10th Grade Biology
Polly had been dissecting dead frogs in her advanced biology class when she heard the particular sounds of ribbits of frogs. When the teacher wasn't looking, she crawled over to the closet and pressed her ear to the door.
"Ah, so that's where they put you," she mused.
She crawled back over to her desk and sat down again. Only the students in the back row knew she can done that. Despite being a good student, she was normally put in the back of every class so that she didn't distract the others. It never really worked well.
When the bell rang, she made a beeline for her best friend and boyfriend, Javier Peña, who was going to his locker.
"Javier! Javier!" she shouted and ran down the hallway.
Javier looked like he wanted to be swallowed by the ground but turned around to her.
"Ranita, what do you need?" he asked.
She was way too excited for this to be a normal thing.
"I can't tell you here! There's too many eyes! Too many eyes!" she chirped.
"Too many ears too," he clapped his hands over her ears.
She nodded at him, and he removed them.
"You need to meet me by the bleachers at 4pm. I have a plan, and I need your help," she poked him on the shoulder.
"I need to stay and finish a workshop project," he argued.
"You'll have plenty of time," she waved him off, "This is more important!"
"Not all of us are science geniuses and can pass every test easily. Some of us need a class we can pass," he countered.
"Say that to my Spanish class," she retorted.
He closed his eyes in agony. He spoke Spanish. His parents spoke Spanish. More than half of the town spoke completely fluent Spanish. His poor girlfriend, who's grown up next to him his whole life in the same said town, doesn't speak Spanish.
"Ignoring your abismal language course, you're doing well in most of your classes," he grumbled.
She jumped onto his side.
"Say yes! Say yes! Say yes!" she grabbed him.
"Fine! Si! Si! Si!" he relented. (Yes! Yes! Yes!)
"Great!" she cheered and ran off to her next class.
He grabbed his bag to go to his psychology class.
At the meeting time, Polly sat down beneath the bleachers of their football field. She spotted some couples in the distance but ignored them. She had better things to think about.
Javier trudged up to meet her. He had his driver's license and his dad's truck, so neither one had to worry about their parents coming to get them.
"What are we doing, Pollywog?" he sighed.
She was bouncing around. This wasn't good.
"You know we're dissecting frogs, right? This week," she enforced, "Well I've been hearing the ribbit sounds! Ribbit! Ribbit! And I think we can free them!"
She gestured excitedly about that.
"What?"
"We're gonna free the frogs, Javier! You have your multi tool, and I know the schedule of the teacher meetings! We can go get them right now!" she jumped up and moved towards him.
"No," he started to back away, "I'm not doing that."
"You are!" she moved towards him again.
"No."
Javier held onto Polly's backpack while she checked the hallway.
"I don't see anyone," she whispered and silently walked toward the classroom door.
She turned the doorknob and opened it. She gestured for him to follow, and he made his way over to her.
"Open it," she ordered.
Javier took out his multi tool and stuck it in the lock and jiggled it until it opened. He was used to breaking into his attic all the time. He opened the door and let her in.
Polly walked in to see about four tanks full of live frogs on the shelves.
"Grab that one, and I'll grab these," she pointed to two of them.
She took a small foldable wagon out of her backpack because only Polly would own something like that. He wondered how her books fit in there too.
Javier prayed that someone wouldn't catch them, as he began to help her stack the frog tanks. That would be the worst conversation to have with his father.
Soon they had them loaded up, and he grabbed the last one.
"Let's go," he told her.
She grabbed her backpack and wheeled the tiny wagon down the hallway. Luckily the wheels were smooth and didn't squeak. He chalked that up to her need to keep her equipment in order.
Javier huffed and puffed behind her as he carried the large glass tank down the hallway of the school.
They passed by the teacher's conference room and heard the meeting going on, but luckily for them no one came out.
They made it to his truck, and he helped her load up the back with the four frog tanks.
"What are we gonna do with all of them, Ranita?"
"We'll put them in my basement. My mom doesn't go down there regularly anymore, and when they realize we have them, they won't be able to take them back!" she squealed in delight.
Javier rolled his eyes but got her into the truck, and he drove to her house.
It was a modest house for a neuroscientist and architect slash fashion designer which wasn't saying much, but it was a crowd pleaser for the locals and some tourists.
It was a two story house made of pink and blue paint down the sides. The roof was a massive dome which housed a large telescope. There was a large garage and a massive basement which led underground a ways towards his ranch. It wasn't exactly a tunnel, but it could hold a majority of her family's odder equipment and utilities. They had a long history of eccentric personalities.
He parked his truck out front and helped her unload the massive amounts of frogs.
"How are you gonna feed these things?" he asked.
The logistics of their heist were coming to him slowly.
"I'll buy some frog food. It's not too expensive. I'll use my mom's ID. She'll never know," Polly reasoned with him, "They'll be fine for tonight. We still have some extra food from the tarantula."
"I... never tell me that again," he muttered.
He hated that hairy furry thing. It had eight beady eyes. It felt weird when it crawled on you, and she let it crawl all over him!
"Mom's got it in her office now. You'll never have to see it again," she reminded him.
"Great," he grabbed the last tank and followed her into her house.
He watched her unlock her door and enter. He followed her down the stairs to her basement which looked remarkably like the high school science lab plus a doctor's office plus a mad scientist lab from the comic books.
She moved towards a shelf in the back and began to stack the heavy tanks on it. No one could say a scientist wasn't strong. Those things weighted several pounds.
Those frogs just continued to ribbit on.
"Oh! I'm so excited!" she squealed and threw her arms around him, "Look at how many frogs we got!"
He happily returned the hug before looking at the frogs in their tanks. Their big beady eyes were staring at them.
"We gotta keep them wet," he reminded her.
He just wanted their beady eyes off of him.
"Right! There's several spray bottles down here! I gotta get an empty one! Wouldn't want to accidentally throw acid on one!" she bounced away to the sink in the basement.
He watched her check the bottles and really hoped she didn't find one with acid or some other burning liquid. That would be another horrible ER trip he would have to explain to his mother.
It wasn't until several days later that Javier's parents got a phone call from Polly's parents. Apparently the school had called around and were asking about some missing amphibians.
Of course, his mother was astonished about the heist but was fine with his antics. His father decided that he would work extra on the ranch as a punishment.
Polly somehow wasn't punished for this. Of course she wasn't. She could probably get away with murder.
Polly's parents decided to donate the frogs to an aquarium terrarium restaurant in a big city in Texas. They would live the rest of their lives as a tourist site.