Tales From Heller

It Takes Three To Tango

Every year, sometimes before winter break, sometimes as AP exams were approaching, and in one especially frenetic year on the first day of school, Mr. Simon would hear three sonorous rings of a cowbell outside his classroom, and then he knew the prank war had begun. He and Ms. Liu had started small: she changed the font on his presentation to Comic Sans, and he had replaced a link in one of her assignments with a rickroll. This prank war never failed to draw in an eager battalion of other teachers and TAs who always picked sides, and sometimes waged miniature conflicts against each other.

As soon as Ms. Liu saw inherently suspicious copy paper boxes pop up around the school, she knew there was some untapped potential for shenaniganry—forget placebos or racketeering or whatever the club was up to, these boxes could do so much more! One late afternoon, she grabbed her cowbell and checked inside Mr. Simon's room; it was dark, but she could see a bright laptop screen (no silhouette of someone working, but he was probably out of view), so with a dramatic flourish of the cowbell, the game was afoot. She surveyed the path below the walkway to make sure nobody overheard her, but she only saw a few cheerleaders heading down to the field.

When Ms. Liu had sounded the call to arms, she hadn't taken the initiative of figuring out what her first prank would be, assuming that she would be able to make the first move. The following day, as she beckoned her third-period class in, Juliet came to her holding a copy paper box with a neatly written cursive note saying "Open me." So Mr. Simon had made the first move after all! A desperate measure, clearly, and one that she'd have to recoup immediately. But what was in the box? It seemed light, and she shook it a few times for good measure.

Ms. Liu rang her cowbell once more, and asked the class for a drumroll before opening the box. It was empty.

"This savors of anticlimax," Ms. Liu cackled. "As you were so nice, Juliet, to bring me this lovely present, could you bring him this box of Thin Mints after class? They're his favorite cookie, definitely, without a shadow of doubt. I saved them just for him."

"No problem, Ms. Liu. They're my favorite cookie too."

Frank entered Ms. Liu's classroom exactly with the seventh-period bell with a few Thin Mint crumbs on his face and another copy paper box in tow, this one also with a cursive "Open me" on top, and a few pink hearts for good measure.

"I was relayed this gift from Mr. Simon for you. He thanks you generously for the Thin Mints, and he says you'll enjoy this gift equally," Frank said without a trace of humor.

"Oh, I'm sure of it," Ms. Liu responded with another cackle. She shook the box a few more times—still really light, although this time there was definitely something inside—and asked for another drumroll. Inside there was nothing but a note accompanied with a picture of a surprised Pikachu: "That feeling when you expected an empty box." He had outplayed her yet again, and humiliated her in front of her entire class. This could not stand.

During brunch the following day, Ms. Liu told Juliet to stay behind a minute, and gave her a heavy copy paper box with an extremely elaborate, hand-inked letter in artificially formal English thanking Mr. Simon for all his presents and promising even more beneficence in return.

"I'll watch from outside. This is going to be one for the ages," Ms. Liu promised Juliet.

"I'm sure he'll be surprised."

Ms. Liu sent Juliet into his classroom and waited outside, hearing enough muffled chatter to assume that Juliet was probably the victim of another one of Mr. Simon's long rants. The bell rang, and she still wasn't out; Ms. Liu knew she had to get to class, so she left Juliet behind and made a beeline for her classroom. The light was off, which was strange; typically the motion detectors lasted longer.