Close encounters of the Rooster Kind
A long time ago, in a school named Be – I mean, Dell, High School, there was a kid named Joe Brown. His friends, of course, called him Rooster.
That’s me.
The origin of the nickname is a whole other story, but we’ll stick with this one, which started one Monday morning in the principal’s office. I don’t know about you, but generally, I classify it as a pretty bad week if I’m in the office before second period on Tuesday, trying to come up with plausible ways for buckets of water to end up above a certain teacher’s door without any help from, say, myself. On this particular day, however, the unpleasantness was counterbalanced by a strong sense of satisfaction, which is usually how you feel after seeing a bucket of water has fallen on your math teacher’s head, and being thoroughly congratulated by your classmates.
The principal took a seat behind his desk.
“Mr. Brown,” he said, “what a surprise.”
I rolled my eyes. He said that every time.
Just then, the window exploded inwards as something flew through the glass and straight at the principal! I covered my head with my hands as the glass tinkled around me. When I finally looked up, it took me a while to take it all in.
A girl in jeans and a sweatshirt stood on the other side of the room, dusting herself off. Most of the principal was still sitting in front of me, except for his head, which was on the desk, with wires sticking out of his neck.
“What?” I said. The girl looked up, appearing to notice me for the first time.
“Oh, hi. I’m Lisa. I work for the Secret Society Against Android Invasion. Now that I’ve told you that, I’ll have to kill you.”
“What!? Wait a second here, that’s just – you can’t – what?”
“Just kidding.”
“Huh?”
“I suppose you’ve never found out your principal was an android before, huh?”
“Not exactly.”
“Well, don’t worry. We’ve got people doing the PR, and it’ll all work out.”
“Right. I’m just going to go back to class now.” Math now seemed strangely appealing to me. It didn’t make any sense either, but at least it was a familiar kind of not making sense.
I rose shakily to open the door, but discovered that Lisa was barring my way.
“Hey, weren’t you over there?”
She rolled her eyes. “Sorry, buster, you’re coming with me. I don’t have to kill you, but that doesn’t mean we can leave somebody who knows about us running around screaming their heads off.”
“Actually, I was just – hey!”
I found myself unceremoniously dragged across the room to the window. “Um,” I said, “I think my mom might get a bit worried – and the school might wonder where I’ve gotten to, and, you know, I really love math, so – ”
At this moment I was dumped unceremoniously out the window, onto the grass just below the sill.
“Never mind,” I muttered under my breath. I looked up and saw...
a. A black van with “Secret Society Against Android Invasion” painted on it
b. A large chicken poised to eat me
c. Albert Einstein
d. That it was raining kalamata olives