One last plan

“I've got a plan.” A chirpy voice said as its owner set their tray down on the lunchroom table.

“No”

“Nu-uh”

“Nope”

Three tiered voices responded in near unison. 

“Come onnnn. This one is way better than the last one. There is no way for us to be caught this time.” Alex, the chirpy voice speaker groused.

There was a collective groan from the other three sitting at their table, Zeke being the first to comment with more than pained sounds or one word response with his baritone of a voice, “The last plan ended with each of us in detention and Nelly with a burn on her arm, so ‘Better than the last one’ really doesn't mean much.”

“Hold on,” Alex jumped in quickly to defend themselves. “I just put Nelly in charge of the distraction, it was simple.” They said before standing and miming the actions he described next.

“Boil the water, pour it on the ice bucket to create a bunch of steam, then get out as quickly as possible, if Nelly’s too clumsy for that it's not on me.” 

Proceeding to look at said “Clumsy” girl, Alex was only met with unimpressed eyes and a rather rude hand gesture, her sleeve rolling down just enough to not see the almost faded scar of the burn the water left. “The pot handle you brought broke Idiot, how old was that thing anyway.”

Before Alex could answer Nelly held her palm up to him, “Nope, never mind, don't care. I didn't get it half as bad as Matt on the ‘Plan’ for Mr. Hendrix's mid-term,” She said before looking over to Matt with an impish grin, “how long did it take before your dad let you leave the house on your own again?”

Meeting her grin with his own annoyed glare before turning it on Alex, he responded in what, in Alex’s opinion, was an entirely unnecessary amount of venom, “Five calendar months, one for each week of detention that I got assigned.”

“You took too long to get into the cabinet.” Alex dismissed out of hand. “We had Hendrix distracted for like 10 minutes down the hall, you should’ve been in and out in less than three.”

Matt held eye contact for moment before going back to his meal with a grumble, “The stupid papers were in the bottom right, you said they’d be in the top left. I had to look through all of them. How was I supposed to know which key worked anyways?” 

Alex, deciding it best to have this part of conversation drop, continued from his first statement, “I have a plan, and this one is completely untraceable.”

Zeke’s deep chuckle brought all the viewers to him, “you said the first plan for getting Ms. Viramontes’ quiz sheets would be untraceable. And surprise surprise, it was traced. Back to me, only me. Why did we have to use my laptop anyways?”

“The school computers were too slow, my laptop was still confiscated for the time we tried,”

“You tried,” the others cut in in unison.

Alex, not losing face for a second, continued on, “to check if there was a Deep Web site that had all of the assignments from our school, and neither Matt nor Nelly owned one at the time. You’re ‘The Tec Guy’ anyways.”

“Whose class is your next ‘great plan’ for anyways?” Nelly asked after the bit of silence that followed Alex’s last remark. “All of our classes are pretty straight forward this semester. All it takes is like 20 minutes of prep before I've got a pretty good grasp on all of the work.”

“That's the beauty of this plan. It will get us everything that we need, for ALL of our classes. And I have reason to believe it'll work for future classes too.” Alex said with a tone of certainty that wasn't quite there when he presented any of their previous plans, relishing in the look of surprise and sudden interest that "The Mastermind's" companions did their best to cover up. A shared glance between the other three and a committed nod was all Alex needed to know they were on the hook.

“Let’s say,” Matt started before taking a quick sip of his water bottle. “That we were,” another sip, “Somewhat interested in what you had to say. What does this 'New, better, and untraceable plan' entail?" Despite trying to sound nonchalant, Alex could see his left-hand clenching and relaxing as it always did when Matt got excited.

Reaching into their bag, slower than needed to build up suspense of course, Alex proceeded to slam six textbooks onto the table, one for each class they were all taking that semester, he began to explain his master plot, completely ignoring each of their expressions as he spoke.

“I have no clue how no one has thought of this before, or how the school could be so blind as to make such an obvious mistake. But in these textbooks, there are hundreds, if not thousands of instructions, and problems almost identical to the ones that get put on our tests and quizzes that we get assigned.”

So caught up in their explanation, Alex failed to notice the faces of those sitting around them drop from thinly failed interest to complete confusion. For one the plan started with actual facts, but none could see where their friend was leading them with this.

“All we have to do is memorize each of the processes to the problems, verify our knowledge with the fake problems, and then when the time comes, we can just use that knowledge to answer the question. And the best part, we can just grab these from the library when no one is looking and put them back after we're done.” Finishing with the absolutely perfect amount of flair in their bow, Alex sat down back down ready to be praised for their brilliant plan.

Only to be met by the others falling to the floor in laughter. 

It took several minutes, and more than a few confused onlookers catching their eyes for all of them to return to their seats. 

Still fighting down her chuckles, Nelly was the first to speak, “Are you telling me. Your big plan is studying.”

Before a very confused Alex could respond, Zeke cut in, “Hold up.” Catching his breath for another moment Zeke continued, “You've been in the top ten present in our grade since the end of freshman year. Are you telling me that you haven't studied once?” His humor dissipated as he spoke, shifting more towards shock.

Alex responded in sincere defense, "I don't know what you're all talking about. My plan is to repeatedly practice all of the content in the textbooks in preparati- its studying. I just heard it.” A quick thump to their head on the table got the others laughing again. “The thing I just described is studying.” 

Nelly decided to speak next, “Why did you have to steal the textbooks instead of just checking them out from the librarian?” Another thump on the table. “You didn't want them tracing our book logs huh?

Thump.

“I'll take that as a yes.”

“Welp, I’m in.” Matt said while picking up his new tray. “Zeke you in?”

“I’m in, Nelly you in?” His own tray leaving the table.

“I'm in.” Looking over to the still slumped over Alex, she spoke through one last singer, “Alex, you in?”

Thump.