Solitaire. Alice Oseman

      “Okay, Team Ops. Today’s the day we’re catching them, yeah? Everyone’s got a separate area of the school. Patrol that area and call me if you find anything. Nothing’s been done to the school since Friday so there’s a chance they won’t turn up today. But we’re going to do this until we feel that the school is safe, whether we end up catching anyone or not. Meet back in the hall at eight.”

      Why did I even come here?

      The prefects begin to chat among themselves, and Zelda speaks to each person individually before sending them off into the unlit, unheated depths of the school.

      When she gets to me, she presents me with a piece of paper and says, “Tori, you’re patrolling the IT suites. Here’s my number.”

      I nod at her and go to walk off.

      “Er, Tori?”

      “Yeah?”

      “You look a bit …” She doesn’t finish her sentence.

      It’s 7am. She can piss off.

      I walk away, throwing the piece of paper in a bin as I pass it. I come to a halt upon finding Kent standing ominously by the hall entrance.

      “Why me?” I ask him, but he just raises his eyebrows and smiles at me, so I roll my eyes and walk away.

      Wandering around the school like this is peculiar. Everything’s so still. Serene. No air circulation. I’m walking through a freeze-frame.

      The IT suite is in C Block, on the first floor. There are six computer rooms: C11, C12, C13, C14, C15 and C16. The usual whir of the suite is absent. The computers are all dead. I open up C11, switch on the lights and repeat this for C12, C13 and C14 before giving up and taking a seat on a swivel chair inside C14. What does Kent even think he’s doing involving me in this? As if I’m going to do any kind of ‘patrolling’. I kick the floor and spin. The world hurricanes around me.

      I don’t know how long I do this, but, when I stop to read the time, the clock waves in front of my eyes. When it calms down, it reads 7.16am. I wonder for at least the sixteenth time what I am doing here.

      It is then that I hear a distant sound of the Windows booting-up jingle.

      I get off my chair and step into the corridor. I look one way. I look the other. The corridor dissolves into darkness both ways, but out of the open door of C13 glares a hazy blue glow. I creep down the corridor and go inside.

      The interactive whiteboard is on, the projector whirring happily, the Windows desktop on display. I stand before the board, staring into it. The desktop wallpaper is a sloped green field beneath a blue sky. The harder I stare, the wider the board seems to spread, wider and wider, until the fake pixelated world invades my own. The computer that is linked to the screen hums.

      The door to the room shuts by itself, like I’m in Scooby-Doo. I run and grab the handle, but it’s locked and for a second I just stare at myself in the door window.

      Someone’s locked me in an IT room, for God’s sake.

      Stepping backwards, I see the board change in the blank monitors’ reflections. I spin on the spot. The green field has gone. In its place is a blank page of Microsoft Word with the cursor flashing on and off. I try smashing at the keyboard of the computer that’s hooked up to the board and wildly swishing the mouse across the table. Nothing happens.