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Chapter III: Vanished

"Wha... Victor?" Mrs. McSalls called out to him as if he had merely gone a few yards away. "Victor? What just happened?"

"He went into his calculator!" Rebecca said in her high, nasal voice. "Oh my God! How's that possible?"

Victor's best friend, Amanda, walked over to his desk, and began investigating. This girl was the only reason that Victor was able to make it through the first semester of high school; with a similar hair color to Victor, brown eyes and a body nearly as slender, she was smart enough to basically do all of his homework, and outspoken enough to keep the jerks away from him. She was probably the only one that could solve the mystery.

She started by looking to see if the calculator still worked. The cursor had reappeared on the screen, and she tentatively pressed the "2" key, hoping she wouldn't be consumed like her friend. A collective gasp came from the class, and a sigh of relief followed it when they all saw that Amanda remained.

"Okay," she said. "Let's check his entries." She looked back over his previous equations, marveling at the stupidity. "Wow. I never knew he was this bad. What's this? 80085? Really? Oh!" She had reached the end of the list, and saw that he had tried to divide by zero. She considered the plausibility, and came up with nothing. "This can't be. But it's the only explanation I can think of."

"What?" Andrew asked, his long hair draping over his zitty face. Amanda questioned whether he showered.

"He tried to divide by zero. I think that might have something to do with it."

"The error did something?" Mrs. McSalls asked. "What? How did it... take him? I've done that countless times and I--"

"I don't know!" she said forcefully. "It's just a hypothesis. But I don't know what else would cause it. And it happened right after he did the operation. It seems to make sense to me."

"How?" Erik, the head-shaved geek said in disbelief. "That's not possible! Why would the calculator do that?"

"I. Don't. KNOW!" she responded, getting tired of the question."It's all I can think of. He who has a better idea can challenge me." She was met with no resistance. "No one, huh? Not even you?" She pointed at Timothy, the shorter-than-average jock. "You got nothing? Not willing to tell us your theory, you good-for-nothing, halfling, brain-dead piece of crap?" She wasn't exactly sure why she was picking on him now, but he deserved it. The frightened look on his face satisfied her. "Okay. Good. No one's going to ask that question again, right?"

She got silence for a while, but Erik said, "I bet if we looked at the processor--"

"ERIK!" Amanda said. "Shut." She waited for a full ten seconds. "Up. If we take apart the calculator, I'm pretty sure Victor will be toast. We aren't going to worry about the why. Understood?" She looked around the room, and got silent nods of agreement from almost everyone.

"Who put you in charge?" Timothy said. "Girls can't lead. You look tough now, but you're scared."

Amanda walked up to him and squatted to his level. "Do you wanna take me on, half-squat? Yeah, I'm scared. My best friend is stuck inside a calculator, and I don't know if he's still alive. But I'm at least ten-to-the-fifth times smarter than you, and this whole shebang hasn't got a thing to do with you, so go ahead and back off, you numbskull TWERP."

He gave her silence, and sat back down.

"But you're not in charge," Mrs. McSalls told Amanda. "I am. And we're going to safely hand this issue over to the police." She began walking toward the phone.

"Ah ah ah," Amanda said, holding Mrs. McSalls back. "This is between the... thirty-three of us. The police wouldn't understand."

"What are you doing!?" Mrs. McSalls demanded. "This is like mutiny, you know!"

"No, what YOU'RE doing is mutiny. I'm the captain of this freaking boat, and I call the shots. So get the thought of the phone out of your mind--"

The bell rang, Signaling the end of the class. before anyone could move, Amanda took the keys from Mrs. McSalls and locked the door.

"Hey! What're you doing!?" multiple people asked simultaneously.

Amanda answered as she was putting down the shades. "We are solving this problem now. The next class does not come in. You do not leave."

Timothy made a wordless advance, but his intentions were clear. Amanda guarded the keys, and reached for his nose.

"Ah! What the hell are yooooOOAAAAHHH!" She was twisting his nose, forcing him out of control, and then kicked him in the stomach. He was on the ground, and no longer a problem. The rest of the class looked on in awe.

When Amanda had recovered her breath, she turned to face the rest of the students. "Now that you've all seen that demonstration," she said, "I hope there will be no further resistance." No one affirmed her, but no one denied it, either.

"Good. So now we'll bounce some ideas around. Erik, you first."