The Guardian of Threshold

by A. A. Volts

  I remained frozen in place while the clock crawled toward six o’clock. In a futile effort to distract myself, I counted the remaining minutes and even the seconds. I hoped it would stop me from thinking about the horrific scenes that I’d dreamt.

  I was forced to make peace with the fact that I wasn’t as brave as I would like to be, I wasn’t as grown-up as I thought I was, and I was definitely not as strong as I led the whole world to believe.

  I finally fell asleep, only to be awakened a few minutes later by the defiant alarm clock.

  Groggy and still shaken, I waited to hear the usual sounds that signaled that my dad was up and about before I dared to leave the safety of my bed.

  I changed out of my pajamas, then I carefully folded and set them aside to wear one more night. I’ve always hated to do the laundry, so I tried to use my clothes as much as I could before they had to be washed.

  While I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth and washing my face, I heard my dad’s heavy footsteps getting closer to my door.

  He knocked with a disturbingly soft knock that seemed like it couldn’t possibly have come from his giant hands.

  “Are you up already?” he asked while walking in right as I flushed the toilet.

  “Morning, Dad,” I said, probably sounding crankier than usual and definitely more tired than I intended. Not getting the right amount of sleep all week had taken its toll.

  I could see the concern on his face, but he didn’t bother questioning me. Knowing him, he probably assumed I was on drugs or something. I didn’t mind… after all, we weren’t exactly best friends anyway. After my mother’s death, a steel wall had been erected between us. Her passing had changed us both and not for the best.

  “Make sure you’re not late,” he said after closing the door. As usual, I didn’t care to reply. I was too busy gathering my stuff for yet another excruciating day of high school.

  I ran downstairs, skipping every two steps to save time. When I arrived, I found my dad standing in the living room fiddling with the TV remote with one hand while holding his morning coffee with the other.

  “Later, Dad,” I said as I sped past him on my way to catch the disturbingly yellow bus.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yes, I’m fine,” I said to put his mind at ease. “I gotta run. I don’t want to be late.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  HIGH SCHOOL

  I almost missed the bus. I arrived at the bus stop just as Gus was closing the door. For some unknown reason, he insisted on being early. I missed the bus more times than I could count.

  If I hadn’t banged on the doors hard enough, I don’t think he would’ve reopened them. Thankfully, he did. I couldn’t take another day of riding my bike to school and freezing to death. Although I had my driver’s license, I lacked a car. If you asked me, I’d say that sixteen is too old to ride the bus or be driven to school. I tried to persuade my dad to loan me his car, but after last week’s accident I’d be lucky if he let me ride my bike. I couldn’t wait until I got my own car. For some strange reason, I had to wait until my seventeen birthday. I could fly an airplane, but I wasn’t allowed to drive a car.

  If my dad hadn’t been working from home today, I would have skipped school. Unfortunately, my father worked from home on Fridays—one of the perks of the information technology company he worked for. By seven in the morning he’d have gone into his home office, only to come out every once in a while, parading around the house with his Bluetooth headset. I could swear that he spent all day on the phone. It was impossible to talk to him while he had the headset glued to his ear.

  I was really tired on the way to school. Thankfully, the number of carless losers was minimal, so I was able to lay down uncomfortably on one of the back seats. I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I remembered was Gus nudging my left shoulder hard to wake me.

  “Get up. I’m running late,” he said, even though he wasn’t. “If you don’t get up, I’ll have to get the principal.”

  “Okay, okay! I’m up,” I said, annoyed as I mumbled and cursed under my breath.

  As I approached the front of the bus, I realized that Gus had parked the bus much further away than usual.

  What I hadn’t noticed was that several feet away stood a rather odd and out-of-place white and yellow sign that read “ROAD CLOSED.” It was located just before the Stoneham High main building. Nothing exciting ever happened at Stoneham High. I just hoped that we had no school today.

  I thought about turning around and heading back home, but a tall figure wearing a dark blue uniform and a fluorescent yellow jacket waved me closer.

  “The school is in lockdown,” said a Stoneham police officer. His badge said his name was Ryan.

  “What happened?” I asked. There were four police cruisers and two fire trucks parked in the school fire lanes; their bright, spinning lights screamed caution.

  “Someone called in a bomb threat.”

  “Should I go home?” I asked hopefully.

  “Nothing to worry about, probably just a prank. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that? Would you?” the officer asked.

  “No, sir.” I was about to point out that I had just arrived when the police chief burst out of the building.

  “All clear! Let’s move out before the press gets here,” the chief yelled. “Take down that barricade, Sergeant Ryan. Stoneham doesn’t need any more negative publicity.”

  “Yes, sir,” replied Sergeant Ryan without taking his eyes off me. He seemed suspicious. Like the fact that I was the last kid to arrive made me guilty somehow.

  “Hey, kid, what are you waiting for? Go to class, you’re already late as it is,” the chief ordered.

  I walked past him without uttering a word. I was afraid that if I did, he too would think I was somehow involved. I was known to be blamed for these sorts of things; maybe it was because I didn’t care what other people thought of me so I never even bothered to defend my reputation.

  I managed to sneak past the administrative staff, who were busy tending to the firefighters. Regrettably, my teacher Christi Black, or Mrs. Black as she liked to be called, wasn’t busy at all. She usually spent her mornings sitting on her chair either painting or admiring her freshly painted nails. That was exactly what she was doing when I walked in. Some of us suspected she went out every night and wanted to look as spiffy as possible.

  The rest of the classroom sat in almost complete silence; if it weren’t for the occasional scribbling noises of graphite on paper, I would’ve doubted I was in high school. As always, the room smelled of chalk, which made me sneeze for several minutes before my nostrils got accustomed to the smell.

  “How nice of you to join us,” Mrs. Black said sarcastically, attracting a stream of muffled laughs from around the room.

  “Good morning,” I said, scouting the room in an effort to find the closest seat to Carla. A good ten minutes passed before I could muster enough courage to interrupt Mrs. Black’s nail polishing session. As much as I liked not doing any work, I was bored; surely anything had to be better than nothing at all.

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Black. What’s today’s assignment?” Carla gave me a subtle look. Jonas didn’t deviate his gaze from his English assignment.

  “Page eighty-nine, Mr. Ryser,” Mrs. Black replied, looking over her glasses, something she did only when she was extremely annoyed.

  I worked hard to catch up, but I left a couple unanswered questions. I turned in my paper and went straight to French class, which was boring as usual. I still didn’t know why I would need to speak French. Sure, I’d probably visit France one day, but I was sure the hotel staff would speak English fluently. Try explaining that to Mrs. Finningan, though.

  “As you may have heard, we had an incident this morning…” She paused and looked around as though searching for the person responsible. “Someone called in a fake bomb threat. I don’t know who it was, but I’m certain the police will find out. If I were that person, I
would turn myself in right away.” That’s how Mrs. Finningan started her class. Throughout the whole hour, she kept reminding us to rat out the person who called in the bomb threat, as if we knew who it was. We heard it in English, French, Spanish, and even in German. She was determined, I had to give her that much.

  On a rather strange and interesting note, during history class, I kept hearing the girls whisper and giggle, but whenever I looked at them, they would blush and turn away.

  “See you all later,” Wendy said, turning slightly to Jonas and me as we were leaving history, much to our astonishment since she never talked to us.

  “That was different,” said Jonas as we navigated the sea of people in the hallways.

  We arrived at the science lab just as the class was starting. It would’ve been another quiet chemistry class if Jonas hadn’t mess up his experiment and filled the whole lab and ground floor with smoke, setting off the fire alarm and triggering pandemonium among the rest of the student body in the process.

  We were told to evacuate the building and go to the courtyard. Fortunately, the smoke covered the lab so quickly that nobody else saw that Jonas’s experiment was the cause of the incident. I dealt uncomfortably with the bumping and grinding as people rushed to be the first to leave the building, probably not because they thought it was on fire, but so they would be the first ones to get to the few remaining cardboard pieces outside to go sledding on the snowy hills.

  About three minutes later, the fire trucks arrived at Stoneham High for the second time that morning. By the time the chief gave the all-clear, it was lunchtime.

  “I’ll get our usual table,” said Jonas as he headed for the cafeteria.

  “I’ll be there in a few,” I replied as I went the opposite way toward the restrooms. I’d grown accustomed to always washing my hands before eating. Jonas, on the other hand, thought the practice was a waste of time.

  In the restroom, everyone tried to guess who called in the fake bomb threat, but they stopped talking when I entered.

  After I was done, I waited outside patiently for Carla to come out of the girls’ restroom. We took our time walking carelessly through the grounds, talking about nothing and everything. It was my favorite time of the day. A good ten minutes or so passed before we reached the cafeteria. Jonas was already halfway through his lunch. We talked about the usual stuff, and since nothing ever really happened in Stoneham, the whole school was abuzz about who had called in the fake bomb threat and what had caused the fire alarm to go off. Some people speculated there was a bomb after all and it had gone off, while others thought someone caused the incident so they could play outside in the snow.

  “Well, you did it again… you’re the lead suspect,” said Jonas as he shoved not two, but three whole baked French fries into his mouth.

  “It doesn’t surprise me,” said Carla. “It seems these people have nothing better to do.”

  “And what makes you think that Mark didn’t do it?” asked Jonas, sporting a quizzical look.

  “I didn’t!” I said indignantly. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “It isn’t necessarily a bad thing. You have to admit, being bad and all has its advantages with the ladies,” Jonas said with a grin.

  “If by ‘ladies’ you mean white trailer-trash with a probation officer,” Carla said as she perused inside her pink and purple backpack, apparently trying to find something. We laughed as Jonas gathered our used trays.

  “Aren’t you guys coming?” Jonas asked, perplexed and holding our trays.

  “Yes,” I said, snapping out of my daze.

  We walked to math class while secretly making fun of the popular kids as we passed them. I could’ve been popular if I wanted it. All I had to do was hangout with the “right” crowd. The only problem was that I couldn’t stand them.

  “See you later, Mark,” said Carla in her soft and sweet voice. I would see her again after school because of our different schedules.

  With all the excitement, I almost forgot about the strange and dreadful presence that followed me around. Little did I know that my brief, chaotic peace would soon end.

  I arrived on time to Mr. Campbell’s math class and took my usual seat in the darkest and quietest corner of the room. The fluorescent light in the back was burnt out, making it my favorite spot. Some days, I was even able to sneak a snooze or two, depending on how tired I was and how boring the lesson of the day was; today was definitely one of those days.

  The class had barely started when I found myself slowly drifting toward an infinite void, only to be brought back violently by the loud and stern voice of Mr. Campbell.

  “Wake up, Mark. You’re here to learn and not to sleep.”

  As he spoke, I felt death itself approaching; the dread was unmistakable, invisible, and evermenacing. I was fed up. I was tired of being followed around. I refused to sit idly by while that thing, whatever it was, made fun of me. Feeling a false sense of security, I got up and said loudly: “What do you want from me?”

  “What did you say?” Mr. Campbell asked as the whole class paused to look at me.

  “Hmmm… nothing,” I said in vain.

  “You just tripled your workload, young man. I suggest you learn some respect,” said Mr. Campbell.

  Mr. Campbell believed that equations made the most effective detentions, so he walked over and threw about ten sheets of paper on my desk.

  “I expect it on my desk before the end of class.”

  “There’s no way I can finish this today!” I said, still feeling the diabolical presence, the same dreadful feeling.

  “You’ll never finish it if you don’t start.”

  By the end of Mr. Campbell’s class, my brain hurt, not to mention my hands and fingers from squeezing the pencil too hard. It took me a while, but I’d finished it… fifteen minutes late.

  That’s when I realized it was almost 3:45 p.m. and the last bus had probably already left and I might as well start the walk to my house.

  ***

  As I walked home, the sky grumbled and the cold invaded my being. My backpack provided limited protection, while my shoulders paid a heavy price. My eyes felt tired and sore, but my lungs thrived on the crisp New England winter air.

  My week had been long and dreadful. I still couldn’t believe that I had missed the bus again. Somehow, I missed it most days of the week.

  Overcome with boredom, I walked with my head down, looking at the asphalt as though I was searching for something. Then suddenly out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Jonas and Carla Weber’s matching sneakers as they quickly caught up to me.

  The twins were not only my childhood friends, but also my only friends. They seemed cold, given the shivering noises that Carla made while she adjusted her earmuffs and the frantic motion Jonas did with his hands, rubbing them together trying to warm up.

  They carried overstuffed backpacks and seemed to suffer the same pain as I did, yet they didn’t seem to care, as though the pain was normal. Perhaps the cold was more of a pressing matter.

  “Did you guys miss the bus too?” I asked, surprised.

  “No, when I didn’t see you in the bus, I decided to wait for you, and Jonas followed.”

  “Hey!” Jonas said. “I was planning on waiting anyway.”

  Jonas had barely finished speaking when a rolling thunder announced the imminent arrival of either heavy rain or an ice storm. Overstuffed clouds seemed to cover Stoneham, promising to burst over the small New England town like a water balloon.

  When we were about a block away from our street, huge raindrops started to fall, hitting first my backpack and then my face.

  As the rain increased, so did our steps. Soon our careless steps turned into an all-out race to see who would be the first to find shelter from the freezing rain—the finish line was the poorly maintained porch of 12 Hersam Street, my Victorian style house.

  I was the first to arrive, probably because I was part of the school track team and in fairly good
physical shape; Jonas was second. He crashed onto me, using me as a human emergency break and panting like a wild animal. He was chubby and not a very good runner; he had barely managed to arrive before Carla, who didn’t seem to be trying very hard.

  Much to my disappointment, Carla didn’t use me as a human break, choosing the cold, hard wall instead.

  We stood still for a few seconds to catch our breath. I was amazed by the power of nature as torrents of rain fell with a mysterious, raw energy that charged every drop.

  “Are we doing anything later on?” I asked, wanting to see Carla again.

  “Sure, how does dinner sound?” Carla said, smiling. She had the kind of smile that gave life meaning.

  “Where?” asked Jonas before I even had the chance to reply to Carla’s question. Jonas always jumped at the opportunity to go out whenever I went—it had something to do with the fact that his parents only allowed him to go out if I went. I kept hoping that one of these days Jonas wouldn’t want to go out to dinner so I could tell Carla how I really felt about her. I should have told her during our walk in school, but it didn’t seem like the right time or place.

  One of these days, I’ll have my chance, I thought. But how is Jonas going to feel about it? He’s my best friend. I’m not really sure how he would take it if I got involved with his sister. That’s if she even likes me.

  Although the twins were fifteen years old, their parents felt it was safer for them go out with me because I seemed capable of defending myself should the need arise. I guess being over six feet tall had its advantages.

  “So where do you guys feel like going?” I asked, only to regret it a split second later.

  “Uh, let me think,” Jonas said without really meaning it because he immediately added, “what about La Luna’s? We always eat there on Fridays.”

  “That’s because you only want to eat there,” Carla objected, rolling her beautiful Caribbean blue eyes. “For once, can we please go somewhere else?”