Journal: The Secret Safety Deposit Box

This is interesting. Our crazy English teacher has only gotten crazier. She wants us to write in our journal every day (except for weekends of course) for the whole term. Seriously, that’s all we’re doing for the WHOLE term! I guess that’s not that bad. I don’t really like writing essays about the greatest Neopian in history. Anyway, she said that we should write in our journals like a diary. “Put in your personal thoughts,” she said. “Nobody is going to read them, not even me!”

Then HOW are we going to be graded??? I always get A’s in English, even when I don’t try. Either she really likes me or she’s just lazy. I’m putting my Neopoints on the second one!

Jan. 11, 2005

English class is at the very end of the day so I have to write about everything that’s happened to me, starting from breakfast and ending at Science which is before English. Lucky, aren’t I? Some people have English class very first thing so all THEY have to write about are the pancakes they had for breakfast. But I have to write about the whole ENTIRE day! Thanks a lot, Mrs. Owen. You’re one heck of an English teacher.

Jan. 12, 2005

In my last… erm, ‘entry’ we’ll call it, I complained about having to write about my whole entire day when others just had to write about a slice of their day. Well, I thought about this last night at home and I realized that I don’t HAVE to write about my ENTIRE day. How would Mrs. Owen know if I just wrote about the important bits of my day? She wouldn’t unless she followed me around in her spare time. That would just be creepy.

Jan. 13, 2005

I got in trouble today. It happened in Science, when Mr. Green (our Science teacher of course) assigned us projects with our lab partner. Now my lab partner happens to be one of my best friends. Her name is Marianna and she’s a Blue Aisha. Here’s what happened:

Mr. Green: Now I’m letting you all choose your own topics. Hopefully, it won’t be anything SILLY *eyes Kyle and Nathan, troublemakers for life, at the back of the room*

Kyle: MR. GREEN, I THINK WE’VE JUST BEEN ACCUSED! Is that how you USUALLY treat your students? I mean, really, who do you think we are? Do you honestly think that we’re some kind of troublemakers who don’t know when to shut up?

Nathan: YEAH! What he said!

Mr. Green: I guess I’ll be seeing you boys in detention again. Now, the due date for this project is Jan. 27. At the end you will have to give us a presentation at the front of the room. So get working!

Okay. That part that I just wrote really wasn’t that necessary. I just thought it was kind of funny. Okay, I’ll move on to the part where I got in trouble. It was awful! Mr. Green started using my full name and… well, just read on.

Marianna: So what do you want to do for our project? Something good… you heard Mr. Green, nothing silly!

Marianna is a genius. She gets almost all straight A’s- except for PE. She’s absolutely awful at sports, but a whiz in Math. Well, nobody’s perfect.

Me: Well, how about I dress up as a giant heart and you tell everyone how the heart works. Or we could do lungs if you prefer that…

Marianna: No way! You must be crazy, Karina.

Me: Well then what do you suggest?

Marianna: *Giggles* I suggest we dissect your petpet Cobrall, Maze!

That’s when I lost it. I jumped out of my seat, and my backpack (which I had hung on my chair) fell on to the ground and burst open. Now there’s one thing you have to know about me and that’s that I really love my Cobrall.

I brought Maze to school before when I was little. The principal caught me and made me promise never to bring him to school. I promised.

But TODAY I HAD to bring him to school! Tiffany, my owner, was going to be out the whole day running errands. She said she couldn’t take Maze with her and I didn’t want to leave him all by himself in the house so… well, I THOUGHT he would stay in my backpack! But then again, anything can happen, right?

Maze went slithering across the floor. You’d think people had seen a Cobrall before. They all leaped on to their chairs and started screaming their heads off.

Mr. Green: KARINA THE GREEN ZAFARA, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?

I told you he started calling me my full name. I had to chase after Maze and when I finally scooped him up and put him into my backpack again, Mr. Green had a lecture to give me. And a little something called detention.

Jan. 14, 2005

Nothing important happened today so I’ll talk about DETENTION yesterday. Correction: detention with Kyle and Nathan!

In all the excitement yesterday I forgot to write about Marianna’s birthday. She turns 13 tomorrow so we’re going bowling to celebrate the occasion. Of course, I was pretty miffed at her for suggesting that we should dissect Maze (even if she WAS joking) and then not saying anything when I got in trouble. In fact, I’m STILL miffed at her. But I’ll get over it by tomorrow (not that I have a choice or anything. I can’t be mad at her on her birthday).

Anyway, back to detention. I thought it was going to be a horror and I wouldn’t leave to see today (which, yesterday, was tomorrow…) but it was actually… fun!

Mrs. Hag, the detention officer, just sits at her desk and sleeps until it’s time for us to leave. She can sleep through an earthquake for crying out loud! And I say her name suits her well enough.

Anyway, Kyle and Nathan were the only ones in the detention room when I arrived. In fact, the three of us were the only ones who got detention that day! The two of them were as silent as mimes until Mrs. Hag went to sleep. As soon as she nodded off, the two boys jumped out of their seats and ran over to where I sat.

Kyle is a Red Lupe and Nathan is a Yellow Gelert. They both faced me and I felt slightly intimidated by them. I knew I shouldn’t be. They weren’t tough guys. They were just silly troublemakers who always got into… well, trouble.

“Are you coming?” Kyle asked.

“Coming where?” I said stupidly.

“We’ll show you,” Nathan whispered.

I can never resist a little excitement. So I left my backpack in my chair and followed Kyle and Nathan to the other side of the room. There was a rather large bookshelf propped up against the side wall. Nathan took one end while Kyle took the other. With that, they managed to move the bookshelf away to reveal a secret tunnel.

“Whoa,” I gasped. “Where does this go?”

“You’ll see,” Kyle said in a mysterious voice. He bent down and crawled into the tunnel. I could hear his paws padding against the floor.

“Ladies first,” Nathan said jokingly. I grinned at him (the first time I ever even smiled at him! I always thought he was a bit of a nuisance… except for when he made funny jokes of course) and crawled through the tunnel. It was pitch black, but as soon as my eyes adjusted I could see the faint figure of Kyle in front of me.

We padded down the tunnel for about 10 minutes. Kyle stopped suddenly and I accidentally bumped into him.

“We’re here already?” Nathan said. “Well, that’s good. Open the door already!”

We had reached a small wooden door. Kyle opened it and had to duck his head to go through. I started to follow him, but Nathan pulled me back.

“Watch your step,” he whispered in my ear.

I blinked at him. I stood in the doorway and stuck my head out. I couldn’t see much at first, but then I saw that if I had just merely stepped out, I would have fallen straight to the floor. The door was high, very high.

“How do I get down?” I asked.

“Jump,” Nathan said simply.

Here’s another thing you should know about me. I’m afraid of heights.

“That’s how Kyle did it,” Nathan said. “He bent his head, went through the door and jumped for his life.”

I started to cough loudly. The idea of jumping out of a door and plummeting to the ground was not a very reassuring one.

“Are you afraid of heights?” Nathan asked after awhile.

“What’s taking so long?” Kyle called from down below. “Come on! We’re wasting time here! Hurry it up!”

I nodded my head. Nathan started to laugh. I glared at him.

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” I said huffily. “You would be scared of heights too if…” My voice trailed off. I had no particular reason why I didn’t like heights. I just… didn’t like it.

Nathan waited for me to continue. When I didn’t say anything he did a surprising thing. He grabbed my hand and said, “Watch your head!” Then he jumped out the door.

I screamed the entire time I went falling down. I tried to land on my feet, but as soon as I touched the floor I tripped and went spiraling into Nathan who went crashing into Kyle. When we all got up, I gasped so loud that Kyle rubbed his ears.

It was a rather big room with everything you could ever imagine in it. Literally everything was tossed around the ground, propped up against the wall and set up on shelves. Furniture, clothes, paint brushes, they were all there.

“What is this?” I whispered.

So then Nathan and Kyle told me the entire story of how they came across this glorious room. I listened without speaking.

Kyle: We kept getting detention and we were terribly bored of it. So we were playing catch one day and Nathan went chasing after the ball and crashed into the bookshelf.

Nathan: The bookshelf moved a bit and we could see a little bit of the tunnel. So we moved the whole shelf and went crawling in.

Kyle: We got to the door and opened it. There were stairs that led to the floor from the door. We discovered all this treasure and we also found a letter.

Nathan: It said ‘Dear whoever is reading this. We are the builders who made this Neoschool. We added a secret giant safety deposit box and filled it with treasures because everyone has been kind to us while we worked. They have brought us many foods and drinks when it got hot and extra jackets when the snow came. So this is a gift of appreciation.’

Kyle: We found some tools and we tore the stairs out. We didn’t want anyone else to find it because they would steal the treasures in here.

Nathan: So every time we get detention we come here. We just jump out the doorway. We don’t mind if we get hurt a little bit.

Kyle: We just look at all the treasures and maybe organize them and play with them. It’s a whole lot of fun.

Nathan: We use the trampolines over there to get back up to the doorway.

Kyle: Now that you know our secret, you must promise not to tell ANYONE.

Me: What about Tiffany or Maze?

*Nathan and Kyle exchange glances*

Nathan: Sure, they’re okay.

Jan. 17, 2005

This weekend has been full of adventure once again. Marianna’s birthday party was a ton of fun. She loved all her presents and the cake was really good…

Okay, okay, to tell you the truth, my mind is on Sunday. Kyle and Nathan came to my house and Tiffany opened the door and was shocked. She was like, “Since when did you get two boyfriends?”

We went to the park and they treated me to Hubert's Hot Dogs. It was a lot of fun. I’m sorry to say that it might have been even more fun then Marianna’s birthday. I think I’m going insane!

PS: Mrs. Owen, you better have kept you promise and not be reading this! If you ever found out about the Secret Safety Deposit Box, they’d kill me!

Jan. 18, 2005

Good news! I asked Mrs. Owen if I could take this journal home with me and keep it as a real diary and she said, “Well Karina, I’ve been watching you and you’ve been working very hard on your journal, I can tell. You may take it home and keep it there, as long as you bring it to school and write in it during English. Then you can take it home again of course.”

Hurrah! And I knew from the tone of her voice that she hadn’t read a single sentence of my journal.

Also I have two new friends: Kyle and Nathan. Who knew that I would have friends that were boys? Now sometimes I get detention on purpose just to hang out with them in the Secret Safety Deposit Box.

I guess Marianna’s right. I’m crazy. But I’m proud of it!

The End