The Bad Boys' Soft Boys' Lonely Hearts Club - The Full Package

The Marbleous Ms. Vazquez

"Let me get this straight," says Principal Strickland. "You just happened to stumble into a, as Mr. Gomez has described, 'Fullmetal Alchemist-type cult S-word', at the same time that Mr. Messina-Park was in the same space, running what I can only describe as an illegal, and highly immoral, tooth racket inside school grounds, and you so happen to find said people already dead."

"i take offense to that," says Brayden, still reading his magazine, or just watching the pretty people dressed pretty, whichever tickled his fancy. "first, it ain't illegal to help kids remove them milk tooth things. you don't need a permit, as long as the kid consents. dads do it all the time. an' second, so far, about morals, i know only that what is moral is what makes you feel good after and what is immoral is what makes you feel bad after. ernest hemingway, death in the afternoon."

We all stop for a second to admire the only two cells in Brayden's brain come up with a compelling argument.

"what?" he says, surely after feeling everyone's stare on him. "i like classical stories. they talk about tits and shit."

"Don't quote Hemingway to me, Mr. Messina-Park," says Mrs. Strickland. "Ms. Vazquez caught y'all red-handed!"

I wish I could say she caught us red-handed, but that would be too on-the-nose, 70% of the people in the room have blood gushing from an orifice that is seldom used for gushing, or have blood on them. It rises to about 93.7% if you count the pile of bodies in the corner, which principal Strickland seems to count.

If you are asking where that .3% is for, it's because one of the corpses is missing an arm and two toes, which, again, Principal Strickland seems to be making a fuss over.

As we are all sitting down in front of Mrs. Strickland's desk, shoes caked in blood - which, if you haven't tried, is the second-worst cake ever, right behind liver and buttercream frosting cake -, including Lee Vazquez, who sat in her calm and poised air of badassery, Mrs. Strickland is fighting to keep her coffee inside the cup she is cupping with her hand.

Wait, is that where the word comes from? It cups the coffee as we would cup the cup? Wild.

Anyways, it is a hard task, given that she is shaking from top to bottom, and to the top again, as if the hair on her body is doing some kind of wave, like in a soccer game.

Between us, a thick layer of air particles going about their business, not being interrupted by external forces, nor being forced to vibrate to any particular frequency. Meaning, silence, dead silence. As dead as the bodies beneath us. But if you think about it, there are always bodies beneath us. The silence, however, is becoming a bit awkward.

"So," I say, trying to brighten the mood, "first time seeing a dead body?"

It is a simple, even innocuous question, made to brighten the mood, but it makes Mrs. Strickland, and the contents of her cup, jump one inch to the right.

"Why is Ms. Higgins unconscious?" she asks.

As nobody dares to answer, she repeats the question again.

"I asked, why is Mr. Higgins unconscious?" she repeats, louder and stronger. "Mr. Gomez?"

"Why me?"

"Because, last time I checked, you were the one looking over her as you showed her the school," she says.

And sure enough, there she is, "sitting" on a chair while unconscious, right between Jungkook and Harry.

"She ain't unconscious, chief," says Jungkook, grabbing one of her arms and flailing it around. "See? She's waving at ya."

Harry grabs the other arm, and, following his beefy friend's vibe, changes his voice to a high pitch tone, which sounds as high as a bass tuba. "Yeah, look at me, I'm what's-her-face. I'm o-kay!"