Vela stared directly at the camera, wide-eyed. She said nothing. As the long seconds dragged on, visible beads of sweat began to form on her forehead. Somehow she didn’t blink. Albiorix found himself gripping the corners of his desk so hard that his fingernails started to hurt. The other Bríandalörians shot each other concerned looks.
“I think she’s broken,” said Devis.
This elicited a louder round of laughter from the class than Evan’s crack about Albiorix’s outfit.
“Shhh,” said Ms. Chapman.
“Okay, um, I guess I’ll do it?” said Olivia Gorman at last. Then she recited a brief loyalty oath to the flag of the nation. After that, she predicted the weather and shared an “inspirational” quote of the day from some sage called Steve Jobs.
Olivia and Vela returned to class a few minutes later. Olivia was beaming. The paladin looked pale and shaken.
“Nice choke job, Valerie,” whispered Evan. “Did you, like, forget how to talk?”
“Hey, did you forget how to brush your teeth?” said Sorrowshade, turning to Evan. “Because when you talk, it smells like a haunted sewer.”
Evan clapped his mouth shut with an audible snap an instant before the rest of the class burst out laughing. As Ms. Chapman shushed the class again, Albiorix thought he caught a strange look in Nicole Davenport’s eye. Not good.
“Valerie, honey, you can have a seat now,” said Ms. Chapman.
“Huh?” said Vela, who seemed to have forgotten she was standing at the front of the class staring out into the middle distance. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And now let’s dive back into those essays!” said Ms. Chapman.
Though not as grueling as earth sciences, Ms. Chapman’s English class was a struggle for the adventurers as they tried to shoehorn complex ideas into the rigid, highly traditional format of the five-paragraph essay. The goal was to persuade the reader of their position, but in this case the two available choices—“Cats Are Good Pets” or “Cats Are Not Good Pets”—seemed totally arbitrary. Worse, all the best Bríandalörian arguments (cats are good pets because they can see ancient spirits; cats are bad pets because they might be an evil wizard in disguise) were totally off the table.
So the outlanders did their best to try to imagine why your average middle schooler might like or dislike the beasts. Devis’s point that cats are good pets because they can be taught to steal trinkets was deemed “unrealistic.” And Sorrowshade’s contention that cats are bad pets because they are affectionate was called “bizarre.” Thromdurr, in particular, was criticized many times by Ms. Chapman for using old-fashioned words that “sounded smart” instead of writing in plain language. It was rough going, and as always, it seemed, they were relieved to hear the sound of the bell.
On the way to Computer Applications class, the party quietly conferred among themselves.
“Vela, what happened with the announcements?” said Albiorix. “I’ve watched you face down an entire ogre war party by yourself, but I’ve never seen you like that.”
“I don’t know,” said Vela, “I just . . . froze.”
“Hey, instead of Vela the Valiant, maybe we should call you Vela the Vacant,” said Devis. “You know, because of the dead eyes.”
“Yeah, I thought your whole thing was giving big inspirational speeches,” said Sorrowshade. “I feel like I’ve endured quite a lot of them.”
“It is, but only to adventuring parties. You don’t know what it’s like talking to hundreds of people at once . . . all of them strangers,” said Vela. “What if I had misspoken or . . . I had something stuck in my teeth?”
“Oh, you did, actually,” said Devis.
“Still do,” said Sorrowshade.
Vela frantically began trying to locate and dislodge the bit of spinach from her incisors without a mirror.
“Bah. Trouble yourself not, paladin,” said Thromdurr. “Fear is a natural part of life, I am told. One day I hope to experience it myself!”
The party stopped. They stood at the threshold of room 215, the school computer lab.
“Here we are,” said Albiorix. “Devis, when I give you the sign, I need you to distract the whole class’s attention away from that laser printer by Mr. Gulazarian’s desk.”
“Okay, what are you thinking? Small fire? Large fire?” said Devis, his eyes lighting up. “What size fire?”
“No fires. We can’t have you getting suspended over this,” said Albiorix. “I need something subtle.”
“Subtle,” said Devis. “Got it.” And he scampered off to take his seat.
“There is no way he got it,” said Vela with a sigh. “You understand that, right?”
Albiorix shrugged and nodded. The other four adventurers found their seats as well. Each of them sat down before their very own computer: a boxy, folding device, a bit like a book, with a glowing screen and keyboard instead of pages.
Albiorix smiled. He figured that if the conjuration magic inscribed in his spellbook back in Bríandalör was unavailable, he might well use one of the fabled computers of this world to conjure what he needed instead. The class was currently using a design program to create a menu for a fictional restaurant. Albiorix had decided that this was the perfect cover for forging the documentation he needed to enroll at JADMS.
“When working on your menus, it’s very important to properly name the layers,” said Mr. Gulazarian, as he made the rounds, inspecting everyone’s work in progress. “By the time you get to Layer 27 you’re going to have no idea what Layer 1 was.”
Albiorix waited until Mr. Gulazarian was distracted and . . .
Nothing. He realized he had absolutely no idea how to use a computer. When a Homerooms & Hall Passes character employed one of the devices in the game to, say, search the web for a research paper or play an online game, they merely checked their Computer skill and rolled the appropriate dice to determine success or failure.
But Albiorix didn’t even know where to begin. He tentatively punched the letter C on the keyboard. A small c appeared on-screen. Huh? Why wasn’t it a big C? He needed a big C for the word Canada. Albiorix glanced at the clock. He had fifty-three minutes to completely understand computers and use them to create a believable birth certificate. Albiorix took a deep breath. He cracked his knuckles and rolled his shoulders and tried not to hyperventillate. He had fifty-two minutes now. . . .
GULAZARIAN, Khoren Haik
OCCUPATION: Eighth-grade Computer Applications teacher
ATTRIBUTES: Cunning: 15, Intelligence: 14, Likability: 8, Willpower: 15, Fitness: 10
SKILLS: Classroom Management –2, Computer +8, Cooking +7, Drive +4, Poetry +9
BIOGRAPHY: As far back as he can remember, Khoren Gulazarian dreamed of being the greatest slam poet of all time. Under the moniker Street Truth, Gulazarian won second place in a number of poetry contests, but circumstances eventually forced him to choose a more practical career. This may explain his general frustration at ending up a middle-school computer teacher.
—Excerpt from The Tome of Teachers
FIFTY-ONE MINUTES LEFT. Albiorix smashed the C key harder, hoping greater force would make the letter larger. Instead, a long snake of little c’s poured forth. What in the world?
“What are you doing?” whispered June, startling Albiorix. The wizard didn’t realize she was sitting at the station beside him.
“I’m just . . . practicing my typing,” he said.
“Seems like you’ve got the letter C down,” said June. She gave him a thumbs-up.
“Actually, I seem to have temporarily forgotten how to make it a big C,” said Albiorix.
June cocked her head, raised her eyebrows, and gave the wizard a look that, for the first time since he had arrived, made Albiorix feel like he truly didn’t belong in this world. After approximately eight seconds, she said, “You hold down the shift key.”
Albiorix did. Then he typed C. Presto! On-screen appeared a capital C. Albiorix’s heart leaped.
“June, you’re a compute
r expert!” said the wizard.
“Uh, no. Not really,” said June, “What, have you never used a computer before?”
“Nope,” said Albiorix. “We don’t have them back where I’m from.”
June nodded. “Ah. My cousin went to a school like that. No computers, no grades. They played with sand all day and none of the toys had faces.”
“Yes, exactly!” said Albiorix. “And you might not be a computer expert, but it looks like you’re pretty good.” He pointed to June’s screen. In the first five minutes of class she had already laid out a very nice menu for a place called Just Churros.
“Well, I do like to draw and do graphic design and stuff,” said June. “So I use my computer at home for that.”
“Say, do you think you could help me with something?” said Albiorix.
“I guess,” said June, leaning over to Albiorix’s computer. “What do you want to call your fake restaurant?”
“Oh, no, not the menu,” said Albiorix. “I need to very quickly create a fake Canadian birth certificate that will stand up to close scrutiny.”
June blinked. “Why?” she said. “Are you some sort of international criminal?”
“Ha! No, no,” said Albiorix. “Nothing like that. It’s for a . . . game.”
“Oh,” said June. “Not gonna lie. I was a little bit hoping you were an international criminal. But games are cool too. Although this one seems like it might be kind of nerdy.”
“No, it’s actually not nerdy,” said Albiorix, his voice rising. “It’s a great way to socialize and build imagination and weave amazing stories with your friends! You should really give Homerooms & Hall Passes a—actually, on second thought, I’m not sure it would make much sense to you.”
“Ouch,” said June. “Well, I don’t want to play your nerd game anyway. I’ve got Oink Pop on my phone. Anyway, first we need to do an online image search for a picture of a real Canadian birth certificate.”
June’s fingers flew across her keyboard, and in a matter of seconds the screen showed a document that said Birth Certificate at the top, with an official-looking seal beside it.
“We save that file and open it in our other program,” said June, as she did. “Then we blank out the old name, like so, then type in the new, made-up one over it. What do you want it to be?”
“Armando Boort,” said Albiorix.
“Ha,” said June. “I knew it was a fake name.”
“What? No, it’s very, very real!” said Albiorix. “Putting your real name on a fake birth certificate is, uh, how you score points in the game.”
“Relax, I’m joking,” said June. “So we’ll type Armando Boort, in a font that’s close enough to the real one. Next we’ll change the date of birth so it doesn’t say 1954, and give the parents the same last name. Click save, and voilà: one fake Canadian birth certificate, ready for your game that is apparently beyond my simple comprehension.”
Forty-seven minutes left in class, and Albiorix had the documentation he needed to enroll at J. A. Dewar Middle School.
“Thank you so much, June,” said Albiorix. “How can I ever repay you?”
“That will be nine thousand dollars,” said June. She held out her hand.
Albiorix blinked. Then he slowly reached toward his own ear, pulled a coin out of a pocket dimension, and handed it to her. June stifled a laugh. Mr. Gulazarian shushed her.
June spent the remainder of the class helping Albiorix with the menu assignment too—he decided to call his fictional restaurant the Sorcerer of Snacks as a little inside joke—and by the end, he felt he had acquired the basic fundamentals of how to use a computer. In Homerooms & Hall Passes terms, his Computer skill would have increased by one. All in all, it was a pretty successful period.
Yet there was still the matter of printing the document without anyone noticing. At 9:31, four minutes before the bell, Albiorix gave Devis the sign: licking both thumbs and running them smoothly across his eyebrows. Devis stared at him. Albiorix did it again. Devis shrugged. They probably should have agreed in advance about what the sign would be. Eventually Sorrowshade noticed and punched Devis in the arm and Devis finally got it.
The thief gave Albiorix a little wink and dropped his pencil. He went down to get it and, a few seconds later, somehow popped up on the other side of the room.
“Mr. Gulazarian, where’s the pencil sharpener?” said Devis.
“This is the computer lab, Stinky,” said Mr. Gulazarian. “We don’t have a pencil sharpener.” He gave a sigh and didn’t bother to look up from helping Thromdurr with his menu design.
“Oh,” said Devis. “Then . . . what did I just jam my pencil into?”
“Huh?” said Mr. Gulazarian. He stood and started toward Devis but immediately wobbled. An instant later, he fell flat on his face with a horrendous crash. Several students gasped. Others jumped to their feet. A few pulled out their phones to film. Vela quickly stooped to help him up, and Albiorix clicked the print button.
“Mr. Gulazarian, somebody tied your shoelaces together!” said Nick Ribat.
“Impossible,” said Mr. Gulazarian. “I’m wearing loafers! They tied somebody else’s shoelaces together around my ankles. Whose shoelaces are these?” He held up a knotted pair of neon-green laces that he’d managed to untangle from his feet.
“What?” said Evan Cunningham. “How is that—”
“How is what, Evan?” said Mr. Gulazarian, pulling himself up off the floor.
“Nothing,” said Evan.
“Spit it out!” said Mr. Gulazarian.
“Well, those are my shoelaces, okay,” said Evan. He held up both of his sneakers, which had been completely de-laced. “But I—”
“Evan Cunningham,” yelled Mr. Gulazarian, “go to Vice Principal Flanagan’s office right now!”
“But he didn’t do anything, Mr. G,” whined Derrick Day.
“What are you, his lawyer, Derrick?” said Mr. Gulazarian. “You know what, you’re going to the office too. If Evan did something, there’s no way you didn’t help him.”
“Aw, c’mon!” said Derrick. “That’s, like, typecasting, man.”
As the whole class watched the three of them argue, Albiorix slipped out of his seat and swiped the freshly printed page sitting in the tray on the opposite side of the room. Devis gave Albiorix another little wink as he deftly twirled his pencil back and forth across his knuckles.
The bell rang and Albiorix practically dashed to the office. After a short wait beneath the Inspire Leadership poster, Ms. Roland, the receptionist, waved him back to see the vice principal. The red-faced, crying boy he passed coming out of Flanagan’s office did give the wizard pause, but Albiorix’s optimism had mostly returned by the time he took his seat across the big desk from the vice principal.
“Hello, Armando,” said Flanagan. “Did you bring the proper identification required to enroll in J. A. Dewar Middle School?”
“I sure did,” said Albiorix. “Here’s my birth certificate!”
He handed the printout to the Vice Principal, who put on a pair of reading glasses and scanned it. He frowned as he rubbed it between his finger and his thumb.
“Why is it on printer paper?” said Flanagan. “Where’s the original?”
Albiorix’s heart sank. Somehow he had assumed that the printer, like a duplication spell back in the real world, would produce a perfect copy of the real thing. Apparently it didn’t.
“This is, uh, just a high-resolution JPEG of my birth certificate,” said Albiorix, trying out some of the new computer-y terms he’d just learned from June. “Obviously the original is with my parents, Jeffrey Dwight Boort and Angela Kay Boort, back in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.”
Flanagan gave a noncommittal grunt. “Fine,” he said. “I just need to confirm that you currently reside in our school district.”
Albiorix was stunned. “You need to—but . . . but the rules don’t say anything about—”
“Sometimes the rules don’t cover every situation,”
said Flanagan, as he slowly removed his glasses and stared at Albiorix with cold gray eyes. “Your circumstances are unusual—we don’t have any other foreign exchange students at JADMS—and I’m using my own discretion as vice principal of this school. You’re not questioning my authority to do that, are you, Armando?”
“Ah . . . no, sir,” said Albiorix quietly, as he looked away.
“So who are you living with while you’re visiting us here in the states?” said Vice Principal Flanagan.
“Lovely family, they’re called the . . . Albiorixes,” said Albiorix, who was never very good at coming up with names on the fly, a real weakness as a Hall Master.
Flanagan jotted it down. “Phone number?”
“Oooh,” said Albiorix, “Here’s the thing with that: actually, they don’t have a phone number, per se.”
Flanagan squinted at him.
“Because the phone is broken!” said Albiorix, who could hear his own voice speeding up and rising in pitch. “They’re getting it replaced. Yep. There was a terrible accident. The phone exploded. Thankfully nobody was hurt. Anyway I’ll be sure to let you know as soon as they have it all sorted out. The phone.”
“Please do,” said Flanagan. “Address?”
“It’s 347 Elkview Road,” said Albiorix, picking a house number at random and a street name he vaguely remembered from a map he’d once seen in The Hibbettsfield Handbook. He had no idea if the address actually existed.
“Elkview Road?” said Flanagan, staring hard at Albiorix.
“Yes,” said Albiorix, “though I haven’t ever viewed any elks there. Ha ha.”
“My favorite pizzeria is on Elkview Road. It’s called Pasquale’s,” said Flanagan. “You should order a sausage pie from there sometime. Once the family phone gets fixed, of course.”
“Of course,” said Albiorix.
“All right, then, Armando. I think we’re squared away,” said Flanagan, extending his hand. “Welcome to our school.”
“Thank you, sir!” said Albiorix, shaking it.
On his way out of the office, Albiorix was feeling pretty good. The phone number and the address were complications, to be sure, but he would sort them out. The important thing was, Armando Boort was now a full-fledged student at J. A. Dewar Middle School. At least for now, he wouldn’t get expelled and cease to exist/join the Sky Bear in the Great Cave of Clouds. Hooray!
Homerooms and Hall Passes Page 7
