• When Meagan entered this classroom that morning the first thing she noticed in the hands of the boy who sat in front of her was a cabbage. It was a purple cabbage that was quite large for it’s size, and gave a faint stink of rot. gonk
    “Where did you get that?” asked Meagan.
    “Stole it from the chemistry lab about a week ago,” the boy replied, grin stretching over a face scarred with acne and bright pink braces.
    When the teacher walked in, Meagan said nothing of the cabbage. The lesson for the day began as Meagan was called to read aloud Macbeth with a few other pupils. The minute they finish the chapter, the teacher snapped her book closed and faced the blackboard. The cabbage flew about the length of the classroom like a purple UFO the moment her back was turned, and the instant she turned around again in was concealed beneath a desk and thirty hapless poker faces all staring intently at the blackboard as if no leafy purple vegetable had been sailing through the air only seconds before. She pursed her lips, knowing that something was amiss but got back to her lesson anyway, and the cabbage arched through the air again. This time it left evidence. After being concealed in a boy’s locker for just over a week, it was starting to wilt and leave a trial behind it, like it was shedding it’s outer layer as tears for the mistreatment of cabbage. When the teacher performed yet another about-face she saw the cabbage hit the floor and roll to stop by the TV set. She immediately turned to the boy sitting in front of Meagan. He sat there in his GSS football jersey with his feet up on a wooden stool that usually sat at the front of the room serving no purpose at all; grinning ruefully at her knowing the jig was up.
    The teacher looked at him, then at the pathetic pile of cabbage and then back at him. She closed her eyes, wishing she instead had to deal with the Frisbees the same boy had made the other day out of the bottoms of pizza boxes as appose to a decomposing vegetable.
    There was nothing she could say but this, “Give me the cabbage,”
    The boy dived to the front of the room and grabbed the vegetable, cradling it in his hands as he protested, “No, no, it’s fine. I’m putting away, see?” He tried to stuff the cabbage into his bag but the teacher held out her hand. She glanced back at the floor in front of the television, the tiles now shining with clear slim the had oozed out of the cabbage on the impact of smacking the floor.
    “I mean it. Give me the cabbage,” she said again.
    “You're not worthy of the all powerful cabbage!” he cried as she eased it from his hands and set it on her desk.
    The class was laughing and calling out to her, “Yeah, Miss! Your not worthy!”
    “Too bad,” she simpered and returned to her lesson.
    The cabbage sat at the front of the room looking more beaten and pitiful then ever before. By the time the bell rang the signal the end of class the room reeked of spoiled cabbage. The smelled lingered in the room for several days after. The cabbage itself disappeared from the desk at the end of the period.
    When Meagan walked down from the library to the bathroom the afternoon the scent of cabbage filled the stairwell. When she turned the corner to the last landing she saw a group of kids holding their noses and laughing. Meagan elbowed her way through the crowd to reach the bathroom door and saw a scene that would put a CSI murder sight to shame.
    The cabbage’s hostage situation had ended from a brutal drop from the top floor of the stairs. It’s purple leaves where spread out like a wreath of olive leaves for the Olympics. The purplish slime was spattered out every which way like a blob of fresh paint, wafting the scent of rotting vegetable corpse through the school.
    The smell reached Meagan teacher and she came running down the stair and almost slipping in the gunk on the floor. While she was staring at the mess, eyes bulging out of her head like a pair of Lindor chocolates, Meagan happened to look up. That acne-scarred face was staring down and laughing at his handy work.
    “Oh there you are!” called Meagan, “I found your cabbage!”
    The teacher look up and saw that ridiculous grin beaming down at her and ran up the stairs. The principle reached him at the same moment and took the boy down to the office. As punishment he had to clean up the slime that was now spread halfway up the stairs from the students trudging through it on their way to class.
    A week later the teacher walked up to the boy and handed him a stinking bag.
    “You left this while you were cleaning up the other day,” she said, “I figured you’d want it back,” mrgreen
    Her lesson that day was probably the quietest she’d ever had, with the entire class bunched into one corner of the room trying to get as far away from the boy as possible and trying to read Macbeth while breathing through their mouths at the same time. The boy sat as his usual place right by the door, with the bag of rotten cabbage on his desk, face the color of his braces. It the last time he brought a cabbage to class.
    The next week, he opted to a hamster. dramallama