, knowing her dad, she would have been standing there a long time.
Summer wasn’t just worried about breaking the rules. She was starting to get kind of creeped out by the sound of the heater. She was fairly certain that it wasn’t supposed to do that.
She whipped her head around as she heard keys jangling on the other side of the stairs. She caught her breath, not daring to make a sound. Then, she shook her head. She was being silly. It was just the janitor. Summer let out her breath. She was about to pull out her phone to text her dad again when, suddenly, she heard a creaking sound. She looked around, but no one was there. Nothing had moved, either. Was she just being paranoid?
She shook herself again and looked outside. As she did, the door opened on its own. She blinked, but it stayed open. That was impossible. The school doors were too heavy. They didn’t stay open. Or open on their own, for that matter.
Summer reached her arm out through the open door. The cold wind stung her hand. She was definitely not hallucinating. What had opened the door? And what was keeping it open?
I’d rather freeze than stay in here, Summer decided, stepping out of the building. The snow crunched under her boots as she trudged across it. She stopped underneath a barren tree in front of the school, setting down her bag and leaning against it. She stared hard at the open door, as if her intense gaze would somehow force the door shut. Eventually, she remembered that she didn’t have telekinetic powers.
Summoning all her courage, Summer walked back over to the door, her heart rate increasing as she did. She stopped right in front of the door, listening to see if she could hear the heater. As she expected, the high-pitched whining of the heater was still audible. With a deep breath, Summer quickly shut the door and ran in the opposite direction, trampling her old footprints.
She didn’t stop running until she got back to the barren tree. When she looked back, everything looked normal. Maybe she had just been paranoid. The door hinges probably needed to be oiled. The school was old, anyway.
Finally, a bluish-gray car pulled up to the school. The driver rolled the window down as they parked the car.
“Summer, get in!” her dad said.
“Took you long enough,” Summer replied as she got into the car. They drove away, Summer content that what had happened at the school had all been her imagination.
Behind the glass door she had shut, I smiled. Freshmen were so naive. It was only a matter of time before they realized that they weren’t imagining me, of course. But still, they managed to convince themselves that they were.
How amusing.
