And He Never Considered This[]
The three of us came out the classroom, bumping right into Becky. Both she and Russell were having a conversation. Gary lurked around near the foyer. I decided to watch the scene unfold.
“We are fully prepared to share the auditorium with you, and the rest of the gang, there is plenty of space. Under the condition, that all of you keep the rest of the cliques out. When we return, we share it,” Becky explained.
Russell turned, pointed to the gang lurking in the school clothes store. “Go to auditorium,” he ordered. “Tell other people come here.”
“Thank you, Russell,” said Becky.
“Russell help.”
Becky smiled.
We had to wait for the others to join us. Judging by the look on Milo’s face, Becky’s plan certainly wasn’t his own. Once everyone had gathered, we had to make our way down through the maze like basements, to the door that lead out to the parking lot. Under Milo’s instructions, we had to search the many long crates and boxes on the shelves, for shovels or anything good to dig with.
Me and Pete found some shovels under a box marked “memories.” Russell pulled the door open with a mighty pull. Ice cracked, where it had frozen in the gap between the door and the frame. We took it in turns digging. The first shift was me, Milo, Becky and Russell.
“What are we doing this for?” I asked.
“I wanted to go find Crabblesnitch’s car and blow it up,” Milo said.
“We’re not doing that,” said Becky. “Crabblesnitch doesn’t seem to care what is going on with the snow. We are going out there to see how bad the situation is. And collect a few things from our dorms.” Sub-consciously, she cast a glance back at Gary.
“Oh! Gary’s ADD meds,” I said.
“Well, yeah, among other things. If we are going to stay here for a while, we need to be fully prepared for the long haul. For all we know, there could be nothing wrong, and Crabblesnitch is doing his to ruin Christmas.”
Everyone planned to take shifts digging through the snow, but as it turned out, Russell, Milo, Becky and I were more than capable all by ourselves. In an almost jarring way, my shovel burst out through the show, upwards into air. I shot a frown to Milo, who gave me one back. Milo’s fingers laced together offering me a boost. My foot on Milo’s hand, I reached upwards onto the flat surface with my arms, and pulled myself out. Becky followed, then Milo, then Russell. Russell reached down the snow tunnel pulling everyone else up one by one, until we were all stood there baffled.
There was snow, and plenty of it. Just not as much as we had expected. Not a single snowflake more than the night we were evacuated. Unbelievable. Crabblesnitch had done this to ruin Christmas.
“So, what’s the plan?” I asked, clapping my hands together.
“We dig out the dumpsters near the dorms,” said Becky. “No one uses them for trash. They contain salt, for when the snow gets too much.”
I climbed back down our snow tunnel, handed up the shovels up. After the last one, Russell reached down, and pulled me up by the scruff of my jacket. I felt like a small kitten compared to his strength. Rumors circulated around a few weeks ago, that he was capable of lifting a grown man into the air as if that man were a ragdoll. He set me down on my feet.
“Thanks, Russell,” I said.
Russell nodded.
In truth, I missed Russell and the gang. Yeah, they bullied, stole, destroyed shit, and earned their place in detention, but they were good kids. If Russell hadn’t have ordered me to beat kids up so much, and Derby not held that offer over me like a particularly tasty carrot, I might still be part of their gang now.
We would be hiding out in the clothes store, talking without a care for the school play or anything else going on in the building. Or maybe I would grow immune to preying on the weak for kicks. Who knows how life would have gone, had I not faced the choices I had made.
A group made our way to the girl’s dorm first. While Becky and Sarah went to the dorm’s building to collect a few things. The rest of us set to work digging away the snow around the dumpster. Using a shovel, Russell pried open the lid. Inside rusted ancient old bin, were numerous sacks of gritty salt. Each of us took a bag, creating a path way towards the plaza, before we ran out and had to go back for another sack. Becky and Sarah joined us with a backpack full of their own possessions each.
We focused our attention on working our way towards the main building, until the salt ran out. Milo told us he had something to do, and left us to work alone. We took it in turns digging out the dumpster near the boys dorm, and going into the dorm to collect a few things. I volunteered to get things for Pete. We had lived together for three months already, I knew pretty well what he would want. I filled one backpack with clothes, the other had a deck of cards, our Liar’s Dice set, a comic book or two, a few board games and puzzles Pete had brought from home. Playing board games were good for a long evening, when doing homework didn’t even put a dent into the dragging hours.
I returned to Pete, and gave him one the backpacks. In the distance, from the parking lot vaguely, a loud boom cracked through the icy quietness. Apparently Milo had given Crabblesnitch something for Christmas. Nearly an hour passed, of shoveling salt over the snow passed, before we were all exhausted and hungry. Near the door to the basement, we saw two boys escape. I was too far away to see what they looked like. There was a gleeful mischief way about them. On the way through the basement Becky grabbed the box labeled ‘memories.’ Her curiosity had gotten the better of her.
^^^^
Sat in the chairs in the upper balcony, we had a feast of our own. Just rations the same as everyone else. We could have blackmailed Crabblesnitch, but we wanted to save that little gem for a later date.
I searched through the memories box, and found some home movies VHS tapes. They seemed like technology fossils to me. I turned the tape over, examining it from all angles, unsure how to even use it.
“Woah, man, check this out,” I said, showing it to Pete.
“Weird…” said Pete, retrieving another tape from the box.
For hours and hours we watched them. The projector in the AV room projected them onto the back wall on the stage. All of them were about Crabblesnitch’s youth. Excluded from cliques. Bullied. And most of them were in snowy winter months. Some point during the night, when my brain shut off, and I was ready to go to sleep, I got an idea.
“How about this; we give Crabblesnitch a taste of his own medicine?”
“I like where you’re going with this,” Becky commented.
“And this will spare us having to record classrooms,” said Ivan.
Auditions begun. Hardly a huge crowd, but we were glad for them. Sarah put on a great performance, with the help of Becky, she gave a performance of a child Jane Eyre, giving her scolding speech to her aunt, before being sent off to school. Becky performed Cathy’s speech from Wuthering Heights, where she finally declared she loved Heathcliff, but could never be with him. A punk kid with red hair took to the stage, he told us his name was West, and he did a monologue from Hamlet. He put so much passion into his lines.
I exchanged looks with the others in the club. Right away, we knew he was in.
Next was a blue haired kid named Danny Nix. He had a copy of the book The Outsiders, and read the poem from it. The poem was quite insightful. I made a mental note to read it someday. The whole time performed, I couldn’t help noticing a boy in the back with purple hair watching him.
Pete acted out a scene from an old book, from the wild west named Red Dead, where a man pleads with an old friend to see reason, before he was shot and left for dead. I played the part of the old friend.
Everyone from the club read lines from the original Christmas Carol story. Pedro, Ivan, Eunice, Ivan, Melody. The parts they read for right away were granted. They earned the chance to choose their part. Angie Ng gifted us with a dramatic reading of the original Cinderella, gory details and all. Christy acted out a scene from a chick flick. Trevor Moore and Ray Hughes mimed some kind of video game, where they jumped around and made weird “Wa!” noises, and spoke in bad Italian accents.
The last to go on, was one of the Art Freak girls. A tall blonde senior by the name of Cheryl. She read from Pride & Prejudice, a letter to Elizabeth from Darcy, justifying his contempt for a conman.
^^^^
Given the fact that we were hardly in a position to be choosy, considering the lack of interest in the production, the cast list went up. Pete and I were in the process of putting the list up on the foyer notice board. He swore loudly, retreating away his thumb.
“Stupid pins!” Pete declared.
I was still reeling from the fact that Pete swore. I had never known him to do so. “Tomorrow I’m thinking about hanging out in the basement.” That was our code word for sneaking out. “Want to come?”
“Yeah, alright. I’m getting sick of seeing the auditorium all the time.”
I stepped back, and looked over the list once more.
Dr. Ebenezer Scrooge Joshua Hyde
Bob Cratchit Pete Kawolski
Jacob Marley Gary Smith
Tiny Tim Pedro De La Hoya
Ghost of Christmas Past Sarah Bennett
Ghost of Christmas Present Becky Delaney
Ghost of Christmas Future Ivan Alexander
Mrs. Cratchit Eunice Pound
Martha Cratchit Melody Adams
Peter Cratchit West James
Belle Angie Ng
Fred Cheryl Linton
Fan Christy Martin
Fezziwig Danny Nix
Portly Gentleman 1 Ray Hughes
Portly Gentleman 2 Trevor Moore
“You know, Pete, if you had have told me three months ago I would be this cool with being in the school play, I wouldn’t have believed you,” I admitted.
“Me neither,” Pete admitted.
He fetched a box from the floor, that the Art Freaks girls had decorated to conceal the camera inside. With labels and doodles, it appeared as if we had a very bright box, to keep flyers in. Even the circular hole for the camera lens was unnoticeable. Our job was simple; stand back and record the mayhem Gary will create. Apparently he was good at that.
Right away, I saw it for myself. Pete and I stood near the tray dispenser, and watched. Standing near the Nerds, calm like before a storm, Gary pretended to eat an apple. One throw, and it sailed through the air, hitting Ted Thompson right in the back of the head, with such force, his face slammed against the table. He stood, fist clenched.
“Which of you little snots threw that?” Ted demanded.
All heads turned to Gary. Unfortunate for Algie, he was sat in front of Gary, reaching for an apple from the bowl. A pear found its way from Ted’s hand, to being pulp in Algie’s face. Like a tornado fruit flew across the room. Each student turning on each other. The greasers ran for trays to hit other kids with. Bullies stopped with the food all together, and outright wedgied a couple of kids. Earnest insulted Russell, and for his reward, the nerd king was lifted off the ground by the elastic of his underwear. He squealed like a bitch.
Becky wanted chaos and that is what she got. Full out war of kids hurling food at each other, so bad that we had to move to the top of the steps, standing in the foyer to record it. We would have been pelted with food otherwise.