Ms. Bixby's Last Day by John David Anderson

he’s chewing on the word. “I like it.” He repeats the word to himself as the three of us make our way across Talbot Street, ignoring the looks of the drivers, who are probably all wondering why three boys are walking away from school on a Friday morning. It’s all right, I want to tell them. We’re on a top secret mission for our teacher. Go about your mundane little lives. Still, all those glances make me nervous. Adults have a way of making you think you’re doing something wrong even if you aren’t . . . though technically, we are, which makes it even worse.
    â€œWe should probably get off this street,” I say. “Someone could ID us.” Someone on the PTA, for example, one of a dozen meetings my mother manages to flit to.
    â€œWhat? You mean your black-and-green camouflage isn’t helping you to blend in?” Brand asks as we cut across a parking lot between two redbrick apartment complexes. I give him a dirty look, taking little satisfaction in the fact that if we were in the jungles of Cambodia, he’d be toast in his little tiger T-shirt. I unfold the map to make sure we are still headed toward the bus stop. We learned map reading this year in Ms. Bixby’s class.Legends and keys and Never-Eat-Spoiled-Watermelons and all that stuff. We had to, she said, because it would be on the test. The big, ugly, standardized, pass-this-or-you-will-be-sentenced-to-death-while-your-teachers-are-flayed-alive test. Ms. Bixby hated that test, so we hated it, but we took it anyway. Sometimes you have to suck it up and get it done.
    â€œIf we just make a right up here, then another left at State Street, we will be at—”
    I’m suddenly cut off. Not just cut off; I’m actually thrown against the side of the apartment building beside us. Brand has one hand in my chest and another dragging Steve backward against the wall.
    â€œI think we’ve been spotted,” he whispers. It sounds exactly like something I would say.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œOur cover has been blown,” he repeats. He indicates that there’s someone around the corner. Someone we know. I quickly steal a glance, swallow hard, then pull back.
    â€œOh, gefragt. Big Mack attack.” I press back against the wall. Brand nods gravely.
    â€œWhat? Mr. Mackelroy?” Steve squeaks. Mr. Mackelroy. The other sixth-grade teacher. The master Dungeon Master if ever there was one. Dressed in his tweed jacket and carrying his briefcase—the only teacher at Fox Ridge who bothers to carry abriefcase, like it’s still the twentieth century—cigarette dangling from the corner of his frown. Thankfully he was on the phone and distracted, or he probably would have seen me sneaking a look. “Shouldn’t he be at school already?” Steve whispers.
    â€œHe might say the same thing about us,” I point out. I wonder what Mr. Mack is doing walking to school, but then I remember hearing that some of the teachers who work at Fox Ridge live in the nearby apartments. Mr. Mackelroy—divorced and with no kids save for the students he’s constantly torturing—is probably one of them. I look down at my camo. I don’t have any pants the color of red bricks.
    â€œWhat do we do?” Steve asks. “We can’t let him see us. He will report us to the front office. They will call our parents.” Steve’s face is puffing up like a blowfish, his eyes bugging out of his head. The whole mission is in danger and we’ve just gotten started. We are about to tunk big time. It’s suddenly clear what must be done.
    â€œWe have to silence him,” I say.
    â€œHuh?” Brand says.
    I glance around, scanning the ground, struggling to come up with something, thinking out loud. “You know. Take him out. Eliminate the threat. We can use a shoelace to strangle him. Or a belt.” I can hear Mr. Mack’s voice now, still on his phone, getting closer.