Q-Hall

There’s a joke the teachers tell about Q-Hall.

“That’s where we send the bad kids,” they say with malicious glee, faces lit with an eerie glow reflected from their laptop screens.

The seniors get in on it, too.

“If you piss off the wrong person, it’ll show up on your schedule the next semester. If you’ve got a class in Q-Hall, that’s it. It’s over.”

They cackle and walk away as the freshmen anxiously scour their printouts, triple-checking every room number.

At the beginning of every semester, without fail, if someone transfers out of a class or withdraws from the school, the rumours start.

“They got put into a Q-hall class,” everyone gasps with exaggerated shock and dramatic wringing of hands, “They’ll never be seen again!”

The joke is, of course, that there is no Q-Hall. There’s A-Hall through D-Hall, on the first floor on the north side of the courtyard, opposite the admin offices and the Band Hall. There’s E- and F-Hall on the second floor of the south side, and G- and H-Hall on the north side. There’s Trophy Hall, down by the gym and the locker rooms. There’s Main Hall, with the big staircases by the front entrance. There are a lot of back staircases and maintenance corridors that you can use to avoid crowds, but students really aren’t supposed to be back there.

There is no Q-Hall.

So why does my schedule say that my 4th period Biology lab is in Q-9?

Sandra snatches the paper out of my hands in homeroom.

“Uh oh, Andrew!” Her voice is shrill, ecstatic. “You musta been baaaaaaad! Ooooooooh! They’re sending you to Q-Haaaaall!”

She waves the paper in my face.

“Knock it off.” Kiran grabs it from her and hands it back to me, but not without a lingering stare at the fourth line.

“It’s a typo, Andrew.” she says, sounding confident but with a worried look. “It’s probably supposed to be A-Hall.”

“How do you know?” Sandra sneers.

“Q is right next to A on the keyboard, Sandra.” Kiran returns the glare.

“Except there are no science labs in A-Hall.” My voice is quiet, contemplative, and I don’t look at either of them. Just down at my schedule. None of us say anything for a long minute.

There must be something in my face that takes the fight out of them.

“Just- just take it to the front office,” Sandra says in a dismissive tone, “It’s not a big deal. It’s probably just a prank.”

“Yeah,” Kiran chimes in, “I’ll go with you.”

The bell rings.

“That’s okay,” I say, shouldering my backpack, “I’ll see you later.”

There’s already a line at the office, kids waiting to talk to the attendance secretary. I wonder if it was more than just me, if other kids have shown up to ask about Q’s on their schedules. As I get closer and closer to the front of the line, I don’t hear anyone mentioning typos. They’re in the wrong Spanish class, or they have Calculus but need Trigonometry instead.

The secretary makes a few keystrokes and the kids zip away, everything fixed. No one mentions Q-Hall.

It’s finally my turn, and the secretary smiles brightly at me.

“What can I help you with, hun?”

I show her my schedule, pointing to the fourth-period classroom.

“I think there’s been a mistake-” I start, but as soon as her eyes hit the room number, she frowns.

“Are you not taking Biology this year?” she asks, suddenly sounding suspicious.

“Um, I’m supposed to?” I must sound like an idiot.

“Then stick to your schedule, please.”

“But-”

She narrows her eyes at me, looking a lot less friendly than she did a minute ago.

“I really don’t have time for this. You should hurry up, you’re late for first period.”

I’m not really the type of person to start arguing. I don’t know what else to do, so I go to class. I don’t show anyone else my schedule all morning, and I barely eat lunch.

When all my friends have gone back to class, I stand in the courtyard as the late bell rings. I have no idea where to go.

“Andrew Obeide?” someone sticks their head out of the door to Main Hall.

“Yeah?” I answer, wondering if they have my real schedule or if someone in the office is waiting to see me.

They wave me inside without saying anything else. I follow, no questions asked. What else am I going to do? Stand outside until the principal sees me and asks what I’m doing?

The kid I’m following has the hood on their grey sweatshirt up, and they’re moving fast.

They’re too far ahead to talk to without shouting. I’m jogging to keep up, but I can’t close any distance between us.

They run up the south stairs and into F-Hall, turning a corner so sharply I lose sight of them for a minute. I see them again ducking into one of the maintenance stairwells, one that leads down to the practice rooms behind the Band Hall, if I have my bearings right. As I hurry down the stairs after them, it occurs to me that continuing to follow someone I don’t know, for reasons they haven’t explained, is probably not the best idea I’ve ever had.

I throw open the door at the bottom of the stairs, expecting to see the grey hoodie disappearing around yet another corner, but I stop short, surprised.

There’s no one here—but there are no practice rooms, either. It’s a stark white state-of-the-art laboratory. I think I recognize some of the equipment from the true crime shows my mom watches… and I recognize the things in jars lining the shelves on the far wall.

Specifically, I recognize the face in the only jar on the bottom shelf. He transferred out of my Geography class freshman year.

The door opens and shuts behind me, and I hear the click of a lock.

“Hello, Andrew. Welcome to Q-9.”

Header Image: “Lorain High School hallway” by Matt Dempsey, CC BY-SA 2.0; Image has been modified from its original format.