Jackie

It was a school like no other. The hallways of schools always have secrets, but this one’s secret was even darker than others. For many months I have been wondering how such a thing could have happened. Teachers have always told us that she had just fallen and gotten hurt. But, I have always known that there was something more, something beyond one’s expectation.
For you to understand what I’m talking about we need to go back to a few years ago. It all started on June 28 of 1989. My day started just like any other, I woke up and went to school. As I got to school, like any other day there she was just sanding by her locker and talking to her friends. Oh man, how I liked just standing there and staring at her. Not for a long time of course, I didn’t want her to think I was some kind of freak.
“Hi, Will! How’s it going?” she said as I walked towards her.
Many times she had said this to me but every time I would be too afraid to respond because I didn’t want to look stupid in front of her. As I finally try to say something I start to shake, I shake so much that I drop my drink and it spills on her.
“I’m so sorry,” I stutter.
“It’s ok, I just have to go to the bathroom to get cleaned up.”

…

Sitting in class I looked at the clock and noticed that twenty minutes had passed and she hadn’t been back yet.

“I wonder what’s taking her so long, she can’t possibly still be getting herself cleaned up,” I think to myself.
As I get up to ask the teacher a question an officer enters. I come closer to the teacher’s desk and I hear him say that she’s not coming back.
He turns to leave and I can’t help but blurt out, “What happened to her… is she going to be ok?”
“Look kid… it’s best that you just get on with your life, she’s going to be fine.”
Funny, for weeks our teachers told us not to worry about her, she was going to be fine. When everyone started to ask why she hadn’t back to school, the teachers started to say she had moved, but I knew something was wrong. She wasn’t the only person who had just disappeared, many other people had “moved” before but we never thought much of it. I started to notice that every time we asked teachers about a certain student they always answered us as if they were hiding something.
…
I guess it was about time to try and figure out what was happening. For many months I looked around the school and I couldn’t find anything, until one day I decided to go into the one place I hadn’t tried, the storage room. As I looked around the room everything looked normal, except for one thing. There was a door handle on the wall.
“Why, would there be a door handle on the wall?” I say to myself.
I started to walk to towards that door handle and decided to turn it. As I walked inside and went down a set of stairs it felt as if I were inside of a dungeon, with the dark old staircase and the walls coming apart.
“OH MY GOD!”
I couldn’t believe my eyes. Everywhere I looked there were people in tubes filled with water. And, on one wall there stood a sign saying “Testing Zone ”. All this time we’ve been told that kids had just moved, they were really being used as an experiment. Our teachers were using us as guinea pigs.
I stepped further into the basement and came across the one thing I was scared to find, grave stones. One of them was engraved with the name Jackie. There she was. I begin to wonder why I wanted to know.
Silently, I reach down into my pocket and grasp a crumpled piece of paper. I open it up and start to read:
Jackie,
From the first day I met you, I knew you were someone special. Countless times I wanted to return your hellos, but I could never get up the courage. Whenever I tried, I ended up embarrassing myself, like that day I spilt my coke on you. Then I wrote this letter in the hope that one day, you’d come back.
I feel a rush of anger and I throw the letter to the cold dirty ground.
I never thought that would be the last time I ever saw you. If I did, maybe I would have told you how I felt. Now it’s too late. I’m standing over your grave, in our freaking school basement!
I left and never came back. Then one day I opened up the newspaper and saw in big bold letters, “School Testing Organization Exposed!” As I read through the article I thought about Jackie, I remembered what happened. Now after recounting this story, I realize I have to let it go.
Goodbye Jackie.