4 Bar Stool: Chapter 4

By the time I got to the top of the staircase, I was out of breath and wheezing. Either there were two many stairs, or I was more out of shape than I remember being. I decided to believe the former.

Once I had regained my breath, I looked around and saw rows of lockers stretching all the way to the edges of my vision. They lined the walls on either side, and were very simple. They were all the same pale-green, had a black number screwed in at the top, and had a handle with a lock in the middle. As I walked through the hallway, looking at the numbers flashing by, I unconsciously stopped at locker number 144.

"I guess this was, or is, my locker," I thought, as I stared at the handle. "But I don't remember the lock combination…"

As I was trying to figure out what the lock combination was, I heard steps approaching from behind me. I turned, and I saw a teacher walking up.

"Nate!" Mr. Gio yelled at me. "What are you still doing at your locker? Class started over five minutes ago!"

Mr. Gio was the history teacher, and was known for his strict sense of punctuality. If you were even a minute late, you were considered absent, and forced to sit outside of the classroom for the duration of the class. He lived by the saying: "It's better to be an hour early, than a minute late."

"Mr. Gio!" I said, remembering him with a mix of both hatred and a reminiscent fondness. "I was just all backed up this morning, and I was late, and now I'm just trying to open my locker."

"Well hurry up with that already. First period will be over before you finish, at this rate," Mr. Gio replied.

"Yes, of course sir," I said, as I turned back to my lock. I still did not know the lock combination, but under the gaze of Mr. Gio, I put my hands to the lock. As soon as my hand touched the dial, muscle memory kicked in, and unlocked the locker.

"There," Mr. Gio said. "Now grab your things, and quickly head over to class. I'll be watching you until you do."

I turned to face the contents of my locker, to figure out what class I had, and what I needed to bring. Luckily, this I did not need to remember, because I kept a copy of the schedule taped to the inside of my locker door, and kept all my binders labelled and organized. I looked over to the schedule, and saw that I had math with Mr. Lacowasi this morning. I then scanned the row of binders in my locker, found the one labelled "MATH," and grabbed it.

"There," I said. "I'm all set now."

"That's wonderful Nate. Now actually go to the class," Mr. Gio said, gesturing for me to hurry.

"Yes, Mr. Gio," I said, as I closed my locker and locked it. I then turned and headed for the math classroom.

---

As I walked the halls to get to the math classroom, all of the memories of high school came back. Even in the very halls I was walking, I recalled the time Raul and I painted each other's feet red and blue, and ran through the halls, tracking our footprints across the floor. I smiled as I remembered that.

My smile stopped when I got to the math classroom door. I had never liked math, even after I had become an adult. Looking at the door to my childhood math classroom now, I felt the discordance even more. These feelings were made that much worse by the fact that I was late, and would have to walk in while Mr. Lacowasi was talking.

I started for the handle, but as my hand touched it, I hesitated. I began to realize what it meant to open this door. Up until now, I had forgotten my purpose here. Overwhelmed by the fact that I was in the past, I forgot that I came to change it. Now standing in front of this door, I realized that opening it and exposing myself to all of my classmates, meant that I really needed to focus on my goal. I tried to remember everything that Pete had told me: "only change the thing that you absolutely need to. Otherwise, do everything else the same," "make sure to do it quickly, because if you take too long, you will cease to exist." With these things in mind, and the fact that I was now really late for class, I whipped open the door and stepped inside. Immediately, the quiet whispers of the class silenced, and the Mr. Lacowasi turned to face me.

"Well look who decided to join us this morning," Mr. Lacowasi said.

"Yes, I'm so sorry Mr. Lacowasi," I replied. "I just -"

"No excuses Nate," Mr. Lacowasi said, cutting me off. "Just take the assignment, and get notes on whatever you've missed from a classmate. I need to move with the lesson."

"Yes sir," I said, as I grabbed the assignment from the front desk, and quickly moved towards my seat at the back of the room.

I always sat in back, not because I could goof off and not get caught, but because I could observe people. What most people do not realize, is that your backside reveals just as much as the front. Most kids just try to hide from the teacher at the front, not caring about who might be looking over their shoulder. Granted, in a high school classroom, it does not really matter who else besides the teacher sees the goofing off, but I still take a small sort of pride in being able to discreetly see what everyone else is doing.

"Hey," a whisper to my right said.

I turned to see that Jacob was the source of the whisper. Jacob was in my close circle of friends in high school, although we were not as close as I was with Raul. The three of us, and two other guys, hung out pretty much exclusively in high school. After graduation however, we all sort of lost contact with each other. Raul was the only person I semi-kept in touch with.

"Hey," I replied, trying not to sound like I have not seen him in over ten years.

"Late again, huh?" Jacob whispered.

"Yeah, yeah," I replied.

"You owe me," Jacob said, as he handed me his notes. "Just try not to be late again."

"Thanks man," I said, as I grabbed the notes and started leafing through them.

There was then a couple minutes of silence as we both listened to Mr. Lacowasi talk about functions, and then Jacob spoke again.

"Raul told you about the meeting right?" Jacob said.

"Yeah, the one at lunch?" I replied.

"Yeah, that one. I really want to win this one. I can't graduate on a loss streak."

"I feel the same way. We definitely need something new though, if we are going to beat the tech-side."

Jacob then turned his eyes towards the front, signalling that the conversation was over, and that it was to be resumed at the meeting at lunch. I turned as well, and for the next couple of hours, I went through all of my other classes without a problem.

---

The bell rang for lunch at 11:45 am. Not remembering if I even brought a lunch, I just headed straight for the lunch room. The lunch room at AC Grace was every teenager's paradise. The principal believed that you should work hard and play hard, and that you should keep the two separate. As such, the lunch room had the standard long tables with bench seats, but it also had large couches, TV's, vending machines, gaming consoles, and a small movie projector. Lunch itself, also lasted around an hour and a half.

I walked in through the doors of the lunch room, and saw that it was already packed with students. Every lunch was pretty much a race to get to the TV's and games. I scanned the tables to try and find Raul, and I saw a hand waving at me. I headed towards the hand, and once I broke through the crowd, I saw that the hand belonged to Raul.

"Hey," I said, as I sat down beside him. "It's really packed in here."

"Yeah, it always is. That new game just got released too, so the gaming section will probably be even more packed," Raul replied. "Normally I would be all on that, but today is important."

"Right the meeting," I said, looking around the table to find it empty. "Where is everyone?"

"Probably lost in the crowd," Raul replied. "That's why I told them to come a bit earlier. They never listen."

Just then, Jacob broke through the crowd and appeared in front of us. Shortly after, Sean and Connor appeared as well. Sean and Connor were the other two guys in my circle of friends, and they were pretty much inseparable. They had every class together, had lunch together, and actually lived pretty close to each other as well.

"Well, glad you could join us," Raul said, quickly motioning for them to sit down. "We lost precious minutes of meeting time, because of your lateness."

"Calm down Raul," Sean said. "I tried to get here early, but the crowd was just too big. I was navigating through it the whole time.

"Yeah Raul, so was I," Connor added.

"What about you Jacob? What's your excuse?" Raul said, turning to face him.

"Don't have one, but I think that doing this whole thing is a waste of time too. Let's just forget about the lateness and just get started, yeah?" Jacob replied.

Sean and Connor nodded in approval of Jacob's suggestion.

"Okay, okay," Raul said, begrudgingly acknowledging that Jacob had a point. "Let's start this meeting."

Everyone turned to face Raul, and he waited until he was sure that he had everyone's attention before continuing.

"Okay, before we start, let's go over the rules of the war, so that everyone is on the same page," Raul said. "Sean? Care to do the honours?"

"Sure," Sean said. "Okay, so the main objective of the war, is to steal the other side's flag and bring it back over to your own side. Both side's flags are going to be in the lobby on a pedestal, and in order to fully win, you have to put the other side's flag next to yours. Am I forgetting anything?"

"The boundaries and the time limits," Connor said.

"Oh right, the boundaries and the time limits," Sean said. "So for the boundaries, obviously, each side's buildings are their territory. The hallways connecting the two buildings, are split right in the middle. For the time limit, we have two hours after school ends at 3 pm. This means we have until 5 pm to win this war."

"One last thing," Raul said. "How the 'kill' system works."

"Of course, yeah. I always forget about that," Sean said. "The 'kill' system works by way of paintball gun. It's pretty simple; if you get shot, you're 'dead' and can no longer participate in the war. You can only watch. If you break this rule, your team automatically loses."

"I think that about covers it," Raul said. "Any questions? Does everybody understand?"

Everyone nodded their heads, indicating that they understood.

"Okay, so here is the plan that I thought of," Raul said, going around and making eye contact with everyone at the table. "A couple of weeks ago, I was walking along the tech-side building, and purely by chance, I saw this beat-up door. I hadn't noticed this door before, and so when I got closer to inspect it, I saw that there were freshly cut vines and leaves near the bottom. The door had been covered this whole time, by these vines and leaves."

"If that's the case, why would they be cut now? Why not just leave it?" Jacob asked.

"I think it was because parent's week was that week. I think the principal wanted every single nook and cranny cleaned up. You know how parents are. Especially the tech-side parents."

Everyone nodded in agreement. They were all too familiar with the stories of tech-side parents causing commotions over their children's grades. As if it were the teacher's fault for giving out bad grades, and the child had nothing to do with it.

"Even so, what does that have to do with the war?" Sean asked.

"It has everything to do with it, Sean," Raul said, with excitement in his eyes. "That door is a secret backdoor entrance into the tech-side building. We can use it to sneak in and take the flag."

"I feel a 'but' coming," Jacob said.

"But…" Raul said; everyone smirked. "There's one slight problem."

"What is it?" Connor asked.

"The door is locked, and we need a key to open it," Raul said.

"Well then this was all useless!" Jacob said, throwing his hands up in the air. "How on earth are we supposed to find the key for that!"

"Shhh. Be quiet, Jacob!" Richard said, glaring at him. "Someone might hear you!"

"Oh it doesn't matter," Jacob said, at only a slightly lower volume. "It's all general-side people anyways. We're good."

"You never know, and it doesn't hurt to be careful," Raul said, suspiciously scanning the surroundings. Once he was satisfied, he continued. "I have a solution, of course."

"What is it?" Jacob asked, calming down a little.

"The caretakers all have a master key to their own buildings..." Raul started.

".. and you want to sneak into the tech-side caretaker's room, and steal a master key, to then use on the door," Sean finished.

"Exactly," Raul said, seeming to be proud of the plan that he had come up with. "What do you think?"

Everyone looked at each other, and tried to process Raul's plan together. After a couple of minutes, everyone seemed to be in agreement.

"I think it might work!" Sean said.

"I agree with Sean," Connor said.

"I guess it ain't bad," Jacob said.

Raul then turned to me.

"You've been awfully quiet. What do you think of the whole plan?" Raul asked me.

"I think it's a great idea," I said, and genuinely meaning it too.

"Okay, then!" Raul said, clapping his hands together. "Now we just have to figure out who does what."

"What do you mean?" Sean asked.

"Well, someone has to steal the masterkey, while the others wait outside the door to be let in. We can't all go together, or else it would draw too much attention. So either one or two of us, has to go in, steal the key, and let the rest of us in," Raul said.

"That's true," Sean said. "All five of us sneaking around, would definitely raise suspicions."

"I'll go and steal the key. If no one else wants to go with me, I can go by myself and let the rest of you in," Raul said.

"I'll go too," I said. "You came up with the whole plan, it's the least I can do."

"Thanks man," Raul said, grabbing my shoulders in gratitude. "So then at 3:15 pm, fifteen minutes after classes end, let's meet at the front lobby. I'll lead you guys to the door, and then Nate and I will go in and steal the key. Sound good?"

Everyone nodded in agreement.

"Okay then, I'll see you at the end of the day," Raul said.

With that, the bell signalling the end of lunch rang, and everyone got up to go back to classes. As we headed for the door, we walked silently, but looked at each other smiling, caused by the comradery instilled by the communal investment in the secret plan. We all felt that we had a real chance of winning this war, and changing the history of this school forever.

As I walked through the lunch room doors, this feeling was destroyed, when a memory came rushing back.