School Daze

"Move it, loser!"

Once again, Cameron Cohen found himself in the mud, goo leaking into his blue Fox racing sneakers and covering his blue jeans. The black leather jacket he had on protected the writing on his black tee shirt. He looked up at the girl who pushed him down. Her name was Maya Sanchez, the snottiest - and most beautiful - girl in the school district. Don't let her pink mini skirt and Happy Bunny tee shirt fool you into trusting her: this chick is a cheerleader from Hell.

"Don't you know that this hallway is reserved for cheerleaders only? What is your problem?" she asked in a nasally sort of voice. The Hispanic sixteen-year-old flipped her shoulder-length black hair at a cute guy sitting nearby, fluttering her mascara-coated eyelashes at him. Then she looked back down. "If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay out of my way."

Cameron’s brown eyes glared up at Maya’s blue ones, which gleamed with triumph and conceit. She stomped on his brand-new sunglasses with her three-inch heels and marched off to meet up with the rest of her cheerleading clones.

Cameron slowly got to his feet, wiping mud off his face as best as he could. Now that he and Maya were sophomores, her attitude had reached its worst. What was it that she had against him? He could never figure that out. Not in freshman year, when he first met Maya, and not now.

"Are you all right, Cam?" Cameron turned around to see his best friend running up to help him. Her short brown hair bounced in its messy ponytail, and her green sports uniform – sweatpants, jacket, and sneakers – blew in the wind as she ran. The girl was a Russian girl Cameron had known since seventh grade. Her name was Tanya Eltsina, which seemed appropriate because she loved Harry Potter and anything to do with fantasy. In Russian, "Tanya" means "fairy princess".

Cameron looked at her uniform to see what appeared to be chocolate milk covering her coat and staining the white words "Little Russian" printed on her chest. "Yeah, I’m fine. They spilled your breakfast on you?"

Tanya nodded, picking bits of egg and bacon out of her hair. "And they ruined my egg McMuffin!" She blew a stray lock of hair upwards, her dark emerald eyes broadcasting a tone of irritation. "We have to do something about them."

Cameron, a.k.a. Cam, smiled to himself. She hadn’t been in America for all that long, but one could barely hear the Russian accent in her voice. "Well…do you have any ideas?"

Tanya’s gemstone eyes immediately lit up. "As a matter of fact, I do." She grinned evilly. "Fifth period is the next time we see them, right?"

"Right…" Cam had no idea where she was going with this.

"So, that when we spring them!"

"…Spring them with what?"

Tanya leaned over to Cam and whispered in his ear. They were going to have to skip lunch B to pull it off, but Tanya’s plan sounded foolproof. So the two friends began to plot…

DING! DING! The bell signaling first period rung. Tanya and Cam looked at each other for a minute then ran off in opposite directions. Cam hightailed it downstairs to Mrs. Buxton’s English 10 class while Tanya ran upstairs for Latin I.

-----

As third period chorus drew to a close, Cam kept glancing at the clock. He was standing next to Tanya in front of the class to practice their piece, "Seasons of Love" from the movie RENT. Cam and Tanya had won the two solos in the piece and were anxiously waiting for the song to begin. The sooner they finished the song, the sooner they could set up their trap. Finally the teacher, Ms. Collins, played the opening chords for the piece, and everybody sang.

"Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes…five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear…five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes…how do you measure, measure a year?"

'In Maya’s torture,' Cam thought dryly to himself. Tanya thought the same thing in her mind and almost burst out laughing.

They finally reach the chorus of the song, where basically all they had to do was hold "love" for two measures every time it was written.

"How about loooooooooooooooove? How about loooooooooooooooove? How about loooooooooooooooove? Measure in loooooooooooooooove…Seasons of looo-ooo-ooo-ooove, seasons of looo-ooo-o-o-oove…"

Tanya began singing her solo. Man, did she have a beautiful voice! Cam had started developing a small crush on her late freshman year, and it had grown so great that he almost forgot to pay attention to the song.

"Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes…" Tanya began singing. "Five hundred twenty-five thousand journeys to plan…five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes…how do you measure the life of a woman or a man?"

"In truth that she learned or in times that he cried…" Cam responded. "In bridges he burned or the way that she died…"

Finally the song was through. Tanya and Cam were the first ones out the door. They ran down the hall to Mr. Simpson’s room to set up. String, duct tape, scissors, and a bucket were all that was needed.

-----

Tanya dumped the last cup of water fountain water into the bucket. "There!" she exclaimed triumphantly. "That should do it!" She jumped down off the chair she was standing on and gave Cameron a high-five. "She is so going to pay for being a jerk to us!"

Just then, the pair noticed footsteps coming down the hall. They quickly ducked down behind a bookcase as a figured opened the door. But it wasn’t Maya who opened the door – it was –

"Mr. Simpson! NO!!" Tanya cried as the bucket emptied its contents on the unsuspecting math teacher. He glared at Cam and Tanya before grabbing their sleeves and dragging them to Mr. Jameson’s office. As the threesome walked in, Cam spotted Maya Sanchez talking to Kayla Duncan outside the computer class. Tanya could have sworn she’d seen Maya wink in their direction.

Maya laughed her cute little giggle and ran off to her study hall. Tanya and Cam shared a glance. She was so going to pay for that…

-----

"Well, Tanya," Cam muttered to his friend, "this is it."

"Yup," agreed Tanya. "Our parents are so going to kill us."

"It was fun while it lasted."

"Sure was. Nice to have known you, my loyal partner in crime."

Cam chuckled. "Same to you."

Just then the principal walked in. Mr. Jameson’s face radiated with irritation as he turned to face the two teenagers. "Well, well, well. If it isn’t Bonnie and Clyde." He whipped around to glare at Cam and Tanya. "I suppose you think dumping water on the teacher is funny. Well, here at Roosevelt High, we have rules! Rules that not only protect the innocent, but rules that also eliminate troublemakers like yourselves!"

"Please, try to understand!" Tanya stood up and looked at Mr. Jameson with those cute, watery eyes that you see in cartoons. Strengthening the Russian accent in her voice, which was a guaranteed get-out-of-trouble-free-because-of-its-cuteness card, Tanya related the events leading up to their unfortunate demise. All Cam had to do was sit in the background looking handsome, occasionally adding "Yes, that’s right" and "That’s true, that’s what happened".

Finally, Mr. Jameson relented. "All right. I will speak to Maya immediately. However, your parents will be receiving a phone call from me."

"Yes, sir," the pair replied in unison. They stood up and walked out of the office.

-----

The rest of the day passed pretty uneventfully, aside from Cam tripping and falling face-first in the toilet in the boys’ bathroom. After school released for the day, Cam and Tanya met up by the door and proceeded to walk home.

"You think Maya will keep bothering us?" Tanya asked Cam.

"Move it, losers!" For the second time that day, Cameron found himself in the mud with Maya standing over him. The preppy cheerleader flipped her hair, threw Tanya’s purse in the recycle bin, and walked away.

"Yes, Tanya," Cam replied to her earlier question. "I think Maya will keep bothering us."