Disclaimer: I know it's hard to swallow, but I don't own Phil of the Future.
Authors note: It's great to see all the new countries reading Phil the Future showing up in the story stats. Welcome. Thanks also go out to Aww for submitting a review to Flowers and Chocolates, and to Boris Yeltsin for continuing to be here for authors. - CraftyNotepad
Aww, Fish Sticks!
Chapter 1 - The Appetizer
Running madly down the halls, the high-pitched screams of Neil's voice were trailing a good three feet behind him, as he rushed into the janitor's closet, before wedging it close to the mop. Plop! Plop! Plop! Those weren't his screams catching up with him. Those were tomatoes ceasing their flight path against the secured door. Their scarlet, liquidy contents escaped only to torment him from underneath the door.
"Why me?" Vice Principal Hackett pleaded to an empty and unsympathetic closet. This was worse than the November Fish Stick Rebellion. If there hadn't have been so much time off in November and a couple more weeks the next month, well, Neil knew he might not have won that one. This was not his fault, Shirley. It must have been caused by the budget cutbacks – no, it was Diffy's fault.
This all started, with Chef DuPree. "Hey, maybe I could blame the chef?" Hackett mused aloud. It was the chef's obsession with blackening of everything on the students' menu, from fish fillets to burritos which led to today's trouble; that, and Diffy. Even if the blackened fare was low in fat and okay on calories, once Keely Teslow featured H. G. Wells Jr./Sr. High's culinary leader on her new morning report feature segment, Keely Teslow's Talks to Teachers, the phrase "dipped in melted butter" was all the newly health conscious school board needed to hear to demand he make the school make immediate changes. Despite being busted for extortion (or perhaps partly due to her broadcasted broom-pushing penance), students listened to the younger Diffy, listened to her lies. "Blackened" meaning "burnt," indeed! Hackett removed the no longer warm plastic sandwich bag from his pocket, opening it to catch even a whiff of the wondrous aroma held captive within - blackened breakfast sausages. He had four left, and - another tomato wen splat against the door, only to be joined by the halt of footsteps. They had reached him, and their demands for him to exit the closet began. Vibrations from their fists pounding on the other side of the door reverbrated in his back as he sat on the floor, pushing against the assaulted door, his feet balancing upon the outside of round, wheeled mop bucket, now pinned between his shoes and the opposite wall.
Now, there were three left. The remaining piece of the fourth was now rolling in his mouth like an unchewed Tootsie Roll. He deserved these last pleasures, didn't he? In the army, he had learned that a soldier had a right to a cigarette before his firing squad - bad thought. Another sausage would soothe his frazzled nerves. Two remaining, he thought, both sausages and nerves left, and when he thought of "nerve," he pictured Pim Diffy. If only he hadn't taken the easy way out. Sure, the Board hadn't actually ordered Hackett to improve on the school lunch; perpetually non-present Principal Tillywack had passed the buck onto Neil by default. Neil scratched his challenged scalp, wondering as he often did, "since school principals are allotted vice principals to dump task they don't care for, why aren't vice-principals also given vice-vice-principals or quarter principles or somebody to pass along unsavory duties to?"
Maybe that's the way it will work in the future, he comforted and self with, but in the present, he was stuck with either doing it himself or dealing with Pim Diffy. Pim had a plan. Pim always had a plan. (More of a scheme) 1st, she told that she needed access to all student records. Hackett was suspicious, and believed this would was only an attempt to change her D- in modern dance/ventriloquism third period. He was wrong again.
In the beginning, like all her plans, everything came across as legitimate. Pim proposed that students at lunch be grouped alphabetically in various departments; the school board approved. The next day, every student at H. G. Wells was issued a classroom to go to to have lunch. Keely was upset and Phil wasn't thrilled that they were not assigned to the same room, but as they worked on news stories for the school, they still had access to the newsroom and they enjoyed eating alone anyway. Other students weren't so fortunate.
They were assigned alphabetically all right, but not simply by last name. No, Pim had grouped everyone alphabetically by their report card grades, as well. A students got to eat first, and had the classroom is nearest the cafeteria. The further someone's grades were down the alphabet below further down the hall was their lunchroom to wolf down was now a cold meal before the bell rang. What should've been taco Tuesdays for everyone, turned out to be. Butter and jelly smeared upon last week's biscuits for the academically challenged. Oh, Pim had sold the new nutrition system as a way to "raise test scores" - the 3 magic words that could get the school board to agree to anything. This was now day 3 and Neil Hackett was just thanking his lucky stars that the door was holding - what was that smell? Fish sticks?
Old Sausage Breath could definitely smell fish and chips as they were being wedged into the cracks about the door. They wouldn't dare!
They would. With the light absent from around the door, his world was plunged into darkness.