Slim Jim had great hearing. It wasn't so much his ears, which were still very good. It was mostly his hair. At least, it was mostly the hairlike bundle of nerves that grew out of his head which was very sensitive to....basically everything. Air currents, air pressure, ambient electricity, but the most important thing his "antenna" picked up on were vibrations in the air. Sound. His memaw had joked that he could hear a pin drop halfway cross the house and, on a clear night, she wouldn't have been wrong.

So it was his hearing that caused him to look up from his book, and what he heard were sharp gasp, a quick whoosh of air, and a muffled yell. He looked around to see if anyone else had noticed, which they hadn't. He looked up at the clock, then at the door, then the clock again, then the door, then back to the clock. Class really should have started by now. The teacher could be here any second. He had always been in his seat when the teacher had arrived, a streak he wasn't eager to break. However, his mama and daddy had raised him right and being raised right meant you didn't just ignore someone who was in trouble. Besides, he couldn't be called late for peeking out the door.

There were more graceful ways to get out of his seated position but the fastest was to just flop out to the side like a fish, which earned him no small share of odd looks as he struggled to get his feet back underneath him and make for the door.

Peeking out in the hallway though, there was nothing to be seen but a weird bin sitting in the middle of the floor. Still, he could hear a faint hissing sound coming from one of the lockers. Looking both ways to make sure no teacher was coming, he turned his back on the bin and placed his hair right against the locker to see if he could make out exactly what was going on inside.

Was somebody breathing in there?