Mermaid Pirate Dispatch

The school’s hundred-year-old wooden floorboards creaked heroically under Mrs. Masterson’s feet as she paced up and down the sloppy columns of desks. Adrian stole a glance at her long, swaying skirt as she sauntered past his seat then quickly locked his eyes back down on his test packet. Hairs stood up on the back of his neck when she stopped moving but the creaking continued for another two steps before going silent.

He turned around to his best friend, clenched his jaw, and pushed his eyes out, code for did you hear that?

Andy raised his eyebrows and shrugged, looking deliberately back down at his own test. This, of course, meant, I don’t know what you’re going on about, but I’m focusing on my test!

Adrian growled to himself and turned back around, a cold sweat trickling down his scalp. He stared at the grid of circles on the old Scantron answer sheet. Mrs. Masterson insisted that computers were just a distraction and that real learning happens with paper and pencil. But the rumor was that someone had hacked the computer network in her classroom during her first year teaching at Freemont Elementary School after taking over for the recently deceased Zeeman Harrison.

Mr. Harrison had been ancient, but everyone liked him. Even Adrian had been known to wave to him in the halls on his way to class every morning. Mr. Harrison would stand outside his classroom door and smile at every student in the school, his unnaturally white teeth glistening in the morning sun.

Adrian had been looking forward to having Mr. Harrison as his 4th grade teacher, but sadly the old man had passed away during the summer break a year prior and now Mrs. Masterson taught in his old room, ambling about like an elephant inspecting rows of corn, her stubby feet sinking into the rotting, squeaky floorboards every time she took a step.

The teacher rounded the corner at the front of his column and he crinkled his nose in disgust, huffing his disapproval out through flared nostrils. He took another breath and let out a sigh, attempting to focus on the test.

Question four: One hundred and ninety five times four. He groaned internally and rolled his eyes, glancing at his pristine, empty scratch paper. Show your work, he sneered to himself, mocking the teacher’s incessant insistence on old-fashioned principles. Nobody does math that way anymore, he thought. He scanned the possible answers.

A) 475
B) 580
C) 660
D) 780

He rolled his eyes again, thought for half a second, and decided C looked like a good answer. He found the number four on the answer grid, slid the pencil over to the C circle, and pressed down. Before the pencil had even made contact with the paper the lead cracked spectacularly, sending the entirety of the tip flying into Annie’s hair.

His eyes bulged and he stared at the back of Annie’s head, something he had spent plenty of time doing before. He often got lost in the glossy, flowing river of her beautiful brown locks, entranced by the medley of light and shadow, highlight strands contrasting with deep, rich strands of pure silky chocolate. Now there was lead in there somewhere. He ground his teeth, glaring back down at the broken pencil.

I didn’t even push down hard! he murmured internally. Thankfully he’d listened when the teacher had insisted they keep their pencil sharpeners out on the desk. He quickly shaved off nearly a half inch, chipping away at the wood and graphite, trying to see how long he could keep a single sheet of it together as he twisted while applying gentle pressure. He could have used the backup pencil, but he loved watching the blade whittle away at the archaic writing implement.

Finally he had a point he was happy with. He set down the sharpener and looked back up at the Scantron answer sheet. His heart jumped and he shook violently just as the second pencil collapsed back down to the wooden desk with a loud crack.

Mrs. Masterson shot him a nasty look and he blinked twice, his wide eyes staring at the scratch paper. It was no longer blank. The setup to multiply one-ninety-five by four had been written out, though the line underneath the stacked numbers hadn’t been completed. He stared at the writing, which was weak and shaky but certainly legible, then he looked around the area, trying to see who might have done it.

Adrian glared back at Andy again with bulging eyes, his brow raised high enough to pull up on the tip of his nose and lift his ears. This, of course, meant, was that you?

Andy cocked his head with wide eyes that clearly said, you’re going to get us in trouble!

Sure enough, Mrs. Masterson was coming their way. “Is there something wrong, Adrian?” Her shrill voice croaked like a possessed bullfrog and Adrian slowly turned to face her, grinning nervously.

“No, ma’am,” he whimpered.

“Keep your head down or I’ll fail you for cheating,” she warned. He knew this was not an idle threat. She had failed Peter and Linda last week when she suspected they were cheating. Really they were just passing love letters, but they couldn’t admit to it, so they took the fall for cheating.

Adrian stared in disbelief at the writing on his scratch paper. Shaking his head, he slid his hand back to the answer sheet and prepared to fill in the C answer once again. This time the lead splintered and crumbled long before he lowered the tip to the paper.

“Ugh!” he groaned, quickly staring up at the teacher who whipped around to snarl at him. His face pulled into a tight grimace and he immediately put his head down, taking up the spare pencil. Fine, he thought, I’ll show my work.

He paused, staring at the arrangement of the numbers, trying to remember the first step. Gently, he felt the pencil being dragged down as though it suddenly weight just a tiny bit more. He let the pencil fall a little down and to the right, directly below the column where the four appeared under the five. The point rested gently on the page without breaking.

Oh, he thought. I think I remember. I need to multiply the four and the five… He pondered a moment, and began to write a two, but before he could cross the curve to the lower left and pull it back to make the horizontal line, the pencil seized up and wouldn’t move. His hand trembled as he worked to fight it but as it shook the pencil slowly continued its arch down before curving left and up to close a circle.

Zero? he thought. Then it hit him. Sure, four times five is twenty, but you’re supposed to write the zero and carry the two. He rolled his eyes and wrote a little two up by the nine in the top row. Four times nine? He pursed his lips and rolled his eyes again, taking an aggressive breath in through his nose and desperately wanting to just guess at the answer.

Eventually he realized he could just double the nine twice, something that wasn’t too hard to do in his head. Four times five was really just double the five for a ten, then doubling that again for twenty. Of course, eighteen was a little harder to double than ten, but he worked it out.

He started writing the six of thirty-six, but once again the pencil screeched to a halt near the top of the curve. His hand wobbled and jerked as he fought for control, but in the end he wound up with a tremendously sloppy eight.

Oh! he thought, nearly slapping himself on the forehead. I forgot to add on the two! He chuckled to himself, then his heart jumped as he realized what was happening. Who was helping him? What on earth was going on? He looked around nervously, side-eyeing Mrs. Masterson carefully. He ran his fingers along the length of the pencil, searching for strings or wires or anything that might be controlling it. Nothing.

He took a deep, resigned breath and pressed on, carrying the three up to the one. One times four is four, add the three… He glanced at the answers and groaned. The answer was D, not C. But when he tried to fill in the answer his pencil wouldn’t budge from over the scratch paper. Once again the instructions to show your work echoed in his mind. Begrudgingly he scrawled a seven in a column with the one and thought, there, you happy?

Sure enough, he was able to fill in the D circle without incident. He smiled and leaned back to fold his arms with satisfaction. Then Mrs. Masterson gave the ten minute warning. He flipped forward in the test packet. Twenty more questions?! He gasped, his mind racing. He gripped the pencil in a sweaty fist and rushed to blitzkrieg the answer sheet, filling in some kind of pattern or something, anything to finish before the time ran out.

Instantly the pencil lead crumbled onto the paper and he was left stabbing the dull, dry wood fruitlessly into the surface of the paper, its volcanic opening spreading out like a splintering straw. The chalkboard eraser sailed back at him from the front of the room, pelting him on the side of his head in an explosive cloud of white dust.

“Ow!” he cried, blinking his stinging eyes rapidly as they filled with the irritating chalk particles. For a brief instant in that swirling sea of white he could have sworn he saw Mr. Harrison scowling at him with a mischievous smile.

“Adrian!” Mrs. Masterson wailed. “You have failed this test! Go immediately to the principal’s office!”

He blinked, chalk covering his entire head and upper body, staring blankly at the woman he and his friends secretly called “the mastodon.” His chest was heaving, filling his lungs with dust. A chill prickled its way all over his flesh. Shaking, he got to his feet and stumbled out of the classroom into the hall, coughing breathlessly. Unblinking, he floated to the principal’s office, his stunned mind entirely unprepared for the conversation he’d soon be having.

[Reddit Post]