Organics Forever

Bowie Elementary hadn’t seen a student in ten years, and yet the city had never gotten around to demolishing the school. Instead, the octagonal building had been allowed to languish in the middle of a drowsy neighborhood with its doors and windows boarded up and its innards baking under the West Texas sun. Dusty textbooks lined shelves in classrooms, running parallel to grid arrangements of small desks and plastic chairs. The last decorations of the school year had been stripped from the walls and put away, as if the last teachers had fully expected to come back again in the fall to continue educating little Sangelinos.

The school even had water and power, something Andy and his friends had discovered on their second incursion into the building. They had all gone to Bowie as kids, had each sat in the nurse’s office after losing a tooth, and had each climbed and fallen from the large evercrete pipes that passed for a playground outside. Now, nearing adulthood, they used the school as a hideout, a way to escape the prying eyes and iron fist of the SAPD. There were few places they could go without being watched, and being at home with their parents was almost worse. It had been Laura’s idea to check out the school, and after a few exploratory trips with Andy, they’d deemed it a suitable hideout.