Dead Rules by Randy Russell

sometimes connected to one another, sometimes not.
    To kill time, Jana sealed her lips into a straight line and copied the first box Skinner had drawn into her notebook. She placed an X at the bottom of the box and left an opening at the top. She drew in the short horizontal and vertical lines. The box, she finally realized, was a puzzle. It was a maze. Just like the kind they have on the back of paper place mats at IHOP.
    It was a puzzle she could solve quickly, without error, but she was well behind Mr. Skinner’s progress with the chalk. Jana copied the second box from the blackboard. Like the first, it had an X at a gap in the bottom. It was the entry into the maze. The other gap was high on the left side of the box instead of at the top. It was the way out.
    Jana flipped the page in her notebook and started copying the third box. She looked at Mars once. But she did it with her head ducked, peering carefully from behind the edges of her hair that fell forward over her work.
    He was watching her. Jana wondered if he was staring at her every second. Maybe he was trying to drill a hole in the back of her head with his piercing blue eyes. Tough luck. She already had one of those.
    She had drawn the sixth box of Skinner’s when two Virgins entered the classroom. They sang one soprano note together lightly and everyone in class looked up. Then the shimmering Virgins did something absolutely beautiful. They sang Jana’s name in alternating high and low notes in delayed harmony. Jana had never heard her name sound so pretty.
    Jan-ah Web-ster. It sounded like a lullaby.
    In their ephemeral white gowns, with arms that seemed to float on the air, the Virgins motioned Jana forward. Their hair lifted softly on a breeze that wasn’t there. Jana stood from her desk and walked to the front of class. She felt clunky.
    The Virgins were at the classroom door, Jana eager to follow them. They turned and held up the palms of their hands in unison. Jana stopped. The Virgins moved their outstretched arms to encompass the classroom, their fingers undulating.
    Jana was supposed to choose a student from her homeroom to accompany her to the Planet.
    She looked over the class. Arva grinned at her. Jana’s roommate had closed her notebook on her desk and was ready to go. Christie, knowing she wouldn’t be selected, smiled at Jana, wishing her well on Jana’s visit to her real life.
    Henry Sixkiller looked hopeful. Beatrice did not. Yellow fins sticking out of the top of your head really wasn’t the sort of thing you wore to anyone’s funeral. Mr. Skinner tapped the blackboard with his chalk, waiting to do another box.
    Jana pointed to the back of the room and said, “Mars Dreamcote.”
    A murmur passed through the classroom. Students leaned toward each other to speak in whispers. Christie’s and Beatrice’s mouths fell open. Arva dropped her hands on her desk in disgust.
    Wyatt, leaning sideways from his seat on his good leg, gave Mars a little shove. The dreadfully handsome blue-eyed Slider, who had seen Jana in her underwear and socks on her first day in Dead School, made his way to the front of the room. Jana tugged her hair behind her ear and followed the Virgins out the classroom door. Mars quickly caught up.

Chapter Twelve
    MARS SURPRISED JANA.
    He didn’t get on the bus when she did. Jana found a seat in the middle and watched him out the window. Mars circled the side of the bus and darted through an opening in the chain-link fence that surrounded Dead School. With her thumb, Jana played Michael’s ring back and forth on the third finger of her left hand.
    Mars bent over to retrieve something in the grass at the base of a tree across the road. He tucked it inside his shirt and hurried back.
    Jana watched him carefully. There was restrained power in his movements. It was there when he stood still too, when he leaned against something in the hall or against the rail of the fire-escape