Chapter 22 – Toxic Waste
John had so much damage repair to do after his talent show. He knew the majority of the student body would torture him about it until the day he went off to college so he decided to focus on his teachers. John already did his best to win Mr. Rogers back over, showing up to class early and always staying for extra credit. Their relationship remained strong but John could tell his teacher had lost some respect for him. Another teacher John had to win over was Ms. Sissa. He was trying to do everything, even volunteering on the weekend to go help her pick up frogs for her class to dissect.
Ms. Sissa was busy talking with a staff member at the lab while John was allowed to browse certain areas. He looked at some cool brains in jars, got a few educational lectures from some of the scientist who weren’t so busy and was offered the opportunity to watch from a viewing room as they performed a science experiment .
John sat quietly in the viewing room as he watched the duo of scientist through a protective window. On the table lay two frogs, flat on their backs. The scientists both carried needles filled with some sort of green liquid. They didn’t explain to John what they were actually doing, but he figured this would be more exciting than watching Ms. Sissa trying to negotiate some cheap frogs for her class.
Each of the scientists injected one frog and waited for a response. The two injected frogs turned a pale color and remained flat on their backs. Each scientist used a scalpel to poke at the pale frogs and exchanged nods with each other. Suddenly, each of the pale frogs jumped up as nothing had happened and started seizing all over the table. John laughed a bit at how the foolishly rolled around. It wasn’t long until the frogs started to attack each other and the scientist quickly sprayed them down with a bottle of nitrogen.
The scientist bagged the frozen frogs and exited their lab.
John decided to leave the viewing room and met up with the two scientist in the hall way. ”What happened?”
“Nothing serious,” The scientist on the right said. “We’re testing a new energy drink.”
John laughed. “They got pretty energetic in there.”
“I’ll put them out back in the toxic dumpster,” The scientist on the left whispered. “I’ll call for pick up immediately.”
Ms. Sissa eventually returned and explained they would be allowed to grab frogs from the dumpster out back. As they arrived out back, with gloves and safety bags to carry the dead frogs, John noticed one dumpster was marked toxic while the other was simply a regular dumpster. John got a crazy idea to get revenge on a bully who had ruined the life of many. While Ms. Sissa wasn’t looking, he grabbed the two frozen frogs from the toxic dumpster.
Nova still hid behind Kyle. “Tell them what you did? Talk. They deserve to know.”
John knew had to no place to run. He had to take responsibility. “Fine, I’ll talk.”
The group prepared for the truth.