Living High School to the Fullest (Completed)

Chapter 21: Winter Ball Committee

“Sure,” I replied.

And then I told my friends why my brother had considered it a good idea to bring his pet snake into school to scare his algebra teacher. It turns out that my brother’s new friend David wears his Yankees cap at all times for a reason. David had suffered from severe headaches and vomiting for a while a couple of months ago, but it took the doctors some time to figure out what had caused it.

It was a brain tumor. A benign brain tumor, thankfully, but it still had to be surgically removed because it could have compressed David’s brain tissue, doing some serious damage there. Hence, some of David’s hair had to be shaved for the surgery. Everything went well according to the doctors and David is as good as new. Thank God.

But since Brad’s friend had had the surgery only ten days before high school started and he didn’t want to walk around with a bald spot, he was wearing a Yankees cap. Funny thing, wearing a cap isn’t even forbidden in our elaborate set of school rules, although it is naturally frowned upon by our teachers. Given David’s special circumstances, though, all of his teachers turned a blind eye to his wearing a cap during lessons. That is, all of them except one: Mr. Murdoch.

Mr. Murdoch, sensitive teacher that he is, insisted repeatedly that David had to take off his baseball cap during algebra. Even after David and his parents had talked to him. It wasn’t because the other kids were making fun of him, but Brad’s friend was rather self-conscious and felt highly uncomfortable without his cap. Which is more than understandable, I think. Mr. Murdoch, on the other hand, didn’t think so.

Well, at that point my little brother had chosen to make his algebra teacher feel a little uncomfortable as well by placing Fluffy underneath a cardboard box on his teacher’s desk, hoping to give Mr. Murdoch a real good scare when he lifted it. Only it didn’t work out as planned thanks to my biology class’ visit to the school pond.

“He’s such a jerk,” Em stated very annoyed and carefully shoved one of her strawberries to the side. She always saved her strawberries for last. Our orders had arrived while I was telling my friends everything about David. “I’ve never liked Mr. Murdoch. I swear, he’s a robot or alien life form or something. He doesn’t have any compassion at all.” She was now in a rage. “I mean, come on, why can’t he let David wear a baseball cap? That kid had a freaking brain surgery, for crying out loud!”

“Craniotomy,” Brian interjected. “That’s the medical term for brain surgery.”

Seriously, sometimes Brian is a bit nerdy. How the hell does he know such things?

“Oh come on, you guys also watch House. And Scrubs,” Brian immediately defended himself because the rest of us simply looked at him. “You should know that, too.”

“Point is,” Em continued, ignoring Brian, “Brad was right. Too bad that his Fluffy idea failed, it was actually pretty good. Mr. Murdoch sure deserves some kind of payback. Hell, I wouldn’t mind helping your brother with that. We should all wear baseball caps and hold snakes into Murdoch’s face or something,” she giggled.

“That’s it!” I exclaimed excited, almost dropping some of the delicious chocolate ice cream I was just about to spoon into my mouth. “Em, you’re a genius!”

“I know!” She agreed enthusiastically. “But why, exactly?”

“They should all wear baseball caps! Brad and everyone else in Mr. Murdoch’s class. As we now know, it is not forbidden. And if all of them are wearing one, refusing to take it off, it would piss Murdoch off majorly!”

“Oh my god, you’re right! I am a genius! And you know what? We all should also wear one. In fact, the whole school should. That would be epic! Hey, this could be my prank,” my best friend said giddy with excitement.

Emma was still a little disgruntled because Aaron and I hadn’t woken her up for our nightly visit to the park with Penny. Technically, I had already fulfilled our Lizzy task ‘play a prank’ by helping to put the penguin head onto the Jefferson statue. Em hadn’t and she has been thinking about ways to fulfill that particular task for quite some time now, never having come up with a good idea.