At school, Zoey sat in her normal spot in History when the bell rang, letting Mr. Feeny know he only had five minutes left of class. He decided to finish the discussion as he began to hand out graded assignments.
"An interesting thing happened when I was grading this assignment, Mr. Hunter, yours wasn't there." Mr. Feeny pointed out.
"Oh, I-I can explain that." Cory spoke on behalf of his best friend like he always did.
"I was speaking to Mr. Hunter." Mr. Feeny said sternly.
"Well, See, Shawn and I, we think so much alike that decided to write one paper." Cory explained, chuckling, obviously proud of their idea.
Mr. Feeny raised an eyebrow, clearly not amused. "Really?"
Cory nodded. "Yeah."
"Then you won't mind sharing your grade." Mr. Feeny said.
Cory and Shawn shared a look and shook their hands.
"Alright, so what do we get?" Shawn asked with a smile.
"Well, this was a well-thought-out paper." Mr. Feeny commented as he looked over the essay quickly. "It deserves a B."
Shawn nodded. "Very fair."
"Divided by two." Mr. Feeny added and ripped the essay right down the middle, handing one half to each of them. "That makes a D for you and a D for you."
"Well actually, a B is an eighty-six." Zoey informed with a tight smile. "And eighty-six divided by two is forty three, so it's lower than a D which is a sixty-seven to sixty-nine."
Mr. Feeny gave her a pointed look. "Do you think you know grading averages better than I do, Miss Francis?"
"No, sir." Zoey muttered quickly, looking down.
"Still fair." Shawn said as he accepted the assignment.
"Hey!" Cory complained, clearly upset by the pout on his lips. "But Mr. Feeny. Come on. It's the middle of our senior year, okay. Why are you being so tough on us with the assignments?"
"You know, you're right. Let's forget about those D's and take Miss Francis' suggestion instead. Make it two F's." Mr. Feeny decided casually.
Topanga's eyes widened. "No! Don't fail them. Zoey didn't mean it-"
"But he was wrong." Zoey pointed out. "A D isn't half of a B."
"Ah! The third and fourth Beatle chimes in." Mr. Feeny sarcastically said.
"An F followes you around for the rest of your life." Topanga told their teacher.
"Okay, we'll take your D's." Cory decided with a smirk. "Our college applications are already in."
"Yeah, well, yours are." Shawn grumbled under his breath as he leaned down in his seat.
Zoey's eyebrows furrowed in shock as she turned to face her boyfriend. "What? You haven't sent your college applications in. Shawn, I filled them out for you."
Shawn rolled his eyes and let out a huff. "Zo, don't start, okay? What's the point? People like me don't go to college."
"Do your assignments, Mr. Hunter, and you'll go to college." Mr. Feeny told him sternly.
"And if I get in, how am I supposed to afford it, huh?" Shawn snapped. "There's.... There's just so many things standing in the way. Besides, I mean, why are we doing all these assignments? They're just busy work. What's left to learn?"
Mr. Feeny immediately snapped his head towards the teenage boy.
Cory gulped nervously, his face terror-stricken at the look on their teacher's face. "Uh, Mr. Feeny, he just means that, uh, we-we've been here four years, and there's nothing really left that you can teach us."
"Not helping, Cor." Zoey hissed.
Shawn, Cory and Zoey all began to be concern when they noticed the look on Mr. Feeny's face.
"Whoa, whoa, look at Feeny, man." Shawn whispered worriedly. "Feeny, you okay?"
Mr. Feeny didn't reply, he just kept his unflinching, stony glare on Shawn and Cory.
"Shawn, Zoey, this is that moment that we talked about." Cory whispered back, his eyes never leaving Mr. Feeny.
"Yeah, he's definitely gonna blow." Zoey agreed.
"Stand up." Mr. Feeny instructed sharply.
"Okay, this is bad." Cory said as he and Shawn stood up.
"The rest of the class, please leave." Mr. Feeny continued.
"Bad, bad." Shawn agreed with a grimace.
Cory waved feebly at his classmates as they slowly walked out of the room. "Goodbye... Goodbye."
Without trying to be noticed, Zoey bit the bottom of her lip as she scooped up her books and began making her out of the classroom quietly.
"Miss Francis." Mr. Feeny called.
Zoey scrunched up her face and turned around. "Yeah, knew you were going to say that."
"Mr. Feeny, why don't you just let them do a makeup assignment? Don't fail them." Topanga insisted as she stood in front of their teacher.
"You better stay too, you little control freak." Mr. Feeny replied. Topanga gasped and took a step back in shock. "So, just because you sent in your college applications, nothing that I teach you from now on means anything, hmm?"
"I was just having this discussion with them the other day." Topanga said.
"Quiet!" Mr. Feeny angrily demanded.
Topanga's eyes widen. "You yelled at me.... but I'm Topanga."
"Shawn, I want this assignment brought to my house by five o'clock this afternoon." Mr. Feeny instructed.
"This afternoon today?" Shawn questioned. "That's impossible."
Mr. Feeny paused for a moment and turned away from the four and made his way to the backboard.
Cory's eyes widened in realization. "Oh, no. He's keyed into something you said."
Shawn scoffed. "This afternoon today?! Why doesn't he just ask me to come up with tickets to the Super Bowl?"
Zoey watched as Mr. Feeny wrote the word 'impossible' on the black board before he turned back to them with a firm expression.
"Mr. Hunter, here's your new assignment. To come up with two tickets to the Super Bowl by the end of the week." Mr. Feeny declared.
Cory chuckled, thinking this was a joke. "Oh, come on, Mr. Feeny-"
"Quiet!" Mr. Feeny yelled, his voice cold and stern.
Cory flinched. "You yelled at me... but I'm Topanga."
"You're Cory, Cor." Zoey corrected.
"Mr. Feeny, what are you so upset about?" Topanga wondered.
"Miss Lawrence and Miss Francis, I have assignments for you two as well." Mr. Feeny began. "For you, Miss Lawrence, butt out of other people's lives for one week. For you, Miss Francis, learn to be wrong once this week. Otherwise, both of you will get Fs."
Zoey's eyes widened. "But I've never failed before!"
"There's a first time for everything." Mr. Feeny casually responded.
"That argument doesn't get you anywhere with her." Cory explained knowingly.
"And as for you, Mr. Matthews, since you feel so responsible for your friends' fate, I put their fate into your hands. Their success is your success. But if any of them fails, so do you." Mr. Feeny informed.
With that, Mr. Feeny walked out of the classroom and left the four teenagers stunned into silence.
Shawn scoffed. "Thanks a lot, girls."
••••
Later that day, after school the group was at the Matthews' home, in the kitchen. Shawn and Cory sat at the kitchen table while Zoey and Topanga leaned against the counter behind them with a radio placed between them.
"Okay, what do you got?" Cory asked his best friend.
"I got four can't miss ways on how to get Super Bowl tickets." Shawn replied.
Cory nodded. "Okay, give me the best one."
"I go back in time to the first Super Bowl when tickets weren't that hard to get." Shawn answered.
Zoey pressed her hand against her mouth to keep sound from escaping.
"Good. Good. Very good, I don't need to hear the other three." Cory deadpanned but Shawn clearly didn't notice because he smiled proudly.
"If you're gonna go back in time, you could do the original assignment, and we wouldn't be in the miss..." Topanga told the boys before she realized what she's said and began covering it up by singing. "Tra la la la la la."
"Topanga, butting in in musical form is stilling butting in." Cory informed her.
"Oh! Ask Zoey, that was my next idea. We get advice from my girlfriend." Shawn said proudly.
Zoey shook her head. "If I give advice, I get an F."
"You can afford an F, Zo." Shawn told her.
"No I can't!" Zoey shouted angrily. "It's important for me to do well in everything!"
Shawn's face fell and he looked down at his notepad sadly.
"Okay, are you ready to win some Super Bowl tickets?" The radio announced said excitedly.
Topanga's eyes widened at the announcement and her head snapped to Cory and Shawn, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion when they didn't seem fazed at all by the announcement.
"Okay. If I was a pair of Super Bowl tickets, how would I find me?" Shawn thought aloud.
"It's an interesting question, Shawn. Another interesting question, would Feeny make such an impossible assignment?" Cory wondered.
Topanga grabbed the radio and held it right between Shawn and Cory.
"We've got the last pair of Super Bowl tickets available in the known universe! And we're down to ten more chances to win 'em, so call. Me. Now!"
"Topanga! Will you turn down the radio?" Cory asked in annoyance. Topanga held the radio like a football and started running across the kitchen, mimicking a football player. "No jazzercise in the kitchen!"
"And we're down to our five final callers, 555-WKZN, that's 555-WKZN."
Zoey rolled her eyes before she grabbed a can of soup from the cabinet as well as a bowl. She stood by the dining table and slammed them down on the table to get Cory and Shawn's attention.
Shawn's eyes widened. "I think she's trying to tell us something."
"Well, you know her better than I do." Cory muttered.
"Okay, okay." Shawn said, taking a breathing to focus. Zoey held up the bowl. "Bowl." She held up the soup. "Can. There's trouble in the Balkans? Is that what the radio said, babe?" He teased her and placed a cracker in her mouth which she immediately spat out into his face. Zoey held the can of soup up to Shawn's face. "Uh... soup. Bowl. Soup... or.... bowl. Okay, I choose soup."
Shawn took the can of soup and stood up to put it back in the cabinet.
With a frustrated huff, Zoey jumped onto her boyfriend's back and pushed his head down towards the table so his ear was directly by the radio.
"555-WKZN. It's 103.5 and we're down to our last caller for a chance to go the Super Bowl!"
Shawn's eyes widened and he straightened up, flinging Zoey onto the ground in the process.
"They're giving away tickets to the Super Bowl." Shawn exclaimed to Cory.
"And we almost missed it! Thanks a lot, Zo!" Cory accused.
Zoey narrowed her eyes at him as Topanga helped her up back onto her feet.
Shawn went up to the phone and dialed the number. "Hello? Yeah? I'm caller twenty!" He exclaimed which caused Cory to join him in his excitement. "What I gotta do what?"
••••
Shawn had failed miserably at getting the Super Bowl tickets. As it turned out, the radio show wasn't just giving tickets away, they were holding a contest. The contestants had to wait out the cold Philadelphia air, it was sixteen degrees that day, on top of a billboard, and be the last one standing to win the tickets.
Shawn had come so close to winning. It had come down to just him and one other contestant. The other contestant was an Eskimo who came to Philadelphia every year with his family in January for vacation.
"All right, Mr. Feeny, we got this one figured out.." Cory said proudly as the four of them walked into the classroom.
Shawn chuckled, thinking Mr. Feeny was toying with them. "This was never about Super Bowl tickets."
"It wasn't?" Mr. Feeny asked.
Cory smirked. "You don't think we know you, Mr. Feeny? You don't think we know that when you're teaching us something, we should look for the lesson behind the lesson? Well, we looked and we figured this one out all by ourselves."
"And we didn't even help them, Mr. Feeny." Topanga told him.
"Yeah, I didn't say anything so I was neither right nor wrong." Zoey added with a proud smile.
"Even though we think something's impossible, we still should have tried because that's all you wanted. You wanted us to try." Shawn said.
"And even thought it's not important to do work during our senior year, we should still make you think we're trying." Cory finished.
"You see how we haven't given them any advice on what to say?" Topanga pointed out with a smile before her face turned serious and pointed a finger at him. "I don't fail. I don't."
The four of them threw their arms around each other and smiled at their favourite teacher.
"Now, aren't you proud of us, Mr. Feeny, huh?" Cory wondered.
"Where are the Super Bowl tickets?" Mr. Feeny questioned.
The four stared at him in shock before assuming he was teasing them and they broke out into laughter.
"'Where are the tickets?' Good one." Cory laughed.
"You know we don't have any tickets." Shawn said.
Topanga chuckled. "Mr. Feeny, that-"
"No, Miss Lawrence." Mr. Feeny interrupted sharply. "All you had to do was stay out of it. And you had to help them succeed. And you needed to be wrong about something. That was the assignment. Now, where are the tickets?"
Shawn sighed. "Mr. Feeny. I really did tried."
"We know that's what you wanted." Cory added.
"You have no idea what I want. Get the tickets, or fail." Mr. Feeny snapped.
Topanga's eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "Mr. Feeny, why-"
"Stay out of it, or fail." Mr. Feeny told her.
Zoey huffed. "Come on, Mr. Feeny, why are you really-"
"Be wrong, or fail." He responded.
Cory frowned. "Mr. Feeny, come on, how are we supposed-"
"Help them all, or fail." Mr. Feeny said before he walked out of the classroom, leaving the four teenagers alone.
Shawn turned to Topanga and Zoey and scoffed. "Thanks a lot, girls."
••••
Shawn was back at the billboard except now they'd changed it, plastered a photo of the Eskimo on it congratulating him on winning the contest. He let out a glum sigh as he looked out across the view in front of him.
"What are you thinking about?" Zoey asked as she joined her boyfriend up on the billboard.
"Whenever I've wanted anything in my life, there's always been an Eskimo standing in my way." Shawn muttered with a frown. "You remember when you and Cory went to summer camp and I couldn't afford to? That was an Eskimo. All the other kids grew up in real houses with real backyards, I grew up in a trailer park."
"Eskimo." Zoey muttered.
Shawn sighed and leaned back against the billboard. "There's just so many things standing in my way." He clicked his tongue and stood up. "I'm going to the Super Bowl."
Zoey's eyes widened at the sudden change in pace and stood up. "Shawn, you don't have any tickets."
Shawn shrugged his shoulder. "I don't care."
"You have no way of getting there." Zoey pointed out.
"It doesn't matter! Zo, people like me, we don't go anywhere because we don't believe that we can get there! I'm my own worst Eskimo!" Shawn exclaimed.
"Shawnie, listen to me. I'm trying to help you here." Zoey begged. "You don't have to go anywhere."
"Yes, I do! I do have to go somewhere because if I don't... I'll never go anywhere. Now be the best girlfriend in the whole and get out of my way." Shawn pleaded.
Zoey paused for a moment before she stepped out of Shawn's way. Shawn pressed a kiss on her cheek before he climbed down the ladder.
••••
Zoey walked into her History classroom where there wasn't anyone inside apart from Mr. Feeny who sat at his desk, reading a book.
"Mr. Feeny, I failed you." She called with a frown as she walked to the desk. "As we speak, Shawn is foolishly rolling westward to San Diego and certain disappointment."
"Did he get the tickets?" Mr. Feeny wondered.
"No. He said the tickets didn't matter. He said that nothing mattered and he'd find a way in." Zoey told him, sighing.
A ghost of a smile appeared on Mr. Feeny's face. "That's what he said, hm?"
"Yeah, I mean I was standing in front of him and he asked me to move out of the way so he could go." Zoey explained.
"And did you move out of the way, Miss Francis?" Mr. Feeny asked.
"Well, yeah, I mean... I shouldn't have but I really felt like I should." She admitted with a simply shrug. "I know the assignment was to be wrong, but, Mr. Feeny, it was like he didn't need my help on this one, y'know? He was gonna do this one on his own. No matter what. Guess I failed, huh?"
Mr. Feeny smiled and shook his head. "On the contrary, Miss Francis, you passed with flying colours and so does Mr. Hunter, Miss Lawrence and Mr. Matthews."
Zoey stared at him in disbelief. "Huh?"
"Zoey, Shawn isn't going to college and succeed because you and Cory want him to. He has to want to. And believe that he can. And the only way he can do that is on his own, without you or Cory's help." Mr. Feeny explained.
Zoey furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. "Then why did you want me to be wrong?"
"You need to know you won't always be right." Mr. Feeny told her softly.
She smiled. "I think I understand why you've been so upset. And I think I know why you're gonna keep giving us assignments every day until our last day with you. Because one day you're going to have to let us go. One day you won't be able to teach us anymore and you can't be sure if we're going to be alright."
"Miss Francis, you're right." He reminded her.
"Yeah, I am." She replied, brushing him off dismissively. "That's life."
"You won't be perfect anymore." He pointed out.
"No one should be perfect. Besides, you learn from failure. And I need to know that, right?" She wondered.
"Life is a lot tougher than school, my dear." Mr. Feeny admitted with a sigh.
Zoey smiled warmly at her teacher. "But the right thing to do is just step aside and let us live it. I mean, we learned that because you taught it to us."
Mr. Feeny gave her a smile before he turned on the TV he'd brought into the classroom. And low and behold it was tuned in to the Super Bowl channel and amongst the crowd, they spotted a man holding a sign.
The sign said 'Hey, Feeny. Nothing's impossible'.
______________________
PUBLISHED: September 27, 2018
WORDS: 3160