Suddenly, the room grew silent except for a noise that sounded a bit like one of those spring doorstops hitting some piano keys before being aburptly silenced. "Yo tengo el perro," said Rachel out of nowhere.
"What?" asked Jordan in surprise.
Rachel unfolded her hands to reveal the dog figurine. It was true.
"Can she… even do that?" asked Kiki.
"N-no!" said Randy, his eyelashed eyes expressing irritation and his clenched teeth accentuating his chiseled cheekbones. "That's against the ru-ules!"
"BAAAAH!" went Jacques, to everyone's surprise, even his own.
"It is not," retorted Rachel with her eyes closed. "Mr. Pony never said anything about confessing to the class that you had one of the animals without being asked. If the objective of the game is to discover the owner of each animal, why not voluntarily reveal this information?"
"Because it takes the fun out of the game!" insisted Owen. "What would be the point if everyone just said what animal they had, and you knew everything before you even started playing?"
"You are one to talk," responded Rachel elegantly, before adding like the bladed tail of a lizard, "for one who had their eyes open the entire time Mr. Pony was distributing the animals." The whole class gasped. Mr. Pony stifled a grin and covered their mouth with both hands in anticipation. Though they were not allowed to reveal their teaching secrets to the class, similarly to Heads-up Seven-up, the true objective of Tienes el Gato was to identify who among the students would be likely to cheat on assignments or tests by peeking, as well as encourage student teamwork and group problem solving.
Owen burst into tears. "I can't believe you would lie like that! Why are you bullying me? I would never ever do something like that!"
"BAAAAH!" went Jacques.
Jordan put his hand over his nose and mouth thoughtfully. "Wait. If Jacques only goes 'BAAAAH' when someone tells a lie, doesn't that mean that you really were watching the whole time?"
"Not only that," added Jenny coldly, "Since he was looking the whole time, that means he was also cheating."
"What the heck!" said Kathleen angrily, leaning forward and balling up her fists behind her. "If you do that, the game isn't fair for anyone else!"
"Why is everyone ganging up on me?" asked Owen, his voice hoarse. "I didn't do anything wrong! This is all Rachel's fault!"
"Oh?" said Rachel, slightly bemused.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"She's the one who ruined the game for everyone else! So what if I already knew? I let y'all have fun playing the game. I was the one following your stupid ru-ules!" He pointed angrily at Randy.
"Don't point at me," scoffed Randy. "It's disrespectful."
"Uh," interjected William. "that's only true if you point with the middle finger."
At first, Mr. Pony looked like they were willing to see how this situation unfolded, but now it had escalated to the point of needing an intervention.
"Hey now," they reassured Owen in a calming tone. "Why don't you just take a deep breath, and count to three? Remember, this is just a game, and everything will be alright afterwards. No use getting in a quarrel with your friends over something that won't matter tomorrow."
Owen thought about this for a second, then decided to take Mr. Pony's advice. He took a deep breath and wiped his tears away with the sleeve of his dark blue sweatshirt, smudging his drawn-on facial hair a little. He cleared his throat, seeming a lot more composed now.
"You're right!" he admitted, spreading his arms wide and downward as if he was making a grand presentation. "It is just a game." He then grinned and put his hands behind his head. "Thanks Mr. Pony, I got a little carried away back there."
Everyone gawked at Owen. His mood had changed almost instantly, like someone had pulled the switch, the Nintendo Switch, inside his head.
"Hey, uh, Owen," began Jordan, "You all good now?"
"Oh, totally," he replied, closing his eyes and waving his hand nonchalantly. "Because..." His grin spread wider, his shiny teeth like Chip Skylark catching the fluorescent light from the ceiling and giving him an impish appearance.
"Yo sé quíen tiene el pato."
"HE SPEAKS SPANISH!?" the voice of a large man could be heard bellowing somewhere far in the distance.
"What does that even mean?" asked Kiki, putting a finger to her lips thoughtfully.
Owen put a finger to his chin. "Maddie. Tienes el pato." The way he said it affirmed that it was a statement, not a question.
"Huh?" asked Jordan, drawing back his hands in surprise. Everyone was silent for a few seconds.
"I said," repeated Owen, in a language we could all understand this time, "Maddie has the duck."
"There's no way," breathed a shocked Randy.
"Oh, there totally is," prodded Owen, pointing a finger wrathfully at the rest of the class. "Because Jacquesypoo here totally would have gone 'BAAAAH!' if I was lying… right, Maddie?"
"He's… right," I admitted, before presenting the handsome blue harlequin duck figurine. "Yo tengo el pato."
"So now that we've found all of the animals, what happens?" asked Kristy, her hand to her chin thoughtfully.
"Simple," answered Rachel, closing her eyes and folding her hands in front of her. "The game ends, and we emerge victorious."
"Huh?" asked William. "But that was so quick! It wasn't any fun!"
"Yeah..." added Kiki slowly. "All we did was yell at each other."
"It's all Owen's fault," accused Randy. "He ruined the game for us."
"How many times do I have to tell you, it's not my fault!" responded Owen. "It was Rachel!"
"I may have revealed that I had el perro," qualmed Rachel, "but that was only for the sake of advancing the game more quickly. How is that any different from what you did? How does that make me more at fault than you?"
"Because you had to go and take all the guesswork, all the uncertainty, all the fun out of the game," insisted Owen. "So when everyone ganged up on me for no reason, I just… decided to return the favor."
"Yeah, but you broke the rules," inputted Randy. "You peeked. Rachel did nothing wrong."
"What? She ruined the game! How is that not wrong?"
"What is right or wrong is but your opinion. Is the objective of the game not to win?" asked Rachel, with a cunning smile. "If that is true, then, objectively, what I have done is right." Somehow, it felt like this argument, and not actually winning Tienes el gato, had been her goal this entire time.
"No, it's wrong!" insisted Owen angrily. "What's the point of playing a game if it's no fun? If everyone just says they have whatever animal they have, it spoils it for everyone else! Do you wanna spoil The Last Jedi too, while you're at it?"
"But what she did didn't break any rules," countered Randy. "Jacques' weird lie detector thing says so. But since you watched Mr. Pony give everyone else the animals, you were the one that broke the rules!"
Mr. Pony blew a whistle. Everyone jumped in surprise and turned to look at them. "Time out, everyone! You lot are getting a bit too out of control. Normally, I'd be 100% down to continue this heavily moderated discussion. But – and this it a big but - "
Owen snorted with laughter.
"Ahem," continued Mr. Pony, slightly irate. "The cars are starting to pile up outside. Your parents slash guardians are going to wonder where you are if I keep you here much longer. So for that reason, I'm going to need you to line up behind Jordan to leave the classroom." They quickly retrieved the animal figurines.
"You heard Mr. Pony!" exclaimed Randy. "Please move in an orderly fashion!"
My head still spinning like a Beyblade, I stumbled into my place in line as if I was on autopilot. Although I had been tasked with handling the responsibility of being the keeper of el pato, I felt as if I had just been swept along in the tide of my more powerfully-personalitied friends, just like what had happened during kickball. It was as if I had been robbed of my agency in my own story. I wasn't sure I liked the feeling. This time, Mr. Pony did not stop to give me anything before I left the classroom, and though everyone was silent, it was a hostile silence, and it felt like you could cut the tension in the room with a knife, specifically the knife that Chuck uses to cut butter sandwiches into triangles.
As if I were a Cog in the machine, I patiently waited my turn as the kindergartners in front of me were picked up one by one by their parents or guardians. Eventually, I dejectedly clambered into my mama's car. And just like that… the second day of school was over.
TO BE CONTINUED
...Mr. Pony leaned against the outside of the kindergarten building. Removing the crown from their lips and pretending to exhale deeply, they said "whew. Today was quite a day."
"Do you want to talk about it?" asked one of the other two beings near them.
"I guess," replied Mr. Pony, putting the crown back to their lips. "One of my kiddoes had two meltdowns during class and then recess, and a few of the others got into a fight over the rules of a game we played afterwards."
"Yeah, I think I may have heard some of that. You really can't underestimate these kids," replied the other being. "Even if they're only kindergarteners now."
"I know. I can only imagine how unruly your class is, even compared to mine," replied Mr. Pony.
"Should we be worried?" queried the third being, the same one that had been talking to the two security guards in the camera room earlier that day.
"The issues aren't serious enough to warrant… administrative action yet," answered the second being, treading carefully around their words. "Though we'll have a better idea after the class swap."
"Understood. Thank you for your input, Ms. Uni," And with that, the third being bowed and took his leave, getting into a long, black limousine in the carpool loop and driving away.
"Those administrative hecks," asked Ms. Uni now that the mysterious being was out of earshot. "What was that even about?"
"Language, sis," reminded Mr. Pony. "But I have no clue," the added despondently, pretending to take another drag of his crown. "Anyways, I'm bushed. I need a butter sandwich."