I can't access my flashdrive ("Access denied")

I am going to be telling every single bit of what happen:

So we have this project in Programming 10 where we have to create a website for the school. We do our projects in the school's computer, because my laptop is currently broken at the time and I'm in charge on coding and stuff. Everything worked out fine, no viruses, no nothing. The next meeting we had we have to do an activity and I got assigned in a different computer. The computer lab we are using is for elementary, because the highschool lab is in renovation. When I plugged in my flashdrive, my files showed up for a while, but when I clicked on the folder it all disappeared and all that I can see in the window is the folder "System Volume Information" and a shortcut to my flashdrive. I tried opening the shortcut, and all of my files appeared, except for one: the folder that I clicked before all this happened. I was so devastated because our project is in that folder and that is the only copy we have and we made a lot of progress on that. I ejected the flashdrive and when I got home, I plugged it in a Windows XP Service Pack 2 laptop my neighbor let me use (based on my 2 week experience, I could see that the laptop is virus free.) And when I opened the flashdrive folder all that is in there is the "System Volume Information" folder and the shortcut. I tried opening the shortcut like before, but Windows says that access is denied. I am extremely scared that my files would have been deleted because all my school related projects is in there. Is there anyway to fix this? I think the virus came from our school computers because last year, they have deepfreeze that resets and deletes all of the files (except system files) when turned off. But this year I could see students' folders everywhere and the desktop is often customized. Since elementary students usually use the lab I assume their flashdrive has the virus. The computers run Windows 7 Ultimate.