Film

The class was frozen. They were failing the course. The principal was going to expel them if they didn’t bring their grades up. The highest was a D-.      

“Do you think we’ll pass this class?”

But the suffocating atmosphere was thick. Thick with the fear of failure. Of expulsion.

Of being a middle school dropout.

“Okay class! Pop quiz.”

The class was still silent.

“What’s the problem?”

“You know!” raged one. “We’ll be expelled—”

“That’s just the principal’s fiery wrath on us. We—”

“What do you mean, ‘us’?”

“I went to school here, until the principal expelled me for failing the same class as you. I had a teacher teaching this same class. I was one of you.”

The class didn’t speak.

“We need to graduate in June. We only have five more months until the summer. We need to graduate from middle school.”

“We will.”

The students, some of them, looked down. They mumbled.

“Do you think she—”

“She didn’t even pass the middle school level! How is she a teacher?”

“How is she even educated—”

“Mark!”

“What? Just asking!”

“Be quiet. She’s right there.”

Mark looked up. He gulped. “Hey…sorry.”

The teacher only nodded. A light brown hand and manicured nails pushed the paper towards him. His eyes slid down to it slowly. The quiz had probably fifty bajillion questions on it, none of which Mark was going to answer correctly. Then his D would become an F. He wouldn’t get into All-State, which means he’d never get into a good school with a full-ride scholarship to playing pro basketball.

The teacher held the class after school, way after the quiz. None passed. The teacher said the students needed to pass, but the teacher said she didn’t pass. “Because of the principal’s inability to accept failure and repetition. He couldn’t allow repetition. He had a fear his middle school wouldn’t be credible to anyone should anyone repeat. That wouldn’t look good on his school board. So he expelled them. So…”

The teacher told the students to round up anyone who was expelled, and force the principal to allow them to repeat. Even the teacher, who hadn’t passed the eighth grade, would go back to school. She didn’t care whether she graduated college with a Master’s in Education. She was sick of living under a stupid principal. He couldn’t be fired. That’d be suicide.

“Go on Facebook.”

“Okay. So…” One of the students took the slip of paper, and all the kids gathered around her. “We look them up, tell them to come back to J.J. Ramses Middle School, and they’ll be repeating eighth grade and graduating? Then they’ll have a past worth looking back on?”

The teacher bobbed her smiling head. “Yes!”

The students told the teacher they’d like to discuss this further themselves. The teacher turned away, or rather slithered away, out of the door. The main girl, Brett, became a magenta snake, telling all the other students her plan. “The teacher may give us pop quiz and lead the way, but I know what to do.”

The students all spiraled around her.

“See, the principal doesn’t understand us. He’s stupid. So what’s to do than get rid of him? He’ll never know the difference between being a principal here on earth and in whatever other world he’s going to after death.”

“So—”

“Let’s go! You know how to use those fangs.”

Everyone became an animal, whether it be a beaver, snake, buck, chameleon, hawk or wolf, they were they. Stealthily, they hunted the prey. He was in his office, looking at some files. The animals watched him from afar, right outside his office. He deserved it, Brett said. He deserves everything—

“You know what. Killing the principal won’t make us graduate. The other people who hadn’t won’t graduate because of us.”

Brett glowered at Stephanies. “What? They’ll know. They’ll hire another principal—one who’s too scared to expel.”

The animals watched the principal. They asked each other where the teacher was.

“She’s probably—”

“Right here.”

Everyone swiveled a furry, scaly or feathery head. Lips curled into knowing smiles. The principal, who was a dragon black as death and red as lava, folded her wings. “Now—who will—”

“Brett.” Came a wooden voice of a wolf.

The magenta snake slithered forward. “Let’s go.” She could reign in her s.

They all crept, but one of the beavers, when told to turn the dead principal into a dam, swiveled his head from left to right. “No!” He expostulated. “No. this is wrong. I won’t. I won’t be held accountable. I am not that way. You all will be judged by the Lamb!”

“What?” Brett’s tongue flickered, her eyes sparking with red sparks. “You do as we say.”

The beaver shook his head. “No—murder is wrong.”

“We’ll be expelled. We don’t want to be misfits, right?”

“No—but we can move on—”

Brett turned a deaf ear, then suddenly screamed, “Go!” Every animal lunged at the principal, his door cracking and splintering open as the terrified non-shapeshifting person guarded himself behind his swivel chair. The blackness became a little red, with splatters of blood sprinkled onto the chair. “Now—for those students. And a new principal.”

The beaver stood there, horrified, as the animals dashed out of the school. He stood there, shocked, unable to breath for a second. Then, at home, when the beaver had turned back into a teenage boy, he told his parents. They were horrified. They told him he’d graduate at another middle school.

“No! I must graduate from J.J.! It’s my school.”

“No. You will graduate from Red Panda Middle. It’s just down the street—”

The boy turned into a beaver, joined the others and then told them how to proceed from having a full school full of former failures. His parents hunted him down (they were falcons), but they failed in their job—the wolf went after them.

The beaver was convicted, in a dream by the Lamb.

He repented.

But he never graduated.

He only worked.

He gathered the other students.

What a day in prison. Students—murderers—in prison.

The movie ended.

“What a movie…”

The students told the principal to reeducate those students who’d been expelled. Or they’d fire the principal.

“Besides,” one of the wolves said at one of the students’ houses that day. “It’s better than that movie’s ending!”

Everyone cheered.

The beaver gave a sigh. The Lamb would be proud.