Dear Albert: The Lock-In

Me and Gil have to walk across the street to get to the gym, where the lock-in is already underway.

If you saw our gym, you would understand why football star Jeff Wellstone didn’t get in trouble for throwing a stapler at my head and leaving a scar: While the rest of campus is a picture of public school mediocrity, the gym is breathtaking. It’ an old, ivy-covered building surrounded by tennis courts, baseball and softball diamonds, and a football field, all connected by a slate walkway—the kind meant for diplomats and scholars (not the Jeff Buttstones of the world). The actual building houses two full-sized gyms, a mat room for wrestling, a basement pool, and a multipurpose room. In short, somebody dumped a ton of money into this gym. Priorities around here are clear.

It’s weird—how long I’ve been thinking about this lock-in, envisioning me and Anna and everyone I care about letting loose in the most beautiful building imaginable. But from a distance, the gym doesn’t look regal, and I don’t feel free. The sight of the old grand building makes me angry. About injustice. About my stutter. About everything.

“Aren’t you cold?,” Gil asks as we cross the street. He shudders, pushing his skateboard to his side. I realize I haven’t put on my jacket—it’s still draped over my arm. But I’m burning hot, right down to my fingertips.

“No,” I say, and we walk the rest of the way in silence.

Mr. Daley, our stressed out, hands-off, 30-something newspaper moderator, greets us as we push open the massive gym doors.

“Sam! How’d your hearing go?” He looks at Gil. “Oh wait, your friend can’t be here.”

“I’ve been hearing that a lot tonight,” Gil says, rolling his eyes.

“But he goes here,” I say.

Mr. Daley looks at Gil sympathetically.

“You know how hard I had to work to convince Principal Rink to let thirty teenagers sleep TOGETHER in the gym? Everyone’s going to wind up dead or pregnant. For all I know, people are already playing spin the bottle in the underpants. Forget I said that, I’ll get sued," Daley says. "This is the most stressful night of my life. Worse than when I proposed to Jocelyn. Point is, if they find out someone from outside the newspaper staff was here, consider me fired.”

Gil looks at me, clearly disappointed. Gil’s never had trouble getting into anything until he moved back the the States. It had started with Jeff putting a condom—fine! okay! my unused condom!—in Gil's Mountain Dew, then tonight's hearing, now this? Has this whole country forgotten that Gil is basically SuperMan with a B— grade point average?

“I’ll leave with you,” I say. I’m in no mood to bow to authority, no matter how much I feel for poor Mr. Daley.

“No,” Gil says, brightening. “You got a MISSION, mate! I’m gonna skate around for a while. It’s not too cold.”

He’s lying, lying for me. I sigh—another person trying to protect me.

The “A Gym” door swings open. Renee Rodriguez bounds out to Katy Perry blasting behind her. She’s already wearing tiny pink pajamas.

“Sam!” she shouts, and hugs me.

Before I can extricate myself from her smushy embrace, I hear Gil say “Later man,” and the door behind me close. “Come play basketball! WAITOHMYGOD! Did you win your hearing?”

Renee means well, but this is not who I want to confide in right now.

“I’m gonna look for An—Braden,” I say. For once, I’m thankful for my speech impediment.

And suddenly I’m running up the stairs, leaving Mr. Daley and Renee behind.

I reach the multipurpose room wondering what purpose the bizarre, carpeted room is being used for tonight. Is spin the bottle in the underpants really a thing? I should have done more research. But I open the door anyway—

—and see about eight people sitting in a circle. A dark circle. A few spinning flashlights give me the only clue to who these people are.

None of them are Anna. I turn to run out, but see a news reporter, Gracie Farznik, sitting next to dumb Paul Atkins. I want more than anything to find Anna, but I know I need to make my announcement. Now. Before I lose my nerve.

I walk deeper into the room, and one of the spinning flashlights stops at my feet.

“Sam the Beaver Dam!” Paul says. Ugh. “Wanna play Truth, Dare, or Rug Burn?”

Another guy, I can’t see who, tells Paul to shut up and asks me about the school board hearing. The room goes silent.

“I lu-lu-lost,” I say, and am immediately disgusted with myself. I pick up the flashlight and hold it like a microphone. It burns my eyes. I can’t see anyone, but I know they’re there. “Which is why I’m running for stu-student council.”

“You? Haha, yeah right!” someone says, probably Paul.

“Yes. Right. Gracie, you can print that. I’m an an an official candidate,” I say.

“Really?”

I spin around and see the a female silhouette with Pippy Longstocking braids. The hair looks unfamiliar, but I know the voice.

“Yes, Anna. I’m doing it,” I say. Still without a visual confirmation that it’s actually her, (thank you, blinding flashlight!), I grab the human’s wrist—like I saw Gil do to his British girlfriend once over Skype—and pull her out of the multipurpose room, into what seems to be the mat room, empty and dark.

We sit on a pile of mats. I still can’t see her face.

“Your hair,” I say. Anna’s not exactly the type to show up at a lock-in with braids sticking out of her head. But still, it’s her, I’m sure.

“Oh right,” she says, and touches a braid that seems to be growing out of her ear. “Renee and Shana gave me a make… over? What happened tonight?”

“Tonight…” I start, but realize there’s going to be plenty of time to explain. And only a few minutes alone, here, in the dark, on a pile of mats.

The old Sam would never try to kiss her. But the old Sam was always the victim, always the poor boy with the stutter.

What would Braden do? I think. And this helps.

“Tonight is just beginning,” I say. And then I do something I’ve never done before—I scoot over, closer to Anna—

—and get whapped in the eye with one of her braids.

“I’m sorry!” she says, and I lower my head between my knees, wincing. She puts her hand on my shoulder and moves even closer, and suddenly I understand why people always talk about the way girls smell.

It turns out Anna doesn’t smell like books. She smells like something else, something I’ve never smelled before. Under the smell of hairspray, Anna Ingram smells like home.

I see the outline of her head turn. She’s facing me now, so I come up for air. I wonder if she wants to to touch me as much as I want to touch her, if it all. I wonder if she’s already had her first kiss, and then I wonder nothing—and move my face toward hers.

And somewhere in the building, a window shatters. Anna gasps, and whaps me with a braid again. I pull away and cover my eye. Someone opens the door and turns on the lights. Out of my uncovered eye, I can see now, see Anna looking beautiful and terrified in with her silly hair, when Braden bursts in.

“Something’s going on outside,” he says, and I hear people from downstairs screaming. “I think there’s been an accident.”

What is Dear Albert? It's a fiction experiment on SparkNotes about a guy, Sam, who writes a secret advice column under the name Albert. The "experiment" part is this: His story is a mesh of pure fiction, and YOUR input. Want to participate? Leave a question for Albert in the comments (real, or totally fake)!

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