August 15th, Study Hall, 12:09 PM:

I’m in study hall today because I forgot to do my English homework. Just another fabulous day in the life of Margret Fisher. One more missing assignment and I’m considered a fifth grader! Can you believe it? Me being considered one of those spit ball shooting dweebs? Honestly, fifth grade?! I’d be knocked down a whole entire grade. And not just in English. No, Mr. Hasenwire doesn’t want me being the only seventh grader. I’m going to have to repeat the whole entire sixth grade. Wouldn’t that be awful! But the teachers don’t care about what I think, whether I lose all of my friends or not. All they care about is whether or not I finish my homework.



I don’t even like school. So why should I be punished with the cruelness of homework? I mean, why don’t we just do our homework at school? But then it wouldn’t be homework, would it? Then it would be schoolwork. I personally don’t think that I necessarily need to go to school. You don’t need to go to school to be a rock star. That’s what I want to be when I get old. Why can’t kid’s rule the world? I mean seriously. If I had any chance, any chance at all to rule the world, I would take it.



Back to English. Ugh, why would anybody like writing? Gosh, this is boring! Sure, if people didn’t write then there wouldn’t be any sheet music, but why can’t we all just write in music. Who actually reads those big, fat, dusty books at the public library? Who wants to read the 17-million-word Marienbad My Love? Who has the time to write a story with almost 20 million words in it? But I can tell you one thing about them... they don’t have lives. What am I supposed to write about? A talking dinosaur, a rocker chick, or a slave that is being forced to write a paper for school by their owner, Mrs. Fasendire.



Well, there’s no one else in here, so I could look through the drawers for something that I could use to make Mr. Hasenwire’s station wagon explode. That would be totally epic. Let’s see, ice pack, dinosaur model, and a brown box. Boring! Let’s see what’s in the box. That's weird, it’s just a model of the Earth. Next drawer! After about fifteen minutes of searching, I finally found the chemistry set. Oh no! I screwed off the cap of one of the test tubes and spilled it onto the whole entire kit. Then the whole thing started to bubble, broil, and sizzle. I dove behind one of the lab tables right before the... KABOOM!!!!



When I looked up, I gasped in horror. The whole lab was covered, floor to ceiling with a sickly, green substance. It was disgusting, not liquid or solid. It was dripping from the ceiling, the desks and the computers. The globe is rolling around the floor. I have to get out of here.



It’s 12:15, there’s still a few minutes left of recess. If I go outside now then no one will ever have to know that it was me. As I walked outside, I saw the weirdest thing ever. It was night. In the middle of the day. Sounds crazy right? You sure are right about that. But seriously, it was night time, at noon. Well, technically it was both.



This is so weird! I’m not that good at science but I’m pretty sure that’s not supposed to happen. There are only two possibilities. Either 1: Aliens have taken over Earth and this is their idea of how to ‘make an entrance’, or 2: The sky’s broken. Can the sky break? Well I don’t really know the answer to that because, as I mentioned before, I’m not that good at science. And also, I can’t know because it’s never happened before!



Then, as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. Everything was normal, well almost. Everyone was running around screaming like a whole bunch of deranged freaks. It was awful, and so weird. I was apparently the only one who hadn’t moved, when I realized that not moving draws too much attention to myself. And I don’t like attention. So, naturally, I started acting like a deranged freak too.



I was running and running, around and around. I felt like a dog chasing its tail. When the teachers finally got us all rounded up, we went inside. The teachers informed us that we were to go about our daily business until they got any news about the “strange mishap.” Right, so I had to go about my daily business? Fine, off to science, and then I walked through the door.



I totally forgot about the explosion! When I walked through the door, it’s like nothing had changed. The green sticky substance was still everywhere but the globe had stopped spinning. I walked forward and just as I was about to head for the door, it swung open. In walked Mr. Hasenwire, oh great, it took him a second or two to fully realize what he was surrounded by. Then he started yelling at me and was all ‘What happened? Did you do this? What in the world happened?’ I told him that I didn’t have any idea. That I just walked in and found it like that. Then he replied “Oh really?”



To my astonishment, he held up my unfinished English paper, with my name on it, covered in the green substance. He then gave me detention in which I was supposed to clean all of this up. And when I asked him how, he just said, “That’s your problem.” Can you believe it? He made me clean all of that up! How was I supposed to do that all by myself? “It’s impossible,” I told him. But he wouldn’t listen to me. He just walked right to the door, turned, and said again ‘‘That’s your problem.’’



After school that day, I stayed after for detention. Since there was no teacher there, I basically just hung out at the tables thinking. It was totally boring in detention. There was nothing to do other than hanging out or doing your homework. Guess which one I did?



I looked around the lab, looking for something to do. Then, I spotted the globe. It was wedged between a desk and the wall. I sauntered over to it, picked it up, and started to play catch. I’ve been playing baseball for a while now, so I pretty much have the dynamics down for throwing a ball. In other words, easy peasy lemon squeezy.



The weirdest thing was, when I looked out the window, it was day and night again. I stopped throwing the globe and then, it was just day. I shrugged. I set the globe down and started cleaning. Mr. Hasenwire threatened that if I didn’t do my job then he would keep giving me detentions until I finally cleaned it.



I walked to the supply closet and got some wet wipes, and started scrubbing. The green stuff was surprisingly easy to get off. In a matter of fifteen minutes, I had already cleaned five desks. This is going to be a breeze. After thirty minutes of cleaning, I had finished the desks and one fourth of the computers, when I took a break. Working is hard.



I grabbed the globe and started tossing it up and down. Well, I dropped it. At first I didn’t really care, but before I bent to pick it up, something awful happened. The Earth began to shake. I was knocked to the ground and hit my head on the tile floor. Earthquake! Then everything went black.



When I woke up, the earthquake had stopped, but what I saw was even more horrible. The glass in the windows had shattered. There is broken glass everywhere, and, to make it worse, the earthquake had just made the green goo spread. Now it was underneath the tables, and on my shoes. And, the worst possible thing, it was in my hair.



There were sirens screaming outside, and when I looked out of the newly shattered windows, I saw it, the whole entire city was in ruins. There were cars abandoned in the middle of street, and most of them were on fire. People were sobbing and clutching one another as if they were scared that it might happen again.



Gingerly, I got up and walked over to the globe, bent over and picked it up. I turned it clockwise and the sun went down and the moon came up. I kept on turning it until it was day again. No way. I shook it slightly and the earth trembled a little. This is impossible. I had found a voodoo globe.



After figuring out what the globe really was, I went into a kind of shock. I just stared at it, spinning it slowly in my hands. Was it possible? No it couldn't be possible. What is it then? After staring at it for a full thirty minutes, I got up, carried the globe over to one of the lab tables, picked up a box, and set the globe in. I found some tape and sealed it. Then I put it back into the drawer and went about cleaning up.



All I could hear was the clinking of glass. Clink, Clink, Clink. Slowly, the noise got smaller and smaller until finally, all I could hear was a voice. Soft at first,but then it got louder and louder, until I opened my eyes to find myself in English class.



Mr. Hasenwire is standing over me saying, “do you have your homework young lady?” I asked him what about what happened in the science lab but he didn’t know what I was talking about and just asked for my paper again. Was it all just a day dream? I told him yeah and opened my binder. But when I pulled out my paper and handed it to him, it was covered with thick, gooey green slime. Was it really just a day dream?