and I don't wanna sit still

[skepticgirl_1]

Usually I wasn't a big fan of field trips. They tended to be boring, awkward excursions that never taught us anything worthwhile and just gave people an excuse to socialize without the teacher being able to stop them. Which wouldn't have bothered me, in the past, had I had someone to socialize with, too. But when the new girl was going to be the gone girl in six months, no one really paid me much attention. That was fine by me. If only the field trips were interesting enough to distract me.

But this, this was different. I didn't have any friends in this class (yet), but I did have friends, and I could sneak peeks at my cell phone and send texts every so often. I wasn't doing a whole lot of that, however, given that this field trip was to a place called DARKLab. DARKLab. Had no one in marketing noticed this? Did the board of directors really think it was a good thing to say they controlled a dark lab? Either a whole lot of people had a very dark sense of humor or there was something going on here. I chose to investigate the latter.

Peeling off from my group was easy enough. There were too many of us for only a teacher and two parent chaperones who didn't know what they were doing with this many teenagers. I innocently slipped into a bathroom, waited for everyone to forget about me, and then headed straight for a door that said "Employees Only."

I stopped abruptly in front of the door because, of course, it was locked and, of course, it was a card key lock, not anything I could pick.

I hesitated and spun in a slow circle, wondering what alternative route I could use.

Comments

[makeithome]

There's another school group on a field trip today, but they get one of the interns to lead it. That's another perk of no longer being an intern, Gwen has found. Not that she ever minded the field trips, but most of the time, it was obvious the kids were bored and she was wasting her time on most of them. At best, they were just happy to be out of the classroom for a little while.

Besides, she has projects to tend to. She's been trying to stay on top of things even more than usual of late so she can justify working on her own experiments in the evening, which is really just a hunt for a cure for Kaine.

Still, it's no surprise when she finds one of the high schoolers in the hall, looking lost. It seems like there's always one. "You get separated from the group?" she asks.