When school lets out early for a snow day, Scotty Weams
(who is disappointed that the snow means cancellation of
his team's basketball game) and his two best friends, Pete
and Jason, decide to stay at school for a few more hours to
work on a go-kart Jason has been building for shop class.
There are four other students left behind -- Les, the school
bully, Elijah, who is an enigma to most everybody, and two
girls (one of which happens to be Scotty's crush). They are
left in the care of a single teacher, who, when it
becomes obvious that the storm is getting worse, wades out
into the snow to seek help. Once he's gone, then teens
find themselves TRAPPED.
As the storm worsens, burying the entire first floor of the
school, the story turns into a cross between Hatchet and
the Breakfast Club, wherein Scotty comes to understand and
re-define the others based on their reactions to the
various challenges brought on by the survival situation,
rather than on personal revelations. It's hard to say how
Scotty himself changes, but he does use his character
assets as presented at the beginning of the book to help
the group survive.
Once they break into the cafeteria's stores, they have
enough food to last them months, but inside the old,
structurally weak building, they don't have power. Or
running water. Or a way to communicate with the outside.
The teens have a radio, and every once in a while the reader
is reminded that it's not just the little group inside the
school that is in trouble -- but their families who were out
when the storm started, or who live in equally old, equally
weak structures.
The informal voice of the narrator and the pervasive sense
of danger (only a few pages in, foreshadowing suggests that
not all members of the group will live through to the end)
will hold appeal especially for reluctant readers. But the
tension is ratcheted tight enough that avid readers may
devour it in one sitting.
The day the blizzard started, no one knew that it
was going to keep snowing for a week. That for those in its
path, it would become not just a matter of keeping warm, but
of staying alive....
Scotty and his friends Pete and
Jason are among the last seven kids at their high school
waiting to get picked up that day, and they soon realize
that no one is coming for them. Still, it doesn't seem so
bad to spend the night at school, especially when
distractingly hot Krista and Julie are sleeping just down
the hall. But then the power goes out, then the heat. The
pipes freeze, and the roof shudders. As the days add up, the
snow piles higher, and the empty halls grow colder and
darker, the mounting pressure forces a devastating
decision....
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