Jon and Karyn had barely entered the building before they were approached by one of the school administrators with passes.
"You two have been excused from your first and second period classes. Report to Room 21."
Room 21 had to be down in the basement, as all the rooms on the first floor were 100. There were a few offices down there, and some other disused rooms.
Jon had been done to the basement level once since he enrolled. It was a small stretch of hallway, and dead ended at a set of locked double doors he always assumed led to the furnace or some other building thing. But today, they were wide open, revealing a stretch of cinderblock hallway he didn't know was there. The floor looked like it had been freshly mopped, and there was a janitor on a ladder fixing one of several flickering lights. The hallway past that point seemed to be blocked by stacks of old desks and chairs.
They were both wondering why the school didn't use this space anymore when they were ushered into a room that looked rather dated. It appeared to be an old classroom, with wooden chairs set up in a circle. There were a bunch of covered items off to one side of the room, possibly more chairs.
As they waited, other individuals came in. All the students who Jon had seen yesterday getting examined.
Finally, an adult spoke up, and quieted the room. She looked to be in her twenties, but she wasn't someone Jon had seen before. "Good morning, everyone. As you all might imagine, we've been a bit concerned about your situation, and it has been decided that it makes sense to continue to monitor you all as we try to figure out what happened. The school board would like things to start to return to normal, or as close as possible."
"Do you have our lab results?" Sarah asked.
"Not yet, the doctors will be speaking to you later, I understand they are still waiting on some results. My name is Miss Fine, I'm a certified counselor. I usually specialize in crisis counseling, but...as you can understand, I've never really handled anything like this. No one has, I think. And it was felt you might benefit from having a chance to talk about it."
"What is this place?" Karyn asked.
"Well, my understanding is that this used to be the home economics classroom, but it was shuttered. Either way, now it's a space where we can talk about how you are handling the current situation."
"You mean...with each other?" Biff said.
"Who else understands what you are going through?" She said. "I'm also here if you need someone to talk to privately. I'm available exclusively for all of you for the foreseeable future.
"What if we don't want to talk about it?" Biff said.
"While we brought you all here today, if you choose after this to not take advantage, that is your choice. Why don't we all go around and introduce ourselves?" She suggested.
