NO SCHOOL! Oh wait…

Ryan Lee * 2h ago

“The student body has voted, and it’s official: April Fools’ Day is now an official holiday! The teachers have voiced their approval of this new event, stating that every student who does not show up for class will receive an 80 on their next exam! Perfect to bring up that 60 in AP Physics! Enjoy your day off, Stuy!”

You stare at the Facebook post, bewildered by your stroke of luck. You no longer have to cram for that CS test happening tomorrow—you merely have to cram for two tests occurring on April 2nd, because the CS one got pushed back!

Wait. No, this can’t be right. It’s obviously some devious prank from the SU to ruin peoples’ chances of getting the gold sticker that comes with having perfect attendance! “Haha, you ain’t getting me this time!” you think smugly as you pack your backpack for the next day.

***

When you wake up the next morning, something immediately seems strange—you weren’t woken up by the annoying dings of 138 new notifications on Messenger. Not wanting to be left on read again in your lunch group chat, you decide not to say anything and continue with your daily 20-minute struggle to get out of bed.

***

At the train station, you notice another anomaly. Members of the “Stuy Student” species can be easily identified by their giant, textbook-laden backpacks, a cup of Starbucks coffee from the day before, and a drained, half-asleep expression on their faces from staying up until 3:00 a.m. the night before. And yet, when you look around, you see nobody resembling anything close to that. “Don’t tell me they actually fell for it,” you think to yourself as you get on the 2 train.

When you climb the stairs to the Tribeca bridge, you see that your worst fears have come true—no one else is even here! You walk slowly to your first period class, your footsteps echoing through the silent hallways. A light flickers ominously. Suddenly, you begin to realize that maybe it wasn’t a prank after all. You begin searching for the teachers, because surely, SURELY they didn’t fall for the same trick as well, right?

You sigh in despair as you slowly climb up to the 10th floor, searching for the signs of life one may see on a normal school day. Not a single person on the other nine floors, so what are the odds that they’re all up there? Suddenly, you hear a sound… splashing water? When you finally reach the 10th floor, you see something that’s both terrifying and intriguing at the same time. The gate to the roof is hanging open, with the key still stuck in the door. And—is that a towel on the steps? Curiosity overpowers everything else, including your common sense, as you follow wet footprints up the forbidden staircase. You reach the top of the staircase and open the door ever so slightly…

The first thing that catches your eye is the sparkling pool. You look on in amazement as you see all the teachers gathered around beach chairs, umbrellas, and even a pool bar, all surrounding the cleanest pool you’ve ever seen. “No way! The fables are true!” The legendary 11th-floor pool is real, in all its glory.

You begin to look around for your teachers, but none of them look like what they look like in class. The formal ties, dress clothes, and suits that none of your teachers ever seem to get tired of are all gone, replaced with swimsuits that you can’t help but chuckle at.

In your trance, you accidentally bump into the door. The resulting creak makes you freeze in place, hoping that nobody heard. Thankfully, nobody does… except for your Music Appreciation teacher. His eyes lock with yours for a terrifying moment, and he stares disappointedly into your soul for failing his previous test. Suddenly, he points at you and yells, “OUR SECRET HIDEOUT HAS BEEN FOUND! WE CAN’T LET THE STUDENT BODY GET WIND OF THIS!! GET HIM!!”

For a brief moment, not a sound is heard; even the sloshing water goes quiet. Suddenly, all the teachers shout, “GET HIM!!!” and start running after you in their bathing suits! You slip on the towel that you saw earlier, tumbling down the stairs to the 10th floor. The angry patter of 300 teachers follows, and— OH NO! IT’S DR. MARKOVA, AND SHE WANTS REVENGE FOR THAT ONE TIME YOU WORE LEGGINGS UNDER YOUR GYM UNIFORM LAST SEMESTER! You sprint down the stairs, racking your brain for places to hide. The corner of the cafeteria, where you always sit because you’re lonely? No, the lunch ladies will find you. The sophomore bar? No, Mr. Moran is just going to yell at you for being too loud while he drags you off to be punished. But where to go?

Aha, the 6th-floor gym! If you bury yourself in the equipment closet, nobody will ever find you! Just as you’re about to open the gymnasium door, you hear the unmistakable words of the pacer test: “The FitnessGram Pacer Test is a multistage aerobic capacity test that progressively gets more difficult as it continues. The 20-meter pacer test will begin in 30 seconds. Line up at the start.” The sheer beauty of this song compels you to follow the source of the sound… right into the clutches of your gym teacher.

Uh oh.

“Please! Don’t do this to me! I have a family!” you beg as they drag you off to all the other teachers. But it’s no use. After being pulled along the floor and down five flights of stairs, you arrive in the auditorium, where all the teachers, still in their swimsuits, have gathered. “Y’know, this would make a great Stuyvesant Confessions post,” you think to yourself as 300 pairs of eyes stare at you, all of them thinking of creative ways to torture a puny Stuyvesant newborn.

Finally, the teachers reach a consensus. “From now until the end of the year, you have to pose like those hominid statues on the 7th-floor forest for two hours after school, every day!”

“No!! Please! My AP Bio teacher will use this as an example to explain what natural selection is! You can take my airpods and my failed geometry test from last semester, but at least spare me the little dignity I have left!” you shout in despair, hoping that the teachers will take pity on you.

Silence follows as the teachers consider the request. “I mean, he’s just a scrawny freshman, so what’s the worst he could do?” says one teacher. “But I mean, being the sneaky one that he is, he very well may have sabotaged Thursday’s Senior SING! performance!” says another. “Hmm, but if we take all his stuff, he’ll probably learn his lesson, right?” says a third.

After some intense deliberation, a teacher walks up to you and yanks your backpack away. “You’re free to leave. We’ll return your backpack in a few days, after all of us have dissected it and taken everything we’ve deemed valuable, including but not limited to: your phone’s messaging history, TI-84 Tetris, and your credit card that has a balance of -$185 from going to Ferry’s every day instead of eating at the cafeteria.”

You slowly walk out of the building, amazed that you weren’t dragged down into the basement, tied up to a chair, and challenged to “Escape the Room”! The scanner ladies stare at you as you leave, seemingly frustrated that they can’t confiscate any of your valuables.

***

The moment you get home, you open Facebook and begin filling out the Stuyvesant Confessions form:

“So the craziest thing happened to me today…”

(Monkey, Monkey)