Friday + Ian

2. implosion

Chapter 12: The Greek God (Part 2)

The rest of the lesson crawled by as Ian waited for the right moment. He wanted to catch Friday off guard, so it had to be completely out of the blue. He watched her out of the corner of his eye as she seemed to slowly relax and retreat into her work.

Ian was fascinated by how she would show no outward signs of distress every time Mirabella would say something about Friday that was meant to be snide, but ended up being truly just stupid. He could still tell that Friday was listening though, by how she would brace for impact with every comment. Ian was smug that his classmates seemed to recognize how vapid Mirabella was, just from how apathetic they were about everything she said.

He was even more smug because he knew that if he decided to try, his snide comments about Friday would be much more effective. He was sure that she wouldn't be able to ignore him-- in any situation, actually. Ian was already a very hard person to ignore, but he also knew that Friday was starstruck by his presence from how she reacted when he walked in. He was suddenly itching to see her shock from what he was about to do, and decided that now was the right time to execute his plan.

"Excuse me," said Ian, leaning over the perfect amount— not too far into her personal space, but enough to surprise her— and placing his hand on her desk.

Friday flinched, looked up at him, and flinched again. Ian noted that she was easy to scare.

Ian smiled his most blinding smile and watched as she froze like a deer in headlights, seemingly processing his existence.

"May I borrow a pen? I seem to have forgotten mine," Ian said, smiling apologetically.

Friday looked relieved. "Of course," she said in that clear voice, gesturing to her pencil box on the corner of the desk. Ian nonchalantly took a pen, simultaneously dropping in the implosion concoction that he had painstakingly prepared.

Conscious of her gaze on him every few minutes after he sat back in his seat, Ian made sure to take notes studiously. He was the picture of innocence. After a while Friday seemed to concentrate on her notes instead of him, so Ian sat back and waited for the chaos.

As expected, the pencil box finally imploded. Ian pretended to be shocked, but was gloating on the inside about how perfectly his plan went. Now, I know implosions are difficult to imagine as anything other than a fancy explosion, but you have to give it to Ian-- his genius really came out through the elegant way the box crumpled and oozed liquid. Ian smirked as he watched Friday's terrified surprise.

"That's an interesting pencil box," Melanie said. "Where did you get it?"

"I didn't do it!" exclaimed Friday, which made Ian even happier, because we know that's what all perpetrators of crime say.

"Stop this, stop this at once!" demanded the openly hostile Mr. Maclean, as if anyone could control Ian's perfectly executed and now-quite-advanced chemical reaction. The whole class gathered around Friday's desk in a flurry of commotion. Ian got up from his desk and hung around the back of the gathered group, just observing Friday's expressions change as the events progressed. Everyone watched the puddle of molten plastic and floating pencils sizzle and pop until the acid ate right through Friday's desk and everything dropped onto the carpet.

All the girls, and some of the less image-conscious boys, screamed. And Mr. Maclean, finally in an act of good sense, ordered everyone out into the corridor, which was a good thing because as the acid started to eat the carpet, the synthetic fibers were giving off a toxic gas. If there had been a canary in the room, it would have perished instantly. Ian knew this would get Friday in even more trouble than if it were just a harmless prank, so of course he had planned to make the fumes toxic.