All characters from the Ice Age series are property of 20th Century Fox and Blue Sky Studios. All other characters belong to me.

To the Future in High School

The next morning, everyone struggled to get ready for school. They had to figure out what exactly to do to prepare for school, sometimes they realized it on their own, sometimes they ended up asking someone in the house which led to extreme embarrassment or awkwardness. Manny, Ellie, and Diego had met at the sidewalk to wait for Sid only someone strange was among them. Ellie's brothers went to middle school so they were going to school a little later. The strange one nearby tried to climb a neighbor's tree and fell. He tried again, hyperventilating and making urgent squeaks as he continued in determination.

"Who is that?" Ellie asked the others, pointing.

Diego lightened up a bit. "That's the same guy I saw yesterday while everyone was going to their houses. I think he's a nutcase."

Manny narrowed his eyes. "Could that be the squirrel guy we knew?"

"Certainly looks like it. If you're right, that would be Scrat." said Ellie gazing over hopefully.

"Hi guys, sorry I'm late. My sister kind of-"Sid paused when he saw everyone staring.

"Is that the guy you guys think is even nuttier than me?"

"No, but close." replied Manny. "We'd better get moving." Sid wanted to go to Scrat but the rest turned away. He followed his friends after pausing to look at Scrat, in a waddle gate he'd even kept as a human when he stopped procrastinating. They stopped when they entered school grounds. They exchanged schedules to see what classes they had together.

Diego read first. "I have Painting 1, Weights, 10th Grade Algebra, Honors Biology, 9th Grade Social Studies, English B, and" he narrowed his eyes "Spanish."

"Wow, that's a lot. I have Study Skills, Special Ed English, Earth Science, Pre-Algebra, Basic Drawing, Speech, and 9th Grade Social Studies." Sid said quickly as if he knew it by heart and grinned. Everyone stared at him.

"Uh, I have Webpage Design, 9th Grade Science, Pre-Algebra, Creative writing, 9th Grade Social Studies, English B, and Study Skills?" Manny questioned his last class.

"Ooh, that means you have Social Studies with Diego." said Ellie, grinning. I have Mythology, 9th Grade Science, Physical Fitness 1, 9th Grade Social Studies, Basic Drawing, English B, and Pre-Algebra. I have science with you Manny." He smiled even though it was only one class. The four of them entered the school. They saw room numbers, lockers, and most noticeable other teenagers. Some girls were hanging around laughing about a picture of a boy, each dressed in flip-flops, sleeveless tops, and short shorts or blue jeans. Two boys were chasing each other for no apparent reason other than one had stolen the other's baseball cap.

"Wow, you'd really wanna know what they're doing." said Ellie. The rest walked in silence until Sid came up to one of the girls and tried to flirt. The girl screamed and ran away.

"If there's anything you know, never, ever do that!" said Diego, turning to Sid sharply. He gave Sid a written list of the rules and consequences. Sid started to read them loud so everyone in the hallway heard him. Diego came and socked him.

"Hey!" said Sid still reading, "That's against the rules!"

"Right now it sure isn't." replied Manny, grabbing it from him. Ellie watched but didn't take action. She was used to these kind of fights between them though if anything got any worse, she'd probably stand up for Sid. The 5 minute bell rang.

"Ok, now's the time to split up. We need to see if we can find out anything about our situations from our classes. Our goal is to find a way out of here, not get good grades. Everybody hear that?" The rest of the bunch nodded.

Sid smiled and gazed over longingly at a candy machine even though he had no money. He started to dash to it but Manny stopped him.

"Sid! That means you can not get A's in class. It doesn't mean act like yourself!" whispered Manny, irritated.

"Got it." Everyone walked off to their classes.

Just then Scrat burst in the school doors, looking a little bruised and cut but finally with a walnut from the tree he climbed. He cracked it open in the hall with a nutcracker while everyone watched. Then he ate it and hurried to class.

When Ellie got to Mythology, she knew it might lend her some possible information to help her friends. She copied down notes the whole hour on the teacher's boring lecture, just smiling back at anyone staring at her who was awake until the teacher asked her a question.

"Ellie, name one of the animals the ancient Egyptians worshipped."

She looked down in her notes for a second but didn't find an answer.

"The possum." she guessed confidently.

"I'm sorry but I don't know of any possums that lived along the Nile River." the teacher said in a boring, monotone voice. The class laughed but the teacher just kept on with his lecture. She continued her notes as the class went on. The teacher assigned the kids no homework for that day.

Meanwhile, Diego was in his painting class. He got horrified when a kid spilled paint on him. He wiped it on his painting smock, deciding to resist using the sink. Most of the kids were painting flowers as their assignment went. Diego followed the instructions and painted some yellow tulips though he didn't feel he was getting anywhere closer to his friends' dilemma in getting them back to the ice age. Then he painted a lion in his spare time before class ended.

Manny was in the Webpage Design class. He had little idea what all the symbols and text meant for making a webpage. Every time he loaded his webpage there was an error. By the handout he got, he was already earning a C- in the class. If this didn't get him any closer to finding out what happened to them, he decided to still try to do it. After all, the previous night, he had been scanning dozens of webpages. Maybe with luck he could make one if he tried hard enough.

In Study Skills, Sid was given an extra assignment since he claimed he had no homework. Soon he got bored and passed out, snoring. A girl behind him giggled and wrote "Kiss me!" on his neck. Soon the teacher noticed the snoring and tapped her fist hard on the table.

"You have a lot of work to do young man."

Sid woke up instantly and tried to come up with an excuse. "I was just-uh-looking deeply at my paper, you know how much better grades you get when you read hard. Everyone tells you that your grades will turn from F's to A's"

"Smart comments like that do not belong in this classroom. Now do your work like I told you." The teacher putting her finger down sternly at the paper and gave Sid a look. Lip trembling, Sid forced himself to stare down at the paper and finish his work.

Scrat had aerobics first hour. The class was taking turns running. When Scrat got his turn to run, he thought he saw an acorn at the other end of the track. He ran faster than any other kid and made it back with what he thought was an acorn in half the time it took the other kids. He bit down hard on it but as it turned out, it was a littered mini nail polish bottle. He almost broke his teeth again. When he stood there with a hand on his mouth, everyone stared. Luckily the class went in before anyone could ask. However, the next thing the teacher had planned was step aerobics. He made a squeak every time he made a move to the aerobics music. The teacher looked his way but didn't say anything. The other kids and the teacher seemed to already be informed that Scrat was allowed to make noise because he couldn't talk. Still, the kids took an interest and two boys started copying him. Unfortunately, that got them in trouble.

Then came second hour. For Diego, this was no problem, after he learned how to use the equipment in Weights, he used it with ease. The only problem was the teacher caught him for not changing into his gym clothes. The teacher gave him a warning. He decided to bring clothes the next day but he wasn't too sure how humans were supposed to behave while changing in the dressing room.

Manny got to his science class early. He gained great interest when he opened his book to a part on electricity. Soon Ellie was beside him.

"Nice to see you again." They smiled at each other. "What is this on?"

"How electricity is produced. We should study it this period. If we can't figure it out, we can show it to Diego later. They read it until the teacher passed out a sheet on magnetism. After reading through the entire electricity chapter Manny and Ellie started on the magnetism worksheet. They thoroughly read the section that went along with it. Then the teacher handed out more worksheets on magnetism that basically repeated the same thing as their last one. Ellie and Manny decided to do them later and look more at the book. Then they turned back to the electricity chapter.

"Hey, I have an idea!" In electrical stuff they use magnets to make the electricity right? Maybe we can invent something like that and get back that way." Ellie exclaimed.

"I don't know. It seems pretty complex." Manny said, pointing to a diagram of a simple motor.

"Oh, come on! That blue light seemed pretty electric. Don't you think? And the light was coming toward us like a magnet."

"I don't think so. The only things it says here that magnets are attracted to are certain types of metal." said Manny pointing.

"Oh, maybe it's a kind of force that got us here then." They looked up force but also found the definition of work in the textbook. The definition for work was when something that moves an object a distance. Force was even simpler. It was defined as a push or a pull. Manny's eyes narrowed. This was definitely not what they were looking for. Then they hit pay dirt, a chapter on electromagnetic radiation.

"It says it is energy that travels at 300,000 kilometers per hour. That sounds fast doesn't it?"

"Yeah. I'll make sure I research it more when I get home." By now most of the kids were finished with all the handouts. Some started to socialize and the teacher didn't seem to mind. He just sat at his desk and graded papers. A girl came up to them. "Hi, what are you two doing?"

"Just studying." replied Manny.

She looked at all the sheets he had not done. "If it takes you that long, maybe that's why you have Study Skills 7th hour."

"No, my parents just wanted me there." he guessed.

"I thought it was because he had an anger problem." said a small but daring boy at the table next to them. Manny glared at him. Ellie stepped in before Manny could get mad and prove what the boy said.

"No, we're just kinda slow readers. We like to study a lot so we get good grades in class." Ellie said.

"That's a first." replied the girl. By the way, what are your names?"

"I'm Ellie and this is Manny." said Ellie. He waved at the girl subtly.

"My name's Jessica."

"Nice to meet you." Ellie greeted her, giving her a hand shake.

"Nice to meet you too. Sorry, but I just thought you two were some of those geeks that hang around and do nothing but homework."

"We're not." assured Manny. Just then the bell rang and the teacher handed out yet another sheet on the same section.

"See you later Ellie!" Jessica waved. Ellie waved back. Manny and Ellie packed up without a word, exchanging glances, and headed to their next classes. They realized they had a lot of science homework to do that night.

When Sid got to his second hour class, Special Ed English, he was surprised. He saw a bunch of kids from other countries speaking alien languages and others that were barely able to talk and had strange behavior. He went up to 2 Mexican girls gossiping about something in Spanish. One said uno. Sid misinterpreted it.

"Uno, I know what?" They stared at him for a second. Then one counted up to ten in Spanish using her fingers. She held up one finger and said "uno" at last.

"Ooo, no I don't understand you." Sid said.

The girls glanced at him, then continued talking.

Sid walked up to a kid who was acting strangely.

"Hi." he said.

The kid smiled weakly, made a grunt, and wrote "Hello" in response on a piece of paper.

"Hmm, are you a stone age person?" The kid gave Sid an angry look and shook his whole body no. Just then the teacher gave in the room. "Today's lesson will be on the proper way to use English." she said happily.

"Ain't ain't a word!" Sid shouted out.

"Good job!" said the teacher clapping. She handed everyone easy sheets on correcting grammar and English pronunciation. She gave Sid a special sheet on social skills. Everyone finished the sheets pretty fast. The kids passed up their sheets. The teacher told the kids to write down words and sentences they knew while she graded papers. Sid took this time to write a fairly complex, long page on how the sloth was a special animal and how these qualities applied to him. The teacher handed Sid back his social skills paper. Many things were circled and an E was written at the top. His other two papers came out as a C and B-. The teacher collected what everybody wrote while she had been grading papers. She came up to Sid with his paper.

"Can you please give me more factual evidence next time you write on the sloth. I don't think that you compare yourself to one according to their natural habits well. I would suggest that you do some research next time first."

Sid was shocked. He thought he knew very well about sloths and sadly to say also believed he had all the lovable qualities he had listed about sloths.

"What do you mean? We're fast movers, we do things with precision, we speak with a lateral lisp and we're smarter than most other animals."

"Sloth?" said a Norwegian boy. "Moves slow, can't walk, slow but no in water." he said slowly with an accent. He was obviously just learning English.

The teacher's expression hardened. "When you say "we're", what are you referring to?"

"Oh, you know, how I'm a sloth and I-" Sid covered his mouth.

"Sloth?" the Norwegian boy repeated.

"I'm sorry but the sloth is not a kind of person. It is actually an animal." the teacher corrected.

"Oh, now what I meant was I'm a sloth, she's a sloth (pointed to one of the Mexican girls, he's a sloth (pointed to a mute boy in the far corner), they're sloths (pointed to the kid who acted strange, two Japanese kids, and the Norwegian boy), we're all sloths!"

Most of the class burst out in laughter, obviously misinterpreting Sid's error.

The teacher made him look up sloth in the dictionary and do a web search on them for the rest of class. Sid was not happy with what he found written about modern day sloths. He was about to declare all of it fake but the bell rang and the teacher and kids left the room before he could open his mouth.

Scrat had a cooking class that hour. Everyone was making cakes and sandwiches. Scrat tried to make a acorn shaped cake but didn't have a clue how. Eventually he spotted a nut shape in somebody's cake and dug into it, getting frosting everywhere and all over several people's clothes including his own. He was given a note home requesting a behavior conference with his parents or to serve a detention. He was sent to the dressing room to change into his aerobics clothes but luckily, no one was in there so there was no problem.

Manny had Pre-Algebra next. He was almost completely lost when he looked at his practice sheet. Fortunately for him, the teacher cared. The teacher saw Manny struggling and came over to help.

"2+3/5x20. First take away 2 from both sides. Then multiply 18 by the reciprocal of 3/5." Manny was still lost. "Um, what does reciprocal mean?"

"The opposite of the number, like the reciprocal of 2 is -2, and the reciprocal of ¾ is 4/3."

"So the numbers are reversed sort of?"

"Yes. So you multiply both sides by the reciprocal of 5/3."

After a few problems like that Manny caught on and he found the graphing exercise quite easy. He was feeling quite confident until the teacher handed everyone a quiz. The teacher said not to copy so he didn't look at anyone else's paper. There were some things he knew how to do and some things he didn't. He was able to figure out most of the things like problems with negative numbers because he had known about them from the ice age and stuff that he had already learned that hour but some of the squared numbers puzzled him. He handed the paper in and estimated that he got a B. Mr. Jones assigned a few pages in the book for everyone to do that night.

Diego also had math that hour, only on a 10th grade level. When he was given pages to do in the book, he looked everything up for a while and was able to understand most of what he was doing after that. He easily calculated numbers when multiply and dividing. Needing to calculate distance and speed when he hunted as a saber seemed to give him the ability to work with numbers well. At last the instructor handed out a sheet on some formulas and math concepts. Diego was pretty sure of himself that he would know hoe to do it.

Ellie had Personal Fitness 1 next. She followed the kids into the dressing room. Luckily she found a pair of gym clothes in what she remembered as her locker. When class started the teacher announced that they would be playing volleyball. She did very well at volleyball once she got the hang of hitting the ball. She also beat everyone in class at the sit and reach test.

For Earth Science, the teacher had the kids watch a boring video and told them to take notes. Sid started to fall asleep only 5 minutes after the video started. However, a tough girl dressed in black with pigtails who couldn't take snoring was sitting next to him. She whacked him every time he fell asleep. He tried to cover his sleepiness up by starting to talk when he was forced awake but the girl was all business. She flicked him on the head whenever he tried to talk and pointed his head at the television screen when she got really frustrated. After a while it worked but, after watching the movie for the rest of the hour, his head felt numb and his vision was blurry from the mental strain so he headed to the bathroom to wash his face only it made him late for his next class. He also forgot to pick up a worksheet that for a section in his textbook when he left.

Meanwhile, Scrat was sitting in the office with his detention slip. The principal came up to him and took him to his back office.

"Any type of food fighting is not tolerated here. That includes any type of throwing, squirting, spitting, spilling, or improper eating behaviors. For your incident, you will be taken out of the cooking class and switched in 9th Grade Science in place of it. Since you are in the Special Ed program, you may be given a detention or parent conference. I am not asking for a reply from you. I just expect that you return with that sheet signed and ready to hand in tomorrow."

Scrat nodded. He had kept his squirrelly sounds to a minimum while the principal was talking.

"You may be excused." Scrat nodded and left. He had been waiting a whole hour and a half in the office so he was given a pass to go to his 4th hour class because he had just sat in a chair until the principal finally went out of his office and found him.

Diego was in Honors Biology class. He was given a lecture from the teacher for the whole hour so he took time to look through his textbook. Besides, everyone else was daydreaming or half asleep. Only a few kids maintained focus on the instructor. He started by looking up definitions in the book's index. He quickly got a feel for the basic things like genotypes and dominant/recessive genes. He turned to the page numbers for things he didn't understand. After looking at this textbook as well as his math one he picked up on how complex humans were in the modern age. There were theories and symbols for formulas no animal would have dreamed of coming up with. However, being human, he somehow remembered some things about biology out of the blue. It reminded him of how the rest of the herd and him had suddenly picked up what all the human things were around them when they first came out of the ice age. He thought and continued to search. Then the bell rang for lunch.

Ellie had 9th Grade Social Studies 4th hour. The teacher was assigning everyone projects on the American Revolution. She was teamed up with a boy named Adam. She was going to be researching the Boston Tea Party and King George the Third with him.

The teacher gave the signal for everyone to start working. She was looking at a picture of some colonists dumping tea into the ocean in her book when Adam walked over.

"Hi."

"Hi!" she smiled back.

"I know but maybe we could get some pictures off the internet for the project and caption them. We could also type some pages on our two topics and how they are similar. What do you think?"

"Should we split the jobs o do them together. Cause' I don't think I understand the whole dumping tea into the ocean thing."

"Together I guess. Maybe I could start typing while you read about it in your book."

"Good idea!" she exclaimed. She began to read on it. As she read about her topics she wondered why the person called King George the Third would be so obsessed with ruling a continent so far away. Ellie read about how The Boston Tea Party was to rebel against rising taxes and about how King George was so uncaring for the colonists, especially when all they wanted to do was have their own country. Then she saw a sentence that stunned her in the next section about the settling of the west. 'The colonists' tempers rose when the Native Americans fought to keep their land when Westward expansion began.' She read on, fascinated. 'This was the start of many battles and conflicts between Americans and Indians that were based upon how the settlers thought of themselves as superior to all other races.' She read on about it and then closed the book, shocked that anyone could be so judgmental. Ice age animals sure weren't like that. Ellie suddenly saw King George's point.

She came up to Adam who had already finished a few paragraphs. "Hey, I think King George was right about ruling the colonists."

Adam gave her a blank stare. "America was founded because the king lost power of the colonists. Besides, I don't think the teacher wants us to give our opinion in our project."

Ellie nodded and took a seat at the computer next to him. Because she liked her topics so much, she typed with lightning speed and had finished almost as much as Adam by the end of the hour.

At the same time, Manny had Creative Writing. The teacher was very carefree and let the class write whatever stories they wanted for the whole hour as long as they were appropriate. Manny didn't know what he could write without saying something about the ice age or saying things about his awkward household with his 4 sisters. Finally he settled his mind of something. He wrote about problems he thought were in the typical life of a teenager. He wasn't sure it came out right but handed it to the teacher anyway when class ended.

Sid was late for Pre-Algebra. He had the same teacher as Manny, Mr. Jones. The teacher joked when Sid came in, 5 minutes late, face dripping with water from the restroom.

"So those kids must have been really after you." Mr. Jones teased. "Go ahead and sit down right there." He pointed to a seat near the front of the class. Sid sat down and Mr. Jones pasted out a math equation paper. Sid's vision went from good to blurry again right after he saw the problems. He had no idea whatsoever how to do them and the movie from last hour hadn't helped. Just then, he felt something damp on his neck. A few girls were laughing behind him. Sid recovered fast.

"Hey, if you're gonna kiss me, try my lips." he said in a wide-faced grin. The girls laughed again.

"Try kissing this." One of them showed him a filthy tissue covered in lipstick and dirt.

"No, I actually prefer French kissing." said Sid.

"You can French kiss our tissue. All the girls love it when a boy does that." the leader said, picking up on Sid's lack of common sense.

Sid tried it and ended up spitting it out across the room. The girls laughed and Sid looked back at them, completely oblivious to their joke. He tried to do the equations again but still didn't know how.

"Mr. Teacher, I need help!" Mr. Jones came to him.

"What's wrong."

"What does this mean?" he pointed to a review question that a kid in 3rd Grade should know that said "10/?0" Mr. Jones looked surprised that Sid didn't know it how to do it. He gestured to the girls that had been teasing him earlier behind him. "Why don't you ask these fine ladies for help." The girls agreed to help but poor Sid was going to be even more stuck getting help from them.

"10 divided by one equals what? One, two, three, a million?" they teased.

"Uno?" Sid guessed.

"Yes, just keep writing answers like that and you should get an A."

"Words also count." another whispered.

Sid believed them and wrote things like uno, zero, sloth, love machine, a, b, c, math champion, and random phrases and numbers. When the quiz got passed out Sid questioned if he should do the same thing on it.

"Oh, sure. We do it all the time. A few other naughty kids nodded in agreement and snickered. Sid did as he was told and handed in his quiz and passed it in fairly pleased. Sid vowed to do the pages in the textbook for homework the same way. Doing what the girls said was fun and easy.

Scrat had English that hour. The teacher gave him a handout and told him to write about something other than nuts. He thought for a moment. Then he wrote about all the perils he had been faced with as a saber-toothed squirrel, accidentally mentioning nuts here and there. Then his last paragraph was about how badly he wanted a nut as a prize for his work. The teacher collected the papers and lectured for the rest of the hour. Scrat took the time to draw a perfect picture of an acorn on a notebook piece of paper before lunch started.

This one was really silly. Let me know what you thnk of it.