Double Felix

As far as I’m concerned, each day can be sorted into one of two categories:

A) A day that goes exactly as it should go and in a really good way; or

B) A day that goes another direction entirely and not in a really good way.

Today started off as an “A” day, but it seems to have taken a wrong turn toward being more of a “B” kind of day.

The reason I know this is because I am sitting in the principal’s office when I should be in class. It’s Monday, so I should be doing spelling because that is what we do first thing every Monday.

I’ve been in Mrs. Lovejoy’s office before. This isn’t the first time. I have actually spent quite a bit of time in here over the years I have been at Scribbly Gum Primary School. There have been a few … well, a few misunderstandings.

But, today is different.

It is different because Mrs. Lovejoy isn’t in here with me. I’m in here by myself. And the door is locked. With Mrs. Lovejoy on the outside. I don’t think that she is very happy about this arrangement. I can tell because she is shouting. Mom told me that when people shout, they are usually upset about something.

I don’t know why she is unhappy. I’m the one who should be upset. I’m the one who is locked in her office. I’m the one who is now having a very, very “B” for bad kind of day.

“Felix?” Mrs. Lovejoy calls loudly through the door. She is using her just-pretending-to-be-
cheerful voice. It is high-pitched and singsong. “Can you open up, please?”

Mrs. Lovejoy doesn’t need to shout. I can hear what she is saying perfectly well. It is a very thin door.

She rattles the handle; the door remains locked.

Then I hear her say more quietly, “Helen, get me a knife.”

I think she might be talking to Mrs. Troy who sits at the front desk and makes announcements over the PA system. Mrs. Troy wears very pointy high heels that make a clip-clopping noise like a pony when she walks. I hear her push her chair back from her desk and trot her way down the hallway to the teachers’ lounge.

“Felix? Are you OK in there?” Mrs. Lovejoy interrupts my thoughts. “Why don’t you just open
the door and we can talk about this sensibly?”

I don’t reply. Instead I keep myself busy sticking exactly twenty-two pens and pencils into the soil at the bottom of Mrs. Lovejoy’s fiddle leaf fern plant.

“Monica, can you please call Bill Fisher?” says Mrs. Lovejoy.

Monica is another lady from the office. She must have come down to see why everyone is shouting. Bill Fisher is the school maintenance man. Nobody does so much as think about changing a light bulb at Scribbly Gum Primary School without Bill Fisher’s permission.

“Tell him that we need him here immediately. It is an emergency. And tell him to bring a screwdriver. And maybe a saw? Or an ax? Do we have an ax?”

An ax? What is she planning on using that for? I pull all of the books off the shelves behind Mrs. Lovejoy’s desk and put them back in pairs that have the same color on the spine. Two red, two blue, two yellow, two white, two green, two red, two white. It looks much better now.

“I found a knife,” I hear Mrs. Troy say, as she comes trotting noisily back from the teachers’ lounge.

“Great,” says Mrs. Lovejoy. “You can use it to start unscrewing the lock from the door while we try and find Bill.”

The door handle rattles again.

I hope Mrs. Troy doesn’t cut herself trying to unscrew the lock on the door. She has always been nice to me. She never complains when she has to call Mom to bring my lunch to school when I have forgotten it because I’m having a day that is going in the wrong direction.

“Felix! Open up!” shouts Mrs. Lovejoy again, knocking on her office door. She is starting to sound a bit less cheerful now.

I hear more footsteps then another voice joins the conversation. It sounds like Miss Jessup, who was my teacher last year. Miss Jessup was a nice teacher. I didn’t seem to get into trouble nearly as much when I had Miss Jessup. I think it is because she stuck to the rules and when we were meant to do something, we did it. She would never have tried to teach science first thing on Monday when we are meant to be doing spelling.

There is another knock on the door and I hear Miss Jessup say, “Felix. Could you open the door for me, please? We are all worried about you out here.”

I step up onto Mrs. Lovejoy’s chair in order to reach the framed pictures on the wall. There are five of them clustered together in a group directly behind her desk, all created by students at the school and arranged in a jumbled bunch on the wall. There seems to be no order to them at all. I carefully remove the painting of a sleeping giraffe by Kayla C. in Room B and throw it, frame and all, into the trash can. I take down the other four frames and pull the nails out of the wall. Then, using Mrs. Lovejoy’s stapler like a hammer, I neatly bang the nails back into the wall in the correct place and rehang the four pictures in two groups of two.

“Maybe we should call his mother?” says Miss Jessup. “She’ll be able to help.”

“I’ve already called her. She should be here any minute,” Mrs. Troy says, sighing and shaking the door handle. The door remains firmly locked.

I remove one of the three brightly patterned cushions that Mrs. Lovejoy has sitting on the armchairs in her office. Three cushions just won’t do. I look around for a place to stash the extra cushion, but Mrs. Lovejoy really does have limited storage options in here. Then my eyes come to rest on the industrial-sized paper shredder behind her desk. I could get rid of it permanently for her. I place the cushion on top of the shredder, then I
turn it on.

The blades of the shredder whir and the edge of the fancy fabric of the cushion begins to get chewed up by the machine.

“Felix! What is that noise?” calls Mrs. Lovejoy, over the noise of the paper shredder in action. She is definitely beginning to sound a bit panicked now.

Unfortunately, the entire cushion is too thick to actually fit through the paper shredder. The more fabric that disappears into the machine, the less space the feathers have left inside what is left of the cushion cover.

“Thank goodness you’re here,” I hear Mrs. Lovejoy say outside the door.

There is a jangling of keys, so I’m guessing that Bill Fisher has finally turned up. He has a big key ring that contains over one hundred keys, one for every room in the school and some that I don’t think even he knows what they open.

“Now, let me see,” I can hear him slowly trying a key in the lock. “No, it isn’t that one.” I can hear the chink of keys as he slides them around on the ring before trying another one in the lock. “Not that one either.”

The paper shredder groans as it tries to chew up more of the cushion, but it’s stuck. Very, very stuck.

I can hear him sorting through some keys before he tries another one. “No, it isn’t that key either. Hmmm… What about this one?”

He tries a fourth key in the lock. He seems to be working at the pace of a sloth. “Well, it definitely isn’t that one,” he comments.

The fabric stretches tight as the cogs of the paper shredder strain, trying desperately to continue pulling fabric into the machine, and the feathers are now squashed together so tightly in the fabric that they have nowhere else to go. The machine is making a noise like the motor might be about to die at any moment.

“Oh, just give them to me!” shrieks Mrs. Lovejoy.

I hear her snatch the keys from Bill Fisher and begin trying key after key in the lock, rattling the handle each time as if one of them might miraculously open the door.

The paper shredder begins to shudder and large puffs of smoke begin to come out of the back.

A key turns in the lock and Mrs. Lovejoy bursts into the room just as the cushion cover can take the pressure no more. The seams of the fabric rip open and feathers explode into the air like a mushroom. They rain down from the ceiling and cover the room in a layer of white fluff. It looks just like snow.

Mrs. Lovejoy just stands there with her mouth hanging open. She is probably just so surprised by all of the improvements I have made to her office in the short time I have been in here.

We look at each other for a moment, both covered in feathers.

“Hello, Mrs. Lovejoy. Hello, Mrs. Lovejoy,” I say.

Then it starts to rain.

This time it isn’t raining feathers. It is raining water. Actual water. From the sprinklers on the ceiling meant to detect smoke and put out fires. Like I told you. Today is going badly.

And from the look on Mrs. Lovejoy’s face, I think she agrees.