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.

Book Summary

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....