HIGH SCHOOL HELL 1/?


“Whoa, a dead body!”

Garret Macy whirled around to face one of his seventh period Chemistry 
students, Matt Seely, who was staring in morbid fascination at the 
corpse Jordan Cavanaugh had stumbled upon a half-hour ago. It figured 
that, of all the students in the school, Seely would be the one to 
ignore Principal Walcott's order for students to stay in their 
classrooms for the rest of the day. Behind him, Macy caught glimpses of 
Peter Winslow and Devan Maguire, which meant that Cal Hoyt had been 
left distracting their teacher.

“What do you three think you're doing?” he snapped, glowering down at 
them. Winslow looked properly ashamed, although there may have been 
some eye-rolling going on, and Maguire looked bored with a side of 
slightly worried about whether she'd get detention for this, but 
Seely... he was staring up at the hallway ceiling.

“Look, there's a huge hole! The dead guy must've fallen through. But 
who hides a dead body in the ceiling of a boarding school?” he amused, 
seemingly to himself. “Hey, Winslow, give me a hand up, will ya?”

Macy opened his mouth to inform him that he'd do no such thing, and 
give him a complete tongue lashing for leaving his class in the first 
place, but he was interrupted by Devan Maguire, who stomped in between 
him and Seely and started hollering at the boy, hands on hips. “What, 
you ask Peter because you think a girl's too weak to lift you? Is that 
it, you chauvinist pig?”

“No, I asked him because he could bench-press you, and you barely 
passed gym last semester.” Seely paused. “So yeah, I guess you could 
say girls are too weak.” He then favored her with an annoying grin that 
made even Macy want to slap him – although he tended to have that 
reaction to everything Seely did.

“All of you are going to go back to class right now, or you're 
suspended for a week,” Macy finally managed to fit in between their 
bickering. Maguire and Winslow shared a glance and took off back to 
their classroom. The last member of the little trio, though, stood his 
ground.

“I happen to be editor-in-chief of the school paper, you know,” Matt 
stated, puffing out his chest more than a little and flashing his 
student press badge. He didn't bother waiting for a response. “And here 
in America, we have this little thing known as freedom of the press! I 
have a right to watch the proceedings and report on them fairly and 
non-partially,” he finished smugly, smirking.

“You may not have noticed this, Matt, but you are in high school. A 
private high school. Which means that you don't really have rights 
unless we decide to give them to you,” a new voice spoke up, sounding 
vaguely amused. Woody Hoyt, the physical education teacher, was leaning 
on the wall behind Macy, and was actually grinning at the annoying 
delinquent. (Macy sometimes wondered why in the world he had decided to 
take this job, surrounded by smug little rich kids who thought they 
could just throw Daddy's money at their problems to make them go away. 
And then he remembered – well, actually, he didn't remember, why had he 
taken this job and why was he still here?)

Woody nodded at Macy. “I'll heard him back to class for you, but I 
actually came over here to tell you that the roads are still blocked by 
the snowstorm, so it's gonna be awhile before the police get here.”

Macy sighed heavily and wearily at this news, but Seely looked 
strangely happy by this news. “Ooh, so we're trapped in school with a 
murderer on the loose...” he said, clearly excited by the horror movie 
cliche. Well, he would be.

“That body could've been up there for months, it's doubtful that the 
murderer is still hanging around,” Woody said, trying to bring the boy 
back down to Earth. Some of the kids at the school had serious problems 
keeping a leash on their imagination, and the weekly horror and sci-fi 
movie marathons probably weren't helping at all.

“Actually, the blood's still wet. I doubt that would be the case if 
he'd been killed months ago.” This came from yet another new voice, and 
Macy was about ready to slam his head into the brick wall repeatedly 
when he recognized the voice as being Jordan Cavanaugh's. What had he 
done in a past life to deserve this? And why hadn't someone taken the 
girl away from the crime scene?

(The answer to that was: they had. They had brought her immediately to 
Dr. Stiles's office so she could be counseled. She had sneaked back the 
second they turned away from her, and no one had thought that she might 
return to the crime scene, since normal teenage girls would be scared 
by dead bodies, and the administrators still hadn't realized that 
Jordan Cavanaugh was not a normal girl by any standard.)

Woody shook his head at the teenagers. “Either way, you shouldn't 
worry. The cops will be here soon enough, and they can find the killer. 
Now come on, to class with you,” he pointed at Seely, “And to the 
counselor with you,” a gesture at Cavanaugh. “Move.”

Shockingly enough, they both obeyed, although with much pouting and 
whining at him – and a few not-so subtle insults from Seely, who was 
friends with Hoyt's brother, and was also not taking any gym classes 
the rest of the year.

Once they were out of Macy's hearing range, Woody stopped the 
complaining teens and faced them. “Okay, look. I'll keep you in the 
loop about what happens, alright? Just don't let Macy know, I think he 
might actually shoot me.” The two students shared a look – one not 
filled with dislike, which was a little shocking for them – and then 
turned back to him and nodded. He sighed in relief. “And I'm not even 
going to bother taking you guys where you should be, but guys. Please. 
If you're going to sneak back to the crime scene, try not to be so loud 
about it, okay?”

Two perfectly innocent and charming grins faced him. “Loud, sir?” 
chirped Jordan. “Us, sir?” Matt added. Woody rolled his eyes at the 
both of them.

“Well, go on, get away with yourselves.” He flapped his hands at them 
before turning and walking in the opposite direction, hoping this 
wouldn't come back to bite him in the ass.

As soon as he was out of hearing range, Matt turned to Jordan. “We're 
totally investigating, right?” She gave him a look that said 'duh'. 
“Then let's get a team together.”