Everyday, he placed a grapefruit on his desk. At some point in the morning, he would carefully peel and then consume the grapefruit. Then the next day, he would bring a new grapefruit to place, peel, and eat, thus continuing the cycle. He would eat them as he taught class, sometimes nearly choking in his attempts to balance teaching his class and filling his stomach.
But then one day, as he went to pick up his grapefruit, it was not a grapefruit he picked up but a small Mandarin orange. He was mortified. How could his grapefruit have vanished? Grapefruits do not just transform into oranges on their own. Someone must have stolen his grapefruit.
Mindy then walked in.
“Mindy! Why did you steal my grapefruit?”
“Excuse me? I did no such thing.”
“Then how did this happen?”
He held the Mandarin orange out at Mindy.
“I don’t want your orange. How dare you steal my grapefruit.”
“I have no idea why you think anyone would steal your grapefruit. I’m hurt that you think I would do such a thing.”
Paige sat happily in the cafeteria, and made sure to clean up after herself, disposing of her peel. Mindy then stormed in.
“Oh my goodness! Mr. Hayes just accused me of stealing from him!”
“That’s terrible. Why would he do such a thing? What did he think you stole?”
“His grapefruit of all things!”
Paige looked down at her hands, sticky with remnants of the squirts of citrus.
“I have a confession to make.”
“What?”
“But promise me, you won’t tell anyone.”
“Of course.”
“Okay.”
Paige swallowed hard.
“…I stole Mr. Hayes’s grapefruit.”
“What!”
“Let me explain!”
Mindy scoffed, unimpressed with Paige’s antics.
“Fine.”
“You see, he eats a grapefruit everyday.”
“Yes I am aware of that.”
“I know, but he just leaves it out there on his desk. Out in the open, vulnerable.”
“So you decided to steal it?”
“I’m not finished. Anyway, Emma said that she had a Mandarin orange that she did not feel like eating, so I took it out of her bag and put it in the place of Mr. Hayes’s grapefruit. Naturally, I put his grapefruit in the place of where Emma’s orange was. However, Emma was not pleased with my decision to do that. ‘He’ll think me the culprit!’ she said, so she begged me to destroy the evidence. So I ate it.”
Mindy looked at Paige, her mouth dropped open.
“I had no choice!”
Paige regained her composure.
“And to be fair, I didn’t quite steal his grapefruit. I did leave him behind an orange in its stead, so consider it an involuntary trade.”
Mindy grabbed her bag and prepared to bolt.
“Please don’t tell him!”
Paige stood up and watched as Mindy ran off into the distance. She sighed and sat down.
Later that day, as Paige was at her locker, she saw Emma come running towards her, panicked.
“Emma, what’s wrong? Talk to me.”
“It’s over! We’re done for! He’s onto us!”
“What are you talking about?”
“Mr. Hayes! The grapefruit! He knows what you did!”
“What? How?”
“Mindy!”
“Mindy?”
“Mindy.”
“Mindy…”
When Paige had to pass by Mr. Hayes’s classroom, she did so carefully, hoping he would not see her. He was sitting at his desk, seemingly unaware of what was going on outside his room, but then the moment Paige past his open door he fixed his stare on her frightened expression.
“Hi?”
“Do you know anything about my grapefruit?”
“I’m sorry?”
Mr. Hayes walked to the doorway, towering over Paige and crossed his arms.
“I said, ‘Do you know anything about my grapefruit?’ It’s been missing since this morning.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Well, I can assure you I know nothing of the incident.”
“Well, that’s interesting, because I’ve heard information on the contrary.”
Paige went white in the face.
“Really… well, I could have sworn I saw a grapefruit at the bottom of Emma’s bag.”
“Emma, you say?”
“Uh, yes.”
Mr. Hayes snapped his head up and looked toward the hallway, and proceeded to march purposefully in that direction. As soon as he was far enough, Paige ran to find Emma, only to see that he had beaten her there.
“Paige said that you have the grapefruit.”
“I don’t! Check my bag, there’s nothing in there.”
Emma threw her bag in front of her like a shield. Mr. Hayes grabbed it and unloaded the contents to find that there was indeed, no grapefruit. He grunted.
“Well then...”
And he marched off.
Emma saw Paige approaching and flashed her an unpleasant look.
“Why did you do that? Why did you point the finger at me?”
“I had no choice! He had me cornered.”
Emma sighed.
“I know.”
“It’s okay, it’s going to be okay, don’t worry.”
Emma grinned.
“Next time you just need to be more careful as to who you let in on the plan.”
Paige turned to Emma.
“What?”
“There is going to be a next time, isn’t there?”
“I guess so. We have no choice now.”
No comments:
Post a Comment