I didn't want to go out. You didn't want to stay in. I guess we were going to argue again. The rain continued pouring outside. I mentally prepared myself to lead the line through the deluge on our way back to Mr. Pony's classroom, but that being put a quick stop to me before I could even begin. By the way I said that, you would have thought I was talking about a hunky, romantic love interest, but I was really only talking about Mr. Pony.
"Hold your horses, Jordan," they advised to me alone before raising their voice for the entire class to hear. "All right, you lot! Due to the, uh, inclement weather, we'll be taking a different way back to the classroom today."
"Oh boy!" shouted Owen's scratchy voice from somewhere behind me. "Is it a secret passage? Is there a trapdoor? Are we gonna go underground?"
Mr. Pony put their hands to their mouth mischievously. "You could look at it that way," they answered. "We're just going to take a back route that connects the food building with the library, so we'll be out of the rain for a little longer."
"The library's over by the art room," stated Jacques. "But it's a totally different building. How does it connect to here?"
"You'll see soon," reassured Mr. Pony. "But since we are going through the library, I'm going to need everyone to be on their best behavior. You lot need to be as quiet as a mouse so we don't disturb anyone."
"Don't you worry, Mr. Pony," assured Owen, closing his eyes and cupping one of his hands around his mouth like a megaphone. "You won't hear a single peep outta me!"
"BAAAAH!" came Jacques' voice from 2 spots ahead of Owen. From behind him, Randy glared disapprovingly at the young boy in front of him with his elegantly-eyelashed eyes.
"I mean it," warned Mr. Pony, holding up one hand with an irate expression. "If you're too loud in the library, I'll put you in time out once we get back to the classroom. Now, everyone, follow me."
"Fine..." pouted Owen, as we began to move like a herd of buffalo. Mr. Pony led us down the second floor hallway, past the elevator and the bathroom I had been in yesterday, to another set of stairs. After descending down two flights, we came to another corridor that had two ways, left and straight. We proceeded down the straight corridor until we came to a set of red-orange metal double doors, which, upon opening them, led us into what could only be described as… the library.
The library was a massive room consisting of four floors, the upper three of which were wrapped around a large central open space beneath a glass ceiling that the rain made a drumming pitter-patter against. On the ground floor, as we walked in, was a large square counter surrounding Mr. Sibba. He nodded at us as we passed quietly, going to yet another set of stairs that led all the way up to the top. I saw that countless bookshelves and tables filled each new floor we climbed, interspersed with a few armchairs and desktop computers and even the isolated student absorbed in their studies. However, what really stood out to me was an odd triangle-like structure on the third floor – it looked more like a statue, and I couldn't think of any library-related purpose it would serve.
My little legs were exhausted by the time we reached the top-floor exit, a set of glass doors that I could see led out over a concrete bridge to the top of the hill where the art room was located. As Mr. Pony paused to let everyone catch up, I started to wonder if all this pinball and stair-climbing had been their plan to wear us out, since we wouldn't be running around outside during recess. Soon after, we took the plunge, and speedwalked the last bit down the hill and across the street to the kindergarten building.
Finally back in the classroom, our shoes squeaked and squelched against the tile floor as the line dissolved behind me.
"You lot hold on a second," said Mr. Pony, breaking the silence and heading towards the bathroom near the far end of the classroom. "I've got some towels to dry off with before you drip all over the place. By the way, you can talk now." They returned with a few large towels, that we passed around to wipe away the rain. My clothes were still kind of damp, and my skin felt kind of clammy, but overall, I felt much drier than I had been before.
"Whew!" Mr. Pony said after collecting the towels from Randy after he had gathered them up. Once again, there's going to be a slight change of plans. If you haven't noticed, we're short a student, so we can't really do the last practice round for the spelling bee now." Those who weren't already aware looked around to see who was missing.
"Oh yeah, where is Skylar at?" asked Jeremy. "I thought there was someone missing from the line."
"Did she perhaps… go home early?" suggested Rachel.
"Nope! Ms. Uni just needed her for something," answered Mr. Pony. "But between this setback, and the rain, I'm having to freestyle this day as we go along. So, you lot basically have a free period for now."
"A free period?" asked Kristy.
"A free period," confirmed Mr. Pony.
"A free period. Hmm," repeated Julia.
"So," continued Mr. Pony, "That means you can do pretty much whatever you want in the classroom. Centers, Enrichment, naptime, quiet coloring. You could even get in some last minute studying for the spelling bee! I'll be over at my desk if any of you need anything. Just make sure not to be too loud, in case some people are trying to nap."
The rest of the class broke out to do their activities, but I needed a bit longer to think about my next move when thrust into such an open-ended situation so suddenly. With the studying Randy and I had done earlier, I felt like I was good on that aspect, and didn't have anything in particular to do for enrichment, so it seemed like the best idea to take a quick nap and recharge a bit after my unusually vertical trek back from the cafeteria. Joining the likes of Jenny, Kristy, Eli, and Kathleen, I grabbed a nap mat from the closet, set it down in the corner of the rug facing the wall, and laid down. Within minutes, my eyes fluttered shut. It was time for a long winters nap.
My conscious faded back into reality, like a scrambled egg. I sat up in my desk groggily, peering around at my classmates, whose faces were once again blurred out like Dali. Oh great. Even when it wasn't a designated naptime, Mr. Pony's strange dreams still haunted me.
"Yodelayheehoo!" yodeled Mr. Pony, beginning their TED Talk on a weird note. "I had to look up how to spell that word, you know." They looked down somewhat embarrassedly. "I'd never make it in one of those spelling bees. I dunno how you youngsters do it nowadays."
As usual, I was unable to move or respond.
"Well anyways, since Miss Skylar is currently MIA in action, I'll be taking over her position for the time being. Which means that it's time for another unboxing video!" Mr. Pony held out their hand irately, with a Cadbury egg badly photoshopped into it. It was clearly a one-off gesture used only during this TED Talk.
Mr. Pony peeled off the wrapper in a flash and discarded it in the nearby bin, leaving nothing but the milk chocolatey shell and whatever mysteries lay within. They then cracked that open and discarded it as well.
"Unfortunately, I can't eat that, because I'm lactose intolerant," said Mr. Pony, looking down disappointedly briefly and using their biting tone of voice when pronouncing 'lactose intolerant'. "But that's not the important part here. You lot only care about the surprise inside! So let's open it up, and see what it's gonna be!"
A strange noise played in the background. Mr. Pony opened up the capsule to reveal a small metal pin of some sort. "Ooh boy! Looks like some pilot's wings!" Upon closer inspection, the pin did indeed look like a pair of pilot's wings, the type worn by aeroplane pilots or flight attendants on their uniforms.
"Well, that's a bummer," they remarked. "I've already got, like, fifteen of these. And they only go for like, 65 Kč on eBay. Does anyone else want them?"
Nothing but crickets responded.
"Come on," insisted Mr. Pony. "They can be yours for the low, low price of… eh, nothing at all. I'd lose money on shipping if I tried to sell 'em."
Well, shoot, I thought. If they're just giving them away, why not take them? Without much of a thought as to how my previously-sleep-paralyzed body could do it, I raised my hand.
"Ding-ding-ding!" Mr. Pony put their hands on their stomach. "We have a taker! The blurred out faces of my classmates all turned to look at me in unison. It was mildly unnerving.
Mr. Pony returned to normal. "Well, that about does it for this giveaway. Though… Can I really give away something that doesn't even exist in the first place?" They tilted their head to the side and put one hand to their cheek, the one on their face, inquisitively. The weight of thinking about those kinds of deep thoughts was enough to send my brain spiraling back into unconsciousness.
I awoke with a start, sitting up and gasping for breath. My sharp eyes darted around the room, taking in my surroundings. Thankfully, I was still in Mr. Pony's classroom, in the same spot where I had fallen asleep. Aside from William and Eli, who turned to look at my sudden movement, no one else seemed to have noticed me.
"You good, Jordan?" asked William as he and Eli munched the busy beetles.
"Yeah, I'm fine, I guess," I replied. Something still felt a little off though, maybe it was the lingering effects of the dream.
I still had some time left in the free period, so after putting my nap mat away, I decided I'd hang out with someone for the time being. As for who that would be, I scanned the classroom for someone who didn't appear to be doing anything, which left pretty much only Rachel and Kiki. I guessed that meant Kiki then. She was just kind of chilling in her assigned seat.
"'Sup, Jor-bah," said Kiki as I approached. "What are you up to this free period?"
"Not much," I admitted. "I just woke up from a nap, actually. What have you been doing?"
"Just chilling," she replied. "Wanna go sit over at the magnetic sand table?"
"Sure," I followed her over to the magnetic sand table and we sat down at the two seats there. Kiki and I spent a few minutes moving around the various metal objects in the sand using the magnetic cords and staring out the window at the rain.
"It's really coming down out there," I remarked, breaking the silence.
"Yup," she replied. "It's all part of the water cycle. Do you know about the water cycle, Jor-bah?"
I thunk really, really hard, my brain turning into the Windows 98 eMac beach ball, but could only come up with two answers… not even three. Those answers were none other than 'yes' and 'no'.
"No, not really," I answered. I was only a stamp-collecting dentist. I didn't know nothing about no water cycle.
"Well, buckle ur seatbelt, cause the water cycle is an important part of any environment." Kiki raised her pointer finger as if she was about to give a lecture. "This'll take a while. You want a lollipop?"
"Thanks," I accepted an orange lollipop from her and began to eat it, covertly of course, so Mr. Pony wouldn't notice from their desk at the other side of the classroom that we were sharing food.
"So, there's three main phases to the water cycle," explained Kiki, speaking slowly through the cherry lollipop in her mouth. "Evaporation, Consideration, and Percipitation. The first part is evaporation, where water heats up, becomes steam, and goes up into the sky."
"Goes up into the sky?" I asked.
"Yeah," she confirmed. "And then you get to consideration, which is where the steam gets high enough that it cools down a lil' and turns into a cloud. There's a whole bunch of different kinds of clouds, but what kinda cloud it turns into depends on different stuff like the temperature and the wind."
"Temperature… and the wind?"
"Yeah. And for the last part, you get percipitation, which is just a fancy word for rain. Or snow. That's what's going on right now." Kiki gestured out the window at the pouring rain pounding the playground. "The water just gets so heavy that it falls back down." For someone that didn't seem to apply themselves much during class, Kiki sure sounded like she knew what she was talking about. I felt like I understood the water cycle a lot better now… though I wasn't sure how I could apply this new knowledge to my daily life. It might make me a little better at predicting the weather, but that was about it.
We stared out the window for a few more minutes in silence, sucking on our lollipops, watching the percipitation, and listening to the pitter patter it made against the ground outside and the flat roof above us.
"Man," she said, breaking the silence this time. "It's a bummer we had to be inside today. And Skylar is still gone too. I was kinda looking forward to hanging out with her on the fire truck again."
That was right, I thought as I recalled yesterday. Skylar and Kiki hadn't wanted to work on the tunnel, so they had just hung out together instead. "Oh yeah," I commented. "What were you guys up to before William and I showed up?"
"Not much," she replied. "I gave her a lollipop, and she was showing me all this cool stuff on her phone."
"Cool stuff?" I asked. "Like what?"
"I dunno really. It was like a buncha apps n' stuff. I didn't really understand it much, but it seemed like a lot of fun. She's pretty plugged into the whole social media thing."
"Yeah," I agreed. Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed to have social media, just like I wasn't allowed to have coffee – they were both seen as grown-up things in my household.
Suddenly, the door to the classroom swung open and two beings stepped inside. I immediately recognized one of them as Skylar, but the other one was new to me – they were a blonde girl wearing a black hoodie and baseball cap, both of which had three neon green lines on them.
"Oh hey, she's back," said Kiki, standing up from the magnetic sand table. "C'mon, Jor-bah." We started walking over to them, and I noticed Kathleen, William, and Randy likewise approaching.
Skylar waved goodbye to the girl accompanying her as she left, before turning back to greet us. "What's up, guys? Long time, no see."
"Welcome back," said Randy.
"What did Ms. Uni want?" asked Kathleen.
"You weren't in trouble, were you?" asked William.
"Whoa, chill out," answered Skylar, looking a bit surprised to have her friends swarming her like a mariachi band. "I'm not in trouble, don't worry. And none of you are, either."
"Then what was that all about during lunch?" wondered Kiki. "And who was that just now?"
"Oh, she was one of Ms. Uni's students," explained Skylar. "She was just showing me back because Ms. Uni had to watch her class. But enough about me. What have you been doing here while I was gone?"
"Just kinda chilling," said Kiki. "Mr. Pony gave us a free period, cause we couldn't do the spelling bee without you."
"Cool," said Skylar. "There's still some time left, right? We could, like, hang out or something for a little bit."
"Word," agreed Kiki. As they started to head off, it occurred to me that Kiki was ditching me to hang out with Skylar… it made me feel a bit like chopped liver.
"Hold on a second," inputted Randy, a bit sternly. "Why did Ms. Uni take you out of class? You still haven't answered that question."
"Yeah, I want to know too," added Kathleen. "We were just worried about you."
Skylar leveled Randy's ice-blue, elegantly-eyelashed gaze with her own fierce eyes, while still remaining nonchalant about the conversation. "Oh, I'm not allowed to say yet," she replied tactfully. "Otherwise it'd ruin the surprise."
"Secrets secrets, are no fun, unless you tell everyone," retorted Randy, leveraging the tired childhood adage.
"It's not a secret," inputted Kiki. "It's a surprise. She literally just said."
"And don't worry," added Skylar, grinning and flashing the peace sign. "You'll all find out soon enough. If you're so impatient, just ask Mr. Pony. Since they're the actual teacher, they should already know what's going on."
Randy gritted his teeth upon hearing that last comment, accentuating his chiseled cheekbones. His lack of response allowed Skylar and Kiki to exit the conversation and escape any further interrogation.
"Dang, dude," said William, looking down and exhaling. "She got you there."
"Crêpes!" swore Randy before heading off towards Mr. Pony's desk in a huff.
"I wonder what the surprise is," said Kathleen. "Is it someone's birthday party?"
"Well," I answered, "whatever it is, Skylar doesn't seem to want to tell anyone about it for now. We should probably just -"
"Hut-tention!" Mr. Pony's authoritative, yet slightly irate voice carried across the classroom, causing everyone to pause and look at them. "Ahem. So, now that we're all back together again, it's about time to wrap up the free period. Please put away whatever you're doing and return to your assigned seats. But first, I have a bit of an announcement to make."
Announcement? I thought, walking to my seat as the remainders of the lollipop dissolved in my mouth. Could this be the surprise that Skylar was talking about?
"Unfortunately, one of my items has... gone missing," stated Mr. Pony, looking down somewhat embarrassedly.
"Gone missing?" asked Kathleen, putting her hands over her mouth in shock.
"Do you think somebody stole it?" asked Owen, putting his finger across his lips mischievously.
Jeremy glanced around the room, looking for something abnormal. "What thing is it?" he asked.
"Well," answered Mr. Pony. "It's a set of colorful plastic chain-links. They were here earlier today during centers, but I just now noticed that they were gone during the free period."
"So that means," I said, "That they disappeared some time between then and now."
"Wow, Jor-bah, so insightful!" said Owen, cupping his hand around his mouth like a megaphone. "Maybe you shoulda been a detective instead of just a stamp collector." His eyes sparkled with excitement. "Well? Do you know who did it? Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?"
"Silence, troublemaker," canceled Randy, clenching both his teeth and his fist. "We don't even know if the chain-links were stolen in the first place. Mr. Pony or someone could have just misplaced them."
"I dunno," responded Owen. "That sounds exactly like something somebody who stole them would say. Chain-links don't just vanish like that, y'know."
"No, Randy is correct," agreed Rachel. "Jumping to the conclusion that there is a thief without evidence will only start a witch hunt, and sow discord within the class."
"Discord?" asked William. "Like the gaming app?"
"Aren't you a little too young to be on that?" asked Kristy.
"...Anyways," continued Mr. Pony as if they were herding kittens, "whether they were stolen or not, I'm offering 65 Kč to anyone who finds them, no questions asked." Upon hearing about a reward, our beady kindergarten eyes darted around the room, desperate to find the chain-links before anyone else.
Mr. Pony put their hands on their stomach. "But enough about that announcement. We've got to move on to the next activity!" They turned to the side slightly and raised one of their hands. "I'm sure you all know what that is by now. Everyone, report to the rug. I'll go grab the index cards."
That's right, I thought. What's coming up next is… that thing.
AUTHORS NOTE: Hi again, everyone, I regret to inform you that you can no longer expect weekly updates to this story. My stock of pre-written chapters has run dry, like the Sahara Desert, and advanced classes in grammar school mean that I don't have as much time to write. I have no intention of quitting though and will definitely continue the story, it's just that updates will be as I finish them rather than weekly. 3 Crispysylus
