August, 29th, Wednesday
On the first day of his junior year, Arnold got a nasty surprise. It was not something he expected in the slightest. If he known what pure terror, horror, and senseless risk awaited him, he would have turned around and walked, no, ran, all the way down to the hall to counselor's office and immediately requested he be placed in another class.
Unfortunately, he didn't know what lay within the doors of the nondescript high school classroom he stood outside of. Seven years of relatively normally schooling had helped curb the fearful attitude he had once held towards the institution of education. At the moment, his biggest worry was that the counselor's office had made another mistake with his schedule and he might end up in a class that didn't fulfill any college requirements.
He stuffed his class schedule into his textbook and walked in.
Immediately, he knew something was wrong. One thing that set him slightly on edge was the fact that the classroom was decorated with brightly colored posters displaying scenes from American history and that gaudy props were positioned all over the place. Walkerville High, being under-funded, didn't usually have that much stuff in its classrooms. Secondly, he knew all the other students currently waiting for class to start well.
This wasn't too shocking in itself. Walkerville High, despite being the town's only high school, wasn't enormous. Arnold knew the names of just about everyone he saw there. However, he certainly didn't count all of them as personal acquaintances, current or former.
"Hey Arnold!" Wanda was sitting in the desk nearest to the door. She waved cheerfully at him. Tim was sitting in front of her and Dorothy Ann was up in the front row.
Arnold felt his stomach churn. Suddenly the room seemed to whirl around his head. The blackboard, the brightly colored posters, and the ugly human skeleton by the door wearing a revolutionary war style hat all seemed to blur together. Somehow he managed to stagger over to the nearest desk besides Wanda's and collapse into its chair.
"It's not what you think, it's not what you think, it's not what you think," he told himself.
Dorothy Ann and Tim had both turned around in their seats and were looking at him. Wanda made a choking sound like she was trying not to laugh.
"Good to see you, Arnold," said Dorothy Ann. "Looks like we're all in the same class again."
"Isn't this weird?" said Tim. "I don't think this much of us have all had the same class together since elementary school."
"You guys both sighed up for AP history too?" Arnold asked them. They nodded. He looked at Wanda, and felt slightly surprised. He didn't know that she took AP classes.
"What?!" she snapped. "Is it so hard to believe that I'm in this class too?!"
Arnold was just about to ask Tim about their instructor, when several more students arrived and upset him. According to his schedule AP history was taught by Mrs. Knickerbocker. Arnold had never had her before but he knew her as a sort of grandmotherly teacher whose classes weren't that hard if you didn't miss anything and did the homework. She had a reputation for being somewhat dull but this didn't bother Arnold in the slightest. He liked dull teachers.
The other students upset him because they were all familiar too. They were the rest of his former elementary school class. All seven of them. Apparently the class only consisted of eight students. Even AP classes usually had much more than that.
Arnold felt faint. He considered running out the door. But he took too long debating this course of action and then she came in.
She looked a bit older than the last time he saw her, although he supposed it wasn't that long ago, and her red hair was streaked with just a tiny bit of gray. Instead of holding lots of boxes or weird props she was only carrying a textbook like the one Arnold and the others had and a folder that probably contained her lesson plans. However she was still wearing high heels and weird earrings.
She closed the door behind her. The others (the fools!) all started talking at once, and Arnold put his head down on his desk in despair.
Arnold had to ask himself why events had to repeat themselves so. It really didn't make any sense. And he was not at all satisfied with the explanation Ms. Frizzle gave for her presence there.
"Ms. Frizzle, what are you doing here?" Dorothy Ann asked. "How on earth is it that you're teaching high school history?" she gave the rest of the classroom a significant look that took in everyone else. "To all of us?"
"I'm glad you asked, Dorothy Ann," said Ms. Frizzle. "I must admit I'm a bit surprised myself by the way things turned out. You see, your principal, Mr. Arcadia, called me at practically the last minute, and asked if I could fill in for Mrs. Knickerbocker. She broke both legs hiking two weeks ago and wasn't going to be able to teach this semester."
"But, you're an elementary school teacher," sputtered Wanda. "What about your other students?"
Ms. Frizzle laughed her hair-raising laugh. It raised the hair on the back of Arnold's neck, anyway, and said, "Now, now, Wanda, I haven't taught in elementary school for the past two years. I've been doing research in the Yukon."
Good, Arnold thought savagely.
"Anyway," she continued. "You may not all know this but I have always had a passion for history! I know I'm going to enjoy teaching it to you. I don't find the high school American history curriculum quite as fascinating and amusing as the world history syllabus since I enjoy the broader perspective but regardless, I think this is going to be a fun semester."
Of course not, Arnold thought. After all American history alone doesn't contain as many catastrophes as the history of the entire world. He wondered if there were possibly any other classes he could take that would fulfill the same requirement as this one.
"I won't bore you all with the list of rules for appropriate classroom behavior since I'm sure you're all familiar with them. I will only say that I expect them to be followed here as well and I don't intend to waste time enforcing rules that could be spent far more productively."
Arnold couldn't help but look over at Wanda. She had stopped chomping the piece of gum in her mouth and spat it out in her hand. She was in the process of sticking it to the back of Tim's head. She dropped her cell phone, which she'd been playing with when he came in, into her backpack. She folded her hands on top of her desk and gave the board her full attention.
"Okay, so how weird is that?" Wanda demanded during the lunch period afterwards. Arnold was in the process of loading his tray with the meal of the day, which resembled slime mold, and was debating on whether or not he should visit one of the vending machines outside the cafeteria. Wanda was following him around and expressing her confusion and excitement over the situation in a loud voice.
"I mean, what are the chances of all eight of us ending up enrolled in that class? And you know what, Arnold? I didn't even sign up for AP history! I was just, you know, talking to my counselor and I was like, I need to take something that'll look good on my transcript, and he said he'd find me something. So, it wasn't like I was surprised to see they signed me up for it, but I certainly didn't ask for it specifically. She's got to have planned all this. I wonder what she has in mind?"
Arnold didn't answer right away. He wasn't sure what to say. The first thing he'd done during the lunch hour was race to the counselor's office. Unfortunately, he'd been thwarted by the long line stretching out from the doors. Walkerville Highschool had been having problems with the registration process this year. Many students hadn't gotten into the classes they needed and had to make corrections. Arnold would have had to have spent the whole lunch period standing in line in order to get his schedule changed. He was too hungry to do that today.
He didn't want to tell Wanda that though. He knew she'd act derisive and call him a pathetic wimp. He was no longer infatuated with her the way he'd been in elementary school, but that didn't mean he wanted to be on the receiving end of her insults.
The whole situation was slightly awkward for other reasons then Ms. Frizzle's return. The eight of them were no longer close the way they'd been in elementary school. Once they went into middle school, they'd been all split up among three different schools. Wanda had been the only one of Arnold's former classmates who attended the same school as him. Carlos, Ralphie, Phoebe, and Tim all went to another school, and Dorothy Ann and Keesha ended up someplace else all together. Arnold didn't quite understand how that worked, but he knew that some sort of school zoning regulations had changed that year.
Despite having three middle schools, Walkerville had only one high school. A new one had been planned but building hadn't started yet. All of them ended up in the same school again. However, now, most of them no longer moved within the same social circles. Arnold knew that Carlos and Ralphie had remained best friends over the years, and so had Phoebe and Keesha. The rest of them had drifted apart to varying degrees.
"What I don't understand," Arnold began finally. "Is how she managed it. She said Mrs. Knickerbocker broke her legs two weeks ago, but we all should have been registered before that, right?"
"Around here? Who knows? They make a lot of last minute registration changes," said Wanda. "She could have pulled some strings to get all of us together."
Arnold told himself he had plenty of time to move to another class if things got too weird. For now he just tried to put things out of his mind and relax. Unfortunately, this was not so easily done. Everything he saw reminded him of unpleasant memories, lurking just beneath the surface.
For example, while he was walking home from school after the Rock Collector's Club had adjourned, he saw water trickling along the gutter at the side of the street. This sight reminded him of the wretched water cycle they'd been forced to explore and then been trapped in years ago. He shuddered and looked away.
He was right at the edge of the front parking lot, where the teachers, administration personal, and seniors parked. As Arnold glanced backwards he couldn't help notice the three yellow school buses located at the edge of the lot. Of course, they weren't used for fieldtrips, unless you counted the trips the sports teams and the choir and the bands took. Even so, those horrific reminders of his childhood made Arnold, particularly in the light of what this new school year had brought, decidedly uneasy. He'd been telling himself since the lunch period not to worry. It wasn't like Ms. Frizzle could take them anywhere. Where could they possibly go during the fifty minute period they had with her every day?
Still he couldn't shake the uneasy feeling. He hearkened back to his childhood and the constant terror he had lived in. He had tried once to explain to his parents why he dreaded going to school so much and always faked illness or begged to be allowed to stay home. He had tried to tell them about how he and his classmates had been transformed into hideous symbiotic sea creatures by the school transportation system and how another time they'd traveled to a solar system far across the galaxy to watch stars blow up.
His parents had set up an appointment for him with a child psychologist.
The child psychologist, after speaking with Arnold for about an hour, told his parents that he was having some sort of trouble at school. She wasn't sure what exactly it was but her theory was bullying of some kind. This was partly because Arnold's mother had told her about the time he had come home with a purple bruise over one eye. Of course, that had been from Wanda hitting him in the forehead with one of her plastic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and hadn't had anything to do with the fieldtrips.
Anyway, needless to say Arnold never tried that again. The other kids, being the fools that they were, all loved the fieldtrips so and wouldn't do anything to jeopardize their continuance. Arnold was sure that, what with the bus transforming right on the street, someone must have seen it or a security camera must have picked it up somewhere. But this never happened. His cousin Janet knew the truth, but since she was a chronic liar, having her supporting your facts tended to make them more suspect.
Well, he would just have to wait and see what happened. By the end of next week, however he'd better be out of that class if things started going down the same road as before.
September 3rd, next Monday:
Dorothy Ann wrinkled her nose in disgust as she held the paper at arms length. She crumpled it into one hand and used the other to push a strand of short blond hair out of her eyes and back behind her ear.
It was the first edition of the year of the school paper, the Walkerville Weekly. The staff had been working together since school officially started to get the welcome back to school edition out right away.
And it was revolting. That's what it was. There was no other word for it.
Still, it was hardly her fault. She couldn't help it that all the best writing assignments for the school newspaper went to seniors. It just rankled that for the rest of the year she would had to keep writing such mindless drivel.
Impulsively, she un-balled the crushed copy of the Walkerville Weekly, flattened it out, and reviewed it one more time, hoping that her article might come off just a tad bit better.
It did not. Chewing Gum: Walkerville High's Adhesive Menace still gave the impression of a piece of amateur journalism at its worst. She'd done careful and extensive research on the literature available on the subject, as well as interviewed students who lives had been affected by the rampant use of gum on school property, and done her best to write a riveting article. However, it seemed that she just hadn't been able to rise above her subject material.
Not only that but Rick Snyder and the rest of the senior staff had placed her article into the very back of the paper where people were less likely to see it. Even Janet Rogers stupid 'current events' column had a better spot.
Dorothy Ann shoved the paper away, no longer able to look at it. Oh well, she thought. She would still able to list her position as a staff member on the school paper along with myriads of other extracurricular activities she participated in and that was what was really important. And perhaps now that Rick and the others saw how much effort she'd put into this throwaway assignment maybe they'd give her something a little better to cover next time.
Besides, what with the return of Ms. Frizzle, the school paper seemed rather unimportant. The first week of class that they had had with her had been fairly normal, for Ms. Frizzle anyway, but who knew what their wacky teacher really had hidden up her sleeves?
Third period was just about to start and Dorothy Ann eagerly headed towards American History class.
She came in late because she'd wasted too much time out in the hall looking at her article. She had to open the door and make her way to her usual spot in the front of the classroom while everyone else was already sitting at their desks. Fortunately, Ms. Frizzle was still setting up for class and hadn't begun the lecture yet.
Dorothy Ann brushed past the others. Arnold, seated in the very back, was biting his nails and staring nervously at the map of Central America on the board. Wanda, right in front of him, was playing with her cell phone. Over on the left, Ralphie was staring out the window at the clouds and nearby Carlos leaned back in his seat. Dorothy Ann slid into the seat next to Keesha, not in the front row, but close enough.
Dorothy Ann tried to catch her eye and say hello, but Keesha, too, was totally engrossed with her cell phone.
"Alright, class," gushed Ms. Frizzle. "It's time for us to go--"
"No, no, no," moaned Arnold, dragging his fingers through his curly hair.
"---to page twelve in our textbooks."
The sound of several groans and then numerous pages turning filled the air. Arnold started breathing again.
"Oh, silly me, I almost forgot," said Ms. Frizzle. "I have a few announcements to make. First of all, I think congratulations are in order for Dorothy Ann. She received the top score in our district on the project she turned in for the Clarington Foundation." This was a competition where high school students competed to win scholarships by entering their own scientific research projects. The deadline had been in the spring, but scores didn't come back until the next fall. "Let's all give her a big hand."
Dorothy Ann was startled slightly; she hadn't been expecting Ms. Frizzle to make that announcement now, in this class. However, she was not suprised that she had won, since her project had just been that good.
No one else seemed surprised either. Carlos clapped with fake enthusiasm and said, "Nice going, Dorothy Ann," in a tone that suggested the opposite. No one cheered.
Dorothy Ann frowned. She supposed it was just too much to ask of them to show even a little interest in her achievements.
Ms. Frizzle seemed unaware of the reaction, or lack of it, among her students. "And as for the second announcement, if anyone is interested in receiving some extra credit by helping me with a project of mind, see me after class. Now onto page twelve. Today we're going to initiate upon our voyage of discovery of early Mesoamerican civilization," she gestured at the map, which showed a bunch of dots representing the locations of cities. "Of the people who inhabited the area during pre-Columbian times, the Mayan were the only ones who developed a system of writing that could be truly be said to be unique to the Americas. The remains of their grandiose civilization still create a sizable impression today when one views the remains of their astounding building projects scattered throughout southern Mexico and the Yucatan peninsula."
Dorothy Ann listened eagerly as Ms. Frizzle went on to describe the other achievements of the ancient Maya. She found the fact that the Maya had possessed intricate knowledge of both mathematics and astronomy, and even constructed certain buildings so that their doorways aligned with celestial events, particularly fascinating. Of course, she had already known quite a bit about that from her own reading.
Keesha was having a hard time focusing on what Ms. Frizzle was saying because Wanda kept text messaging her.
There was:
?ts'up Ok,DAMHIK, b i herd like kate new sum kid 8 teh speciman in lab a/ hr cousins skool and he died JLT. OMG, CYBI???!!!! Like,lololoolzz645! KIT- Wnda.
And then:
OBTW, NFSCD K8 saw joe & vanesa KOTL n d hall, U knO? doesnt dat jst kill u? I mean, cum on! Theyre costantly makin out n publc. FTR,I love cherry kewl RTficL intelligenced it roxors. trly 1 o th mysteries d universe!!! -W
And finally:
Ya wanna n how he died? He 8 pRt of d octopus dey wer disecting & thN it poisoned him & he coughed bld & keeled Ovr. git out! ppl Et dat stuff n rstRNtz aL d tym! SWDYT??? PCM!!! pritE :) ':L???--wNDa
Annoyed, Keesha gritted her teeth and shoved into her book bag where she wouldn't have to look at it. She glanced nervously up at the board, but Ms. Frizzle was still talking and didn't seem to have noticed.
"----bloodletting and human sacrifice were common customs among the Maya. These were important parts of many religious practices," As she spoke she tacked a photocopy of an ancient Mayan painting onto the board. It showed war captives being presented before a ruler. Although the painting was old and the figures were depicted in a style that was stiff and uniform by modern standards, if you looked closely you could see that some were begging for mercy and others appeared to have already had their throats slit.
Phoebe gasped and Arnold muttered, "I knew it," from the back of the class. Dorothy Ann had already known it too, but she wrote it down anyway. Keesha was still trying to figure out how they got from mathematics to human sacrifice.
After class, Dorothy Ann didn't waste anytime making a beeline for Ms. Frizzle. She ignored the commotion her classmates made talking among themselves and stuffing their books and papers into their backpacks. Within three seconds she was standing breathlessly in front of her teacher's desk.
Ms. Frizzle appeared to be going over next week's lesson plan. She looked up when Dorothy Ann's shadow fell across her.
Dorothy Ann didn't give her a chance to speak first and informed her in gushing tones how much she would love to be part of it, whatever it was. Wanda and Phoebe had gathered behind her and Tim and Ralphie were hanging around in the background. They were all curious about what Ms. Frizzle's 'project' could be.
"Oh, it's so wonderful to see such enthusiasm from you all!" exclaimed Ms. Frizzle. "I can't give you complete information on it right now, since it's still in the prepatory stages and I don't want to disappoint you if it doesn't work out, but I can say that it ties into what we're studying in this class and also contains opportunities for learning and advancement in other fields."
"Hmmm, does that mean we could use it for extra credit?" asked Ralphie hopefully. He figured he could use all the help he could get.
"Why yes, Ralphie, it could," said Ms. Frizzle. "How much effort you put into this will determine how much you get out of it. If you're diligent it could give your grades a serious boost."
"That's great, Ms. F!" yelled Wanda. Her grades were even worse than Ralphie's. "You can go ahead and sign me up."
Ralphie went along with Wanda and by this point Tim's curiosity was provoked to the point where he found it impossible not volunteer too. Of the students who had remained behind, that just left Phoebe. She wasn't sure how much she wanted to be a part of this. After all it probably wasn't going to be your standard high school fare and if it had anything do with what they'd studied today it might be just a little bit frightening. However, she would feel extremely self-conscious being the only one present who didn't sign up. She was sure the others were all expecting her to go along with them.
In reality they weren't and none of them, except maybe Wanda, would have cared if she chose to opt out, but Phoebe didn't think that that they thought that way. So she told Ms. Frizzle to put her name down also. Ms. Frizzle had mostly volunteered the information at the beginning of class just to see how many of her students were actually interested in during optional work. Surprised by how many of them were, she promised them she would let them know as soon as soon as she had more information.
They could only wonder what it was all about.