"First Period" Trivia Quiz

Answer: Construction

A freak event has taken place in the town of Chamberlain. The reports are phoned in to 9-1-1; the gymnasium of Thomas Ewen Consolidated High School has gone up in flames during prom; an entire street is on fire; bodies litter downtown.

In the aftermath, Sue Snell is sat in front of a camera and mic'ed up to tell her side of the story. She explains that no one will understand what really happened behind the two hundred deaths and the destruction of the entire town. It's easy, she says, to forget that they were all kids trying to do their best.

Well before the fires, Ralph White headed to the construction site for his job, listening to conspiracy radio on the drive. Arriving at work he set himself to his tasks but didn't see or hear the danger behind him while he crouched over his task at-hand. It meant not noticing the cement blocks before they collapsed into the trench and onto his body. The police would speak to his coworkers about next of kin, needing someone to claim the body, and it would lead to his home. His colleagues noted that he wasn't a particularly welcoming individual; no one really knew him. They all thought he was a doomsday prepper.

Answer: Hiding in the pantry

The police arrived at the White household with the information that he had been living there for the better part of twenty years. Eleanor Snell was the one to bring the cops over; she was the landlord, managing the property for years and collecting their rent. She noted that she never needed to come by in all her years there as Mr. White maintained the place himself.

Eleanor let the cops in without a warrant, presuming that it was alright to do so with the man deceased, but the situation got weirder the minute they all stepped through the door. Firstly, the windows were covered, on the inside, with bubble wrap. Secondly, judging by the place settings on the table, it was apparent that he did not live alone. When the cops made themselves known, they heard a noise from the kitchen pantry and opened the door to find two women, a mother and daughter, cowering in the dark.

The interviewer, behind the camera, asks Sue (and others) to tell her about Carrie. She wants to know every single thing that they can tell about her. There seems to be very little consensus from the survivors. Some call her a bully; some call her a hero; some say she had an army by the end; some say she was shy; some say she was a monster. One of Carrie's social workers recalls the Turpin case, where a family kept their thirteen children locked away at home and no one had a clue. Carrie was born in the White household and essentially never left it. The Whites, she notes, were a cult of three.

Answer: Duke

Nancy Piper, Carrie's social worker, recalls that even when faced with the tragedy of her dad's passing, her curiosity trumped all other emotion. While she may have been sheltered for her whole life, she was very much willing to talk. Her mother, Margaret, was less happy with the circumstances, insisting that the police should have announced their arrival before stepping into the home. She noted that her daughter was schooled at home, two years beyond what her grade would be in public school.

Following protocol, social services had two conditions for the Whites, especially since they would not be receiving any workman's comp funds for six months. Firstly, Margaret could keep custody of Carrie, but she would need to work (for the first time in fifteen years). Secondly, Carrie would have to go to high school; her mother did not have licensing to teach her privately.

On the day Carrie was set to attend Ewen High School, Sue Snell's mother asked her to be nice to the girl. Sue has to ask-- why wouldn't she be? Her mind was already a bit distracted while she awaited a response from Duke University.

Similarly, at her home, Chris Hargensen waited for her response letter from Duke as well. She asked her dad to give them a call.. or build a new gym... or something. Chris' family was going through it a bit; her mother was out and her dad was occupied. She'd have to fend for herself.

Sue and Chris both talked about their pending acceptance letters on the ride to school that morning; both of them were eager. For the sake of university, they were each others' ride-or-die.

Answer: Ms. Desjardins

On the first day of school, Margaret laid it out for Carrie. Although she would be looking at picking up a job at only $14/hr, she'd make it work and save. In the meantime, they would appeal the social workers' ruling, and things would go back to normal soon enough. She'd only have to think about one or two semesters at most. When Nancy arrives to see Carrie off to her first class, coincidentally the first class for students coming back from winter break, she reminds the new girl that she won't be the youngest in her class. She would be fine.

Margaret would drop Carrie off at the curb in front of the school, reminding her daughter to have pity on the other children ("most of them aren't awake", she noted, "especially the teachers"). Carrie would barely hear this though, the moment being the first time she'd encountered so many other teenagers in one place. She told her mother to have a good dayy at work and, with a wide-eyed smile, set out on her first day.

Carrie's first stumble came when she had to walk through the school's metal detectors. Despite her belongings passing through fine, she had to stand aside to show what was on her chest-- a crucifix picked up by the detector wand. She nearly undid her dress to show what was there, not knowing the nuance of the ask. The moment was caught by Sue and Chris, with the latter wasting no opportunity in giving a cheeky remark.

Carrie would be quite unsure of herself throughout the day, but she wouldn't have much issue finding her way. The guidance counsellor sent her up to her homeroom, and there, her homeroom teacher (and phys ed teacher), Ms. Desjardins, would be welcoming enough. In homeroom, she'd end up taking a seat in front of Sue who, kindly enough, would introduce herself. Chris would be a little less kind, barely holding herself back from taking easy chances to be snide.

Answer: Active shooter drill

Carrie otherwise had a good first day, finding genuine interest in her classes and finding it quite easy to approach other students to figure out where to be. This being her first time out of the house, it was also her first time using a computer; her computer class was fifth period. When she got around to study hall, she found herself back with Sue and Chris, following up on her fascinating day. It was then that she accidentally overstepped again, missing a social cue by talking about Chris' mother, not knowing it was a touchy subject.

Chris, flippantly, decided to ask Carrie who she thought the hottest boy in school was, and while the girls were all in on this discussion, Carrie decided to drop one of her favourite J. M. Barrie quotes instead of give an answer.

Before she could dig into what the girls' favourite books might be, all of the kids were stopped by a lockdown drill in the class and asked to stand against the wall, an experience Carrie had never faced before. Chris' friend, Tina, joked that there was a shooter in the halls, but Carrie didn't quite understand what a 'drill' was. Carrie made enough noise that the fake 'shooter' came into the classroom, aiming their gun at the kids inside, and when he did, Carrie cowered against Sue. At the same time, a mounted TV, suspended next to the classroom door, rumbled off its hinge and smashed down onto the fake shooter's foot, prompting Mr. Peist to call in the injury and abort the drill. None of the other kids were particularly concerned with the event, but it was a black mark on Carrie's otherwise smooth day.

Answer: Rocks

Neither Mr. Peist nor Principal Grayle could determine how the TV came off the wall, but Mr. Peist blamed the earthquake that caused the desks to rattle and the overhead lights to swing. Grayle didn't feel anything. Nonetheless, the two held Carrie back for a few minutes between classes, intent on speaking to her about the unexpected drill. Carrie apologized for appearing to make a mistake, muttering to herself that tomorrow would be a day with no mistakes. Her principal acknowledged it was a quote she was reciting from "Anne of Green Gables"; he'd be the first to catch one of her references.

In front of the camera, Carrie's neighbour, Stella, indicates that she knew about Carrie but rarely saw her. Their yards were next to each other, and at one time, the hedges were thin and low enough that she and Carrie could speak on friendly terms. Stella knew that Carrie was an odd child because in one of their first instances meeting, she was reading a teen novel, but Carrie assumed that it, like any other book, was a Bible. When Margaret found Carrie across the property line, she brought her back inside for an hour in the prayer closet. Stella recalls that once they stepped into their home, rocks appeared to fall from the sky, but only on their property. She checked the news for a week, but nothing explained the surreal event.

From that point on, Stella would hide books in the birdhouse out in the backyard so that Carrie would be able to find them and read them.

Answer: She sewed new ones

When Margaret got home from work, she complained to Carrie that she wasn't happy with her new job, especially since she was being trained by someone much younger than her; she spend half her first day praying for patience. Instead of making supper, Carrie and her mother would sit and speak about the day's events, especially the lockdown in class. Carrie was less frustrated with the fact that it took place and more that her mother never told her the truth, but Margaret wasn't interested in explaining to her daughter about how far the nation had fallen from God. The risk, she said, was that someone would take away their arms, their Bibles, and their prayers, and leave them defenceless.

Still listening to her mother, Carrie would start peeling potatoes for dinner, but Margaret would stop her, instead taking her into the prayer closet so that they could pray for America. That night, Carrie would spend time at the sewing machine, making herself new clothes, certain that what she'd already worn was too modest for school.

Elsewhere in town, Sue would meet up with Tommy to make out in the back of a car. Sue would be distracted, however, feeling that she was a bit short with Carrie without any need to be. Tommy reassured that she could apologize the next day and it'd be water under the bridge.

In the middle of the night, after that first school day, Carrie had nightmares of the shooter drill. Awakening in the dark and looking around her bedroom, she spotted a shadowy figure standing in the corner and believed it to bear the shape of her dead father. As the shape jolted towards her, she woke out of another dream, not realizing that the stress, in her mind, coincided with the appearance of a crack in the window pane next to her bed. Downstairs, Margaret watched the ceiling fixture shake in the kitchen while she read her Bible.

Answer: Chris

The next morning, Sue and Chris opened their inboxes to find that they'd both been accepted to Duke. Unfortunately for Chris, however, as soon as she told her father, she was let in on the fact that money was quite tight for the two of them. For then, he noted, they needed to think about feasibility; she could stand a semester at a state school while he fixed things that were more important.

On the ride to school, Sue would find out the details and try to soften the blow for Chris, admitting that it'd take time to find out if she got her student loans could come in. Chris wasn't willing to take this as a consolation though.

As Carrie and Margaret arrived at the school, Carrie asked that she go in alone-- parents never went into school with their kids. Once she was headed to class, Margaret took a solo trip to Principal Grayle's office to speak on the previous day's events, insisting that their desensitization towards trauma would only serve to make the children expect and face trauma. Margaret claimed to know what they were doing in the school based on videos online, but Grayle suggested that preparing Carrie at home may have helped her better-cope with the reality of school drills. It wasn't what Margaret wanted to hear; she insisted that if her husband were there, it'd be different. In the meantime, they'd be done with drills for the year, and in the event of another one, her daughter would be excused from school for the day.

Answer: While changing in the school locker room

In homeroom, Sue would compliment Carrie on her new outfit, made the previous night out of her best bedsheets, insisting that she could probably sell them. In phys. ed, Carrie would struggle with volleyball practice, but try her best, even in the face of Chris' rude comments.

After the game, Chris would continue the jabs, but things would come to an unfortunate head when, in spite of Sue's running defence, the girls would discover that Carrie was on her period at that moment (worse, still, in her brand-new white pants). Afraid, Carrie begged the other girls to help, but Chris seized the opportunity to pull Carrie to the showers, fully clothed, to wash off, causing her to slip on the tiles. Chris would egg the other girls on, having them throw tampons at her while she filmed the proceedings, chanting 'plug it up' while she cried. Sue wouldn't join the others, but she would watch, uncertain of what to do.

The teasing came to a head when Ms. Desjardin came in to investigate, arriving just in time for the overhead lights to flicker and fizzle out.

Answer: Prom

In an institute, somewhere, a young woman named Caitlin would hear a discordant ringing and look to her hands to find them covered in blood. Blinking and looking again, she'd find them to be clean, all of the mess being nothing more than a momentary vision. She would quickly inform that the girl-- perhaps the one from a day earlier-- had let off another blast, like a starburst, and hit her hard.

Sue tells her interviewer that she's looking in the wrong spots. Everyone thinks they know what happened at prom. Everyone asked about Chris and Billy and Tommy, and what all of them did, and they ask about Carrie, because of course they did, but no one asks about the other people who were there-- the strangers that Sue had never seen before in her life, present at the prom for some reason or another. It wasn't just Carrie, she acknowledges.