Story #3 - Last day of school

Published June 1st, 2024

Part of my Story. This is a fictional short story that I wrote for fun.

It’s the last day of school, not only the last day, but the last day of senior year. Truly my last day of school. It’s hard to believe. It’s been over a decade and now I’m done.

I walk up the steps to the school. It’s right in the middle of our small town. It’s quite a small school. We often joke that it’s a one room schoolhouse since it’s so tiny. It’s an old brick building with only a few classrooms, and some offices in the back. There are four windows on each side of the entrance.

At the entrance, I run into my friend Pine. He’s tall with dark hair and eyes that are almost green. He’s wearing brown pants and a green shirt. He knows most of the school (not that there’s that many people to know), but there’s something different about him that’s hard to put a finger on. He’s not the “popular” kid, but everyone in town seems to know him.

“What’s the last day of school feel like?” Pine asked.

“Weird. Exciting. I don’t even know.” I reply.

“I bet.” Pine said.

“It’s strange. It feels like an end of a lifetime. I am going to be an adult now.”

“An adult. Good luck, I’ve heard it’s a challenge.”

I laugh, “You still got one more year, but trust me: that year flies by fast.”

I follow him inside. Everyone is grabbing their books. I make my way to my locker and grab my math books. I can’t wait to be done with Calculus. Generally, I enjoy math, but integrations take forever. The worst is when I get a problem wrong and realize I made a mistake in the second step. After that, I have to redo all the following fifteen steps. It’s terrible.

After gathering my books, I head to class. The classroom isn’t very big. There’s only about twelve students, most of them are here already. The room fits about twenty. In the front, there is a wooden desk and a blackboard. Often Mrs. Ray writes a math joke on the blackboard, but today it’s empty. There are a few windows on the other side of the room. It’s a nice day and the sunlight is streaming inside.

My seat is in the middle row slightly to the left. I walk in and sit down, waiting for class to start. The chair to my right is empty. It’s Chris’s chair, but he’s always late. On the other side, Rose sits. When she sees me she smiles.

“I can’t believe it’s our last day of school. I’m trying to decide whether I’ll miss it or not” She says.

“I’m done with it.” I say, “This last month has felt like eternity.”

“True but I’ll miss the people, maybe not Mr. Goodheart, but everyone else.”

I chuckle. “I get what you mean. I’m sad and excited at the same time. A little nervous as well.“

She stopped for a second, deep in thought, then said, “You grow up thinking, adults are this separate ‘thing’ and then one day, you suddenly realize you are one.”

The bell rings. Rose is right. We’ve grown up. I knew it would happen sometime. It still sneaks up on you though. Next year I will be off to college.

“Congratulations class! You made it, this is the last day.” Mrs. Ray says as she walks over to the desk, “Today, we will mostly be going over the last test.” I quickly zone out, going over a test is so boring. Instead, I let my mind wander over the past year. It’s been a pretty big year.

For lack of a better way to describe it, I’ve always been a fairly intellectual person. If you have two places of thinking: your heart and your mind. I pretty much only had my mind. I still cared about people but I did not focus much on feeling. I was smart, but I didn’t understand emotions or beauty or wonder very well at all.

This year, all of that changed. My heart was awakened. Awakened to beauty. The beauty of nature. Slightly over a year ago I would have never dreamed of sitting on our rock with Rose every other morning. I liked sunrises but not that much. I would have never thought of destroying my sleep schedule to get up at 3am to see the stars and a meteor shower.

It wasn’t that my heart was non-existent. It was always there. Just suppressed. My brain thought my heart was crazy so it shut it up. But now it’s been reawakened, and I’m never doing that again. I still like my brain though.

“Class is over. Wake up day-dreamer” Rose shoves my shoulder.

I look over and realize most of the class has left. “Sorry, I was thinking.”

“You’re always thinking.” She says with a smile. “Personally, I enjoy feeling.”

“Hey! I’m working on it.” I start gathering my books, “but you should try thinking sometime. It’s very enjoyable.”

After class, we went our separate ways. Sadly, we don’t take all of our classes together. I start walking to my next class. On my way to class, I decide to stop by the principals office.

“Is everything ready?” I ask walking in.

“Yep. All set. You and Rose are heading the rest?” Mr. House looks up from his desk.

“We’re finishing the final plan. It’ll happen right after the last bell rings.”

The rest of the morning was fairly uneventful. It’s lunch time now. As I head into the cafeteria, I run into another senior. We start chatting about the senior prank this year.

Most years, the senior class does a prank. Last year they bought a bunch of fake spiders that looked surprisingly real and hid them all over the school. We are still finding them today. The year before that all the seniors brought small water guns, tiny ones that are easy to hide, but can spray quite far. Whenever the teacher turned their back on them, the students would squirt them. Those seniors got in a lot of trouble that year. Some of the teachers were soaked by the end of the day.

This year we have something else planned. Rose and I don’t love getting in trouble (that joke on Mr. Goodheart was worth it though), so we are trying not to push the limits too far. Even so, we have a great idea.

We make our way over to the table in the back left of the room. The cafeteria isn’t too big, maybe ten to fifteen tables. The seniors almost always sit in the back left. I already see Rose and a few of her friends over there. I also see Pine with them. He seems to join the senior table every few days. Today, he’s helping us with our prank.

I go and sit down. I heard them chatting about the plan. Rose is explaining it to the others.

“Oh good, you’re here.” Rose looks over at me. “Did you check with Mr. House?”

“Yep. He’s all set. Did you explain the plan to everyone here?”

“Just finished.” She sits down. “This might be one of the best pranks ever.”

We finish lunch and head to our classes. The time goes by slowly, and the closer we get to the end of the day the more I worry that something will go wrong. There’s so many moving parts. Rose is running most of it, but I have a few things to do as well.

I start heading to my final class: world history with Mr. Goodheart. Outside the door, I see Rose again.

She walks over to me. “Don’t worry. We’ve got this.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely. This is gonna be great.” She looks as if she’s about to start jumping for joy right then and there. “I can’t wait to see his face.”

We walk in to the class for our final boring history lecture. Mr. Goodheart’s classroom is almost identical to Mrs. Ray’s, except for a world map on one wall and a brown bookshelf with a globe on it near the door. We walk over to take our seats. After our little joke last year, Mr. Goodheart forced us to sit in the front every class.

Mr. Goodheart looks about as happy as ever. I don’t know if I have ever seen him smile. Rose and I both smile at him as we sit down.

“As this is the last day of class” Mr. Goodheart begins. “I have decided to do a brief review of the last quarter’s material. As you all know, we have been studying the Roman Empire and their numerous interactions with the Gauls, specifically during the period of the later Emperors, leading up to the fall of the empire. As you all know, this is one of my favorite periods in history. The fall of the empire happened in 600 A.D., in some part due to the inadequacies of the emperors.

“Even with these inadequacies, we do not know exactly what caused the dramatic fall. Most likely a lack of money and an unhappy populous. When the Gauls did eventually invade, there was no order. The empire fell, but on the other hand, the eastern Empire continued to survive for a while longer, and even…” He goes on for another forty five minutes. I barely catch what he is talking about.

Finally, the bell rings. This is it. On cue, Pine stands up and says, “Mr. Goodheart, since this is the last day of class, we have a special gift prepared for you: a performance.”

Within a minute, everyone is in position. Someone drags the desk and chair over to the far side of the room, covers the chair with a golden sheet and rolls out a red carpet in front of the desk. Everyone else lines up on either side of the carpet.

Pine walks over to Mr. Goodheart. “We present to you: The Crowning of the Roman Emperor.”

Mr. Goodheart stands in shock. “For me?”

“For you.” Pine steps away. “Let the emperor make his way to the throne.”

Mr. Goodheart looks around confused, then realizes he’s the emperor. He walks up the aisle to a chorus of cheers from each side. As he takes his seat on the makeshift throne, I see him smile, truly smile, for the first time.

Next I see Rose walk over to him with the cardboard crown in her hands. She designed it herself. Silver with purple and red stones covering it. Even though it’s made of cardboard, it looks surprisingly good.

“I hereby declare you, Emperor of Rome” Rose places the crown on his head. “May you rule justly.”

This is my cue. I knock on the back wall three times. Mr. Goodheart’s classroom is next to the principals office. Three knocks was our signal.

“May I have your attention,” I hear through the loudspeakers. “If everyone would please make their way to Mr. Goodheart’s classroom, please congratulate him on becoming our new Roman Emperor.”

I look around the classroom and can see everyone’s mostly successful attempt to contain their laughter. Then I see Mr. Goodheart. He looks exactly like an emperor. Ready to take on the world.

I run over to the door of the classroom, just as our “barbarians”, the 9th graders, arrive.

“Do you all have your water guns?” I whisper as I open the door. “Remember to aim at Mr. Goodheart.”

“Barbarians incoming!” Pine announces. “Soldiers! Defend your emperor!”

Our soldiers, with water guns ready, prepare to face the barbarians. The battle begins and water goes everywhere. We even have water balloon catapults. I look up and see a water balloon flying over the classroom and explode right on Mr. Goodheart’s head. A stream of water hits him from the side. He is soaked.

“The barbarians have been routed!” Pine says. The barbarians step to the side. “But we have just received a report of large hail incoming. Take cover!”

While the battle was raging, Rose and a few of her friends set up a step ladder behind Mr. Goodheart. One of the ninth graders brought in a bucket of ice water. As soon as Pine finished speaking, Rose and her friend took the bucket of ice water, raised it over his head and dumped it all over him. He looks a lot less happy now.

At this point, all of the school is here. Rose and I notified as many of the students as we could, and the teachers all heard the principles announcement. I even see Mr. House in the back chuckling as Mr. Goodheart is covered in ice.

A student acting as a servant runs in and announces that the royal chicken coop broke and all ten thousand chickens have escaped and are loose in the palace. He warns that they will reach the throne room any moment. Mr. Goodheart looks at him, confused.

A few students start to move the step ladder and a big fan into position. Mr. Goodheart is mad now and gets up to leave, but Pine runs over to him for the final part of the play.

“Now!” He yells.

Rose gets up on the step ladder with a pillow. I turn on the fan, and she rips the pillow open, sending a thousand feathers right at Mr. Goodheart. We look at him and can barely contain our laughter, but we have to finish this play.

Everyone lines up in front of the classroom. Pine leads Mr. Goodheart, who is too angry, confused and covered in feathers to object, to the middle of the line with Rose and I on either side, and in front of the whole school. Then we all bow, and the crowd erupts in thunderous applause and laughter.

We hear Mr. House through the loudspeaker, barely containing his laughter. “School is dismissed. Have a wonderful summer!”

Rose and I run laughing out of the classroom and out of the school as fast as possible. We do not want to be caught by Mr. Goodheart. Reaching out meadow, we celebrate.

“I can’t believe that worked” I say.

“Told you so. Wasn’t it amazing?” Rose starts running towards the forest.

“Wait up!” I chase after her.

I catch up. The forest looks beautiful this afternoon. Everything is covered in green. I can’t wait for sunset.

We walk over to a stream that runs right through the path. We sit down next to the little stone bridge that crosses over it.

Rose looks over at me. “Did you see his face! It was priceless, even better than last time.”

“He didn’t know what hit him. I’m so glad I’m leaving for college next year.”

Rose laughs, “Who knows what he would’ve done to us.”

We sit here until evening. The sunset was beautiful. Reds oranges, and pinks streamed across the sky. The sounds of the forest and the flowing of the creek perfected it.

It’s dark by the time we leave that spot. While we walk back, fireflies light up the forest. They fill the field with millions of tiny lights. We walk past our rock and say goodbye for the night. I walk down the path and up the back steps of my house. I walk inside. What an eventful day.