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administrator’s
office.
    When Lysa did not return to class that
afternoon, the rumors spread fast. Each story was slightly
different, but with one common denominator…me as the villain. In
one version, I had planted the pills in Lysa’s purse in hopes she
would be dismissed from the Test Year. Another tale told of how
Lysa was taking the blame to cover for my pill addiction. Of
course, my personal favorite was the rumor swearing I was an
aspiring drug dealer hoping to turn my cohort into satisfied
customers.
    Their theories had added weight since
my mother was a pharmacist at the local hospital. Of course, no one
seemed to mention that Lysa’s father was the head nurse in the ER.
In the end, I never confirmed or denied the rumors when people
asked which is why so many defected to Team Lysa. I just wanted the
whole day to be erased from my memory. I knew that whenever Lysa
returned, everything would be ten times worse. And I was
right.
    When Lysa returned to Randolph, her
short sabbatical did not seem to change the spring in her step or
her fancy outfits. I will never know how she rallied everyone’s
support so quickly. Lysa’s disdain infected my peers. I saw a shift
in the air as a result of her whispers. Soon, less of my cohort
talked to me. My presence seemed to make people uncomfortable. It
had become clear. It was me against the rest of the
school.
    On one particular day, I was treated
to a heavy dose of isolation during lunch. The out of place feeling
filled the entire school and my heart. Feeling lost, I visited the
school library out of a simple desire to be invisible.
    In a virtual world full of electronic
texts, tests and talks, the library made me feel safe. A musty and
potent smell of old books permeated the room. I found it comforting
along with the towering stacks that embraced me. I ran my fingers
along the book spines just to feel a connection to something. Just
like the printed words in the library, I felt overlooked and
forgotten.
    A small section of the library called
Kansas History drew me close. My mother had spoken about an
ancestor, Carrie Nation. She was a woman involved in the Temperance
movement in Topeka. During the 1900’s, she was known to take on
drinking, head-on and with a hatchet. She was a feisty woman for
her day. I remember my mother saying, “We Nations have rebellion in
our blood.”
    I stumbled upon a book with a
black-and-white picture of Carrie Nation. Something about seeing
her face called to me. It almost felt like there was an electric
current in my blood. I pictured the image of this woman, swinging a
hatchet around a bar, and smiled. She was the kind of woman I
wished I could be: emboldened, radical, free.
    A massive bang and a click woke me
from my daydreams. I heard laughing from the hallway. I had a sick
feeling in my stomach that I knew what had happened. In fact, I
almost didn’t want to try the handle for fear it would confirm what
my gut already told me: I had been locked in.
    There were no cameras in this room,
and few ventured here. I knew I would be found eventually and
probably within an hour. Once classes started back after lunch,
then the monitors would note my absence. When I was found, I
couldn’t say I did it to myself. Nor could I rat on my cohorts.
Defeated, I slid down against the wall and sat on the
floor.
    As I was flipping through the pages, a
sheet of paper fell from the book still in my hand. It was strange
that I had not noticed it earlier. It was a yellow piece of paper
folded in half. I could tell there was writing on the
inside.
    I opened it up to read the word
“Freedom.”
    There was a crackle in the air. The
hairs on my legs, arms and neck all seemed to stand up at once. If
I hadn’t been sitting down, I would have sworn the ground shifted
to the left and then the right. My ears popped, and my stomach did
a flip. Then, two things happened at once. A strange and powerful
light appeared, and suddenly someone was in the room with
me.
    “