Randy stood back up straight in confusion. "What? Is that… shep?"

"Yeah. Why is his name here so many times?"

We heard applause and cheering coming from the gymnasium.

"Is it… over?" I asked, looking towards him.

"I hope not," he said, meeting my gaze before looking towards the orange double doors. "I wanted to see the ending at least."

Suddenly, a scratchy voice sounded from behind us. "Hey Jor-bah, hey Randy-boy. What'd I miss?"

We both turned, like Graham, to see a short, pink baseball cap wearing being standing a little too close to us. We backed off reflexively.

"O-owen," I said, startled by his sudden appearance. "Where'd you come from?"

"Bathroom," he answered. "That concession stand food goes right through ya, huh?"

Randy shook his head. "No way. Jordan, Jacques, and I were all just in there."

"Like, just just in there? 'Cause it didn't look like that to me."

Randy thought for a second. "No, not really, actually. It was only a few minutes ago, though." Now that I thought about it too, there was a chance for Owen to slip into the bathroom unnoticed after we had been in there while we were around the corner with Kiki.

"Then you just missed me," he said. "I had to until shep finally won the thing before heading out. Didn't wanna miss any of the action, y'know?"

"What?" I asked. "shep won?"

"Yeah! You can go see for yourself if you think I'm lying."

My mind flashed back to the plaque I had read literally two minutes ago. "Let's go check it out, Randy," I said. "If he really is telling the truth, there could be something up with that plaque."

Randy seemed hesitant to give up a chance to pursue Owen further, but also seemed interested in the plaque. He quickly thought of a compromise: "Okay. But only if Owen comes with us."

"Sure! I'm all done in the bathroom anyways."

With that settled, we walked through the orange double doors into what was once section A of the gymnasium. My eyes immediately darted to the stage, where the sight I saw only confirmed the words Owen had spoken: shep had indeed, somehow, won the spelling bee.

"Congratulations, Noam," stated Mr. Sibba, shaking shep's hand. "You will soon join all three-hundred-and-sixty-one of the previous spelling bee winners."

"Amazing," mused shep with his eyes closed, his brain clearly too filled with dopamine to fully comprehend the situation. "To think that somebody like me… would win something like this..."

"No way," said Randy from my side. "He actually won."

"See?" urged Owen. "I told you so."

My mind whirled between the scene I was witnessing and the one I had witnessed like three minutes ago. What did this mean? Did shep win because his name was on the winners list? Or had he really won the spelling bee that many times? Was shep just that good of a speller? Even so, why was his name on that plaque so many times?

"Jordan, Randy," it was Jacques. He and Kiki were still between us and the rest of the class. "Where'd you guys go? I thought – ah, there's Owen."

"Hey, Jacquesypoo," greeted Owen. "How's the weather up there?"

"Weather?" asked Jacques, looking around confusedly. "Fine? We're inside, though." It seemed like the joke had gone over his head, which was ironic considering the height difference between him and Owen.

"But what does that mean?" asked Randy.

"What does what mean," said Kiki, though it was intended as a question.

"Shep. The plaque. There's no way this is a coincidence."

"What are you talking about?" asked Jacques, in utter confusion. Now we were all confused.

"Um," I began slowly, still trying to reorganize my whirling thoughts. "Before we found Owen in the lobby, we saw a plaque with shep's name on it a bunch of times."

"That's a little weird," responded Jacques. "What kind of plaque was it?"

"Ah." My brain had put two and two together, but hadn't communicated it to everyone else yet. "The spelling bee winners. It's like a trophy."

"Oh," said Jacques, "that makes more sense."

"No," soft-canceled Randy, looking down slowly back to the rest of us, as the crowd began milling around to leave. "You're not getting it."

"Huh? How come?" asked Kiki, rubbing one of her eyes. "The trophy's for shep, right? Cause he won."

Randy shook his head. "It'll be faster to just show you."

"No," hard-canceled Owen in a pretty impeccable imitation of Randy's voice. I had a feeling that was important, so I made sure to make a mental note of it for later. "We have to gather the rest of the class and report to Mr. Pony. Because of the rrru-ules!" He made sure to slather copious and voluminous amounts of crêmê-de-la-crêmê on the r's in his words. The large man was absolutely losing his carp.

That annoyed Randy enough to snap out of his semi-entranced state. I could tell how badly he wanted to break the rules, like Charli XCX, but unfortunately Owen did have a point. "Fine," he begrudgingly admitted. "But only because the spelling bee is over."

The five of us quickly found the main group from our class, including Eli, Kristy, Rachel, Julia, William, and Skylar, near the stage with shep and some of the members of his class.

"Well, hello everyone," began shep, smiling, closing his eyes, and holding up his hand as a form of greeting. "Fancy seeing you here."

"Hey shep! Congrats on winning," responded Owen. "I knew you could do it."

"Yeah, good job," I added quickly. "But shep, I have a question for you."

"Oh, my," said shep. "Whatever could it be, Jordan?"

"Have you ever… been in the spelling bee before?"

"Nope… not at all..." He was so content and relaxed. Randy and I exchanged glances.

"Anyways," proceeded Randy, though the whole plaque thing was clearly still bothering him, "The rest of the kindergarteners need to come with me to find Mr. Pony." He started counting out the classmates present. "Since the spelling bee's over, we should get back to our class."

"Man," commented William, bending over slightly and exhaling. "I dunno if I could just go back to class after something as exciting as this though."

"Yeah," agreed Kristy. "I had a blast, and I wasn't even in it!"
"BAAAAH!" said Jacques, drawing a few more unkind stares from the moving crowd.

"Uh, Kristy," inputted Eli. "You… were in it."

"Oh yeah, that's right!" she said, laughing bromeantically. "I totally forgot!"

"All right, so all we're missing is Jenny, Kathleen, and Jeremy," concluded Randy.

"Well, we know where Jenny and Kathleen are," I said. "But not Jeremy."

"Wait, you still haven't found Jeremy?" asked Skylar. "You've been looking for him like, the whole day. I see Owen finally showed up, though."

"Turned up is more like it!" jibed Owen, grinning and putting his hands behind his head.

"Yeah, I'm starting to get worried," I admitted.

"Well, for now, let's find Mr. Pony," said Randy. "Maybe they know where Jeremy is."

"That won't be necessary, old sport," inputted a comical sounding voice, in such a way that 'old sport' sounded a bit like 'pulled pork'*. We all turned, like Graham, to see Mr. Pony waltzing towards us like they had just won the lottery or something. Huffing and puffing, they approached. "I heard Jacques' BAAAAH and was able to locate you lot pretty quickly." They quickly took inventory of the class. "Looks like most everyone's already here, so that's good. Do any of you know where, uh, Jenny, Kathleen, and Jeremy are?"

"Kathleen and Jenny will be back soon," answered Randy. "But no, we were hoping you knew about Jeremy."

Mr. Pony lilted their head to one side and put one of their hands to their cheek, the one on their face. "Hmm… Maybe we should look for him. When was the last time anyone saw him?"

Finally, it was my turn to shine. "I saw him at the beginning of the spelling bee," I volunteered. "When I was heading from the third group section to the first one, he, William, and Skylar walked past me. I thought he was going to the third section with them at first, but he also could have gone to the lobby."

"Oh yeah," added Kiki, that phrase causing her to remember. "You said he was going to the bathroom."

"The bathroom?" asked Mr. Pony.

"Well, that's what I thought," I said, correcting her like a stereotypical male. "But he wasn't in there, and trust me, I've spent a lot of time in that bathroom today."
"Ugh, TMI," inputted Skylar, making sure to spell out the 'TMI'. "But no, he wasn't with us, so he totally went to the lobby."

"Well," said Jacques, "The lobby doesn't only lead to the bathroom. From there, he could have left the gymasium and gone anywhere."
"A-anywhere?" asked Mr. Pony, beginning to sweat nervously. Surely, they were daunted by the prospect of combing the entire campus just to find one student, right?

"What, you think he just walked out?" asked William, a little surprised at the notion.

"So he was playing hooky," said Owen, making a pretend angry expression and biting his thumb. "I knew that punk was up to no good."

"Well, shoot," said Kristy, thoroughly stumped and thoroughly slumped. "If he could be anywhere, where are we supposed to start looking?"

"Mr. Pony!" shouted an outside voice swimming against the current of the crowd, like Finding Nemo. "Jordan! Randy! Someone! Come quick!"

Our heads turned, like Graham, toward the source of the voice to see Kathleen bust out of the crowd uncharacteristically clumsily, an expression of aghast apprehension on her face.

Randy was the first to act. "Kathleen! What's going on?"

"There's something in the bathroom," she gasped.

Randy and I exchanged another worried glance. We had been doing that a lot lately. Could this have something to do with the sink in the boys' bathroom?

"Is it… an emergency?" asked Mr. Pony cautiously.

"Yes! …uh, no. I don't know! Just follow me!" she retreated back into the crowd, with Mr. Pony in hot pursuit.

Against our better judgement, Randy and I were after them an instant later as well. As we catapulted ourselves across the gymnasium floor towards the lobby, the honorable Mr. Sibba managed to climb back on stage. My heart beat, my mind world, and my vision blurred as I raced, like a Lego Racer, through the crowd.

"Once again, before I let you all go," concluded Mr. Sibba from the stage as we sprinted towards the lobby, "I'd like to give a special thank you to all of the sponsors that made this possible."

Achieving my top possible speed as the line leader, I stepped in front of Kathleen, Randy, and Mr. Pony to hold open the door again.

"Ziploc, Florida Hospital, in Florida, America, Huggies, Cuties, Babybel, and SMUCKERS," listed Mr. Sibba before I closed the door and followed them into the lobby.

"Quick, in here," urged Kathleen, throwing open the bathroom door.

Trying not to think to much about how I was getting to go into the girls' bathroom, I stepped into the sealed linoleum chamber and noticed something immediately different between it and the boys' bathroom. Written all over the red tiles of the room walls were the numbers 5, 1, and 4, over and over and over, in Sharpay… in other words, permanent marker. In the distance, the sound of a fossit dripping water could be heard in the background, each drop in the bucket of shattered silence echoing off the scrawled-on walls and enhancing the eerie aura of the area. I slowed my pace subconsciously, shuddering scrumdiddlyumptiously, mom's spaghetti, as I advanced down the hallway.

"It's just up ahead," said Kathleen. Just as she was brushing past me to show the way the sharp sound of a telephone ringing could be heard, the enhancements of the environment causing us all to jump.

"Who's phone is that?" asked Mr. Pony. "If you hand it over now, I won't have to confiscate it."

"Not mine," answered Kathleen. "I don't have a cell phone."

"Mean either," I added.

Randy opened his mouth to speak, but the phone rang again, the receiving end not picking up.

"That's strike two," warned Mr. Pony. "C'mon, you lot. No cell phones allowed at school."

"It's not me," insisted Randy. "I follow the ru-ules."

"Well, it's gotta be one of you!" retorted Mr. Pony. "I don't have a cell phone cuz I'm a teacher!"

The phone rung for a third time.

"Forget the phone!" said Kathleen. "You need to see this!" She urged us forward, through the numbered hallway, and finally we emerged into the main area of the bathroom. And what I saw there could not even begin to describe what was happening next… even outside of the context of the spelling bee.

Multicolored lines stretched from numbered wall to numbered wall without end. Eventually, my brain registered them as the plastic chainlinks from Mr. Pony's classroom. Hadn't they been stolen? What were they doing here? Immediately afterward, my wandering eyes were drawn to the center of the room, where an old-timey dial-up phone lay, surrounded by the vast web of chainlinks.

The phone rung for a fourth time. This time, it was followed by an old timey click as the answering machine picked up.

"Hello? This is Brad's. I can't come to the phone right now, please hold, or leave a message."

*this was a very difficult pun to translate from Czech.