Why I Bring a Bag Lunch Now

Tom Gerencer

tgerencer@yahoo.com

c. 5,000 words

Why I Bring a Bag Lunch Now

They were serving cheesy walnut peppers again, which in my experience is never a good way to start a Thursday afternoon.  I tried to get Jinx — the school bully and a guy with nothing you could really call a neck — to steal my lunch money after second period, but he was having none of it.

“Keep it,” he said, after I’d walked by him for the third time, jingling the contents of my pockets in what I had hoped was an enticing way.  “I can last ’til I get home.”

I wished I could’ve said the same.  Mrs. Hamshaw caught me trying to sneak out the back door of the cafeteria, and she shooed me back in line.

“You eat your lunch,” she said, “or you’ll waste away to nothing.”

Now, I found that hard to swallow, coming from a woman who probably caused calibration problems in seismological equipment several states away.  But sometimes you’re the dirt, and sometimes you’re the model X-500 Eletrolux Deluxe, and there was no denying which end of that equation I fit into.

I stood in line behind Marty Ruckerman, a little dripping of a kid resembling an extra from a Unicef commercial.  He gripped his orange plastic tray as if he thought he’d float away without its extra weight.  I couldn’t help but notice he was trembling.

“Cheesy walnut peppers,” he whimpered.  “They’re serving cheesy walnut peppers.  It’s the second time this week.”

“Get a grip,” I hissed back.  “You want Old Lady Plukrenge to give you seconds?”

At the mention of the possibility of extra peppers, I swear to God his hair stood up.  With good reason, too.  We could see Old Lady Plukrenge even now, through the window in the concrete wall, her plastic hairnet glinting in the light from the fluorescents, her brow-ridge proving evolution, her flowered smock suggesting hospitals and mental institutions.

“Good God, look at the way her lower lip sticks out,” whined Marty, while Plukrenge slopped another ladleful of something grey and unidentifiable on some poor unsuspecting second-grader’s plate.

“And that moustache,” I commiserated.  “You know, Brendan Scully said she strains soup through it when she eats.”

That got a shudder out of both of us.  I thought for certain Ruckerman would try to bolt and run.

“Be strong,” I said, while wishing I could take that same advice myself.  “One way or another, it’ll all be over in forty minutes.”

Small consolation.  We both knew those forty minutes would last three hours, at least.  It was a well-known law of lunchroom temporal dilation here at Emerpathy Middle School.

* * *

Minutes later, having braved the dreaded ladle, me and Marty Ruckerman sat down.

“Are they bad?” he said.

“Can’t you see them?”

“No.  I’ve got my eyes closed.”

“Oh,” I said.  “Me, too.”

I could see that one of us was going to have to have some guts, and I was pretty sure that it would not be Ruckerman.  That’s why I said, “On three, we look.”

“Okay,” said Marty, but he didn’t sound excited.

I counted, looked, and had to bite my tongue to keep myself from screaming.  If the thing there on my plate had ever been a pepper, then someone had removed the evidence.  It was purple, for one thing, and not like the ones they grow that way on purpose, but the deathly purple of a month-old corpse.  Also, it was bloated out like anything, and there was something spilling out its top that I was praying only looked like some kid’s brains.

“It’s bad, isn’t it,” said Marty.

“You didn’t look?”

“I didn’t dare.”

“Nevermind,” I said.  “Let’s just say I couldn’t find my appetite right now with both hands and a GPS.  We’ve got to ditch these things.  And fast.”

Marty made a little whining sound.  “How?” he said.  “We’ll never get them in the trash with Hamshaw here.  She’s got eyes in the back of her head.”

I shivered.  It was only an expression, but we both knew anything could happen here at Emerpathy Middle, and the times it didn’t were more not than often.  But we couldn’t sit there whimpering, which was why I said, “Okay.  How ’bout we stick them underneath the tabletop?  Like gum?”

“And that’ll work?”

“I have no idea,” I said.  “But at this point, anything is worth a try.”

I took one last look at Hamshaw — she was over by the Coke machine, waggling her finger at a kid who’d turned a brilliant shade of green — and I reached out and grabbed the pepper on my tray.

* * *

What happened next is something I will not forget.  Not if I live to be a zillion, which, after everything I’ve been through, I’m not ruling out.

Just as my fingers closed around the pepper, a little tiny voice said, “Ow!  Jou hurteeng me!”

I looked at Marty.  His eyes were almost falling out.

“Please, tell me that was you,” I said, but Marty shook his head.

Then, slowly, and with all the terror from a hundred-thousand nightmares about showing up at recess in your underwear, we both turned to the pepper on my tray.

Through tiny, twisted pepper-lips, it said, “Don’ steeck me to the table, keeds.  Jou gonna squeesh my head.”

“It’s talking,” Marty squeaked.

“Jou right, I talking, mang.  But don’t tell nobody, or I gonna get een trouble.”

“Your pepper is talking,” Marty said again, in case I hadn’t got that far.

“I not a pepper,” said the pepper.  “I am a preesoner of war.  But I juse the deesguise-o-matic, and eet makes me look like thees.  So I hescape.  And someseeng else?  Jou school ees not a school.  Eet ees a sheep.”

“A sheep?” I said.

“A space-sheep,” said the pepper.

“How’s it doing that?” said Marty.

“I study, een the language lab.  But I make the meestake, and I learn espaneesh first.  Jou understands me good?”

We nodded.

“Then leesten: Jou school ees go to outer space.  Today.  Real soon.  With jou eenside eet eef jou don’t do someseeng fast.”

“Cool,” said me and Marty, harmonizing.

“Jou theenk ees cool?  Jou want to be stuck een the feefths grade for ten-thousands jears?  I deedn’t theenk so.  So jou got to get us out of here.  But sneaky-like, because the beeg fat lady?  She’s an alien.”

“Mrs. Hamshaw?”

This made sense.  It all made sense.  My entire horrifying grammar-school experience was coming into painful focus.

“Our school’s a spaceship,” I said.  “Our teachers are all aliens.  That’s why Mrs. Vinnaccio smells like plastic.  It’s why Mr. Bayers can’t say ‘dipthong’ without spitting.  And it explains that weird strip of hair thing Mr. Drake combs across his head.”

“No, no, those guys ees juman being,” said the pepper.  “They jus’ getteeng old.  But they mind-controlled, so jou got to get us out of here, hokay?”

I’d say I thought about it all of half a second, maybe.  And I will tell you: I don’t usually take advice from lunchroom vegetables, but greater forces were at work here.  That much was obvious, even to a kid.

“Let’s go,” I said, but Marty looked at me as if I’d grown a second head, and it was learning fractions.

“You’re going to listen to a pepper?”

“Beats eating it,” I said, and Marty couldn’t argue.  But we were going to need some help.  Two kids like us would never get past Mrs. Hamshaw on our own.  Not even in a lunchtime as stretched out as the ones at Emerpathy Middle School.

What we needed was a girl.  Now, normally, it’s against my policy to get too close to those, but this was an emergency.

“Kenzie Wertmiller,” I said to Marty.

“She’s over by the windows, sitting by herself.”

“That’s good,” I said.  “You ready?”

“Yeah.  But what about my pepper?”

“Ees just a pepper,” said the pepper on my tray.  “But I wouldn’t eat it, mang.  That theeng look like it make jou seeck.”

* * *

Kenzie Wertmiller was a short kid, with glasses that eclipsed her face.  She had hair the color of mashed squash, and the only way anyone would ever call her cute was if there was money in it.  And that includes her mom.  I tried looking nervous when we sat beside her, in the hopes that Mrs. Hamshaw would think I had a case of puppy-love.  But Kenzie saw right through it.

“Get out of here,” she said.

“Just wait a second.”

“No.  You called me plane-crash-face in gym.  I mean it.  You get out of here or you’ll be sorry.  I’m a paisely belt.”

Marty made a face.  “A what?”

“A paisely belt.  It’s like a black belt?  Only better.”

“There’s no such thing,” said Marty.

“You’ll find out, fat mouth.”

For such a little kid, she sure could argue.  But we didn’t have time for this.  I noticed she hadn’t touched her pepper, so I said, “You going to want that?”

She looked doubtful.  “I guess I should.  There’s people starving in Cambodia.”

Well, I’d heard that line a hundred times, at least, and I didn’t buy it.  I mean, there were people with headaches in New Jersey.  Was I supposed to take an aspirin?  Luckily for all of us, my pepper chose that moment to speak up.

“Thees ain’t no time to play aroun’,” it said.  “Scary, scary theengs ees goeeng on.”

I thought she’d scream.  She didn’t, though.  Girls can be all right — sometimes.  For instance, she just sat there with her eyes getting wider while the pepper told her why we had to leave the school, and she didn’t say a word when I explained my plan.

* * *

Now, Mrs. Hamshaw would never let an ordinary kid go to the bathroom during lunch.  But Kenzie Wertmiller was far from ordinary, and someday, she will win an Oscar.  What I’m saying is, last time I saw anybody bawl like that was when I put a bunch of frog’s eggs down my little brother’s shorts.  My parents grounded me.

It worked on Hamshaw, too.  The bawling, I mean, not the frog’s eggs, although I would’ve tried them if I’d had a couple handy.  Anyway, Hamshaw took Kenzie by the hand and led her out, and in minutes, we all met up again in the rotunda, near the front doors, with the pepper riding in my hands.

“I crawled out through the service hatch,” said Kenzie.  “Hamshaw thinks I’m in the bathroom.”

The pepper squirmed.  “Tha’s good, keed.  We go now, eh?”

We were on the verge of walking out, and I was feeling pretty good about it, when Kenzie had an attack of conscience.

“What about the other kids?” she said.  “Like Brendan Scully.  Timmy Howe.  Joe Donnelly.”

Marty raised his hand.  “For the record?  I never really liked Joe Donnelly,” he said.

Kenzie’s jaw, at that point, reminded me about a book I used to have on steamshovels.  “Are you telling me that, knowing everything you know, you’re just going to leave them here?”

She had a point.  I’m not saying it stacked up against an eternity in fifth grade, but it was something.

“Oh, sure, the other keeds,” the pepper said.  “We gonna call the cops.  They gets rescued.  Hokay?  Come on.  Vamos!”

But Kenzie didn’t budge.  “The cops?  What are we gonna say?  Our lunch told us the school’s in danger?”

She had another point.  This one was bigger, and the pepper couldn’t argue with it.

“I don’t know,” it said.  “We talk about eet outside, hokay?”

“Come on,” said Marty.  “Let’s get out of here.”

I know, I know.  I should have gone.  I almost did, too, but the thing was, although I didn’t like all the kids at school, like for example, Jimmy Cress, who poured Za-Rex in my roller skates, or Trisha Foss, who stuck her tongue inside my mouth that time, I didn’t want them kidnapped into outer space, either.  With a few notable exceptions.  What if it was me?  How would my parents feel?  I mean after the initial joy wore off?  I shook my head.

“I can’t,” I said.  “I’m sorry.  You go, Marty.  Take the pepper with you.”

I was surprised, almost, when Marty said, “Oh, great.  Like I’m supposed to go alone?  No way.  I’ll get captured in the parking lot, or something.  I know it.”

So we were staying.  All of us.  Not bright, maybe, but it felt right.  Until the pepper started freaking out, that is.

* * *

“Jou keeding, right?  I mean, jou keedeeng.”

“We’re gonna save the school,” I said.

The pepper laughed.  “Jeah?  How jou ees gonna get past General K’Chazzpak?”

“General Ka-who?” said Marty.

“Chazzpak.  He try to take over the juniverse, but he crash the sheep here twenty jears ago.”

“The sheep?” said Kenzie.

“He means, ‘ship,'” I said.

“He’s a genius,” said the pepper.  “He juse the mind-control to make the people here forgets the crash.  He makes the sheep look like a school.”

Kenzie squinted.  “It really sounds like he said, ‘sheep.'”

“When the sheep crash, the computer break.  Ever seence, jou keeds ees do the calculations.  For to feex eet.”

Marty looked like the guy on the Heimlich-Maneuver posters in the lunch room.  “I knew my homework was too hard,” he said.

“Hard?  How many keeds jou theenk ees doing quantuum tenth-deemension reconciliations?  Ees the cheesy walnut peppers.  They got the mind-enhanceeng drug what make jou ten time smarter than jou was.  And another theeng.  They stretch the time out, so they get more out of jou.”

This explained a lot.

“So we’ll stop studying,” I said, but the pepper didn’t like it.

“There ees only one more computation for to be doeeng.  They get that een a surpriseengs test they gonna geeve jou after lunch, and then the sheep take off.”

“We’ll flunk,” I said.  “On purpose.”

“Jou theenk the other keeds ees gonna flunk?  I telleeng you, we stuck here.  We gonna go to war.  And we ees gonna die.”

The pepper started sobbing.  It was pathetic, really, sitting there in the rotunda, listening to the blubberings of a depressive vegetable.  I would almost rather do anything else at all, except possibly for certain tasks involving yard work or a toilet brush.

Thank God for Kenzie.  She came up with the idea.

“What if we could change the tests?” she said.  “Then the answers would be wrong.”

The pepper’s breathing hitched.  “Jou know where they ees?”

She nodded.  “One time, after school, I heard Mrs. Finnellini say they kept them in the library.”

* * *

We were walking down the hallway to the library, and I was feeling pretty hopeful about our chances for success when a familiar voice spoke up behind us, changing that.

“I changed my mind about the lunch money, punk,” it said.  “I’d like it.  Now.”

We turned around, and there stood Jinx.  His real name was Henry Robb, but he’d punch you if you ever called him that.  For that matter, he’d punch you if you called him Jinx, or if it rained, or if it didn’t rain, or Mars went into retrograde.  At twelve years old, he had full facial hair, and although he wasn’t what you’d call a smart guy, unless your arm was being twisted (which usually it was if you were standing close enough to him) he made up for his lack of brainpower by beating people bloody.  He came walking toward me now, cracking his knuckles in a way that made me think of ice packs and methiolate.

“Who ees thees guy?” the pepper said, “and what happen to hees neck?”

Now, if we’d had brains, we would have run off screaming, but as for me, I thought Jinx would crumble at the prospect of a talking lunch, and I think the others thought so, too.  What we’d forgotten was, Jinx was not like other kids.

“Hey, cool!” he said, and he snatched the pepper from my hands.

“You give that back,” I said.

“Jeah, give me back!” the pepper said, but Jinx pushed me away.  Telling him to do something was like beating up a pit-bull with a chicken.

“Hang on a second.  This thing’s awesome!”

“Give it back,” said Kenzie.  “I’m a paisely belt.”

“Yeah, Good.  Watch this,” said Jinx.  “You kids are gonna learn something.”

I didn’t doubt him that, whatever he was planning, we would find it eductaional, but I had a feeling we weren’t going to like it.  I was right, too.  He reached into his back pocket, and pulled out a firecracker.  He shoved it in the pepper’s mouth, and then held up a lighter.

“This is going to be cool,” he said.

And that was the first time I saw a paisely belt in action.  Kenzie may be small, but she’s got feet of lightning.  She kicked one of them up between Jinx’s knees, connecting in a way that Jackie Chan would have admired.  Jinx collapsed like my Dad that time I swapped his Hershey bar for Ex-Lax, and me and Marty turned to look at Kenzie.

“I told you, you’d find out,” she said.

* * *

We explained everything while Jinx recovered.  He insisted he come with us, “for protection,” but for myself I wasn’t sure if that was ours, or his.  You wouldn’t think he’d want anything to do with Kenzie after an attack like that, but he had hardly finished his recovery when he started offering to bring her books home after school.  Anyway, we voted that we couldn’t leave him wandering the halls with aliens around, and so he came along.

* * *

The Library at Emerpathy Middle School has never been my favorite place, just like my mom has never been a Pakistani carnival employee.  For one thing, it smells in there.  Like the dust of all the books on government and agriculture ever printed.  And for another, the time goes even slower once you step inside.  It’s like being in church, or at my aunt’s house, only magnified.

“It’s quiet,” Marty whispered.  “Too quiet.”  Then he added, “No, on second thought, it’s just quiet enough.  If it was any noisier, I wouldn’t like it.”

“Going somewhere, children?”

I almost screamed, for the second time that day.  I turned, and there he was.  ‘Bad Hair’ Day.  The scourge of any kid who ever owned a library card.  He was eight feet tall, and pear-shaped, with the worst haircut in history.  He was quick with a ‘shh’ and he could spot a gum-chewer at 500 yards in the pitch black through a brick wall.  Most of all, he hated letting kids inside his library.  I think he was afraid they’d read something.

“Mr. Day,” I said.  “We were-”

“Doing research,” said Kenzie, stepping forward.  “We’re doing a report.”

Day smiled.  “Oh, really?  For whose class?”

“Mr. Fuller’s,” Kenzie said.  “It’s on … dolphins.”

“That’s wonderful,” said Day.  “However, we don’t allow food in here.”  He nodded toward my pepper.  “And secondly, the library is closed for lunch.  You’ll have to come back during a free period, or after school.  Tomorrow would be best.  As for now, I’m sure Mrs. Hamshaw must be worried…”

A free period?  We were sunk.  We’d never make it.  And we couldn’t let him take us back to Hamshaw.

That’s when Jinx said, “You leave this to me.”

Now, everybody knew that Mr. Day liked golf.  He always talked about how great he was, and he kept a trophy on his desk.  It had a little silver statue of a golfer on the top.  He told everyone he’d won it in a tournament in college, though we were pretty sure he got it in a yard sale, and had his name put on it later.  I only mention it now because this was the same trophy Jinx ran to and grabbed.

“Hey, ‘Bad Hair!'” he shouted.  “You want this?”

You’d think the world was ending, or at least that part of it that held the library.

“GIVE THAT BACK!”  Day tried to grab him, but Jinx dodged and made it to the hallway.  He turned back, hooted once, and ran.

“You kids stay here,” Day growled at us, and with that, he lumbered off in boiling-mad pursuit.

Marty, meanwhile, shrugged at me and Kenzie and the

pepper.

“You heard the man,” he said.  “We stay.”

* * *

It didn’t take us long to find the tests.  The pepper thought if we changed one question on each one, the school would not be able to take off.  That took a while, but time was something there was not a shortage of at Emerpathy, especially not during lunch.  We changed the tests, put them away, and left the library.  It went like clockwork.  Marty even started whistling.  He stopped, though, when Mrs. Hamshaw came around the corner, with Mr. Day behind her, dragging Jinx along by his right ear.

* * *

Now, anyone who’s never met Assistant Principal Gosling doesn’t know their luck.  The man is short and hunched and has a face that shows no evidence it wasn’t hit repeatedly with a waffle iron.  Emerpathy legend says, when he was born his first word was ‘detention,’ and it’s been his favorite ever since.  And on top of that, we’d soon find out he was an alien.

His office was a bare, cold place that sapped the hope from any kid who entered there.  No cheery pictures brightened up the walls, no ornaments adorned the furniture.  Unless, that is, you’d count the cheesy walnut pepper.  It sat in a heavy plastic jar atop his desk.

“I sorry, keeds,” it said.  “We try.”

In one corner of the room stood ‘Bad Hair’ Day, and in another, Mrs. Hamshaw smiled at us as fakely as she ever had.  Next to her, Old Lady Plukrenge stared off into space, still carrying her ladle, her moustache twitching.  Drool trickled from the corner of her mouth.  And although her lips stayed shut, a voice came from the upper one.  A voice that turned my guts to water.

“You children think you almost won, no doubt,” it said.  “Well you were never even close.  Your friend, it seems, is not the only one with access to the disguise-o-matic.”

“That moustache,” Marty whimpered.  “It’s General K’Chazzpak!”

“Clever child,” the moustache said.  “And a few minutes ago, I was a copy of The Guide to Modern Sweetcorn Cultivation in the library.  Oh, I know you changed the tests.  Don’t worry.  We can fix that.  Now, Officer Gosling.  Show them what they’ve won.”

Gosling nodded.  “Yes, General,” he said.  He reached up to his neck, as if to scratch it, but then he grabbed his hair instead, and lifted.  Underneath, his bald skull gleamed.

“This thing,” he said, waving a hand at the pepper, “may have escaped today, because we were so busy with our preparations, but we will never be so lax again.  And you may rest assured that this ship will leave on schedule.”

“After twenty years of waiting!” the moustache said triumphantly.

“The final data await processing,” said Gosling.  He pulled off one of his ears with a wet sucking sound and set it on his desk.  “The other students ate their peppers.  Even now they are digesting.  Boosting their intelligence.”

He removed his other ear, and then his nose, which he gave to Mr. Day.

“In sixth period, your classmates will take their ‘tests,’ and after that, the school will rise up from this stinking pit you call a planet.”

He took off his lips.  His cheeks.  He put these in the ‘in’ box on his desk, and then popped out his eyes.  They jiggled.

“You’re coming with us,” he said, his bare teeth shining in his naked skull.  “And you’re going to behave yourselves, and do your computations.  And when we are out there, locked in interstellar war, no disguises will be necessary.  And this is what you will obey.”

He took his teeth and tongue out, and he set them on his desk.  A thing slithered from the hole where they had been.  It was fat and green and sluglike, and it slid up on his bony scalp and wobbled, looking down at us with eyes on stalks.  It screeched.

Marty snuffled.  Kenzie’s breath went in and out in little wheezes.  Jinx sobbed openly, and something small and warm and wet ran down my cheek.

And that is when Marty Ruckerman surprised us all.

“You can’t take all of us,” he said.

On average, Marty didn’t talk like that, especially to adults.  It shocked me even more when he jumped forward, grabbed the jar that held the pepper, and hurled it at the window.  And believe me when I tell you, I had never seen a throw like that.  Not in all my years of gym class.

Mrs. Hamshaw acted fast.  She slapped a button on the desk, and a black shield slid across the window.  But too late.  The jar had smashed through.  It fell outside, into the bushes.

“AFTER HIM!” the moustache shouted.  “HE MUST NOT GET AWAY!!!”

A mad scramble for the door came next.  Gosling put himself together hastily, and Day kept us four kids at bay while the faculty and staff ran out.  “You’ll pay for that, Ruckerman,” he growled.

He slammed the door.  We heard it lock, and we were left alone there in the office.

* * *

I won’t say I had a lot of hope.  They weren’t guarding us, but realistically, what could four kids do, locked inside an office?  And what was one cheesy walnut pepper against a bunch of aliens and mind-controlled adults, even if it was bilingual?

“This isn’t as bad as it seems,” I said, although to tell the truth, I thought it might be worse.  “My mom says it’s always darkest just before the dawn.”

“Your mom’s never been awake at midnight,” said Kenzie.  “Just before dawn, it gets grey.”

She was right, I knew.  It wasn’t until Jinx grinned at me that I realized we might still come out on top.

“The intercom,” he said, with reverence.

I turned, and there, on Gosling’s desktop, stood the chrome-pedestaled, white-buttoned microphone of the school-wide intercom.  The one Gosling used for all his diabolical announcements.

“We can tell everyone,” I said.  “About Day!  And Mrs. Hamshaw, and the moustache, and the pepper!”

“Are you crazy?” Kenzie said.  “You think they’ll just believe us?  Would you?”

I thought about that.  She was right.  Again.  I was really getting sick of that.

“Well what else can we do?” I said.  “We’ve got to tell them something.”

Now it was Marty’s turn to grin.

“Oh, we’ll tell them something,” he said, holding up the teeth and tongue that Gosling had forgotten.  “But I don’t think they’re gonna like it.”

* * *

It took us a few minutes to get the hang of Gosling’s mouth.  You had to speak into one end of it, and anything you said came out the other end, in Gosling’s voice.  From there, we only had to aim it at the intercom.  Jinx, meanwhile, shoved pennies in the door jamb to keep unwanted visitors away.

“This is Assistant Principal Gosling speaking,” said Ruckerman, in Gosling’s voice.  “I want to assure you that we’ve fixed the problem with the cheesy walnut peppers.  You see, we had a little trouble with the sewage pipes, and a small amount of septic juice got in the oven.”

“It was just a little bit,” I added, taking my turn at Gosling’s mouth.  “Nothing that could hurt you.”

“And a teeny bit of barf,” said Kenzie, “And a little beetle guts.”

“And cigarette butts,” said Marty.  “And the washcloth Mrs. Finnellini uses on her legs.”

We all looked at each other, and we nodded.

“But everything should be okay,” I said.  “If you think you’re feeling sick, it’s probably your imagination.”

* * *

Emerpathy Middle School did not take off.  Not then, anyway.  It really couldn’t, what with all the intelligence-booster drug being mopped up by the custodians later on that night.  And everybody would have flunked their ‘tests,’ except they weren’t around to take them.  A bunch of kids ran off and told their parents about the food scare, and the board of health showed up, accompanied by six or seven news vans, and when we were discovered locked in the assistant principal’s office with a couple human body parts, and when it turned out half the faculty and staff mysteriously disappeared, and the other half showed up delirious, the school was shut down pending state investigations.

The four of us went back there two days later — me, Marty, Jinx, and Kenzie Wertmiller — and we ducked the yellow tape.  We saw the pepper through the windows in the cafeteria, with about a hundred other gruesome looking lunches, sitting on a hundred orange plastic trays.

I knocked on the window.  Two plates of chicken casserole and some dried-out pizza slices opened it.

“We going,” said the pepper.  “All of us preesoners of war ees takeeng off.”

“Cool,” said Marty.  “Can we come?”

“No.  Jou planet need jou.  And anyway, we do the calculateeng now.  Mos’ of us ees smart enough.  An’ eet take us longer, but so what?  We go a leetle slower.  We got no war to fight.”

“Well, it was great knowin’ you,” I said.

“Me too,” said Jinx.  “Sorry about the firecracker.”

“Will you leave soon?” said Kenzie.

“Tonight,” the pepper said.  “We make it look like ees a beeg hexplosion type of theeng.”

“Cool,” said Jinx.

“Maybe they buil’ jou a real school.  But jou watch out for Gosling and the General.  Jou ain’t hear the las’ of them, or of the beeg fat lady.”

“Mrs. Hamshaw,” I said.  “She’s got eyes in the back of her head.”

“Mang, jou ain’t keeding.”

“But we’ve got us,” said Kenzie.

“Right,” said Jinx.

“And Kenzie’s feet,” said Marty.

“Ees good.  I theenk jou be hokay.  Jus’ be careful what jou eat.”

“Thanks for the advice,” I told the pepper (and the other culinary refugees) “but from now on, I bring a bag lunch.”

END