"Oh! Can I go first please?!" Kimberly, one of Raj's classmates, was the first to speak up after the village chief suggested telling flood stories. Kimmy loved telling stories, and always had some new tale at every get-together she attended. "My older sister told me this story when we were kids, and I always thought it was really awesome!" The chief nodded in her direction, indicating that she should go ahead and begin her story. "Okay, so this is like a modern-day tale but with a twist! In this one high school . . ."

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Duke snapped up from his desk. He didn’t know why he had woken up, but he was suddenly wide awake. Looking around the room, the classroom appeared to be void of any life except for the boy himself. Last he remembered, Mr. Werning had been babbling on and on about the ‘beauty’ of the Renaissance. Whatever that was supposed to mean. Duke had laid his head on his desk for a brief minute and then he must have fell asleep. Now that he thought about it, the halls were deathly silent as well. And that was never normal in Wengate High, home to over two thousand high school students. The boy finally decided to stand up from his desk and investigate more. But, as he did, he could hear the sloshing of water and he looked down to see almost five inches of water?! How had he not noticed? Both his feet were submerged in the water the entire time. Now he really needed to find out what happened.

~~~~~~~~~

"But Duke wasn't the only one left in the school! It just so happens that his girlfriend was locked in a bathroom on the bottom floor. What a coincidence!" The group of students collectively sighed, because of course Kimmy would somehow add some romance in.

~~~~~~~~~

So the bathroom door was locked and water was quickly seeping in, yet Peony had no clue how to get out. The announcement to evacuate the school happened almost an hour ago. She had already tried calling her boyfriend, Duke, but he either evacuated with the rest of the students or fell asleep in some odd place, as he didn’t answer the phone. "What a useful boyfriend he is, can’t even stop sleeping to save me from drowning." Peony had located a small window at the top of the wall across from the door. However, it was way too small to feasibly fit through. Just as she prepared to call Duke one more time, she heard a voice calling out in the hallway.

“Is anyone else still here?!” Duke had already combed the top two floors of the school and hadn’t found a single soul. He had finally made his way to the bottom floor, and was just about ready to head home. From down the hall, Duke heard banging on a door, so he sped up his pace down the hall. “Hello? Who’s there?”

“Well, doofus, if you answered your phone, you’d know who it is!” Ah, the light of his life, and biggest pain in his ass, his girlfriend Peony. The girl could easily perform a triple back handspring and score a goal from halfway across the soccer field, but boy was she unlucky. He made his way to the door the banging was coming from, finding himself face to face with a bathroom that was locked from the outside. "Well, that’s a bit strange. Why would the door be locked on the outside with Peony still inside?" Duke thought. “I can hear you walking out there! Let me out!” Duke quickly unlocked the door, opening it as well, and Peony came rushing out to him, along with a slew of water that joined the layer of water covering the floor of the hallway.

“Hey, are you alright? The door was locked from the outside for some reason. Obviously you didn't do it, but who did?” Duke questioned his girlfriend. Peony’s eyes widened and she frantically looked between the now open door and her boyfriend.

“I just figured it got jammed or something. I didn’t know that it had actually been locked.” Peony’s first thoughts had been that the door had somehow gotten jammed because of the rust on the hinges or some other reason. Who would purposefully lock her in a room with water levels rising? I mean, yeah, there were plenty of people who weren’t too fond of her because she was top of the class and heavily involved in athletic activities. But she didn’t think anyone disliked her enough to potentially put her in harm’s way. Duke started telling her they needed to evacuate the building, as no one else was there, effectively pulling her out of her thoughts.

Hand-in-hand, the two teens made their way to the front doors of the school, expecting to see all their classmates outside in the designated evacuation drill fashion. Yet, when they opened the front doors to the outside world, there was no one. The parking lot was still full with cars, yet the entire high school population seemed to have just vanished. There was a layer of water covering the ground outside, yet the cars appeared undisturbed. The two silently agreed to head to Duke's car and head home. Maybe there was some sort of city-wide issued warning so the students had been evacuated somewhere else.

The entire drive home, the couple did not see a single moving car, or even someone walking alongside the street. It was strange, as there were always middle-aged ladies and men jogging on the sidewalks throughout the day, but not today. Duke had finally pulled into his driveway, and he and Peony went their separate ways to check out their own houses, situated next door to each other. After searching their respective houses, they met back up outside Duke’s car. “Um, so no one is home, and I’m kinda freaking out. Mom was supposed to be home with the boys all day today, because they both got strep.”

“Well, no one is home at my place either,” Duke began, “and Ramone had online classes today and her car is in the shop so she was supposed to be home all day.” As the two looked at each other, puzzled, a piece of paper floated to the ground:

Welcome to the Game!

You two have been selected as our very special competitors.

If you win, everyone will be returned!

But if you lose, well, let's just hope that doesn't happen.

Buckle in and head to the place of your first date for the first game!