Cracks in the Aquarium, excerpt

“You have a point,” nodded Sienna. “How about this?” she planned. “We’ll tell the teacher that we both need to go fill up our water bottles upstairs, and instead of that, we’ll stay in that hallway over there and then quickly come back.” Aiden gave a thumbs-up. Soon, both thirteen year-olds raised their hands, asked the teacher, and walked quickly up the staircase. When Sienna knew that they were out of the teacher’s view, she pulled Aiden to the corner of the aquarium’s hallway.

“What do we do now?” asked Sienna after a few seconds of silence. Aiden shrugged trying to think of something to do. Suddenly, something caught his eye: a long narrow door with the only distinguishing feature a yellow sign with the words “Restricted Area.” Aiden eyed it carefully.

“Why don’t we check out that room over there?” Aiden said pointing to the door.

“The sign on the door says ‘Restricted’ though,” said Sienna, confused.

“Yeah, but that probably means that that exhibition is just being renovated. There’s probably just a bunch of cleaning products that they don’t want anyone touching.”

“How about we just open the door, look around, and if it looks okay, we stay there for a bit?”

“Sounds like a plan,” replied Sienna, opening the door and walking in stealthily. Aiden followed silently behind her. A cold gust of wind blew in both teens’ hair. Upon entering the room, the lighting changed from a cheery bright yellow to pitch black with only a small lamp lighting the back of the room. There was a tall, dark glass vivarium, presumably filled with water. On the floor next to the glass, there were a lot of tools and materials spread around as if someone just carelessly left it there. In the corner of the room, there was a shelf filled with tools next to a table and two chairs. On the walls of the room, there were professional paintings of sea animals.

“This place looks really cool,” said Aiden, taking out his phone from one of his pockets and snapping a few pictures. Both of them lined up with the art and took some selfies.

“I say we just stay here for the rest of the aquarium trip. When there’re five minutes left, we’ll sneak back in, and if they ask, we’ll say we both got lost heading to get water and ended up in another exhibition.”

“Okay” agreed Sienna plopping herself on one of the chairs and taking out her phone. Aiden followed her sitting on the other side of the table, taking out his airpods from his pocket. Time passed as Aiden and Sienna sat quietly taking selfies, editing pictures, and posting them. Not too long later, Aiden looked up from his phone and eyed the glass in the room. Sienna watched from her phone as he got up from his seat and walked slowly, stepping over the disaster of a floor and avoiding all of the tools left carelessly on it. Posing next to the camera, he snapped a couple of pictures in front of the glass.

“Aiden be careful. There’s a lot of sharp materials and pieces of flooring behind you,” warned Sienna, eyeing Aiden. Aiden, with his Airpods in, turned around quickly and was about to go back to his seat when