PHOEBE

Chapter 11: Wild Goose Chase.

Third Person POV

"Girl this is a crazy plan. And I'm forced to think you're losing your mind. Both of you." Lina looked at her friends in bewilderment after Phoebe's brief narration on the revenge she had taken days to plan.

"Look. Stop being a chicken all over again. Grethel deserves everything that's going to happen to her. And I'll go to the depths of the underworld to see this plan machinate." Anne hissed at her.

"So are you in or not Lina?" Phoebe rubbed her palms together impatiently. "We have to get going. But I need one hundred percent assurance that we're all in the same boat."

"Remember how coco was stabbed, eyes plucked and soaked in sobolo. I can't believe you're having second thoughts about this."Anne pushed.

That was the last straw. Lina's eyes glistened with tears at the painful reminiscence. She blinked back the salty liquid threatening to spill and looked up at the two expectant gazes on her.

"I'm in."

"Good. Let's go."

They headed for the door with renewed confidence and determination. The wooden gate was huge, and required a little bit of strength to unlock it.

"Oh shoot. I left the keys on the chair. Let me go get it."

Phoebe rushed back into the dark. She had barely reached for it when she heard the horns of a car nearing them. The girls backed off, rushing back into the dark toward the confused girl.

"I think someone is coming." Anne whispered setting the three girls in panic mode.

"A c..car. It seems huge. Like a truck or something." Color drained off Lina's face immediately.

"No no no no. This can't be happening right now! We have a Math test!" Phoebe whisper yelled almost in tears.

They were still lost in thought when a truck screeched to a halt in front of the store room, loaded with new desks, mattresses and bed slats.

The girls scurried further into the dark room in search of hiding spots. They rushed towards the far end when the door swung open, followed by male voices chattering away.

They knelt noiselessly behind a pile of broken desks and peeked into the holes to see what was going on. Several other men jumped off the truck and began offloading the items into the storeroom while the first batch of men packed the broken desks further inside to create room for the new arrivals.

From where they hid, they observed that the men were making very little progress since after two minutes of offloading the desks into the dark room, the truck still looked loaded to the max.

Phoebe sighed nervously. They were definitely going to miss the test. Mr. Fletcher's test!

If it had been by any other teacher, she'd have been less anxious, but seeing as it was by the source of her nightmares, she'd been thrown in a state of frenzy, her fingers fiddled with the hem of her skirt absentmindedly as she knelt quietly behind the pile of desks with Anne and Lina a shivering bundle by her side.

It was bad enough that he decided to conduct a test but the fact that unnerved the girls was the decision he had taken to record all the tests they'd be having a month prior to the end of semester exam, and that'd be the class score for their order of merit.

This decision followed the meeting made by the board a month before to increase the percentage class score took on the order of merit from thirty to forty percent. The decision sought to curb students' negative attitude toward tests, home works and quizzes and since the implementation of the 'operation fix your attitude toward class activities' policy, there had been a tremendous improvement in students participation in the teaching and learning process.