Lor Mandela - Destruction from Twins (28 page)

As though on cue, everyone turned their
attention to a completely horrified Maggie who slid down in her
chair and blushed through about six different shades of red.

Holden winked as if he and Maggie had known
each other for years and plunked down at an empty desk at the other
side of the room.

Again, as if they were cued to do it, every
student slowly turned their attention from Maggie to Mr. Lee who
was now shaking uncontrollably, breathing sporadically, and
clutching the sides of his desk. His tiny sunken eyes bulged widely
in the sockets. Slowly, and without saying another word, he stood
and walked toward the door. He practically ripped the handle off of
it as he flung it open and staggered out into the hall.

Cynthia Dix, the straight “A” braniac in the
class quietly speculated, “Oh my gosh! He’s having a coronary!”

Other students added their comments, and the
buzz of twenty-two murmuring teenagers filled the usually silent
classroom.

Maggie glanced over at Holden. He was
leaning toward a group of girls who were whispering to each other,
grinning widely and listening intently as if he were trying to
overhear some juicy bit of gossip. He sat back up, but then leaned
toward another group in exactly the same way.

After several minutes, the door flew open
and Mr. Lee finally strode back into the room and glared angrily at
Holden. All conversation came to an abrupt halt. He was still quite
scarlet in the face, but his breathing seemed to be more normal.
After a long pause, he sneered, “We are reading the Chapter
eighteen review, Mr. Guarlo.”

For a few seconds, Holden just stared at Mr.
Lee's twitching face in awe. Then, he shrugged his shoulders,
looked down at his still closed text book, and quipped, “Cool Mr. L
. . . but where I come from that’s like third grade stuff.”

Several students gasped aloud at Holden’s
unbelievable nerve.

“Oh, really,” Mr. Lee sneered, weaving his
way through a maze of desks until he was standing directly in front
of Holden. “Why don’t you just prove that, Mr. Guarlo?” He slapped
Holden’s desk, but was far too wimpy for the slap to make much of
an impact. “I want a ten page essay on rational expressions,
including examples and information sources on my desk by the end of
the day this Friday.”

Mr. Lee’s entire body seemed to be shaking
in an effort to keep from strangling his new student. “I want it
typed and single spaced,” he hissed as he tried to come up with
anything else he could add on to make the assignment more
difficult. “If you fail this assignment, Mr. Guarlo, you will fail
my class!”

The Math Nazi smiled triumphantly, confident
that there was not enough information in the world to produce a ten
page report on this particular subject. He tapped a bony finger on
Holden’s book, and in his usual garbled voice said, “You’d better
get started.” He turned and walked back up to the front of the room
and sat back smugly in his desk chair.

Holden’s face still bore a ridiculous grin,
as he reached in the tattered brown book bag at his feet and pulled
out a yellow paper folder. From where Maggie sat, she could see
that written on the front of it, in beautiful black calligraphy,
were the words;

“
Rational Expressions
Defined”

A Report by Holden Guarlo

Positively stunned, she watched as Holden
sauntered up to Mr. Lee’s desk and casually placed the yellow
folder on it in front of a ghostly pale, sweaty, wide-eyed and
shaking Math Nazi.

“Thank you,” he hissed and
threw the folder onto the heap of papers. “Just go sit down and
leave me
alone!
”

Holden chuckled. “Duuude, two words . . .
day . . . spa.”

This time, almost everyone in the room
laughed out loud.

“Silence!” The Math Nazi’s voice was much
higher-pitched than normal. “Read!”

The class fell silent.

Holden looked over at Maggie once more,
shrugged and whispered, “Sheesh.”

She lowered her head, glanced around
nervously out of the corner of her eye, and pretended to be
reading. She didn’t move again until the bell rang.

D
uring the break between first period and second, the halls of
the high school came alive. The seven minutes in between classes
were always pretty loud, but as students hurried down the musty
halls and toward their next classes, all conversation seemed to be
centered on this new, crazily dressed, and overly confident Holden
Guarlo. (Glenhill is a very small community after all—news travels
quickly.) Even Maggie was excitedly telling Bridgette and Lorrine,
about Holden’s psychological assault on Mr. Lee.

“It was so bizarre,” she shouted over the
din. “I mean, he had a report on Rational Expressions already
written in his book bag! How many people do that?”

Lorrine pushed her plastic rimmed glasses up
on her nose, shrugged her shoulders, and looked at a group of kids
that were walking past.

It appeared that there was one very annoying
side effect to Holden’s arrival at Glenhill High. Everyone assumed
that Maggie knew him somehow; and now they were all eyeing her
suspiciously.

“Why is everyone staring at you, Margaret?”
Lorrine inquired.

Maggie glanced around at the herds of
students making their way through the school. They were whispering
amongst themselves and looking at her like she’d grown another
head.

“Well,” she explained, “he sort of singled
me out in class.”

“What do you mean?” Bridgette asked.

“Um . . . he acted like . . . well, he said
that he saw us that day at the pond,” she explained.

Suddenly an odd sinking sensation welled up
in the pit of her stomach. She felt queasy and dizzy, just like she
had at home earlier. “Uh . . . I . . . uh . . . .”

“Hey, are you all right?” Lorrine asked.
“You’re looking rather pallid!”

Maggie leaned up against her locker for
support and shot Lorrine a desperate, pleading look. Both Bridgette
and Lorrine stared at her with concern.

“What’s wrong?” Bridgette asked. Her normal
smile disappeared as she watched Maggie’s color change from pure
white to a sickly purple.

She couldn’t answer. She felt strange. It
was almost like she had been lassoed around the middle and was
being tugged backward. Only, it felt like the lasso was attached to
the inside of her body—like someone was trying to pull her insides
out through her back.

“Lorrie,” Bridgette’s voice seemed distant.
“I think we’d better get her to the nurse’s office. She looks like
she’s gonna pass out!”

Suddenly, Maggie heard a faint “whooshing”
sound coming from somewhere behind her. The sound faded in and out,
but grew increasingly louder with each whoosh.

“All right, but can you take her?” Lorrine
answered, “I can’t be late for my next class.”

“What? Well neither can I!” Bridgette
protested.

They started arguing back and forth, both
blurting out a list of reasons why the other should go.

“Fine,” Lorrine finally exclaimed, “I will
do it!” She glanced over to see how Maggie was hanging in, but then
frowned and asked, “Hey, where did she go?”

Both of Maggie’s friends looked straight at
her with confused and bewildered expressions on their faces.

Bridgette shrugged her shoulders and
suggested, “Maybe she ran to the bathroom. She did kinda look like
she was gonna puke!”

“Hey! Hello!” Maggie snapped. “I’m right
here!” She felt like she was about to be pulled backwards through
her locker. “Hellooo!”

Bridgette and Lorrine, who seemed oblivious
to the fact that she was standing right in front of them, turned
and started to walk away.

“Hey! You guys! Where are you going?” she
called out desperately. Just then the whooshing sound stopped and
the yanking and tugging on her insides ceased so suddenly, that she
almost fell over backward.

She glanced down at her feet and realized
that she was no longer standing on the grimy grey linoleum that
covered the floors of the school. She was instead in a large open
field; thick, tall grasses of deep brown and rust swayed gently
around her.

Hanging in the air, just above the grass,
was a bizarre, pale green fog. The fog filled the sky as high as
Maggie could see.

“Oh, no,” she panicked.
“Am I . . .” Her blue eyes widened, “
dead?
” She whispered the word “dead”
as she felt her stomach and sides. Everything seemed to be intact.
“Okay, girl,” she said, taking a deep breath to calm herself down.
“Get a grip! Think! If I’m dead, Bridge and Lorrine would have seen
me being, well, dead. They’re acting like I’m invisi . . .
.”

She stopped short, absolutely refusing to
say something so absurd. “So, what’s going on?” she questioned
aloud.

She turned back toward Bridgette and Lorrine
and saw them talking as they walked further and further away from
her. “Bridge! Lorrine! You guys,” she cried out, but they just kept
walking. They could not hear her calling.

She was somehow in two places at once. She
could see the halls of the school and the few students who were now
hustling to make it to class on time, but behind her—where a row of
lockers should be—was the large, foggy field. She looked toward the
big double doors of the school, only to find that they had become
part of the field. In the distance, dark, undefined shapes moved
behind the murkiness.

As she watched the shapes twist slowly
through the fog, she heard a faint sound—a woman’s voice—coming
from where the shapes were. Maggie closed her eyes and listened,
trying to make out what the woman was saying.

“Grass? Grass?” The woman’s voice was
distant and quiet, but it sounded like she was saying “grass.”

“Grass?” Maggie had hoped for something a
little more enlightening. She was perfectly aware that she was
standing in a field of grass!

She squinted, in an effort to make out what
was moving in the haze, but all she could see were the shadows.

As she leaned closer to the blurred forms,
the “whoosh” that she had heard before, started whooshing again. It
grew until it had amplified to a loud roar. As the roar reached a
riotous crescendo, there was a blinding flash of blue light, and
Maggie was back, standing in front of a row of purple and gold
lockers.

She looked at the floor, which was once
again dirty, gray vinyl, and at the double doors which were where
they were supposed to be.

She stood alone in the high school hall,
trying to figure out what had just happened.

“What in the world is going on with me?” she
questioned out loud. She searched her thoughts for some logical
explanation for how the morning had unfolded, but nothing came
readily to mind. In the few short hours since she had gotten out of
bed, there had been nothing but chaos.

After lingering for a few more stunned
seconds, she decided that she had better get to her next class. She
didn’t want to walk into class late—that was always awkward—but she
couldn’t think of anything else to do instead.

“I got sick . . . I was in the bathroom
throwing up . . . I must’ve eaten something . . . .” She tried to
think up a good excuse to give her teacher for her tardiness.
“Well, at least it’s Ms. Devereaux, and not Mr. Lee.” She shuddered
at the mere mention of him.

After a few minutes, she reached the back
auditorium door leading to the stage where her advanced drama class
met. This was Maggie’s favorite class due largely to Ms. Devereaux,
the eccentric, but always cheerful drama teacher. Ms. Devereaux’s
quirky charm was a welcome ray of sunshine after dealing with Mr.
“Math Nazi” Lee.

“Oh, Maggie dear,” Ms. Devereaux smiled
sweetly as she came in.

She half-heartedly smiled back as she
stopped to take in today’s version of her wonderfully unique
teacher.

One could never be sure what to expect when
they entered into the presence of Angelique Devereaux. Today, she
wore a bright pink, ankle-length taffeta skirt that was held out
widely at the bottom by layers and layers of lime green netting.
Her top was a flowing, white peasant blouse with small, pink polka
dots on the large, billowing sleeves. Her long, thick, silvery hair
was tied up in a green scarf with crinkly fringe on the ends, and
her eyes were framed by large, hot pink glasses. Due to the
brightest pink lipstick imaginable, her lips seemed to be leaping
off her face.

She walked over to Maggie and took her
warmly by the hand. “I was worried about you, love. You do look
pale! Brigeet said that you were not feeling well.” Ms. Devereaux’s
voice was soft and soothing, with the slightest hint of a French
accent. “Will you be here tomorrow, do you think?”

“Um,” Maggie frowned, “I’m here now.”

She realized as she spoke that something
wasn’t right. As she looked past her teacher to the students busily
rehearsing skits, she noticed that these were not her usual
classmates.

“Oh, fantastic!” she moaned. She couldn’t
believe that yet another bizarre twist had been thrown into her
day. She looked at the back wall of the auditorium where large
Roman numerals formed a gigantic clock.

“You’ve got to be kidding!” she moaned.

The clock read 11:35—nearly two hours after
her friends had left her standing in the misty field at her
locker.

Maggie stood staring at the auditorium clock
without moving for several seconds. It wasn’t hard for Ms.
Devereaux to see that she was upset. Tears welled up in her eyes
and spilled down her cheeks; her breath was choppy and her chin
quivered uncontrollably.

The kind and caring teacher touched her on
the shoulder in an effort to console her, but it was too late for
that. Maggie was convinced that she was on a fast train to
Looneyville, and no amount of consolation could stop it.