Back to the Future Read Free

step toward the door, but Strickland’s hand shot out quickly.
    “I didn’t excuse you, McFly,” he said sharply, grabbing Marty’s elbow.
    The sudden motion caused Marty to lose control of his books, two of which started to slide down his leg. Raising his knee, Marty succeeded only in knocking the others loose. A split second later, everything hit the floor, including the hollowed-out book containing his Walkman stereo. As luck would have it, the illicit unit slid tantalizingly across the waxed tile in slow motion, coming to rest in the far corner of the waiting area.
    Strickland regarded it with narrowed eyes. Too late, Marty started gathering up his books, quickly placing his body between Strickland and the Walkman.
    “You know the rules,” the older man smiled. “No radios in school. That means detention for one week.”
    Marty gulped. He started to protest, then accepted the inevitable. “Yessir,” he muttered.
    “Starting today,” Strickland continued.
    “Today?” Marty gasped. “But I can’t! Me and my band have an audition for the YMCA dance, Mr. Strickland. I have to be there at four o’clock.”
    One might as well have tried begging a shark to seek food elsewhere. Through rheumy eyes spiked with malicious glee, Strickland stared unflinchingly at his victim. Then, with a curt wave of his hand, he began to turn away. “An audition, huh?” he said. “Well, McFly, it looks like you just blew it.”
    The clock read 3:42.
    Marty was beginning to wonder if he had somehow offended a local deity governing the fates of Hill Valley high school students. It was all too pat to be impersonal—the calculated eavesdropping of Mr. Strickland, bad luck in dropping the Walkman stereo, and now this. After careful consideration, he had decided to skip detention, pleading tomorrow that there had been a misunderstanding as to when the week’s punishment was to begin. That, however, was before he peeked into the classroom to see what teacher had charge of the detention session.
    It was none other than Mr. Strickland himself.
    “Damn!” Marty hissed.
    There was no way of convincing him that a misunderstanding existed. He didn’t even have time to debate the pros and cons of simply splitting and taking the consequences. No sooner had he spotted Strickland than the piercing eyes honed in on him like enemy radar.
    “Come in, McFly,” Strickland ordered.
    Head down, Marty walked into the room. It was a typical classroom in the school which had been built at the end of the Great Depression. Green blackboards had replaced the old black types and the walls, desks and ceiling had been repainted. A new sprinkler system had been added, too, but the place still had a dreariness that Marty found almost terminally depressing. The expressions on the faces of the ten other students enduring punishment indicated that they regarded the place with equal misery. All stared glumly ahead or down at the desk top in front of them. One of the victims, a thin-faced kid named Weeze, had a skateboard tucked beneath his books, almost as if he expected Mr. Strickland to confiscate or destroy it.
    His fear, if he harbored it, was not mere fancy. At the front of the room stood Strickland, ten Walkman units lined neatly on the desk next to him. Those who had been through it before knew what was about to happen next, a fact which did not make it much easier.
    “Now…” Strickland smiled sadistically, “we are going to see how we deal with those who violate our ‘no Walkman’ rule.”
    Gently, almost reverentially, he lifted one of the units and placed it in the jaws of a woodworking vise mounted on the corner of the desk. He then began tightening the jaws until the set broke in half, the sound approximating that of bones breaking. As bits of plastic and mangled parts trickled to the floor, one student winced as if the pain were being inflicted on his own body. Strickland, well aware of which unit belonged to each student, smiled wickedly at