"The what?" Kristin asked.
"The lawn gnomes. Like in my story."
"That was just a story, Lindsey, it wasn't real," I
reminded her.
"But it was!"
"Sure, Lindsey..." I replied.
"It really was!! You wanna see pictures!?" she asked,
reaching for her wallet.
"Okay... I thought it was just a story."
"Well, obviously it isn't."
"Fine then."
"Fine."
"Quit your stupid fighting!" Kristin yelled.
"Jeez! We were just kidding," Lindsey replied. "Ahh!"
"What?! What?!" we all asked.
"Somebody tapped me on the shoulder!"
"I did."
"Oh, Martine, whew. Did you figure out how to kill the pheasant?"
Lindsey immediately asked.
"As a matter of fact, I did."
"Really? How?"
"Easy, really. All we have to do is..." So she got into
this long, technical explanation, but seeing the blank look on our faces, she said "Aw, heck with it, all
I need is some-"
"Hey, who's that?" I interrupted.
"Where?"
"Over there, he's holding this laser thing."
"It's Matt Nelson," replied Lindsey.
"The nuke ray exists? The one capable of generating 2x the
force of a black hole? The implode, explode, implode one? The one with the little protection shield thingy?"
I asked, amazed.
"Apparently." Lindsey replied.
"Woah, what nuke ray?" Martine asked.
"It's something from typing, Martine. But YOU wouldn't understand
since you took Word Processing like you're better than us," Lindsey answered.
"Typing's stupid," she defensively said.
"Quit fighting!" I yelled. "Hey, typing isn't stupid.
Maybe if you're a rich little brat that's had a computer since she was five..."
"You're just jealous."
"You're right."
"Shut up! He's firing it!" The laser went off. The energy
from those 2 AA's lit up the whole hallway and we saw Mr. Schwartz's desk and computer implode, explode and implode
again. But in the nick of time, the pheasant flew off. Before he could shoot again, the pheasant had flown over
his head and out the door. Matt pursued it and caught up with it in front of Mr. Heinen's room. He didn't miss
that time and the pheasant disintegrated, leaving nothing but a pile of ashes on the floor. There was silence for
a minute and then:
"Cool! I need one of those things!" Martine and Lindsey
simultaneously exclaimed. "No, way,Lindsey, you didn't believe me!"
"Aww."
And that was the end of the pheasant. It didn't seem to have any
permanent effects on anyone, we were all a bit dazed, though. And even Julia was normal (for her), except for the
fact that she joined rodeo and started watching The X files. I found out that Lindsey was acting so weird because
of the unusual alignment of a few planets, I forgot which ones, I'm not really into that kind of stuff. The power
came on pretty quickly after the pheasant was destroyed, and we got plowed out soon after. School was canceled
for the rest of the day and the next, so things were pretty much normal when we came back. Except for Mr. Schwartz.
The loss of the pheasant had pushed him over the edge, and he quit his job and left town, supposedly to move to
some tiny, Spanish-speaking nation. I'm surprised there weren't more rumors, but Mr. Schwartz, and the amazing
events of that October day just seemed to disappear from the collective consciousness of the student body until
it became doubtful that it had ever even taken place.
But it still made one heck of a story!
