“Class,” said the old teacher in a nasally voice, “we have a new student today, Cletus,” he turned to the 12-year-old boy next to him.
“Cletus, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself?”
Cletus looked around the classroom nervously.
“Well,” he said with his southern accent, “like what?”
The old 7th grade teacher, Mr. Woodings, asked, “Where’re you from, Cletus?”
Oh, thought Cletus, that’s an easy one.
“I come from the land where the mullet attacks,” he said with a bit more confidence. He heard a few snickers around the classroom.
Mr. Woodings sighed. Another jokester, he thought to himself. He decided to give it another go.
“What do your parents do?” he asked Cletus. The young, Texan boy looked down at his feet, knowing that Mr. Woodings wouldn’t like his answer.
“Well,” he started, “They’re ninjas.”
Mr. Woodings was starting to get annoyed. There were more snickers, mixed in with outright laughter. It wasn’t very often that the group of 7th graders got to hear jokes in Mr. Woodings’s boring history class. Cletus noticed that there was only one person who wasn’t laughing, besides Mr. Woodings. A girl in the back of the class, who had a confused expression on her face, she was pressing buttons on what looked like a cell phone. Noticing that Cletus had seen her, she quickly put the phone away.
“That’s quite enough,” Mr. Woodings said in a stronger voice, trying to control the laughter, “Cletus,” he turned back to the boy next to him, “That’s enough of the jokes. I’m going to let you off since this is your first day, but one more smart answer from you and you’re going to the principal’s office.”
After the class had quieted down, Mr. Woodings asked Cletus, “Where do you live?”
Cletus looked at his feet again. Master Splinter always taught him to be honest. So, Cletus took a deep breath and said, “I live in the sewers.”
After going to the principal’s office and having a long talk about “how things are done” here at Lost Mesa Middle School, Cletus sat in lunch alone. Fuming about how nobody believed him, he tore at his slice of pepperoni pizza with his teeth. It bummed him out that there wasn’t any garlic on it. Mikey had always put garlic on any pizza that he made for the rest of them. After minute or so, he heard somebody clear their throat. Looking around, he saw the girl from history class, the one with the cell phone.
“Can I sit down?” the girl asked Cletus. He nodded slowly. After taking a seat across from him, the girl spoke. “I’m Skylar,” she said matter-of-factly while opening her can of Dr.Pepper, “and I just wanted to say that I believe you. Everything that you said in history class.”
Cletus stared at her. “And why would you?” he asked her, “Nobody does. They all think it’s just some big joke.”
She looked at him through a pair of oval glasses.
“There’s an app for that.”
From her pocket she pulled the device that Cletus had seen earlier. It looked like an iPhone, but it was very thin. It was completely clear so you could see the back of the screen.
“What is that?” Cletus asked in a tone of awe.
The girl gave a little grin. “This is the iPhone of the Future.”
She told Cletus that a few months ago, she had been visited by her future self. Her future self had traveled back in time to give her current self the iPhone. Then, a little while later, she had used the time-travel app to travel back in time to give the phone to her past self. That way, the cycle would just keep going on.
“That,” Cletus said slowly, “is extremely cool. But what does that have to do with you believing me?”
“I used the Lie Detector app,” she said, “and you weren’t lying.”
“So,” Skylar said as she started on her large chocolate chip cookie, “Tell me the rest of your story. You come from the land where the mullet attacks. What exactly is a mullet?”
Cletus answered without hesitation. “Business up front, party in the back.”
Skylar stared at him for a few seconds then said, “Of course,” as if this was the most normal thing in the world, the continued, “And your parents… they’re ninjas?”
“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, to be exact. You see, my last name is Norris. As in Chuck Norris. He was my father. When I was about three some evil dude named The Shredder kidnapped me from my house in Texas. A few days later, after he had taken me to New York, the Ninja Turtles saved me. We looked for my dad but he just seemed to have disappeared. So, the Turtles took me in. I spent my child hood eating pizza, learning to fight and meditating with Master Splinter.”
“So,” Skylar said, “why are you here in Virginia? Don’t you live in New York?”
Cletus answered, “I normally do, but The Shredder came here for some unknown reason and we had to follow him here. That’s why I’ve had to transfer schools in the middle of May.”
Skylar pressed a few buttons in her iPhone of the future.
“Well,” she said, still staring at that awesome screen, “you’ve told the truth this whole time. That’s some story, Cletus. “
“I know, right? So far you’re the only person who has ever believed me.”
Skylar smiled.
That night, as Cletus returned home to the new sewer lair, Mikey was making pizza. Again.
“Could we please have something different tonight?” Cletus complained, “I had pizza for lunch.”
Mikey glanced over at him. “And was it good pizza?” he asked Cletus.
“Well,” Cletus said with a frown, “No. It didn’t even have garlic on it!”
Mikey looked at him in mock horror. “No garlic? You’re going to have to have a talk with the lunch lady. No garlic! The world has gone into insanity!”
As Mikey continued to rant on disrespect towards pizza, Don walked into the kitchen. “How was your first day of school, Cleats?” For as long as Cletus could remember, Donatello had insisted on calling him, “Cleats”. For the life of him, Cletus couldn’t tell why.
“It was pretty good,”
Cletus went straight to his room without another word. He was so happy that he finally had someone that believed him. Life was good.
The next day at lunch, Cletus Norris went to the counter to get food. He quite liked food.
He saw on a sign above the counter that it was southern food day. Cletus was extremely excited. Southern food was his favorite.
When he finally got to the front of the line, Cletus looked around for the lunch lady. Suddenly, a woman stepped out from the kitchen. She wasn’t the thinnest person in the world. She was very pale and had glowing red eyes. She wore an apron and a hair net. A name tag on her chest read BERTHA. This was the lunch lady.
“Um,” Cletus stammered, horrified because of the glowing eyes. This woman was not the same one who had been serving the pizza the day before. “You know your eyes are glowing, right?”
Bertha looked at him with those horrible eyes, “Of course I know that,” she said in a raspy voice, “my contact lenses got messed up. Now are you gonna get food or just stand there all day?”
Cletus tore his eyes away from Bertha’s horrid appearance.
After getting his food, Cletus went to sit with Skylar.
“Hey, Skylar,” Cletus asked, “have you seen the new lunch lady?”
Skylar looked up from her iPhone and glanced over to the counter where Bertha was scaring the wits out of a seventh grader. “Bertha isn’t new,” she said, “she’s been here for a while. She cooks
all the food, that’s probably why we didn’t see her yesterday. But we have trouble. Today, my iPhone
picked up non-human readings from her. Cletus. Bertha isn’t human.”
Cletus looked at her in fear. “Are you sure?”
“Positive,” she said, “I’ve always known there was something weird about her, but…” she trailed off.
Cletus took a bite of his mashed potatoes. “Ugh,” he said, “gross. No garlic.”
Skylar looked up at him. “What did you just say?”
“What?” Cletus asked with a confused look, “I just said that there wasn’t any garlic.”
“That’s it!” Skylar said excitedly, “no garlic! Cletus, you’re a genius!”
Cletus felt very far from being a genius, seeing as he had absolutely no idea what Skylar was talking about. But, he decided to just go with it. It wasn’t every day he got called a genius.
“Yeah,” he said, trying to act modest, “well, you know…”
“Meet me at the library after school,” she said, “We’ll figure this out once and for all.
A few hours later, Cletus walked across the street from the school and to the library. He saw Skylar sitting at a table with a stack of books and a computer on it and made his way over to her.
“Oh, Cletus,” said Skyler, “Okay. So I’ve been doing some research and…”
Cletus looked at the stack of books and read the titles. Fanged Fiends… Horrors of the Night… How to Know if a Fanged Fiend that is a Horror of the Night is Living Among you… Van Helsing’s Guide to Killing Vampires… “Wait,” Cletus said slowly, “Where are you going with this? Are you seriously thinking that Bertha is a… Vampire?”
“Yes,” said Skyler, “I am. Think about it! Glowing red eyes, pale skin, doesn’t cook with garlic… It all fits!”
Cletus went over and sat at the computer.
“Let’s see if you’re right,” he said, “let’s Google Bertha. “
He opened up Internet Explorer and typed into the Google search bar, Bertha the Lunch Lady. He clicked on a link of an old newspaper website. The article heading said Bertha the Lunch Lady murdered today in Lost Mesa Middle School. The article read,
Today, June 4th, 1901, Bertha the Lunch Lady was murdered in the cafeteria kitchen of Lost Mesa Middle School. It is as of yet unknown how she was murdered, the only harm to her body being two small puncture marks on the side of her neck. The only suspect so far is a young man named Edward Cullen who was witnessed to have left the scene of the crime just moments after the murder.
“Well,” said Skylar, “that proves it.”
“What do you mean?” Cletus asked, “How does that prove anything? So, there was another Bertha who was a lunch lady at our school. It’s a coincidence. “
“No,” said Skyler, “It’s not. Think, Cletus! Two puncture marks on her neck. That’s gotta be how she was turned into a vampire. And a young man named Edward Cullen… He must’ve turned her.”
“That’d explain why she looks so evil,” said Cletus with a snigger.
“Yes,” she said, smiling, “so this means that there’s a vampire in our school. A vampire that’s over one hundred years old.”
“Well what do we do about it?” Cletus asked.
“We have to defeat her. We are the only ones who know. We have to kill a vampire.”
The next day was Saturday. Cletus stayed home that day to practice his Kung Fu with Master Splinter. “Master,” Cletus started, “do you think that I could train with Mikey today?”
Splinter looked a little surprised. “Why would you want to train with Michelangelo?”
“I was thinking about learning to fight with nun chucks.”
Splinter looked at him thoughtfully. “Okay,” said Splinter, “I believe Michelangelo is in the TV room playing that… Xbox contraption.”
Cletus went to the room where Mikey was playing Halo. “Hey, Mikey,” Cletus tried to get his attention.
“What’s up?” Mikey asked, barely looking up from his game.
“Could you teach me to fight with nun chucks?”
“ ‘Course I can.” Mikey replied without the slightest inclination of getting up. But when he looked around and saw Cletus still standing there he said, “What, you mean now? I’m just about to kill the Monitor!”
“Fine,” Cletus said, disappointed, “When are you gonna be done?”
Mikey shot a huge laser at the spherical machine and it blew up in a spectacular display of fire.
“Right now,” he said calmly, “let’s get to training.”
That Monday after school, Cletus brought Skyler back to his sewer home to show her what he’d made over the weekend. He brought her a pair of nun chucks. The nun chucks had the normal, wooden handles but the top half was made entirely out of heads of garlic strung together. It made the perfect weapon if you wanted to smack a vampire a few times.
“Cletus…” said Skyler tentatively, “What if we can’t defeat Bertha?”
Cletus looked up from the nun chucks. “We’ll defeat her.”
A few weeks later, after much training on Cletus’s part and many downloaded apps for the iPhone of the Future on Skylar’s part, the pair sat at lunch on a Wednesday. Their plans were made. Cletus was very nervous. He didn’t eat with his usual gusto but instead, picked at his food, feeling as if he might retch if he put something in his stomach. Skyler was a bit more confident. But she didn’t have to get close to Bertha when they were fighting. All she had to do was use her iPhone of the Future. Cletus had the hard job of hitting Bertha with the garlic nun chucks that were currently concealed in his backpack.
After lunch, both feeling very queasy at what they had to do in the next few minutes, the pair got up and walked to the far wall where a fire alarm was mounted to the wall. They didn’t have to get very close to it (they’d be caught for sure). There was an app that could do this sort of thing easily. And after a few seconds of Skylar fiddling with the iPhone of the Future, there was the blaring of alarms, heard throughout the whole school. There was a sudden rush to the exits, the staff herding all of the students out. Within seconds, the cafeteria was empty. And a few more seconds and there were only three people left in the school. Well, two people and a vampire. And, suddenly, all of the lights went out, followed by low, wheezy cackles. The only light in the cafeteria was that which came from the windows. And that wasn’t a lot. Cletus slowly unzipped his backpack and pulled out his pair of nun chucks. This was followed by more cackling from somewhere in the dark kitchens. Cletus and Skylar slowly started to edge nearer and nearer to where they knew Bertha was, waiting for them. When they got past the counter, it was extremely dark. The only light that Cletus could see were two, floating balls of red light. Probably just an oven or microwave, he thought. Skylar pulled out that awesome phone once again and it flared into a bright light. The whole kitchen was illuminated. And Cletus found that the two red lights were not from a microwave. Bertha rushed at them with uncanny speed. She carried what looked like long leg bones, one in each hand. Cletus dodged her attack and rolled behind the counter. Skylar kept the blinding light on Bertha, making her cringe. Cletus rolled out from behind the counter and swiped at Bertha’s legs with his nun chucks. There was some confused scuffling; Cletus drew Bertha out into the main part of the cafeteria. In this light, he could see her weapons properly. They were leg bones, alright. They looked like those of a cow. Aw, man, Cletus thought, the beef we had today for lunch did seem unusually dry. Bertha gave Cletus an evil grin and charged at him again. He managed to dodge one of her bone-swords but second hit him in the small of the back. He hit the ground, hard. He managed to roll on impact and put a few feet between Bertha and himself. He got up quickly, just in time to see Skyler running at Bertha. She had an app of her own invention out and was shooting cloves of garlic out of her iPhone. Bertha blocked all except one with her bone-swords. One of the cloves hit the inside of her wrist, leaving a bright red burn. Bertha hissed at her. Cletus, taking advantage of the distraction, lunged at Bertha from behind. She dodged his attack with ease, using her vampiric speed to run between tables, aiming an attack at Skyler.
The fight went on like this, running, dodging, attacking. After a few more minutes, it was clear to Cletus that they were losing. They were no match for Bertha, she was simply to powerful. He signaled to Skylar that they must retreat. She gave him a nod and, shooting one last clove of garlic at the vampire, ran. Cletus and Skylar made it out of the cafeteria without Bertha giving chase. They both had bruises and cuts from Bertha’s bone-swords. Today, they lost the battle.
But they by no means lost the war.
Bertha walked back to her kitchen lair with a satisfied smile on her face. They won’t be coming back anytime soon, she thought. She walked over to the huge refrigerator, ready to eat a celebratory, raw steak. She took out a huge slab of meat and sat down at a table. She took a huge bite, chewing gluttonously. After a few seconds the triumphant smile on her face slowly turned into a grimace of shock.
“Garlic,” she gasped. Suddenly, Bertha’s ears turned a bright shade of purple and she fell onto the ground.
And Cletus and Skylar stepped out from behind the fridge, Skylar holding a syringe that had just a few seconds ago been filled with garlic juice. And the last smell that the evil Vampire Lunch Lady, Bertha, ever smelled was that of garlicy steak.
-Austin
Hey to all you people who read for fun. U R COOL.
!" Later discoveries proved both of these statements false. It just so happens that Nicholas Flamel was a real dude, born in the 1300s, renowned for his skills in "Alchemy". Also, Michael Scott (Not the Steve Carell 
, along with it's sequel, 
, are some of the very few books in my bedroom that I have not picked up for quite a while. Until now, that is. The primary reason that I started reading this book is because there are so many people who said it was so good, and it is a pretty well-known book. It was pretty much a last resort for me reading it, I didn't really have anything else to read. So, before I started the book, I was like
, gives you. And, I must say that this book, which I have waited for and highly anticipated is just about everything I hoped it would be, and more. This epic story continues in a way that I didn't expect and had me hanging on to every word. I flew through the pages, faster and faster until I suddenly realized that there were only about ten pages left in the book. And, as strange as it may seem, I paused in reading it. Not because I wanted to, but because I had realized that the book was about to be over. A thought that greatly saddened me. The reason for this being that I didn't want this book to end because it was just so good. Though, this pause only lasted for a few minutes because I couldn't stand not reading it. 
, which I recommend to anyone of the male category. It took one night to read and, it was so good that I put off eating dinner for a whole five minutes before putting it down. And, it take's a lot for me to not want to eat, even for a short time. 
, passed away. 
by The Creative Team Behind the Celebrated Movie Series
, Dolores Umbridge's educational decrees. You can't understand my delight as I turned each page to find... stuff. Really cool stuff. 
