Terror at School - Chapter 1
"All right, open page 124 of the book, children."
Ms. Rudi was writing something on the whiteboard in the center of the classroom as she announced the instructions. A flurry of shifting books and shuffling pages followed, and she turned back to face the class, the words QUADRATIC FORMULA written on the board.
"Right, today I will be teaching you the quadratic formula. So far, we have had only basic algebraic expressions. This one is a bit more advanced, but it simplifies things a bit...," Ms. Rudi said.
Sitting in the rightmost row of the class, Baran peered into his textbook, and horror flashed in his eyes.
Simplifies things! You must be crazy! Thought Baran, in chagrin.
He peered over his left, at his close friend Amar, and he seemed unfazed. Baran seemed to calm down. He doesn't seem bothered in the least, he thought, and looking back at his textbook, took a sigh of relief. Meanwhile, the teacher continued with the lesson and began drawing the formula on the whiteboard.
He was always like this, forever looking up to Amar for confirmation and approval in everything, and always judging everything by Amar's standards. He also tailed him everywhere as a sidekick and seemed to agree with all of Amar's opinions. It was almost as if he was a shadow to his friend.
He glanced at the rest of the class, and in the corner, his gaze focused on Zain, that quiet little boy nobody talked to, and who in turn talked to no one. He was always shrouded in mystery, so much so that Baran sometimes wondered if he creeped the teachers out too. The boy looked awfully happy today, quite uncharacteristic for his usual expressionless appearance, and kept peering at his little watch.
Baran looked away from Zain and was soon focused back on his textbook.
The lesson continued, and Baran, following Amar's apparent example, took no interest in it, and instead, he started doodling on the sides of his book. Even when Ms. Rudi called upon him to solve an example, he excused himself by saying at the last minute that he didn't understand the concept clearly. Soon afterward, the bell rang, and Baran was out of the classroom. It was recess time. He looked back by the door as if in anticipation, and sure enough, came along Amar.
"What a boring lesson!" exclaimed Amar.
"I couldn't agree more," replied Baran.
"So, where do we hit out today?" asked Amar of his friend.
"Beats me, we already finished with the Eastern edge of the park yesterday...where do you think?" said Baran in response.
"The Western edge's left, right? Let's do that, then," said Amar.
"Yes, that remains. Let's do this. Chand and Dara have yet to come out, though," said Baran.
As they had been talking, they slowly came across Room # 9-B, the class of their friends, Chand and Dara, and waited.
Their school, called Nexus Public School, was on the outskirts of the city, surrounded on three sides by thickets, which were poorly fenced off from the school grounds. Since no untoward incident had happened yet, nor was any animal found roaming inside the school premises, the school management had taken a laid-back approach to the issue, and the matter had been left to drift. The children were nevertheless forbidden to venture into these lands, but the enforcement in this regard was also lax.
The four friends had already explored much of the Eastern and Northern sides of the forest and bushes facing the school and planned to complete their exploration of the remaining sector as well. They hardly went out more than a hundred meters in each of these trips, before thicker woods barred their ingress any further. Despite this, the area covered was quite significant, since the school grounds facing these woods measured about 600 meters on each side.
The children now began streaming out of Room # 9-B, a full five minutes after the bell first rang, and soon the two friends caught sight of Chand.
"Hey there, buddy, what's the holdup? Why were you stuck inside so late?" inquired Amar.
"You know, the teacher kept going on about some fancy things he had learned about the stupid poetry he was supposed to teach us, and got late. So he kept us for five more minutes," replied Chand.
"I hate poetry too, and I hate people who love poetry even more!" said Amar.
"Yeah, me too, " Baran chimed in, though he didn't mean it. Inside, he was an ardent lover of poems and even used to sing them with his mother, but he could never say this in front of the group.
"So, where's Dara? Stuck in his chair?" mused Amar.
"He was just behind me in the row. I wonder where he's at..." reflected Chand as he turned back to the class and strolled inside, the others following him.
The class was mostly empty, with a few girls left in one corner opening their lunch packs and gossiping. Chand kept looking across the classroom and then turned to face his friends.
"He was just behind me, even called out to me..." said Chand, a puzzled look on his face.
But Dara was nowhere to be found.
NAVIGATION
Terror at School
- Prologue
- Chapter 1