Last Minutes
It was 10:55 am. Middle schoolers at the local middle school were
waiting, captivated by the digital clocks. At last, it happened. The clock
flashed 11:00 am.
It had been almost 200 days since the school year began. This year had
been a journey of friends, grades, and general frustrations. Some people were
excited for the coming summer, while others were having mixed feelings. But, for
most students and teachers, this was a joyous time that finalized an exhausting
school year at Milbank Middle School.
After a half-day of signing yearbooks, eating junk food, and
celebrating, it was almost 11:00 am, the time that everyone would be released
for the upcoming summer. Every student and teacher was forced into their
homerooms, each one half-enjoying these final moments. Students were lounging in
desks while chatting about their summer plans. “What are you going to do this
summer?” a girl casually asked her friend who was sitting across from her. “I
don’t really know, but we should definitely hang out!” she answered hopefully.
At last, the time came. The red glow of the digital clock displayed one more
minute until 11:00 am. Some students started counting down, hoping that when
their counting reached number one, the clock would change. “Five, four, three,
two, one,” someone counted. The clock switched.
Without a moment of hesitation, everyone bolted out of the classrooms,
so fast that the doors hit the walls with a loud bang! The once quiet hallways
become sudden chaos. Students scrambled to their lockers, immediately starting
on their three-number locker combinations. It was like ants at work. After a bit
of grabbing and stuffing locker items in their backpacks, the loud clanging of
lockers being slammed shut began. This constant noise started to remind some of
the students of bombs going off every second. Soon kids started rushing to their
friends, determined to walk out of the building with them. The hallways at
Milbank Middle and High School were a crowded mess of people walking, sprinting,
pushing, and screaming. “LAST DAY OF SCHOOL!” someone hollered at the top of
their lungs. Another person shrieked, “SUMMER IS HERE!” Teachers were standing
in the walkways of doors to their classrooms shouting at the crowd, trying to
calm it down. What they didn’t realize was that this was the last day of school,
so why would the students listen?
Eventually, the crowd made it outside. The scene out there made the
scene back in the school look like a madhouse. The warm air immediately canceled
out all smells. Birds were chirping, the sun was gleaming down, and everybody
was completely dumbfounded at the beauty. The once dull brown grass became a
bright and cheery green. The only thing that remained of the previous snow was a
couple of warm puddles scattered here and there. Directly in front of this scene
were buses and parents in cars, all lined up messily. Most of the parents seemed
just as thrilled as their children, it was like they were feeding off of their
excitement. As most of the kids left, the school gradually became more and more
empty. Within only a couple of minutes, the whole inside and outside was left
completely barren, except for a few wandering teachers that were still cleaning
up from the chaos before. At last, the final minutes of another school year have
been concluded.