I Wonder What This Red Button Will Do....

• Lucy Paterson, Grade 10, Haileybury College
• Short Story
• 2015

Excellence Award in the 'The Write Track 2015' competition

My fingers tap simultaneously in time with the distant ticking of the clock hanging discreetly on the wall behind my teacher. He is lecturing us on philosophical opinions of politics. I am not listening.

A book lay open in front of me. It’s words beckoning me in like soft hands made of carefully moulded letters to make words which make sentences; ultimately making stories and adventures about people with far more interesting lives than my own.

I look up at my teacher. His hands gesture his words (which I am not paying any attention to) and I try to concentrate. But my brain is working over time to make sure I get the last of his notes down. But it just won’t focus! I squeeze my eyes into tight, crinkled balls in frustration. My mouth slightly pouts like a small child as I try to concentrate. My mind, however, is pin pointed on the small structure behind my teacher’s back…

The device is small and dangerous. Its vivid and violent colour looms out of the bland scenery like a cry for help in silence. I gulp as I leave my chair to observe it out of utter curiosity.

“Mary-Jane, what are you doing?” The teacher asks, his eyes wide and his eyebrows moulded into a furrow.

I don’t respond. Instead, I smack the button on the full. A siren wails in the atmosphere of the classroom. My classmates scream and shield their precious ears with their hands. My eyes are open too wide and my jaw hangs so low I almost trip on it.

“Mary-Jane!” My teacher yells over the constant drone. “What are you doing?!”

Without warning, a dozen sprinklers protrude from the roof and water streams like long fingers rain down on my classmates, my teacher and myself.

Without a thought passing through my head, I dive over my desk and hug my beloved book into my embrace, shielding its precious paper being from the deathly wrath of the water.

I feel the cold water trickling down my spine, sending shivers down it in waves. My face is soaked and my body is shaking at the freezing temperature of the liquid.

All of a sudden, it ceases. A few cheeky water clumps drip onto my back and into my hair, but stop their sneaky drip after a few seconds.

When I believe it to be somewhat safer, I remove my head from the safe-haven cocoon. I look up, my eyes adjusting to the light and see fourteen pairs of beady, confused, somewhat scared eyes staring at me and through me. I swallow down a forming clump of terrified spit.

“Mary-Jane,” the teacher scolds. His hair is drenched and is sticking to his head like sopping wet glue in blond clumps. “Why did you do that?”

I try to say something, anything. But the only thing that my brain can think of is a sigh and empty, awkward silence.

Eventually, I regain my bearings and say automatically: “I’m sorry. I was just curious.”