The Media Room

Horia N.

Back in second grade, my handwriting was terrible. Like really terrible. My handwriting didn’t look like normal letters- instead, they looked like hieroglyphs from ancient Egypt. Because of this, my teachers constantly complained about how horrible my handwriting was every time I turned in an assignment. My teachers decided this couldn’t continue for any longer, so they decided to enroll me in some handwriting class with about six other kids in it. Based on the kids’ handwriting skills within the group, my handwriting was actually above average compared to them. And that was saying something. Almost everyone that was enrolled in the handwriting group was pretty nice, however, there was one exception- there was this really problematic kid called Lucas. He had gotten written up six times this whole school year. And the funny part is that the school year only started one month ago. I don’t know what the teachers were thinking to put the most problematic kid in a group of mostly good people. And that brings me to my story. Let’s begin.

I was playing with my friends during recess. It was a nice, cool, September afternoon. We were all playing tag. And I was it. I spotted one of my friends at the entrance of the slide, so without hesitation, I sprinted up the slide and before my friend could run away, I tagged him and ran down the slide. “Wow, I’m really good at this,” I thought. Then, the bell rang. We had to go back inside. The teachers opened the doors inside and we started walking towards our classes. It never ceases to amaze me how fast people’s moods can change. Two minutes ago, everyone was outside, having fun and playing with their friends. Now, just two short minutes later, all the joy was suddenly gone. Everyone was just marching sadly towards their classes, which was a very sad sight to see. I started walking up the stairs to my classroom, when I spotted Lucas. “GIVE ME YOUR LUNCH MONEY, NERD!” yelled Lucas to another kid. “Oh god, not Lucas again. I should probably get out of here,” I thought. I started to pick up the pace, in order to get to my handwriting class before Lucas did. Trust me, you don’t want to know what will happen if Lucas approaches you. Oh, and my handwriting class wasn’t really a classroom. It was just a tiny media office where teachers would occasionally go in order to print papers and to use the copier. But that’s not it. We had to fit seven kids in there, including me, and a teacher. Not to mention that the copiers and printers were quite large and they took up most of the space in the room. It was very cramped.

Aside from that, the room was just like your stereotypical school media room, copiers, printers, a table with chairs in the center, cheap carpets, a fan, a computer, a tiny desk in the corner, a pencil sharpener, some paintings, and some pencils. There were lots of things in that tiny room. Good thing anyone who attended the class wasn’t claustrophobic, otherwise they would probably have a panic attack being stuck in that room. Anyways, I walked inside the tiny media office and tried to squeeze in and find a chair to sit on. Then, the Lucas kid entered the room and sat across from me. Most people were quite paranoid of Lucas- and for good reason- he was a problematic bully. I tried to avoid interacting with him. Trust me, no one wants to get on the bad side of Lucas. He would then target you and bully you for the rest of the year. The media room slowly filled up with kids coming in from recess, but the teacher was nowhere in sight. 

Eventually, everyone was in class, and the teacher was still not there. The teacher was late to our class about half of the time, probably because she had to write up a few misbehaving kids at recess. However, we seven just kept waiting. It had been about five minutes since class should’ve started, but the teacher was nowhere in sight. We sent the tiniest kid in the group to squeeze in and to get into the hall to see if the teacher was there. The kid went and looked, but there was nothing. He sat back down. We waited for about two more minutes, sitting awkwardly in a tiny media room with the lights turned off in total silence and darkness.

Now, because Lucas has no impulse control, he sat up from his seat and shut the door. It was almost pitch black except for a tiny window which brought a little bit of light. Then, Lucas yelled, “Who needs to learn how to write properly? It’s useless! Let’s do a pencil fight!” The whole room, except for me, cheered. “Lucas, maybe we shouldn’t do thi-” “SHUT UP, NERD!” he yelled over me. “I AM MR. LUCAS, YOUR NEW TEACHER, AND OUR PROGRAM TODAY IS TO PARTY! NOW, LET THE PENCIL FIGHT COMMENCE!” At that moment, I knew I was dead. Everyone in the room was going to target me for trying to defy Lucas’ orders. Also, it didn’t help that my teacher loved to have her pencils sharpened and tucked them all neatly into a bucket. If someone were to get hit, it would hurt a lot. The moment Lucas yelled that, everyone in the room started sprinting towards the bucket of pencils. It was every man for himself now.

Everyone was so desperate to get ammunition that the tiny kid tripped on a chair and fell in the midst of all the chaos. And because everyone was so desperate to get some pencils, they didn’t even notice that that kid had fallen on the floor. People just began running over him, which made him quite mad. “HEY, STOP RUNNING OVER ME!” he said. “Shut up, shortie,” some other kid said. This made him very, very, very, mad. The tiny kid got up on his knees in a fraction of a second, and started fighting the other kid. Now, it’s basically common sense, but if you’re shorter than your opponent in a battle, you’re probably gonna lose. But, since the tiny kid was so mad, he did it anyway. Almost immediately, the tiny kid was losing the fight. I saw them both fighting. The taller kid went in for a stomach punch, making the tiny kid collapse on the floor. The taller kid kneeled down to his level, and said, “Hey, shortie! Try using your brain before fighting someone almost double your size!” The tiny kid was obviously infuriated about all this, so he got up in a split second, harnessed all of his strength, and slammed him into the room’s only window. Both kids were in critical condition, and backed up in the corners of the room to try and mediate the pain and to avoid more violence.

I figured that because everybody was distracted by the kids fighting that I could open the door and make a quick escape. But annoyingly, Lucas already thought of this, so he locked the door. The tiny window that the kid smashed looked into another media room, which thankfully had people in it, so when they saw that the window had been smashed, they went to the media room’s door to see what was going on. I heard someone say, “It’s locked!”. “Then go get the principal, he has the master keys to every room,” someone else said. I heard them start walking down the hallway to get the principal. Slight problem- the principal’s office was on the other side of the school, so it would take a while just to even get there. I felt a tiny bit more relieved that help was on the way- however, I still had to survive in this warzone of a room. I knew that I wasn’t safe, so I took “cover”, which was literally just a filing cabinet. It wasn’t the best form of protection from flying pencils, but it helped somewhat. Next, everything happened very fast. Some kid tried throwing a pencil at a kid, but missed, and instead, the pencil’s sharp tip landed on the computer screen, shattering it instantly. Everyone in the room looked at the broken computer screen, but again, nobody, except for one kid, seemed to care. The kid nervously said, “Hey, uhhh, Lucas, m…maybe we s-should s-s-stop?” 

Then, things escalated severely. “Hey, everyone, stop fighting for a second,” said Lucas. Since everyone in the whole room was pretty loyal to Lucas, they obeyed him, and the whole room went silent. “Ha, ha, ha, this absolute idiot thinks we should stop because we broke a computer!” yelled Lucas. The other kid said, “Lucas, maybe you should stop yelli-” “SILENCE!” screamed Lucas. “In this room, I AM THE NEW TEACHER! YOU MUST OBEY ME! YOU MUST PARTICIPATE IN THE GRAND PENCIL FIGHT!” screamed Lucas. He was screaming so loudly that someone halfway across the whole school could probably hear him. Then, the kid did something brave. He yelled to Lucas, “SHUT UP, YOU DON’T CONTROL ME! YOU’RE JUST A BULLY WHO DOESN’T EVEN THINK BEFORE YOU DO SOMETHING!” This made me gain my instant respect for him. Not many people have the courage to stand up for themselves to an absolute idiot such as Lucas. Of course, since Lucas just got yelled at by this kid, he got mad. Like, very mad. He shoved the kid and began fighting him. Also, did I mention that Lucas was quite overweight and large and that the kid he was fighting was thin and average height? Yeah, it only took about two milliseconds of critical thinking to realize that Lucas would’ve easily won the fight. In my head, I thought, “This kid is not going to win. I have to step in and fight on his side, to teach idiots like Lucas a valuable lesson.” Now, intervening in the fight was probably not the brightest idea, but since the whole room was in chaos, I did so without hesitation.

I stepped in and yelled, “Lucas, stop fighting,” I said. Somehow, Lucas and the kid stopped fighting and looked at me. “Lucas, the kid has a point. Stop fighting. You’re an idiot. You’re probably going to get expelled for what you did,” I said. Lucas treaded towards my face and said, “Look at my face, Horia. Just look at it.” Does my face look like I care about getting expelled? Ha, ha, if anything, no school is a good thing!” he said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a fight to finish.” And with that, Lucas punched the kid in the stomach at full force, knocking him out instantly. The kid collapsed on the floor. Everyone left in the room was shocked. So shocked that the room went dead silent. I felt very bad for that kid. “At least he tried standing up for himself,” I uttered in my head. Lucas then turned around very slowly, facing me. I knew I was next. Everyone in the room was watching our every move. Even though I was the tallest person in the second grade, I still wasn’t good enough to fight Lucas properly. At best, I was maybe a little better than the previous kid who tried to fight Lucas.

Even though I was the tallest in the second grade, Lucas wasn’t much shorter than me, and as mentioned before, he was quite overweight, so he could probably take a lot of punches before passing out. However, while Lucas was pretty good at beating people up, he wasn’t exactly very smart. However, I was. My only option was to outsmart him. “Hey Lucas, look over there! It’s the teacher!” Lucas didn’t even move his eyes one nanometer from me. “Incredible,” I thought in my head. “It seems that when Lucas is trying to fight someone, he becomes smart,” I thought. I only had one option left: suck it up and fight Lucas like a man. “I’m going to beat you up, Horia. You will never forget the beating that I’m about to give you in your whole life.” And with that, the grand fight between me and Lucas commenced. I was very scared to fight Lucas. Like, very scared. I was paranoid that I would end up like that kid. Instead of running towards Lucas and beating him up, I did the opposite. I started walking back, away from Lucas. Lucas started creeping towards me.

He said, “Come on, are you scared?” “Come up to me and fight me!” yelled Lucas. I was still backing up. In fact, I was backing up into the corner of the room. I didn’t have much longer to go until I backed up into the wall. However, I remembered something: the corner of the room had a beefy tower fan. I turned around and with all my strength, lifted the very heavy fan up and began approaching Lucas. Ten seconds before, Lucas was fearless. He was approaching me like he could knock me out like the other kid. Now, Lucas was intimidated. He began walking back from me. “I’m going to beat you up, Lucas. You will never forget the beating that I’m about to give you in your whole life.” I said. Lucas then said, “W-What? You can’t use my words against m-” And with that, I swung the heavy tower fan to Lucas’ face. It shattered his glasses almost instantly and he collapsed to the ground. I set the fan on the ground and walked towards Lucas. He was sitting in the corner. I approached him and said, “Goodbye, Lucas,” I said, preparing to punch him in the stomach. Then, Lucas grabbed me by the neck and began choking me. I tried fighting Lucas again in order for him to let me go, but Lucas was way stronger than me, so my efforts were practically useless. 

“Not so fast, kid,” he said, standing up. Once again, I was running out of options. However, against all odds, I started running forward, with Lucas still trying to choke me, and rammed him into the wall. “OW!” he yelled. I broke free of Lucas’ hands and started running towards the door. The door has a tiny window embedded in it, where you can see the hallway. Then, I saw my saviors. It was far down the hallway, but I could see an eerie figure in a black suit, with two students on both sides. It was the principal with the master key, coming to our rescues. But it would still take him about twenty seconds to arrive at the door and open the door to rescue us. Lucas had gotten up again. And he was approaching me. “Wow, he is very strong to still be walking right now,” I said in my mind. “Lucas, it’s too late. The principal is coming to open the door.” Just give up. “No, you’re wr-” And with that, the principal was at the door. He got out the room’s key and tried to shove it in the lock. Lucas realized that all hope was almost lost so he tried to make a run for it and beat me up once and for all. However, he was quite dizzy since y'know, I just whacked him in the face with a tower fan. Because Lucas was so dizzy, he accidentally tripped on the leg of a chair and landed on the table, breaking it, probably because he was so overweight.

I went over to him and said, “Jeez, Lucas, what happened to beating me up?” Lucas was bawling because of the pain. “Leave me alone,” he said, crying over what was left of the collapsed table. An ocean of Lucas’ tears fell on the table. I felt proud that I single-handedly managed to defeat one of the most notorious bullies in the school. Even better, I managed to avenge the kid he knocked out. Just as I was finished with mocking Lucas, the principal opened the door. And he was not happy. He looked at the collapsed table, with Lucas bawling over it. He looked at the tower fan, broken and laying on the ground. He looked at the computer screen, broken. He looked at the three other kids in the corner who watched us fight. He looked at the kid who had been thrown at the window. He looked at the kid who was knocked out. He looked at the dozens of pencils on the floor, smearing graphene everywhere. He was steaming with anger. He points at me. “YOU THERE! COME TO MY OFFICE, NOW!” he yelled. I was shocked that he was this angry, but I guess that anyone would be after y’know, what we did to one of his rooms. I stepped out of the room for the first time. It felt relieving to finally be out of the warzone-like atmosphere of the room. I glanced behind me. Teachers began swarming the media room and I saw them picking up each of the three kids who were injured. I looked forwards. I was walking with the principal towards his office. I was terrified that I was going to get expelled for what I did to Lucas. We turned left and entered the office. Then, looking to my left, there was a sign on a door which read “PRINCIPAL’S OFFICE” in big, bold, uppercase letters.

He told me to go sit in there. I complied, and I sat on a chair. “Wow, I never thought I’d end up here,” I thought. I looked throughout the office. First of all, the nurse’s office had three people in it. Lucas, the kid who was thrown through the window, and the kid who was knocked out by Lucas. Things only escalated further when I heard sirens. Thoughts immediately raced through my head. “Are they coming to lock me up for what I did to Lucas?” I was panicking. However, it wasn’t the police at all. It was an ambulance, and the paramedics ran through the front door and wheeled the three kids out of the building using stretchers. I looked out the window and saw the three kids being loaded into the ambulance. Then, the ambulance drove off and I was left sitting in the office alone. Then, I overheard the principal yelling to the assistant principal saying, “PLEASE, TALK WITH THAT ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING KID, I OBVIOUSLY CAN’T BECAUSE I’M TOO ANGRY!” And with that, he stormed out of the office and headed towards the staff lounge to take a break. I saw the assistant principal walk out of her office and started heading towards me. She entered the office and sat across from me. The office was a simple place. There was a painting on the wall, a table in the middle, and seats arranged in a semicircle, partially surrounding the table in the middle.The assistant principal entered the office and shut the door. “Hey, how are you?” she said. “Good,” I said. “Sorry for getting yelled at by the principal. He can be quite a jerk sometimes,” she said. “Yeah, I think I can tell,” I said. We both chuckled. “Anyways, what happened in that tiny media room?” “Why was there so much violence?” said the assistant principal. Without hesitation, I said one word: “Lucas.” “Lucas? Oh no, not him again,” said the assistant principal. “I’ve lost count on how many times he’d been written up and sent here,” admitted the assistant principal. “Yeah, well guess what. I’m going to expel him. Bullying people is one thing, but trashing a whole room? That’s an instant expulsion,” said the assistant principal. As soon as the assistant principal said the phrase “I’m going to expel him,” I breathed a huge sigh of relief. This whole school was saved. 

People like me wouldn’t have to be careful when walking around the halls anymore. The whole school would have been much more peaceful without a notorious bully ruining everything. But most importantly, I would be remembered as the kid who defeated Lucas. “So anyway, tell me what happened,” said the assistant principal. “Alright, I’ll tell you, but it’s a very long story,” I said. “So, I was coming in from recess and I was heading towards that media room for my handwriting class. The room began filling up with students, including Lucas, but the teacher was nowhere to be seen. All of us just kept waiting and waiting for the teacher to arrive, but she never did. Eventually, after about 8 minutes of waiting in the dark media room, things started to go wrong.” I glanced at the assistant principal for a split second, and saw that she was writing everything down on a piece of notebook paper with a pen. She stopped writing and smiled at me. “Go on,” she said. “Alright, so Lucas shot up from his seat, locked the door, and forced the whole class to participate in this pencil fight in order to brighten the boring atmosphere of the room. The moment the fight began, chaos erupted. Everyone started sprinting across the room towards the pencil bucket to get ammunition. Then, this short kid accidentally tripped on a chair in the midst of all the chaos while trying to sprint to the pencil bucket. Because everyone was so desperate to get pencils, people started to run over him, which made him quite mad. 

He told everyone to stop running over him, but no one listened, and one kid told him to shut up. This made him even more mad and he started fighting the other kid. Both kids got injured and stopped fighting,” I said. “Wow, a fight?,” said the assistant principal. “Yeah, it was pretty bad, but not nearly as bad as what would happen next,” I said. “Some kids in the next media room overheard all of the fighting, and started to walk over to the principal’s office to get help and to unlock the room’s door with the master key. However, help would take a while to arrive since the principal’s office is very far from the isolated media room. In the meantime, I tried to lie low and to avoid fighting. No one really seemed to care about the fight between the two kids and the pencil fight between the rest of us continued as usual. Then, some kid tried throwing a pencil at some other kid, but he missed and accidentally hit the room’s only computer, breaking it. This made the kid ask Lucas if they should stop the pencil fight since there was too much violence and damage. Of course, Lucas refused, and they got into an argument. Eventually, the argument escalated into violence, and they started fighting each other. The kid was tiny compared to Lucas, so I knew I needed to intervene in the fight because I didn’t want more violence. I tried to help the kid, but the kid stood no chance. He was knocked out practically instantly by one of Lucas’ punches.

Lucas then tried coming after me because I tried backing up his opponent. The remainder of the kids who were still pencil fighting instantly stopped and looked at us two. We were about to demolish the whole room with our fight. The room went dead silent, until it was just us two staring at each other. The fight commenced, and Lucas started walking towards me to beat me up. Naturally, I began to back up to avoid violence. Only that unknown to me, I was backing up into a corner and I didn’t have much left to go. Then, in a pure stroke of genius, I lifted the heavy tower fan in the corner of the room, and swung it at Lucas’ face. Lucas collapsed to the ground and I was in position to finish him off. Then, Lucas sprung up and tried to choke me, but I got up and rammed him into the wall, which prompted me to attempt my escape. I sprinted to the door to see the principal with the master key coming to our rescues. Lucas realized that it was almost too late and he tried one final last ditch attempt to finish me. However, I didn’t even need to fight him. Lucas conveniently did the job himself. Because he was so dizzy, he tripped on the leg of a chair and landed on the relatively weak table, breaking it. The principal arrived, took me to his office, you questioned me, and here we are now,” I finished. The assistant principal was having trouble keeping up with me. She was aggressively trying to jot everything down in her notebook as fast as possible. “Wow, that’s a lot of great information,” the assistant principal said, with her eyes still on the notebook trying to write everything down. “You may go back to your class now, she said.” “Once again, thank you,” she said. I got up from the semicircle shaped seat in the principal’s office, opened the door, and left.

I caught one last final glimpse of the assistant principal. She was still trying to write everything down. I started to walk down the hallway and back to my class, on the opposite side of the school. I wasn’t sure how I felt about all this. One one side, I felt very, very, very proud that I had dealt with Lucas. After all, he is definitely going to get expelled from this school after his little stunt today. I had saved tons of students from getting picked on by Lucas. However, on the other side, I was still very traumatized about what happened today in that tiny media room. Even though the action happened like 10 minutes ago, I was still shaking, my thoughts were still racing, and I was still in pure terror. Even though the chaos in the media room only lasted for about five minutes, it was probably the scariest five minutes of my life. First of all, you couldn’t do anything about it. You were stuck in the terror of the media room and you couldn’t escape because the door was locked. Second, I was tasked with defeating Lucas, which seemed almost impossible, yet during all the terror, I still managed to defeat him. Third, there was the scary violence. Everyone was trying to fight each other, and frankly, I was just trying to avoid conflict. Even though I tried my best, I still had to get involved. I was so distracted by my thoughts that I accidentally took a wrong turn and ended up near the media room, on a completely different wing of the school. It was pretty much the same as it was since we left it, with two exceptions. First, no one was in the room. Second of all, the door was bolted shut and had caution tape all over it. I decided to peek through the broken window to see how destroyed the media room was. It wasn’t pretty. There were pencils everywhere which were smearing graphene throughout the room, there was lots of blood, glass fragments, the broken tower fan, the table with wood fragments everywhere. It would take forever to list all of the atrocities in the room, but it looked like something out of a horror movie. I was in shock. I headed down the hallway and to my class.

Lucas got expelled from school after the incident and had to switch schools. All three kids and Lucas miraculously recovered in the hospital. The story of the media room went viral throughout the school, so the media room was turned into a storage cabinet, because very few people would want to use the room after all the horrors that happened in it. But most importantly, I was hailed as the kid who defeated Lucas once and for all.

THE END