Trapped

“It was a Tuesday, and before the sky started falling the main thing on my radar was the start of hoops season. The first game was supposed to be that night, home against Canterbridge. So when Pete said ‘Think they’ll let us out early?’ what I heard was ‘Think they’ll cancel the game?’ So we had different feelings on the subject right from the get-go.” 

At the beginning of the story, Weems defines himself as a basketball player and admits basketball is the most important thing in his high-school life. These lines show Weems’s mindset pre-storm and set him up to grow over the story. Even as large amounts of snow fall, Weems’s only concern is his game’s cancellation.

“It wasn’t the creaky tools that were worrying Holloway, though. It was the snow. That was the other thing he really valued: Like a lot of New Englanders who’ve reached a certain age and haven’t had the common sense to leave, he really had a thing for winter, like it was some beautiful beast that had to be respected. It was part of that whole hardship-equals-character thing. Oldsters loved that, the idea that character was something you could accumulate over time.”

Weems’s thoughts here firmly establish his teenage mindset. He doesn’t understand adults (or what he believes adults to be) and brushes aside the idea of hardship building character. This idea is ironic, as Weems develops enough character to rush to Pete’s rescue after a few days of hardship. Mr. Holloway represents what Weems could (and will) become in time.

“It was, and that was the problem. I don’t think it was really Les’s fault. I mean, I don’t think any of us thought that people would actually die in this storm. We’d been through lots of them, and it’d never happened to anyone we knew. We’d have to change that thinking, though. When we did, we’d all start to think the same thing: that maybe Les had killed a man. For now, we still had hope. We went back to staring into the darkness.” 

Here, Weems looks back on the first night of the storm and Mr. Gossell leaving to get help. At first, Weems and the other kids didn’t take the storm’s threat seriously. When Gossell left, they figured he’d be back with a vehicle to take them home. What became of Gossell, and Les’s indirect murder, is neither confirmed nor denied. The group doesn’t seem to think of Les as a murderer during the book, implying their shared thinking happens at a later, unspecified time.

“It seemed like I should still be able to see the snow. I mean it was white, as white as a thing could be. But there was no light for it to catch now, and it was invisible beyond the black sheets of safety glass. It was still falling, though. You could just sort of sense it out there. You know how sometimes you can tell that it’s gray and rainy outside, even if you’re not near a window? You know how you can just feel it somehow and it sucks the energy right out of you? That’s what this was like, except it wasn’t rain and it wasn’t draining as much as suffocating. It was like being slowly buried by something quiet and heavy. It was like a cold hand reaching out for your neck in the dark.” 

Northrop personifies the storm in these lines. The storm has hands, and it actively works to bury Weems and the others. This is the first time Weems thinks of the storm as an enemy, a theme that continues through the story. Man versus nature comes into play here—Weems versus a giant monster of coldness.

“The talk continued along those lines. The tone was: It’s not so bad. The tone was: This too shall pass. The tone was: Forced. It was like listening to your mom trying to cheer you up when you knew she didn’t really believe what she was saying. Still, we were going through the motions. If you just started listening now, you might think that we were talking about an overnight camping trip, and a coed one at that. The more we talked, the more we sort of talked ourselves into it. It wasn’t so bad.” 

Throughout the story, the kids try to rationalize threatening or dangerous events. This is the first time they do so—making being trapped in the school feel like a sleepover. They are coping with the storm by comparing their situation to something normal and unfrightening.

“Jason and Les, they were like friends all of a sudden. And I knew it was just because they both wanted the same thing, because I was being lame, but they had a few things in common too, aggression, mostly.” 

For much of the book, Weems places people into categories. By this point, he has classified Les as scary/violent and Jason as into military stuff (something Weems thinks of as a little scary). Though Jason is one of Weems’s best friends and neither of them likes Les, Weems puts them in the category of aggressive together. This foreshadows Les becoming violent toward Pete later. It also shows how Weems envies Jason’s knowledge and importance while the students remain trapped. To cope with his jealousy, Weems compares Jason to Les (someone Weems dislikes).

“And right then I realized why I’d been such a jerk to him: He had leapfrogged me. Definitely. Before yesterday, I’d been a step or two ahead of him. More popular, smarter, better athlete. But now, in this shut-down school, he’d taken the lead. All the things that people sort of held against him were advantages now. His dad worked some construction and was really maybe a step or two above a handyman, but he’d also taught Jason more about buildings than any of us would ever know. And Jason’s fatigue pants and sniper rifle T-shirt and that little whiff of violence hanging around him might have seemed a little ridiculous with late bells and assistant principals around. But now, lights out and on our own, it didn’t seem ridiculous at all. And what was I, a good basketball player? A streaky shooter with decent range? A B+ student, more or less? Now, that seemed ridiculous.”

Weems starts to realize the pecking order of high school means nothing. Without the social constructs in place, Weems’s status as an athlete isn’t important. Jason possesses real-world knowledge and skills Weems doesn’t have, which makes Weems feel threatened. Weems doesn’t yet understand how little his categories mean, but subconsciously, he’s starting to shift his thinking.

“Normally, we went through those doors in a long, slow line, but today we all pushed our way in at once. We were hungry, and the prospect of food was exciting, like Christmas morning and Thanksgiving dinner combined. And there was something else too, another little thrill. I remember thinking, Well, that’s that. We’ve done it now. We’ve smashed something, broken in. We might say that Les did it, but it was all of us. He was our device, just like the hammer was his. I remember thinking, We can do anything here now. This place is ours, until someone comes to take it back, someone old and angry.” 

The first part of this quotation shows the construct of lunchtime breaking down. The kids would have never entered the cafeteria in a rush on a normal day, but now, their entire way of thinking has changed. Weems’s claim on the school shows how he still isn’t taking the storm seriously. Breaking into the cafeteria still feels like a game that the group will eventually face punished for, and the school is the turf they fearlessly guard. As the story progresses and the situation becomes more dire, the game will lose all meaning, much like the social construct of school already has.

“We all filed in. It was weird, sort of like class was about to start. People picked out desks, dropped their stuff off to the side, and pulled out chairs. Without even thinking about it, Jason, Pete, and I all went straight for the desks we’d sat in during Mr. Gullickson’s English class the year before. We were a little cluster of three smack in the middle of the room. Krista and Julie sat up front. Les sat in the back. Elijah hovered, considering his options. It was like a conditioned response. We’d been trained: We entered a classroom, and we claimed our seats.” 

Despite the construct of school being interrupted, these lines show that habits are not so easily disregarded. The kids rushed into the cafeteria in Chapter 13 because they were hungry. Now, with no immediate biological need to fill, they behave as they would if school remained in session.

“It was kind of weird. Jason, Pete, and I were good friends, but a day in, it seemed like we were already getting on each other’s nerves a little. Maybe it was because we were all so crammed together. Maybe it was because there were girls here and that made us instant competitors. Or maybe it was because we were starting to realize that we might be in big trouble. Not the school kind of trouble, the real kind.” 

This is the first time Weems acknowledges the group is in trouble within the main frame of the story. As the narrator looking back on their entrapment, he has dropped hints about the storm’s threat from the beginning. Here, the pressure of being stuck in the school shows itself in concrete ways—competition and annoyance. Weems recognizes those feelings for what they are: fear.

“Then I did something I hadn’t done for a very long time, probably not since I was a little boy. I prayed. I prayed for myself. I prayed for my mom. I prayed for all of us. I guess maybe I felt a little self-conscious about it. I didn’t get up and kneel or anything. I just curled up tight in the scratchy wool and whispered. Jason must’ve heard me, though. He was only a few feet away and he started to do the same thing. It’s funny: It was probably the ten thousandth time I’d heard Jason say ‘Jesus,’ but it was the first time I’d heard him mean it.”

These lines represent how people revert to childhood in stressful situations. Prayer comforted Weems to a degree when he was young. Under the current circumstances, Weems is frightened and turns to something that brought him reassurance years ago. Jason appears to do the same thing, showing how both boys behave out-of-character due to high stress.

“Now, I’d have a ton of e-mails and comments and posts. Everyone would be checking in, seeing if I was OK, and stuff like that. Plus, my energy counter would be completely topped off in Mafia Wars—if I didn’t use it, it wouldn’t refill, which was just a huge waste—and my ship would be fixed by now in Scurvvy Piratez. I don’t know why it bothered me so much. I guess when you’re trying not to think too much about the big, real stuff, the little virtual stuff has to carry the load.”

Weems accidentally left his phone home the day the storm started. While the other kids check on pending texts and play games, Weems can only sit and think. He contemplates Mafia Wars and other unimportant things to keep from contemplating the storm and how bad it’s getting outside. Like with the group’s rationalizing discussions, Weems practices avoidance in an attempt to keep fear at bay.

“Now we were sitting in our chairs or standing by the window and watching. I was thinking: This is just a normal snowfall. It looked like snow in all of those old movies, just some fluffy flakes drifting lazily to the ground while some crooner is singing in the background and everyone is dreaming of a white Christmas or going to grandma’s house or whatever.” 

This is the first time the snow slows enough to be noticeable. Weems alludes to the movie White Christmas and the fluffy snow that falls at the end of the movie while the cast sings the title song. Amidst the fear, snow is something beautiful here. Under different circumstances, winter is lovely and means something completely different than it does to seven kids trapped in their high school.

“Anyway, when it was my turn, I prayed to the archangel Gabriel. He’s the one with the trumpet, the one that made the announcements. That’s what we wanted, right? We wanted news. It didn’t have to be divine, just good.” 

These lines foreshadow Weems’s hallucination in the book’s final chapters. Weems prays to Gabriel a few times, and at the end, he believes an angel rescues him. It’s possible Gabriel answered Weems’s prayers and that a guardian angel led the National Guard to him. On the other hand, there may be no angels, which implies prayer didn’t help Weems.

“As it was, I was thinking about how my season was going down the drain. Our first game had been canceled and our second game was supposed to be tomorrow night. I felt weak right down to my joints. I went through the motions of a jump shot, imagining the basket along the far wall. Normally, I picture those going in, but this one felt offline, maybe even short. I could almost hear Coach now: ‘Basket’s that way, Weems!’ I wondered if there was any way to practice in a dark gym.” 

Weems likens his situation to basketball here. Everything about life feels askew, and he can’t picture himself making a shot that’s normally easy. Weems longs for some sense of normalcy. He thinks about practicing in the gym without light just to feel like he’s doing something.

“We were moving too fast. It felt lame to say so, so I didn’t. I kept one hand along the wall and did my best to keep up. Still, I mean, what was the hurry? We had only two things in this world: snow and time. And all it would take was a pen on the floor for me to fall and break my wrist or something. And wouldn’t that just cap off a magical week?” 

Here, Weems follows Jason through darkened hallways to the shop classroom. Weems is still concerned with appearing cool, so he doesn’t mention his fear about their traveling speed. These lines also show Weems’s realizing all the threats don’t come from outside. If he falls and breaks a bone, it’s just as dangerous (perhaps more) than the storm itself.

“We pawed through the fresh supplies. It was just Krista, Elijah, Les, and me in the room. Four days ago, I would’ve said this was the weirdest collection of students you could imagine. What did any of us have in common? […] Now we were sitting here talking about everything except the noise we’d just heard, and it didn’t seem like such an odd group anymore.” 

This passage shows Weems finally understanding that categories and high-school social constructions don’t matter. While he can’t picture the circumstances that would have brought this group together on a normal day, it doesn’t matter now. Away from teachers and other kids to fill out the array of people at school, the group is just kids trapped and fighting to outlast the storm.

“But a hot dog apiece doesn’t last long, and after we’d licked our fingers clean we were left sitting there in our little room again. The snow was coming down, the roof was coming down, it was all coming down. The whole time we’d been here, we’d thought: At least we’ve got this big, old school. When the snow buried the first floor, we moved to the second. When the heat and water went out, we built a little fire and melted snow. But now, I mean, what could we do? This big, old school was a little too old and weak in the joints. We thought it would save us, but now it looked like it might be what killed us. I thought about the girls’ bathroom, stuffed with sharp, busted wood and packed with snow. What if someone had been in there? Or what if it had been this room? Would we have been crushed, frozen, suffocated? Whatever the flavor, we wouldn’t be alive.” 

This passage comes after part of the roof has collapsed. The storm is closing in, and the group is running out of places to run. Nature is winning the battle, and the school-fortress is weakening. Weems takes the storm seriously now. He has seen the destruction it can cause and understands that the school could fail them.

“Things were bad after the fight. There was no option but to stay in the same room. With all of us in there, it could heat up by, like, ten degrees. Plus, that’s where the radio and the food were, and the fire was right across the hall. We broke up into three groups, like we had in the beginning. The girls were in the back; Jason, Pete, and I were in the middle; and Elijah and Les were in the front near the door, as close to their old, abandoned room as they could get without being in the hallway. We felt trapped in every way: in the school, in the room, in between the rising snow and the buckling roof…. It just didn’t seem like we could last much longer like this.” 

These lines come in the wake of the misunderstanding between Les and Pete. The storm now targets the group’s allegiance to one another and has driven a wedge between them. The subgroups have returned, and the storm is closing in. The snow brought the fight inside with the collapsing of the roof, and now it’s pushing the kids outside, where it has the advantage.

“I looked at him now, really looked at him. My eyes had adjusted to the dim light out here and he was just a few feet from me. His face was covered in bruises, with visible swelling and burst blood vessels just beneath the skin. And it was more than just physical damage. You could see it in his expression: He was defeated, embarrassed.

It was bad enough to attack some guy for no reason, but it was worse to do it and lose so badly. It was bad enough to do it for a girl, but it was worse when she resented you for it. It was bad enough to ignore your friends for that girl for four days, but it was worse to go crawling back to them because you needed their protection.”

This passage comes after Pete tells Weems he’s taking Flammenwerfer and going for help. Throughout the story, Pete has faded into the background, partly because Weems thinks of Pete as just an average kid. Weems really looking at Pete here shows Weems no longer thinks this way. He sees Pete as a fleshed-out person and recognizes Pete’s feelings. It’s tragically ironic that Weems sees this right before Pete dies.

“I know the snow above us was probably responding to the noise or its own internal dynamics or just the passage of time. But what it really seemed like to me was that it was responding to our anger. It seemed like it was growing angrier too, and unlike us, it had the power to do something about it.” 

The storm receives personification again here. Before, Weems described the snow’s threat in terms of something huge and quiet that almost snuck up on the group. Now, the storm is large and angry, and Weems recognizes the group’s helplessness against it. The nor’easter offers a battle cry in these lines, and the group soon must respond.

“If this was a movie, this is the point where Krista would’ve leaned over and kissed me. "For luck," she would’ve said, like Princess Leia in Star Wars. But she didn’t. I think you’ve figured out by now that this isn’t about boy-gets-girl. It’s about survival. She didn’t even look me in the eyes when she handed me the shoes. I didn’t take it personally. I think she probably just thought enough people had died in the snow.”

Throughout the book, Weems has a crush on Krista, and it takes him many chapters to think of her as something other than an unattainable hot girl. Here, Weems admits that Krista’s feelings toward him aren’t important. He alludes to Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope here. In the scene he describes, Luke Skywalker has a crush on Princess Leia, not yet realizing Leia is his sister. Like Luke, Weems’s feelings for the girl mean nothing in the grand scheme of what’s happening.

“It’s funny. You’d think that if I imagined anyone’s voice in my head right then it would’ve been my mom or maybe one of my friends. But it wasn’t. It was my basketball coach, Coach Kielty, the guy with one-and-a-half eyes on me at practice all the time, the guy who’d taken a gangly underclassman and made him into a real athlete. And, more to the point, the guy who’d made me run all those stairs and laps.

‘I got us a new StairMaster machine,’ he’d say. ‘It’s at the top of the stairs. Go get it!’ Or sometimes: ‘The point is not to see who can shuffle the fastest; the point is to pick up your feet!’ Or just: ‘Go, go, go!’ I think he thought he was yelling at a wall half the time, but I heard him. I still heard him. I remembered the time after I hit that late three-pointer against Hanging Rock: ‘You know, Weems, you might amount to something here.’ I wouldn’t amount to anything in the snow. And I didn’t train all off-season to give up now.”

At the beginning of the novel, Weems is upset about the basketball game’s cancelation because it means all his extra practice is for nothing. Here, that extra practice turns out to be more important than any basketball game. All the endurance Weems built up allows him to get up and keep trudging through the snow. The battle of two teams in a basketball game represents Weems’s fight against the storm here. Going for help is the biggest game of Weems’s life, complete with yelling coach and high-stakes outcome.