Previously…

“It could be a secret entrance to a hidden world. Maybe it leads to Narnia,” Zoey said excitedly.

“Or it leads to the basement,” Sam said, raising his eyebrows.

I was currently on the first floor of the building and there was…a downward arrow.

About ten minutes into us watching, Leonardo, the director, walked up to the elevator. He greeted Irma, before clicking the downward arrow on the elevator and strolling in.

“He just clicked the downward arrow,” I whisper-yelled. I was standing behind the window-door in Collective, looking at the elevator that the director, Leonardo, had just entered.

“We are definitely asking Leonardo about this,” Zoey said.

Sam nodded agreement.

“Wait, maybe, don’t mention that we were spying on the elevator door,” I said reasonably.

Sam winced, “Yeah, that might be a bad idea.”

“Let’s wait till lunch, so that we can tell Wyatt,” I decided.

Wyatt wasn’t in the same Goal Time block as us, so he wasn’t spying on the elevator door. Luckily, lunch was right after this, so we could tell him.

“Wyatt! We saw Leonardo go to the basement,” Zoey said, dropping her lunchbox on the table.

“Wait, what?” a confused Wyatt asked.

“Well, we saw him press the downward arrow and enter the elevator,” I said, not helping explain at all.

“What?”

We quickly explained what we saw to Wyatt, who agreed that we should ask Leonardo. We spent ten minutes searching the building before eventually realizing:

“If he entered the basement right before lunch, he might still be in the basement.”

All of us paused for a moment as we realized that Sam’s statement was probably true.

“What should we do next?” I asked.

We decided to quiz the other teachers. Logically, Irma, the person always at the front desk, was there when Leonardo walked into the elevator, so she had known about the downward arrow, otherwise she would have been surprised. This meant the other teachers probably also knew.

The teachers sat in three different areas.

One, the actual playground area where a lot of students also ate. It was about twenty feet away from where we were sitting.

Two, the front. There was a set of tables before the front door of the building where the teachers normally sat.

Three, the teacher’s lounge, which students were not allowed to enter without a good reason.

We started by walking to the playground. The sand was wet from the rain the day before and our feet sunk into it. We narrowly got missed by a frisbee as we walked in between two people throwing it, before reaching the tables which were fortunately on concrete ground. The teacher’s table was the table at the most left side from all the other tables, so that they could watch all the students at once.

“So, we need to ask the teachers whether a basement exists.” I have a habit of stating the obvious when I’m nervous. Honestly, there was no reason to recap what we had gone over a minute ago.

“Yup,” Wyatt agreed.

Zoey and Sam stayed silent. There were four teachers at the table.

April was the Algebra 2 and Precalculus math teacher. Wyatt and Sam knew her the best since they had classes with her, though Zoey and I knew her due to meeting her in hallways.

Next to her was Donatello, who advertised the school to other people. I, like most students, didn’t have a clear understanding of what Donatello did, but I knew he set up the open house and talked to my parents when I joined the school.

On the other side of the table was Krang. Krang was the high school history teacher. I didn’t know him well, since I didn’t have any classes with him, though, like April, I had talked to him before. He had a beard and cheerful demeanor that reminded me of Santa Claus, though the beard was considerably smaller than Santa’s.

Raphael sat next to Krang. He was the higher level Spanish teacher, who once again, I didn’t know that well, since I was in a lower level Spanish class. He was known to have an obsession with Peru, which was probably exaggerated by the students in the school.

“Hi!” Zoey said cheerfully. Have I mentioned that Zoey’s personality completely changes when she is excited about something? She is, like, ten times more enthusiastic and talkative.

All the teachers said some variation of ‘hi’ in response.

“What have you come here for?” Krang asked.

“We want to ask you a question,” I said, trying to give a suitable description before asking the ridiculous question.

“Do you think KLS has a basement?” Zoey asked, cutting me off.

April looked surprised for a second, her eyebrows raising, before her expression turned normal again. The only problem with her reaction was that after being asked a question like that, she probably should have been laughing. This made me believe that she was trying to cover her actual surprised reaction with her regular one.

Donatello, who had spent time advertising to people and probably had practice at showing only certain expressions, and looked understandably surprised and amused. I couldn't tell anything from his reaction.

I wasn’t paying attention to Raphael or Krang’s reactions as much, but from what I saw, their reactions were similar to Donatello’s, giving nothing away. Maybe I had imagined April’s response.

Donatello shrugged, “I don’t know. It doesn’t have one as far as I know.”

I noticed that Donatello had avoided answering the question. Zoey had asked whether he thought KLS had a basement, not whether KLS had a basement. The frustrating part was that I knew that that would probably have been Donatello’s reaction even if he hadn’t been lying, since it was easy to miss that one word.

“But do you think it has one?” I asked.

Donatello sounded unsure, “It might have one, but I have never been in it.”

Donatello still avoided answering the question, which made me believe he was lying, though I was still unsure. Before I could quiz Donatello further, Raphael cut in,

“Is there a reason you are asking us this question?” He sounded amused.

“We just wanted to know. We were slightly suspicious since there is an elevator and all,” Zoey said easily.

I would have mentioned the downward arrow at this point, but I didn’t want to bring it up without discussing it with Zoey, Wyatt, and Sam first.

“Let’s say hypothetically there was a basement,” Krang said. “What would you do if you knew about it?”

I shrugged. That was a good question, because if someone actually confirmed there was a basement, I would probably be slightly surprised, before continuing on with my normal life. Leonardo going to the basement could be easily explained.

“Oh nothing. Maybe spread rumors about it and, you know, normal middle school stuff.”

“Zoey, that’s not….” I was laughing too much to complete my statement.

Wyatt looked extremely embarrassed, and covered his face with his lunch box while trying to stop laughing.

“So, is there a basement?” Sam asked, bringing us back to our main goal.

“No.”

“Not as far as we know.”

“I don’t think so.”

“There isn’t a basement. Or at least I don’t think there is.”

We walked away from the table with those responses. I looked around and noticed the seniors’ table.

“We should ask John.”

John was one of the seniors, except he also taught Multivariable Calculus, which technically made him a teacher.

“That’s a great idea,” Zoey said, running towards the seniors’ table.

“Yay, more awkward conversations,” Sam said sarcastically.

The seniors’ often went to eat lunch outside, because they were allowed to. There was an ongoing petition to let other high schoolers eat outside too, but it was still in the testing phase. Luckily for us, John was at the lunch table today.

“Hi, John! We have a question for you,” Zoey said.

All of the seniors looked up, because we had interrupted their conversation. This was ten times more awkward than our conversation with the teachers.

“Okay. What’s the question?” John asked.

“Do you think KLS has a basement?”

John looked surprised for a second before responding, “Sorry, I can’t answer that without Leonardo’s permission.”

John’s response changed my entire view on the matter. I had first thought there were three possible options.

One, KLS didn’t have a basement.

Two, KLS did have a basement and teachers didn’t know about it.

Three, KLS had a basement, but the students weren’t allowed to know about it.

John’s response confirmed the third option. Leonardo, for some reason, was stopping the teachers from confirming there was a basement.