The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories

High Rise High

8 8 8 8 8 The situation at the school is about like you’d expect: total anarchy, bikers roaring through the halls pillaging and laying waste; big guys hanging screaming frosh out of windows by their feet, shut up or I let go; bathroom floods and flaming mattresses, minor explosions and who knows how many teacher hostages ; this is worse than Attica, and the monster prom that puts the arm on Armageddon is Saturday night. The theme is Tinsel Dreams; expect wild carnage fueled by kid gangs sallying forth to trash your neighborhood and bring back anything they want. Who knows how they got out of the citadel? Who can say exactly how they get back in? An interesting thing has happened. Nobody’s cell phone works inside the walls. Worse. The land lines have been cut so you can’t phone in. Then there is the problem with the baby. See, this Bruce Brill, he tries to get down with the kids, you know, call me Bruce, but the kids call him the Motivator ? He’s always, like, “Come on, if you want to, you can get a C,” big mistake trying that on Johnny Slater: “Why are you holding back like this? You could go to mit!” Well, that and his stupid play. ok, this is what you get for pissing Johnny off. He and his gang have snatched your pregnant wife, they broke into your house while you were scrubbing your hands in front of English class, we’ll Macbeth you. Johnny is holding pregnant Jane in the woodworking shop while his seven best buds rig the table saw to rip her fuckin in half. Boy, you should hear her scream. Listen, when Mr. McShy the band teacher begged them to let her go the seven of them did, yes they did smash sensitive Eddie McShy’s Stradivarius over his sensitive head; while he weeps and the pregnant lady screams for help, Johnny uses the splinters to pick his front teeth. It’s Teach, this eager jerk Bruce Brill, that alerted us in the city. “I tried to tell you but you wouldn’t listen.” Look up from supper and Teach is on your screen sobbing for Global tv. “Now it’s too late.” Hunkered down in his office with a handful of survivors, deposed principal Irving Wardlaw shakes his fist at the tv. Frankly, the riot broke out because Bruce tried to make Johnny play a fairy in his “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Fucking Shakespeare, what do you expect? High Rise High 70 k i t r e e d “It’s a jungle in there!” Bruce’s eyes are wet with disappointment. “I had such hopes.” Yeah right, Wardlaw growls, observing on the Watchman in his still-­smoking office. You shoulda had a gun. Then Bruce completely loses it. “My wife is trapped! My baby’s coming even as we speak!” And because Teach made it to the Global studios before the kids or the Mayor’s men could bring him down the whole world is watching, so instead of saying “We’ll look into it” and back-burnering like he does everything else, the Mayor will have to act. In any other city conquest and recovery would be a snap. swat teams on the roof of the school, they could rappel from there no problem, and end the siege; paratroopers could knife in through the skylight, shattering the stained glass with spiked jackboots to break up the Tinsel Prom; the Feds could plant explosives or the governor could call out the National Guard to crack skulls and restore order, but not here. We are ahead of the wave, second to none in doing what we have to do to keep our sanity. High Rise High is a fortress unto itself. Listen, these walls are slicker than glass. No pikes and crampons here! We’re talking a hundred stories built on bedrock, nobody tunnels out and no mole gets in. The vertical face is tougher to storm than Masada or the Haunted Mesa, when your enemies can’t get a toehold you are proof against siege. The first ten floors are windowless, girdled by coiled razor wire bolted tight to the glossy molybdenum face. What were they thinking when they built hrh? Keeping you out? No. Keeping your kids in. Listen, you wanted it this way. The teen population is out of control, you said, and believe me, you came begging. You showed us...