“Very true,” Eggo said, “but you have to get up early anyway around here, so why not be the one who gets to have some fun with it?”
Eggo’s energy was infectious and soon they were all laughing.
After that, it was all business. They needed to assign positions to everyone else in the group. Their briefing inside the packet given to them by Mrs. Price was a list of key positions. Ten positions. One for each person in the group. Eggo could not play along. Nitsy, being the captain, got to choose her co-captain, and she went with Avery, the one person who’d challenged Nitsy for the lead position. She was the prettiest in the group, with long black hair that hung down in tangles, and wasn’t afraid to speak her mind.
Communications and Information Officer was easy. Phyllis never stopped talking. She was perfect for the position. Structural Engineer went to Bradley, whose attire screamed anime and manga. He was the artist in the bunch, so it would fall on him to draw the spacecraft. Ashley, who seemed to blink constantly, would be the crew Medical Officer. She wanted to study medicine in real life, so… why not? The list went on and on. Soon, they also chose their Pilot and Co-Pilot, their Security Officer, their Data Collection Specialist, and their Lead Scientist.
From that point on, everyone worked on his or her portion of the packet with feedback from other group members. Afternoon faded into evening with a short dinner break and then right into night. It didn’t occur to Nitsy how late it was until she started rubbing at her eyes. A yawn escaped Phyllis. Eggo played on his phone through most of the work session since he really couldn’t add any information. He was only there as a moderator, to keep them on track. Now, even he was looking at them with heavy eyelids.
“Y’all ready to wrap this up?” he asked.
“We’re not done,” Nitsy said. “Oh, how I wish we were finished, but we still need to go over the security info for the ship and make sure we all understand how we’ll answer questions. They could be slow and relaxed, or they could be rapid fire.”
Eggo nodded and chuckled. “I’d expect at least some rapid fire. Mrs. Price is tough enough but wait until she opens up questions to the rest of the groups. This is a competition. That part can get pretty ugly. You all should be thinking of questions you’d like to ask opposing teams, too.”
“Bradley’s ship is awesome at least,” Phyllis said.
It was. The boy had created something Nitsy couldn’t imagine any of the other teams coming up with. It was beautiful, but it was also strong and sturdy.
“Yeah,” Nitsy agreed. “We’ve got the ship design aspect in the bag.”
Bradley blushed. Earlier in the evening, when he’d come close to her to get her opinion on a few design elements, Nitsy thought he might have been flirting with her. He was definitely friendly.
A few minutes later, Eggo clapped his hands together and said, “I think you all should call it a night. You’re Wake-Up Crew, so we need to meet up downstairs, outside the entrance, at 4:45 in the morning. If you’re late, we’re waking everyone up without you and our team will lose points for not fulfilling our duty.”
“Eggo, we’re not done though—” Nitsy started to argue.
“You’ll be fine,” Eggo interrupted. “This happens every year. No team is ready this early. Do your wake-up duty in the morning, then get ready and shower, eat breakfast, and come back to this classroom. The morning session won’t be until ten, so you’ll have a few hours to finish.”
Nitsy wasn’t happy about this. She wanted to be prepared. Her teammates were used to staying up late. All teenagers were. If they were at home, they’d be playing a video game half the night, or they’d be watching movies. They definitely wouldn’t be going to sleep. She considered talking to them on the side and asking if they wanted to meet somewhere to finish their work. They’d all scooted out of the room ahead of her, and she was about to rush out after them when Eggo pointed at her and said, “Don’t even think about it. I see it in your eyes. It’s against the rules to meet unsupervised. Teams have tried and every team has failed. Don’t do it.”
She laughed and rolled her eyes. “Busted. That’s exactly what I was thinking.”
“I know,” Eggo replied. “Want to know how I know? Because the brightest kids are the hardest workers, and somebody tries it every year. I don’t want your team to be this year’s example. You have to follow the rules if you want a shot at winning.”
“Sometimes the best leaders are rulebreakers,” Nitsy argued.
He shrugged. “Not here they’re not. Finish up tomorrow.”
Nitsy left the room feeling defeated. They had a lot of work to complete in the morning. She knew her mind wouldn’t shut down the way she needed it to. More than likely, she would be up most of the night thinking about the project and what she might say tomorrow in front of Mrs. Price and everyone else attending the conference.
She was so stuck in her thoughts that she didn’t even realize she was the only person in the hallway. Above her, one lamp shone brightly down on her, but up ahead, where the motion sensor lights picked up no movement, the hallway was pitch black. The others were gone. Even Phyllis had left her.
At her feet, the lime green tile flooring was shiny beneath the lamp. The cement wall to her left bounced the sheen of the overhead light back at her. On that wall, a bulletin board was only half visible. The rest of it was obscured by the darkness ahead and off to her right where the wind rattled the trees out in the open courtyard.
Talent show, Saturday night, 8 p.m., let us see you shine.
Nitsy read the postcard-sized advertisement on the bulletin board aloud, and her voice carried down the hall, echoing so loudly she thought the other lights might pop on. As much as she wanted to show off her leadership skills, she had no desire to get on stage and sing, dance, or recite poetry. She hoped the talent show had nothing to do with the president position.
Student Board Meeting to discuss new curfew and other matters of importance.
This flyer seemed old. Its corners were raveled and some of the wording had faded. Most of it was too dark to see, but it made Nitsy wonder once again about the past at Stonewall Forge. Was this once a college campus?
Her mind kicked into overdrive, a problem she often had when lying in an MRI machine. That loud, constant noise. It was like a jackhammer to the brain, but it changed pitch and tone often. Sometimes she’d imagine bad things happening throughout the hospital. Each scene moved to the beat.
In one, there was an after-hour party and all the doctors were dancing to the beat. Everyone was drinking. No one noticed the lunatic who’d escaped his restraints and was now enjoying the party with them. He boogied his way over to one of the nurses, a brunette that looked kind of like Nitsy’s new Co-Captain, Avery. The nurse lifted her glass to cheer when the lunatic brought a scalpel around and slid it across her neck. Then he moved on to one of the doctors and jabbed at him to the beat.
When the MRI tone changed, she saw a girl dancing on a stage. Ballet style. She was beautiful, around the same age as Nitsy, in a pink leotard. Her graceful legs pranced around the open space while a row of judges watched her. One of the judges reached for a dial on the table in front of him. It looked like the kind on the oven in Nitsy’s kitchen. The judge cranked the heat up all the way and suddenly the stage glowed red and the ballet dancer screamed. She leaped to the MRI machine’s beat, screaming with each step as her feet sizzled on stage.
Then there was the one Nitsy hated, but it always appeared when she was in that white tunnel of solitude.