School Daze (Mel)

Danny did not like to think about her current assignment as a 'bounty hunter'. Someone out in the world threatened society, and Danny needed to take special stock of just what the problem was- and if she could deal with it, she dealt with it. Typically, Danny would not draw an assignment such as this, even though Prodigy placed special attention on one of their more gifted members. This mission held something special though. It just so happened the incident in question took place at Danny's high school.

A few weeks ago, information came up linking a possible money laundering event operating in northern California. No one in Prodigy took any notice of something so petty and small, but it involved a pharmaceutical company currently operating in hot water with every watch dog and government agency in the the Western Hemisphere. Investigations found nothing about the link between the school and the money laundering, but no federal agent could match the amount of information a cheerleader could within those hallowed halls.

It was odd to think of the assignment as anything other than class as usual. Danny walked down the hall to her locker, putting away her books and preparing for lunch. She wore the pleated, plaid skirt with a red cardigan over her white blouse. The chill outside could stay outside for all Danny cared, but having a cardigan always beat not having a cardigan.

Now, Danny knew where the low life degenerates from wealthy families all hung out around a certain hallway, but they seemed somewhat above this. There was always the math club. Danny knew nothing about them and never really made any chance to meet with them. And, Danny could not rule out the administrators. She can only imagine the toll it took coming to a school and dealing with kids who flaunted wealth without knowing what it took to earn it. Any of these leads could help Danny, but the security around the school also fell very lax in the last couple of years, which felt odd considering the amount of incidents befalling the school since Danny joined Prodigy.

Now, Danny needed to be a spy. Or, a bounty hunter. Or, a detective. Maybe all three.

Melodies sat on the bus, her phone dead and all the other kids too big of dweebs to have a conversation with. It had been two hours and it didn't seem Iike they were even close, and, along with time slowing down for her, she was dying of boredom. I don't know how much longer I can take this! This is driving me insane!

At the beginning of the year, Melodi's Dad urged her me to join some clubs. One of the clubs she ended up joining was the Math Bowl. With a little bit effort, she was able to hone her mind to become extremely efficient at solving problems. The team wasn't planning to go to the international level, but with Melodi ensuring that they won regionals and nationals, the teachers thought they'd be cheating the kids out of an experience if they didnt go, and now she wishes that she never joined the damn club.

After 4 hours of driving to California, they arrived at the school. They would've gone to the hotel, but the teachers "want the kids to meet the competition and make some friends!" fuck you, teachers. Fuck you. Melodi just wanted to  to sleep in the hotel, not hang in a school that she knew no one in.

The teachers looking after them just let them go wherever they wanted after they went inside. Some of the other kids awkwardly huddled together in the hall like penguins. It was sad to look at, so Melodi went to the lunch room. Two other Math Bowl geeks had the same idea, but they all silently split up because no on actually knew where it was.

After 9 minutes of walking around, Melodi found the lunch room.  She went into the line. Lucky for her, they were serving pizza, and it looked pretty good. Not like that lunch room crap, this looked Iike was from some pizza place nearby. Maybe this will make up for the long drive, she thought as she pulled out her wallet to pay for the pizza on her plate.

She found an empty table and decided to sit there there while she ate her pizza. She might've had a good group of friends at home, but she didn't here, and she wasn't prepared to make a fool of herself trying make new ones.

"Ms. Tamamoa, you look busy." A woman whom's glasses drooped down as far as the bags under her eyes walkd by, her hair as gray as the linoleum running up the droll hall. "Stay out of trouble."

"Thanks for the concern Ms. Jouragmandr." Danny eyed her as the teacher continued her turtle like pace down the hall. "I am the honor roll." Danny closed her locker and watched the woman stride down the hall with an oddly ornate pair of rings. "I don't think she had that last week." Suspicious, but a winter bonus did get tossed out from time to time.

A low growl came from Danny's stomach. It felt like a compass manifested within her stomach, pointing her True North. "Yeah, I remember where it is." Pushing aside any telling of falsehoods, Danny walked out of the hallway and down the stairs. The cafeteria contained a large open dining hall to eat and a few circular rooms off to the side in a more secluded setting. Danny grabbed a salad and swiped her meal card before heading off towards one of the corner dining areas.

Outside the glass windows of the north side of the hall, she could see the same kids in Loser Alley trading cigarettes for cash and a few of them draped all over each other- hopefully not for cash. "Next stop. But, first salad." Danny crammed herself in a room she thought looked empty, only to find it occupied by a red headed girl who looked possibly a year younger than herself. "Oh, sorry about that." The smell of pizza filled the area. "All the other places are filled, so I hope you don't mind; I'll only be a minute or so." Something about the girl's look caught her attention. "Hey, you look familiar. Are you from around here or are you a potential transfer?"

Melodi really liked this school's food. Her school wasn't poor by any means, but she guessed this school just had more money. Made sense, with all the rich kids. She had just finished eating a small vine of grapes when someone opened the door. A girl with brown hair holding a salad walked in. She was probably a sophomore or something.


"Oh, sorry about that. All the other places are filled, so I hope you don't mind; I'll only be a minute or so." The other girl said.

"It's no biggie." Melodi said quietly.

She stared at her for a moment. When Melodi was beginning to think she had a lot of sauce on her face or something, she said "Hey, you look familiar. Are you from around here or are you a potential transfer?"

A bit of relief rushed over her. She was glad that she didn't look like a pig to the first person she met here. "Uh, no, I don't go here. Our school is participating in the Math Bowl international event and your school is hosting." Melodi said with a clearer voice and a bit louder this time.

The chair felt plush as Danny slipped into it. "Math Bowl?" Four fork prongs dug through the crisp touch of the salad leaf. It sounded promising as she brought the leaf up, dripping with juice from a ripe grape. "Well, that sounds- interesting." A few times the adviser for the math club tried to recruit Danny, but she could never find time to fit it into her schedule. That, and she did not want to. The second fit it, but the former sounded better. "I don't even think I've-" And then her eyes got wider.

Any money laundering would need people to count, and her relative lack of knowledge of the mathletes left her at a great disadvantage. In fact, Danny now knew more about this girl sitting beside her than she did her own classmates. "You know, I don't know a whole lot about Math Bowl, but I'd actually like to see what it's all about. I think they said the Bowl was in the gallery. My parents display artifacts they find in that gallery sometimes, but they haven't sent an exhibit in some time." Just how helpful this new girl could be would be hard to figure out, but it did give Danny a reason to show up to the Math Bowl.

She still kept an eye on Loser Lane, but she could only stomach so much of the idiocy going on with those delinquents. Deep down Danny assumed even a soulless pharmaceutical company would not stoop to their level. But, those math kids would make good assets. Lots of intelligence, confidence in their skills, but easy enough to shake down if things got tough. "Let me show you where the hall is." Danny finished the last of her salad and popped a grape in her mouth. "Come on." She cocked her head and motioned towards the door.

Melodi are the last bites of her pizza as the other girl sat down in a chair across from her. She took a bite of her salad and started to give the same old speel that a lot of people give her when she tells them she's in the Math Bowl. She was saying something else when she abruptly stopped, her eyes widening to some realization.

"Your parents artifacts sound much cooler than the Math Bowl." Melodi said. She was almost certain the girl would be disappointed by how lame it was.

Melodi picked up her Styrofoam Trey as she got up and the other girl motioned towards the door. As she threw it in the trash, she laughed a little and said "Thank you for this. I barely found the lunch room." As she walked towards the door, she said "I'm Melodi, by the way."

Most of the students around here just left their trays all over the place, expecting the grounds crew to take care of everything themselves, but Danny liked to see Melodi take care of things herself. "I'm Danny. Yeah, this place can get pretty odd. The guy who designed the atrium was some big name surrealist artist. I'm pretty sure he was on acid when he designed the layout to the school." Each hallway winded with elevations at random spots, widening and shortening at different spots for no real rhyme or reason. "The guy who hired him got fired, but the building was too expensive, so they punished the students by making us deal with it."

After an odd enough venture down the rabbit hole, Danny opened the door into the gallery named after her parent's donation to the school. It did not fit the mold of the previously designed school and merely existed as a large circular building with nine rings for exhibits and a spiraling staircase leading up to a second floor, serving as the host to the Math Bowl. "I don't know where your check in is, but this is the place." No one within the vicinity looked familiar to Danny, even the guys wearing the same crest as her looked new, but she did vaguely remember one of their faces. "If anything seems odd to you, be sure to give me a call." Danny would give the younger girl her number before heading off to try and begin her surveillance.

A storage area in the back of the gallery held most of the artifacts in storage when not in use. The last display came through four months ago, so the storage now held a great deal of Christmas decorations and other memorabilia currently out of season. Having her last name be on the building and being an apprentice curator gave Danny a key to get into the back. What it did not was give the three or four voices she heard back there gain access. She pushed the door open; a light cut off from one of the offices. "Hey!" Danny shouted as she closed the door. "Who's back there?" She formed a hammer around her hand and pulled out her cell phone for a little bit of light.

As they walked through the school, Danny went on about how some guy was on acid, but Melodi didn't really listen. She was in awe. Not just by the wacky design of the building, but the fact that the school had such a high budget.

"I don't know where your check in is, but this is the place. If anything seems odd to you, be sure to give me a call." Danny said. When Melodi showed Danny her dead phone, she just got her number down on a piece of paper.

"Thanks for showing me around." Melodi said as she walked over to a power outlet in a wall. Luckily, she had brought her charger. She left it there and walked towards her team's check in. She couldn't help but watch in complete embarrassment as two crowds began to form in the middle of the gallery. She tried her best to ignore it, but most of the geeks from her school's math bowl, along with some random people, had begun arguing with some other kids. It was so intense, the awkwardness almost physically hurt her. Nope, never joining the math bowl again. Does this count as odd?

After waiting in a small line for a couple minutes, she got to the front of the line and the woman there, after searching up her name on the computer, gave Melodi her card. "It'll get you free lunch and will verify you're part of a team." The woman said. Just great. I wasted eight dollars on pizza.