Prank War

Prank War [21]

     “Ariane, we need you to stop by the office right now,” the kangaroo said.

    Huh?

    “Ariane, are you there?”

    I turned sideways, and felt the warmth of my sheets. Oh dang it. It was a dream.

    I blinked, slowly opening my eyes. Double dang it. No kangaroos.

    “Ariane?” a voice asked. It sounded like it was coming from the intercom.

    “Huh?” I asked.

    “We need you to stop by the office right now,” the voice repeated, “Sorry to wake you up. Mrs. Moore wants to talk to you about something.”

    Mrs. Moore? Oh right, the principal.

    Every principal so far has tried to talk me into getting more involved in academics. Ha. Yeah right. That was probably what Mrs. Moore wanted to talk to me about.

    “Okay,” I replied, sounding more grumpy than I should probably have. I wonder what the lady on the other side of the intercom was thinking.

    She probably wasn’t thinking about kangaroos.

    I rubbed my eyes, and as I got dressed, my mind wandered back to yesterday. Max had bought a lot of supplies from the Prank and Jokes store. He didn’t show me what they were though. It was going to be a ‘surprise’.

    Oh wait, I forgot to start with the ‘do you want the good news or bad news first’?

    Well, since I already told you the good news, here comes the bad news.

    Mackenzie bought me a dress. She had dragged me from store to store the rest of the afternoon, and made me try on at least twenty different dresses. I spent the whole time complaining how schools can’t make dances mandatory. But apparently I had no say in it.

    Bleh.

~~~

    Minutes later, I made my way towards the school office. I glanced at the clock; two a.m.

    Woah! I was up really early.

    Then I remembered that Kristen and I had changed the times. They probably didn’t fix that one.

    If someone woke me up at two a.m., I would probably kill them.

    I walked into the school office and found Mrs. Moore.

    “You wanted to see me?” I asked, pretending to look like I had no clue what was happening.

    “Yes Ariane, come in,” she led me to her into office. She sat down in her fancy principal chair, and I sat down in the one facing her desk.

    “So I’ve been looking through your school records,” she began. Oh, here we go again.

    I crossed my legs, and made sure I was comfortable. This could take hours.

    “And I’ve found that you haven’t completed any service hours,” she said, “You are aware of that, yes?”

    “Yeah,” I replied simply. Service hours just wasn’t my thing.

    “The thing is,” Mrs. Moore leaned forward, indicating that this was important, “You need to complete your service hours to graduate.”

    Oh crap.

    “How many service hours do I need?” I asked, suddenly worried. Summer was school was one thing, but not graduating was completely different.

    “You needed at least fifteen hours every year, which means you should have completed forty-five hours by the end of this year.”

    Forty-five hours? Oh dang.

    “So I have to complete forty-five hours by the end of the year?” I made a face. There was only about a month of school left.

    “Here’s what you can do,” she turned to her computer and typed something, “You can help around the school, sharpening pencils for some of the teachers, organizing the gym equipment, whatever the teachers need. If you fulfill fifteen hours by the end of the year, I’ll let you pass on the other thirty hours.”

    Fifteen hours – that still sounded like a lot.

    “Oh ok,” I finally said, seeing as I had no other choice. I got up to leave.

    “Wait, Ariane,” Mrs. Moore called out. I stopped and turned around.

    “Here’s your new schedule,” she got up and handed me a piece of paper, “Well done on the test by the way.”

    “Thanks,” I faked a smile, took the paper, and quickly walked out.

    Oh great, just great. Fifteen hours of helping teachers. This wasn’t going to be very fun.

    I checked my schedule. I had about thirty minutes till my first class. I think.

    I needed to go find a clock that had the correct time.

~~~

    It turned out that I actually had twenty minutes till first period. But that was half an hour ago.

    Which meant I was late for first period. As usual.

    But .. I had a perfect ‘A’ average, now that I had passed the test. Which meant I can just chill out now .. and concentrate on fulfilling my service hours.

    Oh joy.

    I finally found my classroom five minutes later.

    “Knock knock,” I said as I walked in, even though the door was wide open. Everyone turned to look at me in unison.

    Well that was creepy.

    Everyone was paired up at a lab station. I glanced around the room and the first person I noticed was Caden, putting on his protective glasses.

    “You must be Ariane,” the teacher said. He was a short man, and he was on the edge of going bald.

    “Yeah,” I answered simply. Normally I would go, “Oh my god, really?” or, “Gosh, I didn’t know that”. But now that I was in a nerdy class, things were different. Well … not really.

    “I’m Mr. Roman, welcome to chemistry. Since you’ve moved up to this class so fast, I assume that you know a lot about what we’re doing today. Take a seat next to Max Townsend,” he instructed.

    Know a lot about what we’re doing today? Hahaha. Right.

    I spotted Max sitting at a lab station by himself. He was hunched over, reading something.

    I walked over to him.

    “Hey, you never told me you were smart,” I said, lightly punching him in the arm.

    “I’m not,” he grinned, glancing up from his book. He shifted so I couldn’t see what he had been reading. “I’m on the edge of failing this class.”

    “What’s your average?”

    “B,” he made a face.

    I laughed, “That’s not failing. What were you looking at anyways?”

    “Ah, just .. stuff,” he answered innocently, letting the book drop on the other side of him. He turned to a packet that was sitting on the table, “Let’s start the experiment.”

    I glanced at him suspiciously. He was definitely up to something.