The Secret Under the Teacher’s Desk

Everything began with a detention. That day I had to stay after school, because I got detention. It wasn’t something very serious, but my teacher thought I deserved it. My punishment was to go from classroom to classroom, wiping the students’ desks and dusting the shelves.

At first, I found it simply boring, because the school was empty, and the hallways felt strangely quiet after hours. Slowly, I made it through the building. I started on the upper floors and worked my way down classroom by classroom.

         By the time I reached the ground floor, I was thinking that I was almost done and only the last classrooms remained. I walked into one of them and placed my bucket on the floor. But just as I was about to start cleaning, I heard something really strange. A faith humming sound.

At first, I assumed it came from somewhere outside, so I decided to ignore it. But then I heard it again and again, each time becoming clearer, and it seemed to be coming from below the floor. Then I noticed some thin lines of purple and green glowing through the small gaps between the floorboards, they were impossible to ignore. I slowly walked toward the front of the classroom, where the teacher’s desk stood. After a moment of hesitation, I pushed the desk aside and what I saw underneath it made me freeze…

          There was a hidden door in the floor. I was sure I had never seen it before, the desk must have been covering it all this time. I didn’t know what to do. But curiosity won me over. I opened the door, and the staircase led down into the unknown. Carefully and quietly, I started walking down the stairs, and when I finally reached the bottom, I realized that I had discovered something unbelievable.  

A secret laboratory was hidden beneath the school. The space was filled with machines, blinking lights, and strange devices, it looked nothing like a normal lab. Instinctively, I hid behind a wall when I heard voices nearby, and I slowly leaned forward to see who was there.

          My English teacher stood only a few meters away, dressed in the type of clothes I used to wear in science class, my protective outfit before an experiment. But then I noticed my music teacher too, except he didn’t look like a music teacher anymore. He was wearing the same type of research suit, focused on monitoring an unusual machine.  

As I continued watching from my hiding place, I realized that more teachers were there. Several of them, and all working together. It slowly became clear that my teachers weren’t just some customary teachers, they were scientists. And clearly, this place was meant to stay hidden, and I was never supposed to find it.

I climbed back up the staircase, carefully closed the door behind me, and I pushed the teacher’s desk back into its original position. After that, I finished my detention, I cleaned the remaining classrooms, dusted the shelves and left the school building.

        I walked home in the quiet evening light and made a decision I’ve kept ever since. I would never go back down there again. AND I would never tell anyone what I saw that day.

Székely Rebeka   X. H