When the Alarm Rang, Our Teacher Said “Nice Try” and Locked Us In

Instead, she powered it off and set it on her desk. “Clever using your mother to try to convince me, but I’m not naive,” she said. “You probably sent yourself that text before the exam started, scheduled it to arrive during the test. Everyone’s phones go on my desk immediately. This test continues.”

Daniela started crying, which made the situation feel even more unreal because Daniela never cried. She was the girl who’d broken her arm during soccer practice and walked to the nurse’s office without making a sound.

Now tears were running down her face as she stared at the smoke that was maybe three inches thick across the floor. Another student, a quiet kid named Warren who I’d never heard speak in class, suddenly stood up and grabbed his backpack.

“I’m leaving,” he said. “My dad’s a firefighter and he always said, ‘If you see smoke you go, I don’t care about the test.'”

Mrs. Garrison moved to block the door, spreading her arms wide like she could physically stop all 27 of us. “Warren Lou, if you take one more step toward this door, you will fail this class, not just the exam, the entire semester,” she said. “Do you understand me? Sit down right now!”

Warren stopped, and I could see him calculating whether graduating was worth potentially dying. The smoke chose that moment to trigger the sprinkler system.

Water started raining down from the ceiling immediately, soaking all our test papers and making the ink run. Students screamed and tried to cover their exams with their bodies, but it was pointless.

Within seconds everything was drenched. Mrs. Garrison looked up at the sprinklers with this expression of betrayal, like they’d personally attacked her.

She grabbed the emergency towel from her desk drawer and tried to dry off her grade book, but it was already ruined. The water was cold and the pressure was intense, like standing under a shower set to maximum.

My clothes were plastered to my body and my test paper had turned into a soggy mess that was disintegrating under my pencil. Through the windows I could now see actual flames, not in our room, but in the building across the courtyard.

The science wing was on fire with orange flames visible through third floor windows and black smoke pouring out. The courtyard below was full of students who’d evacuated, all standing behind yellow tape that security must have put up.

We could see them pointing up at our window and some were holding phones up recording. Mrs. Garrison finally looked out the window and her face went pale.

The fire across the courtyard was growing, spreading from one window to the next, and we could hear glass breaking even through our closed windows. She stood there frozen for maybe five seconds, just staring at the flames.

Then she pulled herself together and walked to the door, taking her key ring from her pocket. “All right everyone, line up single file. We’re evacuating in an orderly fashion,” she said. “No running, no pushing. Leave your tests on your desks.”

The door wouldn’t open. She turned the key and pulled the handle, but something was wrong.

She tried again, jiggling the key and pulling harder, but the door stayed shut. Isaiah pushed forward to help and together they yanked on the handle while the smoke in the hallway got darker and started coming under the door in thick rolling clouds.

“It’s jammed,” Mrs. Garrison said, and her voice cracked on the word jammed. “Something’s blocking it from the outside. The heat must have warped the frame.”

That’s when I realized we weren’t just locked in by her stupid paranoia about cheating. We were actually trapped.

The smoke was filling the room now, hanging at chest height and dropping lower with each second. Students started coughing and the sprinklers continued dumping water on us.

Through the window the fire across the courtyard was fully engulfed. I could see firefighters arriving with trucks and hoses, but they were focused on that building, not ours.

They didn’t know we were trapped in here. Daniela ran to the windows and started pulling on them, trying to open them wider.

They were the crank style that only opened about six inches, not nearly enough for a person to fit through. She grabbed a chair and looked like she was about to throw it through the glass, but Mrs. Garrison screamed at her to stop.

“That glass is expensive and we’re on the second floor!” she said. “You’ll kill yourself jumping from this height! Everyone stay calm while I figure this out!”

Warren pulled out his phone, which he’d hidden in his sock instead of putting on Mrs. Garrison’s desk. He was trying to call 911 but kept shaking his head.

“No signal,” he said. “The fire must have taken out a cell tower or something. I can’t get through.”

The smoke was at our shoulders now, forcing us to crouch down to breathe. The air near the floor was slightly better, but not by much.

My eyes were burning and my throat felt like I’d swallowed sandpaper. Around me students were coughing violently and a girl named Patricia threw up in the corner from the smoke inhalation.

Mrs. Garrison was on her hands and knees at the door, still trying to force it open. She’d grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall and was using it like a battering ram, slamming it against the door frame over and over.

But the door was solid wood and the frame wasn’t budging. I could see tears mixing with the sprinkler water on her face, and she kept saying, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Between hits, Isaiah and three other guys joined her, all of them throwing their weight against the door. They counted down together and hit it simultaneously, and I heard something crack.

It was not the door, but the wall next to it. The drywall had split from the impact, creating a small hole about the size of a baseball.

Warren immediately started kicking at the hole, making it bigger. The drywall crumbled more easily than the door, and within a minute they’d created an opening large enough to see into the hallway.

Smoke poured through the hole, thick and black, and through it I could see flames. The hallway was on fire—not just smoke anymore, but actual flames running along the ceiling and down the walls.

The lockers were glowing red from the heat and I could see melted plastic dripping from the ceiling tiles. The door wasn’t jammed because of warped wood; it was jammed because the hallway was completely impassable.

Mrs. Garrison pulled back from the hole, her face covered in soot and her eyes wide. She looked at all of us crouched on the floor, soaking wet from the sprinklers and breathing smoke.

I saw the exact moment she realized what she’d done. She’d locked us in here during a real emergency.

Her paranoia about test cheating had trapped us in a room that was filling with smoke while fire raged in the hallway outside. There was no way out through the door.

The windows were too small, and we were on the second floor, too high to jump safely. The firefighters outside were focused on the other building.

Nobody knew we were here. Daniela stood up despite the smoke and faced Mrs. Garrison directly.