It was a rather boring day in Independent Study in the library. Well, boring to most of the students, with laptops and books open and telephones snuck into their laps, and maddening for the gentle girl who was in charge of Peer Tutoring for this period.

“Aria, come do my conjugations for me!” one boy said, pushing his computer away in exasperation. Jared, that was his name, a kid in Latin 1.
“You do them yourself, Jared, or you’ll have to have me do them all the time!” Aria said, looking up from her own AP Latin essay that was to be written on Vergil… in Latin. “I have the charts written on the board; you need to actually [i]try[/i] to [i]memorize[/i] them. And quit snapchatting your girlfriend, would you please?” Sighing she went back to her own homework.

“Aria, fix my equation! I got one point four nine seven five three six two times ten to the minus fifty and I’m reasonably sure that’s not a valid answer.” Said another girl, Emily was her name. Sighing to herself, Aria went and helped her with the problem, and had scarcely gotten back to her seat when another boy Andrew called out, “Aria what do I get when I combine potassium and oxygen?”

“An explosion,” she muttered, getting up again and going to help him balance the equation. When she was halfway across the room, headed back to her desk, the lights suddenly flared, then went out. Ms. Galloway, the librarian, had been shelving books by the window, and she’d just… vanished. Her stack of books tumbled to the floor with a clatter. 

Instantly several of the kids started shouting.

“Calm down, please.” Aria said, not audible over the commotion. Grumbling, she stumbled over to the antique chalkboard on the wall and scraped her fingers down it. Within seconds the room was quiet. “Please stay calm. All of you cluster around one computer for light and turn your telephones and things off.”

“Why should we listen to you?”
“Yeah, you’re only like fourteen.”
“You’re a baby. You know nothing.”

Aria bit her lip, tears springing to her eyes at the implications of that comment but said nothing until she could make a harsh retort. “Okay, then, waste all the batteries and then be cowering in the darkness for a while. I’m going to go find some other kids and see what is going on.” With that she fled the library, only her dumb trackfone to light her way. The tears at their remarks beaded on her cheeks. She was always kind to them and helped them with their homework, always, and this was how they repaid her.
As she walked into the other hall she heard a boy talking, and recognized the voice. Jack Smith. He’d asked her for an English paper yesterday that she’d only half-finished. Usually she never did kids’ homework but Jack had kind of taken her under his wing when she’d switched back to public school in seventh grade, and he’d kept a good number of kids from beating on her. A few papers and difficult worksheets was the least she could do for him.

She trotted down the hall to meet him and the other kids surrounding him, their cell-phones giving their faces eerie blue casts. “Jack? I’m sorry I didn’t quite finish the English paper, the tutoring kids didn’t give me any time to finish my own homework, much less start on anyone else’s. Any idea what’s going on? I’m thinking a solar flare except it didn’t wipe our laptops or our phones… the librarian was at the window and she just disappeared. The lights got really bright and then went out, maybe like they just burned themselves out. But the electricity's down, because all the wired computers just like shut off.” She shivered. “Gosh, but it’s cold.”
[@The Scotsman]