Author's note:
Just thought I'd note the fact that if you happen to be reading this on the day this was published (April 23, 2021), or the day after for that matter, this is the first chapter where the publish date aligns with the date that the fanfic is happening.
Enjoy!
Sybella was rudely awoken by a loud noise. It sounded like some sort of machinery outside.
The vampire princess groggily got out of bed and looked out her window, but couldn't see anything from the angle of her window. Stretching, she sauntered over to her journal in a sleepy stupor.
Tuesday, April 23
Ugh. She couldn't get into the mood to write right now. She was just too tired. All the vampire wanted to do was lie down and not think about anything other than sleeping. Nonetheless, she needed to get up and get some breakfast. Maybe that would wake her up so she was able to write something in her journal before class. The vampiress quickly slipped on a t-shirt which had the word "Love" in the middle of a red heart. She also put on a pair of shorts and headed down to breakfast. It was getting quite warm out now, so t-shirts and shorts were once again becoming appropriate attire.
As Sybella sleepily walked out of her room, she was greeted by her ever-chipper friend.
"Good morning, Sybella!" Tanis smiled. "It's a great day, isn't it?"
"I guess." Sybella muttered. She wasn't in a bad mood, just absolutely exhausted. The mummy and her continued walking down the stairs together as the vampiress attempted to wake up.
Miss Grimwood's smiling face was the first thing that greeted the ghouls at the breakfast table.
"Good morning, everyone. I have a bit of an announcement to share with you." Miss Grimwood informed.
"Does it have to do with that obnoxiously loud racket next door?" Phantasma inquired.
"Oh, no. Colonel Calloway just called me this morning and let me know that he has hired a few construction workers to redo the dining hall for the cadets, so it's a bit bigger." Miss Grimwood explained. Sybella remembered how tiny their dining area was when the ghouls were forced to spend a day there last year. She was sort of glad that the cadets were finally getting a decent sized place to eat.
"My announcement is about the Ghoul Board's College and Career Fair I mentioned a while back that you five signed up for. It's this Thursday on Skull Island. You'll have a chance to ask people who work in colleges about what college life is like, as well as find out what school you might want to attend." Miss Grimwood finished.
"Aww man. I don't want to think about that yet!" Tanis whined.
"You must begin thinking about it, Tanis. The semester ends next week Friday, and after that, you will only have a year to make a decision about what your next steps after graduation are. Many colleges have deadlines for applying in the fall as well, so you must begin planning ahead now if you plan to go to college." Miss Grimwood advised. "However, simply not attending college and getting a job right away is an equally viable option as well."
"Is anyone else from our school coming?" Elsa asked.
"No, only you five signed up, unfortunately. But that's alright. There will be lots of students from other schools under the Ghoul Board attending the fair as well, so you may even meet some new friends while you're exploring possibilities." Miss Grimwood shared.
The first bell of the morning rang.
"That's the first bell. You girls better get to Film Studies before the late bell rings." Miss Grimwood smiled. "If you have the chance the next few days, try to think about some possibilities of what you might want your future to look like, so you know what booths to visit on Thursday."
"Thanks, Miss Grimwood. See you tonight!" Winnie smiled as the ghouls all got up and headed to class.
Sybella knew she wanted to go to college, so the decision was a bit easier for her. However, she knew Winnie was on the fence about college, and Phantasma wasn't entirely sure about whether she wanted to take a gap year or two in between college. Sybella sort of just wanted things to stay the same forever. She loved her school and wasn't ready to leave it.
When the ghouls arrived at Film Studies, Coach Micucci's stern face greeted them. If they hadn't known Coach Micucci so well, the ghouls likely would have thought he was frustrated with them, but a stern look was kind of just his default facial expression.
"Alright, today I'm gonna treat ya to a great movie!" Coach Micucci promised.
"Really? What is it?" Isaiah asked.
"It's one of my favorite movies of all-time. The Lorax!" Coach Micucci revealed.
"Oh god, anything but that!" Sidney whined.
"Yeah, why did you announce it like it was something we didn't know about?" Winnie questioned. "You literally have us watch the film or some sequel to it every class."
"Can't a guy just like what he likes? Besides, it's got a great message about the environment...not that I care." Coach Micucci said as he whipped a candy wrapper out the classroom window. "Ahh, windows. Nature's trash can."
Sybella sighed as she watched the opening scene of The Lorax for the zillionth time.
The vampiress had found herself quite bored in Coach Micucci's class, and desperately hoped Mrs. Griffin's class would be better. It always was though, so she didn't feel like she had too much to worry about.
A few students, including Alexis, Sarah and Johnny greeted Sybella as she sat down in her seat.
"Greetings, class. Today we're going to dive a bit deeper into human culture." Mrs. Griffin previewed. "So we had a day talking about makeup in the lower-level class, but I want to continue talking about beauty norms for humans. Let's start with…"
Mrs. Griffin was cut off by the sound of an extremely loud explosion outside.
"Oh my god!" Alexis screamed.
"What happened?" Sarah asked.
"I...don't know." Mrs. Griffin looked shaken up.
After about a minute of silence, because no one knew what to say or how to react to the strange phenomenon that had just happened, Miss Grimwood's voice came over the intercom.
"May I have your attention, please. May I have your attention, please." Miss Grimwood repeated, presumably to stress the importance of the announcement. "There has just been an accident over at the current construction project at Calloway Military School. As a result, all afternoon classes are cancelled. Your parents will be called to come pick you up."
"Alright." Mrs. Griffin looked shocked. "I guess this is the end of class, then. We'll pick up with this on Thursday."
That meant Sybella would miss the lesson, as she'd be gone at the College and Career Fair, but that was the least of her worries right now.
"What in the world happened?" Jessica exclaimed to no one in particular.
"I don't know. But I'm going out to look." Sybella vowed. She had to see what was going on. It's not like she could leave, given she lived here, so she had to find out what had happened so she could know if she was in any kind of danger.
Sybella ran outside so quickly that she had to stop and catch her breath before she actually looked up at what happened. She saw her four best friends already on the scene, looking shocked.
"What happened?" Sybella asked.
At that moment, a huge semi with the letters "BP" on it swerved into the Grimwood's parking lot at high speed, and spun out of control. The cargo it was carrying, a large drum of oil, spilled out everywhere.
"Aw shucks, guess we fucked it up again." the driver shrugged as a huge amount of oil spilled everywhere. "Suppose I'll have to put this sign up."
As he got out of his semi, he took out some tape and put up a sign saying "locally owned and operated" on the side of his truck.
"What were you thinking?" Sybella shrieked.
"You better be cleaning that up." Phantasma glared at the BP driver.
"Oh yeah, we will." the driver promised. "I'll have my people get in touch with your people."
A man dressed in a fancy suit poked his head out of the window and read off of what appeared to be a legal document.
"Legal disclaimer: our people may not actually get in touch with your people." the lawyer notified.
"Bye now!" the clumsy driver said, as he drove away, leaving all the spilled oil all over Grimwood's property.
"Oh my god. This is horrible!" Sybella exclaimed. "But what was the explosion?"
"It was an oil spill!" Tanis cried out.
Sybella's eyes drifted over to an elderly woman as she shrieked "oil spill!" Upon looking at the ground by the woman's feet, a tiny amount of wetness was below her feet.
"I spilled the ¼ cup of canola oil for my grandson Tug's cookies!" the old woman, apparently Tug's grandmother, said. "Now how's he going to get his weekly batch of chocolate chip cookies?"
"It's no big deal, Mrs. Roper." Sybella replied. "How did that cause an explosion though?"
"Oh, no. There was another oil spill over by the construction site." Mrs. Roper pointed over to the construction workers expanding the dining hall.
Sybella looked in horror at oil spurting out of the space they were laying the foundation for the expanded dining hall. Her jaw dropped even more when she saw the initial explosion had polluted Grimwood's moat, which she and her friends had swam in so many times.
"Woohoo! Yeah!" Colonel Calloway shouted. "We've struck oil! We're going to be rich, rich, rich!"
"Look at what happened though!" Elsa pointed to the polluted moat.
"I'm truly sorry about your moat, girls, but the construction workers will clean it up. Then we'll be rich, rich, rich!" Colonel Calloway laughed happily before going back inside. At that moment, Grunt and Baxter noticed that the construction workers had struck oil and came outside.
"Oh my god!" Grunt exclaimed.
"This school's gonna be rich!" Baxter stated with glee.
"Woah, what happened here?" Sybella's yearbook partner, Savana, exclaimed as she too came out to see what the commotion was. Sami and Sam were not too far behind with cameras.
"I'm afraid there's been an oil spill." Miss Grimwood alerted, as she came out, with Julia by her side.
"This is so immoral." Sami shook her head.
"Immoral...but juicy news!" Sam said, as she took several pictures of the moat and the oil spread all over the grass from the BP truck.
"This isn't funny, Sam." Sami scolded. "All this oil isn't good for the animals. It could wreck the ecosystem here irreparably, even after it's cleaned up."
"Just look at that goose." Savana pointed towards a goose with its wings covered in sticky oil.
"Sir Quacky?" Sam peeped, touching the goose by patting it on the head. Given its current oily and weakened state, it didn't move much when she touched its head. "I demand VENGEANCE!"
"Gosh, what an atrocity." another familiar face shook her head. It was Julia, whom Sybella hadn't seen a lot of this semester.
"It really is. Look at all those animals suffering just because some construction workers made a mistake." Sybella sighed.
"This is awful. I know I care about the environment more than most people, but they could at least show the slightest bit of decency. They basically wrecked our ecosystem." Julia complained.
"It really sucks. I mean, there's nothing we can do though." Sybella hopelessly admitted. "It's happened, and hopefully they'll clean it all up today."
"There's absolutely something we can do. I'm going to protest for them to stop this construction. They made the mistake once, who's to say they won't make it again? I don't know about you, but I love Grimwood's too much to let it go into shambles like this." Julia angrily committed.
"You know what, you're right." Sybella nodded. "I'll join you. This is bullshit that they can just spill oil all over a property they're not even doing work on. When's the protest?"
"I'm going to be out there tomorrow during our first class." Julia smiled. "I'm so glad I can count on you."
Sybella's momentary feeling of empowerment dropped a tiny bit when she saw Miss Grimwood behind her. "Is that okay?"
"It's absolutely okay, Sybella. You should stand up for what you feel is right. I too feel what they have done here is very wrong." Miss Grimwood agreed.
The vampire princess was honestly a little surprised Miss Grimwood was so okay with it.
"Yeah. You can count me in too." Phantasma joined. "Just look at how sick Allison looks!"
Sybella looked over at Allison the crocodile, who was covered in the black goop, gasping for air.
"Oh my god, that's horrible!" Tanis exclaimed. "How can we help her?"
"I don't know if we can, Tanis." Phantasma comforted. "By the time we cleaned her off with soap, she'd just get covered in oil again. Her whole habitat is polluted."
Sybella honestly wanted to do something to save the animal as well, but she didn't know how she could.
"She's going to die though!" Tanis cried out. "Just get Sidney out here and have her zap the ecosystem back to normal or something. Or Julia! How about her? She's a witch, she could fix all of this!"
"Not with the environmental witch laws she can't." Sybella shared. "The International Witches Council has strict rules on tampering with the laws of nature. They could get in a lot of trouble for going against that."
"But those stupid construction workers tampered with the environment first!" Tanis snapped.
"I don't make the rules, honey. I wish I did. I can't think of anything more horrible than seeing Allison suffer like this." Sybella started to tear up a tiny bit, but was able to successfully surf the waves of her emotions to avoid metaphorically wiping out.
"That isn't fair!" Tanis pouted.
"Can we count on you at the protest too then?" Phantasma inquired.
"Well...I don't know. I really don't want to miss class." Tanis gulped.
Sybella rarely missed class either, but this was an occasion that absolutely warranted it. It was horrifying to think about what the construction workers had done to their moat.
"That's alright." Phanty shrugged. "Winnie, Elsa, are you coming?"
"No, we've got a test in our class." Elsa informed.
"Yeah, we can't miss that!" Winnie agreed.
"Okay. Three people fighting back against these creeps should be enough." Phantasma accepted.
Whilst Sybella was happy that they had a team ready to protest for environmental justice, one concern still haunted her: what irreparable damage had the construction workers done from their one little mistake?
I am so angry at the construction workers and Colonel Calloway. How could they care so little about the environment? All the animals could get sick or die, and then there'd be nothing left in the moat even after they cleaned it up. I have to do my part and stop this injustice.
Wednesday, April 24
My first ever protest. It feels both liberating and a bit scary. What if I get into trouble? What if Colonel Calloway gets mad?
No, wait. Scratch that. I can't be afraid of people getting mad if I want to make real change. They did a bad thing and they need to be called out on it so they don't do it again.
The vampire princess wasn't really used to writing two journal entries back-to-back (one right before she went to bed the prior night, and one right after she got up that morning), but with all the commotion, she didn't have time to finish her Tuesday entry until right before she went to bed.
Sybella wanted to put on some sassy protest outfit with a memorable tongue-in-cheek slight on it. Perhaps something like "Monsters fight back" or "Don't mess with a monster." However, she didn't have any clothing like that, unfortunately. Instead, she decided to put on a half-blue, half-green top. It wasn't exactly an edgy protesting outfit, but she was wearing the Earth's colors, which is what she was fighting for after all.
The vampiress joined Julia and Phantasma outside the front entrance to Calloway Military School. Sybella held up a sign saying "stop the drilling" whilst Julia had a sign in her hand which read "drilling is killing!". Phantasma held up a sign saying "You're destroying our environment!"
"Alright girls, you ready to really get their attention?" Julia inquired, holding a megaphone.
"Hell yeah!" Phantasma responded.
"Stop the drilling! Stop the killing!" they all shouted at the construction workers, Julia's voice coming through the loudest due to the megaphone.
"Hey ladies, what's this about?" one gruff looking construction worker snapped.
"Yeah, you comin' from some Halloween party or somethin'?" another construction worker inquired.
"You literally don't even know what you're destroying! Did you look at the sign next door? This is a ghoul school!" Sybella yelled back at them.
"Chill out, girls! It was an accident. No need to dress up in costumes." The construction worker clearly didn't believe they were real ghouls.
"Yeah, we're gettin' around to cleanin' it up." the other construction worker replied.
"It doesn't look like that to me." Julia pointed at their moat, which was still covered in oil. Allison the crocodile was still gasping for air in the oil covered body of water, and many fish were floating dead on the top of the water.
"Whatever. I don't need to take this from you girls." the construction worker said, as he turned on his loud jackhammer and kept working.
"Hey!" a female werewolf yelled as she ran towards the construction workers with something in her hand. Surprising, it was Sam from Yearbook! She was holding two eggs in her hand.
"What's your deal, lady?" the construction worker shouted.
"This is for Sir Quacky!" Sam said, running straight at them without stopping. "Why don't you see how it feels?" She had her paws in the shape of fists, making Sybella worry that the werewolf was going to resort to violence.
The werewolf proceeded to whip both of the eggs right in the two construction workers' faces.
"Quack quack mother fucker!" Sam shouted, as she ran away.
"Jesus! What the hell is that girl's major malfunction?" the first construction worker snapped.
"Sybella, Phantasma, and...whoever the witch is...you're going to have to leave. One of the other workers just came in and said you're harassing them." Colonel Calloway said, as he came out from the military school's front door.
Sybella was ready to leave. She didn't want to get in trouble with the colonel or have him call the police on them.
"But they're harassing countless animals! Look! That alligator is dead!" Julia shouted at him.
"What?" Sybella screamed, running over to the moat to see Allison. Julia was completely correct. Allison was floating on her back, but not voluntarily. She couldn't survive living in all the oil.
"Girls, the construction workers are very busy. They'll be getting around to cleaning your moat up." Colonel Calloway's voice grew increasingly impatient.
"Oh yeah, when?" Phanty clapped back. "When all of the animals are dead?"
"I said they're getting to it!" Colonel Calloway shouted.
"That's a monster lie!" Phanty punned. "They're not even working on it!"
"That's it! I don't need to listen to this insubordination! I'm calling Miss Grimwood right this instant!" the colonel snapped at them.
"Fine. Let's get going, girls. We don't need any trouble." Sybella urged.
"No, you're all staying here until Miss Grimwood can deal with you." Colonel Calloway shook his head, as he went back into the building. "Don't think about going anywhere, or I'll tell Miss Grimwood you ran away from me while I was getting her to reprimand you."
Oh no. Sybella was passionate about this issue, but she felt like she'd gotten in over her head now. She didn't want to get into trouble with Miss Grimwood.
"Thank you for calling me, Colonel Calloway." Miss Grimwood appreciated, as she came out to retrieve Sybella and the others. "However, I feel that you may have overreacted a tad. I really don't like those construction workers either given what they've done. They've killed several of our animals, including a goose which Sam, one of my students, just reported to me. Couldn't your workers make cleaning up their mess the top priority for today?"
"I'll try, Miss Grimwood, but they're really very busy." Colonel Calloway dismissed.
"Alright. I'll take care of the girls from here. Thank you for letting me know, Colonel." Miss Grimwood curtly replied, as she brought her three students back into the building.
"Are we in trouble, Miss Grimwood?" Sybella asked.
Miss Grimwood looked behind her to make sure the Colonel wasn't still listening before responding. Luckily, he was long out of earshot. "No, not at all. In fact, the person I'm mad at is the Colonel."
"Woah! Miss Grimwood is a badass environmentalist!" Phantasma exclaimed.
"I suppose so, yes." Miss Grimwood smiled. "You girls are absolutely right. They should be making cleaning up their oil spill the top priority. But there's nothing much we can do unless I want to take the Colonel to court, which I most certainly do not. You girls did a good thing standing up for what you felt was right, and I only ask that you do not protest again out of fear of getting us in trouble. Hopefully the construction workers will get to it soon."
"Is soon going to be soon enough though?" Julia chimed in.
That was a question that would continue to haunt Sybella for the rest of the day.
The vampiress tried not to think too hard about Allison the crocodile dying, or Sam's beloved goose Sir Quacky being killed by the horrible oil spill. She hoped her Sociology class, which she had right now, would take her mind off of the horrible things that were going on.
"Hey, Sybella." Kenzie smiled as she sat next to the vampiress in class. "How are you?"
"I'm okay. Bummed about the oil spill. It killed a bunch of animals." Sybella replied.
"That really sucks." Kenzie sighed. "It's a shame how little people care about the environment."
"It really is." Sybella nodded. For some reason, Kenzie's comment made the vampiress think back to the movie which Coach Micucci has shown them a zillion times, The Lorax. The film seemed a ton more relatable and useful now, given it was all about nobody caring about the environment until it was gone. What if the construction workers screwed up again and killed the rest of the animals? Were her, Miss Grimwood and a few of her classmates the only ones who cared about the environment?
"Hello, my wonderful class." Ms. Cohn smiled. "Given recent events, I'd like to talk about environmental injustice in today's class."
Sybella had grown to love Ms. Cohn's lessons, and the relevance of her current lesson made her love the instructor even more. She'd seemed a tad cold at first, but Ms. Cohn had become one of the vampiress's favorite instructors.
"Many people are affected by environmental injustice, be it illegal dumping or toxic emissions from factories and mass consumerism. Particularly affected by these issues are people in the lower class who cannot afford to live in nice neighborhoods, and…" Ms. Cohn was cut off by yet another explosion.
Sybella's heart sank, and many students looked horrified.
"Oh dear, what was that?" Ms. Cohn wondered. "Not another oil spill, I hope."
The teacher moved towards the window to view what had happened, and reported something surprising.
"Students, I regret to tell you there has been another oil spill...but this one appears to have splattered all over the front of Calloway Military School!" Ms. Cohn exclaimed, pointing out the window.
Sybella and several other students bustled over to the window to look at what had happened. Sure enough, the oil spill had sprayed over the entirety of the entrance to Calloway Military School, leaving the school's bricks completely black.
"Attention, students." Miss Grimwood called over the intercom once again. She sounded exasperated. "I'm afraid to announce there's been another oil spill due to the construction company. For the safety of our students, all classes are canceled for the remainder of the day.
"Class dismissed." Ms. Cohn said, as students came racing out of the classroom to get a closer look at what had happened.
"Are you coming, Kenzie?" Sybella asked.
"No thanks. I don't need to see anymore stupid people destroying the environment." Kenzie snarked. Sybella quite frankly couldn't blame her.
Sybella went outside to see Colonel Calloway yelling at the construction workers. The ground she walked on was completely covered with oil from both the BP truck's oil spill and the construction workers' mistake the prior day.
"You clumsy oafs! What were you thinking?" Colonel Calloway yelled. "I want you to clean up this mess immediately, and then never return here!"
"What about the oil we hit?" one construction worker asked.
"Screw that!" Colonel Calloway shouted. "You're completely incompetent at doing anything right! The expansion is done, and you can forget about the oil! I wouldn't take the money for that oil if you paid me!"
"I always thought the plural of oaf was 'oaves'." Savana chimed in.
"Nah, that's the cool way to say bread. Like, if your friend makes banana bread, you gotta be like 'gimme them 'oaves, homie!'" Sam explained.
Colonel Calloway ignored the two girls' conversation and talked directly to Miss Grimwood. "I'm terribly sorry, Miss Grimwood, for not seeing how incomeptent these workers were. The girls were right this morning. I will have them clean up your moat immediately."
"Thank you, Colonel." Miss Grimwood replied.
"Oh no, guys, look." Tanis said, crying and pointing to their two-headed shark, Alexandra. "She lost one of her heads!"
Sure enough, the oil killed one of her heads, with a patch of new skin growing over the old head.
"I'm so sorry, honey." Sybella started tearing up as well. "At least you still have one head."
"How can we be too late? They just said they were going to clean up the oil." Tanis started sobbing.
"I'm sorry to say, Tanis, but sometimes things in life don't always work out for the best. There's no quick fix for this. They'll likely take the rest of the week to clean up the oil, and more animals could die in the meantime. There's no getting around what a dire mistake those construction workers made. They could have damaged the ecology of the moat permanently." Miss Grimwood informed Tanis of the grim reality of the situation. "That's always the danger when humans mess too much with the environment."
The rest of the girls somberly looked down and attempted to comfort Tanis, as they began to go inside.
Daniel from Sybella's Sociology class came out and greeted the group at the entrance.
"Well, I guess oil's well that ends well! Hahaha!" Daniel chuckled.
"Young man, this is hardly the time for jokes." Miss Grimwood scolded.
Sybella supposed Miss Grimwood was right. She was always used to her problems abating after a few days or weeks, but there really was no quick fix for this one. Environmental pollution was a serious issue, and there was nothing any of them could do to reverse what had happened. Animals had died, and more might die before the oil spill was able to be cleaned up. It was just another depressing reminder of how one needed to treat the environment right, otherwise one might not have an environment to live in someday.
Author's note:
Hope you all enjoyed this chapter! A bit more of a somber ending than usual, but there really was no way to write a happy ending for this one. When people don't care about the environment, this is just what happens, but hopefully the girls making a difference in Colonel Calloway's heart helped empower you a little. No real references in this one, other than the BP truck spilling oil. This was sort of a reference (diss?) of BP spilling tons of oil for four months straight in the Gulf of Mexico back in 2010, polluting the water and killing tons of animals due to carelessness on their part. The driver putting up a "locally owned and operated" sign on his truck also referenced how most BP gas stations put up signs that said "locally owned and operated" (as if that made a difference to the thousands of animals they killed and oceans they polluted) in an attempt to convince people to still come to BP claiming their specific gas station had nothing to do with the spill. I guess that's a tad more political than I usually get in these, but think of it as less of a diss and more of a playful criticism haha.
Also, I want to note the fact that I added the bit about the International Witches Council preventing witches from tampering with the environment just to avoid a "quick fix" type of ending. Sadly, people destroy the environment all the time, and there's no way to just wave a magic wand to fix it all in real life. I wanted this chapter to be as realistic as possible so I felt like that explanation was needed.
As always, feel free to leave a review if you want to, and favorites and follows are always appreciated! Speaking of appreciation, if you're reading this, I appreciate you! Thank you for making it this far into my story and I hope you're enjoying it so far.