DB Extracurricular - Serious Matter

"This is a very serious matter, Miss Minaba," Mrs. Grissom warned the girl sitting in her office.

Sherissie Minaba was rather average looking with dark chocolate brown skin and free flowing shoulder length hair styled in a modest and somewhat conservative manner. Her uniform was slightly rumpled and smelled dusty which made perfect sense given the way she stuffed her drawers. She wore no make-up and accessorized almost nothing she had. She looked rather boring in fact.

She wasn't fidgeting at all.

Given the girl's reputation, Mrs. Grissom always expected her to be displaying the characteristic symptoms of hyperactivity. She had been in Grissom's office several times, but never along with anything like the evidence needed to dismiss her. At least until this time, but that's where things got a little complicated. Because while this time she'd caught herself in her own trap, she'd also had a more understandable reason for her actions.

"I know that, Mrs. Grissom," Minaba agreed. "Darrin should really do something about his problem."

"That isn't what we're talking about," the educator responded quickly with a weary tone to her voice. "Your reputation for mischief is getting out of hand. Are you aware we have heard some rumors connecting you to the fire and blackout from several months ago?"

Minaba's head titled aside for a moment as she looked into air with a somewhat confused expression. Her eyes looked right, then left, then up, then down. For all the world it seemed more as if she were scanning a page than anything else. It was always like this, normal eye patterns and body language queues were more or less useless with the girl. Mrs. Grissom couldn't tell if she'd deliberately trained out of them or if they were just never present.

"No, no, no. Everyone knows Vice President Jeon did that," the girl asked genuinely.

"And about the locker explosion only the last month?" Mrs. Grissom asked. "Or when we had an entire floor flooded by running water?"

"That was annoying! I got so wet from that! I mean I was actually glad to be flat-chested, you know with these almost white shirts under the jackets and stuff," Minaba declared quickly. "And my locker was blown up too! I had stuff in that locker! And Eija got hurt too. Eija's pretty nice. Doesn't make much sense, because she's scary. Or maybe that's what doesn't make sense."

The woman shook her head wearily, unable to determine whether there was in any sign of lie or guilt in the girl's voice. She turned toward a file on the desk that looked about as thick as a business organizer. "I've been looking over your files today."

"Yeah, that always happens when I get called in here," Minaba noted with a little bit of a shrug.

"I've been looking closer," Mrs. Grissom clarified. "You have to be aware that your total grade point average has been staying relentlessly in the neighborhood of our academic-good standing requirements. It moves here and there, but usually not by more than five points. In the mean time, your class averages tend to vary rather wildly."

The assistant principal pulled out some printed papers and started laying them down one by one.

"75, 79, 74, 75, 93, incomplete, 89, 80, 79, 61, 86, another incomplete," she stopped and set the papers down. "

"Today I got in trouble again," Minaba said idly in response.

"This is not a matter to be treating lightly, Miss Minaba," the assistant principal responded.

"No, no, no. That wasn't a joke," the young girl answered irritably. "You listed them chronologically. Sort them differently and I'll tell you something different."

"Chrono…" Mrs. Grissom stopped herself. "Are you saying you remember your first 12 scores from when you first arrived here two years ago?"

"No, that would be ridiculous," Minaba lied with a hearty laugh. Then she told a truth, "You can't read it as anything else in that order."

"Read…" Mrs. Grissom shook her head and straightened herself up. "Miss Minaba, we have received some complaints from Mr. Marsh's parents regarding your attempt to slander him. Given his own actions, we're not having that much trouble with that alone, but security is also stating that they feel you are a disruptive influence. And the principal still remembers the matter of his armchair?"

"What happened to it?" Minaba asked.

"Right," Mrs. Grissom sighed in response to the look of curiosity and innocence. "Let's just say he's a bit cautious with regards to pasta these days."

The completely bewildered look on Minaba's face again defeated her ire and simply made her more tired. Either Minaba was that good at lying or she was really innocent of the events in question. The woman leaned back in her chair trying not to look worn out as she took in a breath and continued.

"Look, I am going to have to speak to your parents later, as soon as the time is right in Africa," Mrs. Grissom told her. "I think you're clearly an extremely intelligent young woman. But you need to focus yourself on your studies and your direction. Assuming I can convince security and the principal not to expel you, you need to think very firmly about whether you're going to continue on with our college level classes and where those go. You only have two more years left of classes here."

Minaba's hand jerked into the air and she started reaching enthusiastically as the assistant principal watched.

"What do you…you have a question?" Minaba simply held her hand up and shook it. "Why are you raising your hand it's just…oh for goodness sakes. Yes, Miss Minaba what is it?"

"If we're a Japanese style school, why do we have four years instead of three?" she asked with a completely honest look of confusion on her face.

"Just becau…" the answer was interrupted by the sound of the phone on Mrs. Grissom's desk ringing. Irritably she reached for it as she noticed the line. "Give me a moment here, Miss Minaba. This is some sort of emergency."

"Huh," Minaba said, glancing at her watch and tapping it as Mrs. Grissom started talking into the phone.

"Mrs. Grissom." Almost immediately, she rocketed to her feet, sending the chair behind her falling to the ground. "How did this happen? Where's our security? Does the press know yet?" She turned the television in her office on and switched it off the school's closed circuit channel to find a reporter from the local stations.

"The epicenter of the small," the reporter emphasized the word, "earthquake seems to have been near the airport somewhere," the reporter was stating, "but people have been quick to connect it to some of the other bizarre incidents today such as the shattering of every window around Meyer Square and the near blanket of smoke that had lain over much of the city early in the day. There are even rumors that the earthquake may have jostled the instruments of one of the planes that left here today resulting in it being out of contact and wildly off route."

"How off route is it, Mark?" the anchor woman asked.

"Well, without giving in to the joke opening you left," the on-site reporter commented, "the rumors I've heard say that it went north over the Pacific rather than south over land. Again, these are just rumors here, can't say for sure what is going on."

"Yeah, it would have to be a pretty severe instrument shake up to make a pilot mistake open water for an overland route," the anchor woman responded with a laugh before turning toward the screen and moving on to other business.

"Excuse me, Miss Minaba," Mrs. Grissom said to her. "We'll talk later; I have to handle some things."

Minaba was staring at the TV, a very endearing amount of worry very clear in her face as she apparently was very obviously not listening to the assistant principal for the first time the entire interview. Mrs. Grissom put the phone aside and reached out to tap the girl. "I'm sure everything will be fine, just go back to your room and do some studying. Everyone will be fine. Like the reporter said, it's probably just a rumor."

Minaba herself jumped up and left the room only half hearing Mrs. Grissom. The young girl heard the woman call for the faculty to leave her alone, but it almost didn't register as she moved into the nearest classroom and the white board there. After a moment she grabbed a marker and started diagramming.

At the end, she stared with a sigh at a large, complex network of lines connecting and interconnecting through a sheer mass of points, more so because her handwriting was much less neat than her normal. There were no notations or anything like that, just empty points and connecting lines and arrows. Someone watching might have thought it was just a random conglomeration of meaningless lines, but Minaba stared at with an expression that seemed both boredom and terror.

Closing her eyes, Minaba took in a deep breath and then violently shook her head for a full half-minute before opening them again. Immediately, she tracked to places where lines ended with no connection or loop and started drawing neat and tidy dashed lines from them until the lines intersected in a point.

And a vibrant, terrible smile worked itself over her face and she erased the diagram completely.

She walked out of the classroom, circling her arms around and looking as if she'd just been relieved of some sort of burden or another. Checking the time clock, she nodded and considered her next actions while strolling through the halls. She may have come to a decision by the time her stomach growled, or she might have been still mulling things over. Whatever the case, the first pangs of hunger decided her and she altered her step toward the cafeteria.
The room was closed, of course. The staff had taken the opportunity afforded by so many students leaving to shut down for a little bit while they attended planning meetings with their own parent company. That and a number of them were on security detail with the airport or something. Minaba didn't really worry too much about it, instead reaching into her purse for one of her hex keys to unlock the cafeteria door and then lock it back up behind her.

The cold storage was padlocked. That was relatively new. Minaba wondered briefly when that got added as she reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of bills. She glanced at the padlock and added a few more before laying the money down on the counter and then, whistling the tune to "Whistle While You Work", she strolled toward the rear door and found the maintenance closet that sat next to the cafeteria's service exit. Trying the door she found it locked with a newly installed locking knob.

"Huh, that's a bit much for a maintenance locker, isn't it?" she asked in idly amused Sesotho.

She took several steps back, set her purse aside, rubbed her hands together and charged at the door, leading with her slender shoulder. She hit the door hard and then bounced to the floor. Standing up, she rubbed at her shoulder as she glared angrily at the offending barrier. Her stomach growled again and she wandered away from the maintenance closet as she looked about the kitchen.

Her eyes lighted on the massive can opening tool attached to one table and smiled triumphantly as she directed herself that way. Which was when she found that it hadn't been merely bolted to the table. It had been welded.

There was a plethora of extra security in this kitchen.

Minaba tugged at the table and growled as she found that it didn't budge. Pushing resulted in the same lack of motion. All she managed to do was wear herself out with pushing and tugging and pulling. She might as well have found a treadmill. Her stomach growled again and she stood up, a bit irritated and annoyed as she crossed her arms with a huff.
Her stomach growled again.

She checked her watch and the clock on the wall and, with a huff turned back to start leaving the kitchen, picking her money on the way and stopping at the door to turn around and glare at the room in general.