The day Mrs. Greenway skipped school, Hell came to Crane High. Upon arrival, everyone could feel deep down in his own nuggets that this would not be a good day, they just didn’t realize why yet. The school began to feel much, much warmer the moment the bell rang for first hour and the poor Creative Writing/Writing Skills Class (Mrs. Greenway’s first hour class) had only 5 tiny fleeting moments of freedom and happiness left.

Mrs. Greenway had to have a sub for this hour. On any other day, they would have hired the usual mustached Mrs. Gross or the knitting sleepyhead, Mrs. DeWitt. Maybe they’d even bring in the world-traveling, spit-slinging widow Ms. Laue: But not today. On this day, as the unaware and doomed walked down the only hallway Crane High School had and into the sixth door on the left, pain struck every sunken heart and fear entered every mind, big or small, as each individual’s attention went fully and completely to the wild-eyed power hungry man sitting behind the beloved English teacher’s desk. He was Mr. Lynch, the student teacher, and it was Mr. Lynch who led Hell to the peacefully boring hillbilly town of Crane, Missouri.

Mr. Lynch towered about six foot and two inches tall, he had vehement steel blue eyes that shot out of his head every time he got even the slightest bit flustered and his jet black hair shone even in the dark. His background included being a rocker, jumping out of airplanes in the Army, and being a Simpson’s fanatic. He wasn’t exactly the scariest person you’ve ever seen, but he sure as Gehenna could make a man’s blood run cold.

Mr. Lynch stood up, like a tree shooting up from rocks and flowers, and overshadowed every student, making them feel diminutive and inert. “The first order of business,” Mr. Lynch declared slowly, as if speaking to small children, “there are 13 kids in this class. Alicia, how many of the 13 are tardy?” Seeing that all 13 students were present and standing along with her in class and the warning bell had not rung yet, Alicia replied unconfidently, “None?” “Wrong!” Mr. Lynch’s mono-syllabus screamed comeback shook the entire room. “Each of you mindless little twerps is tardy, and as punishment, you will all be joining me after school rubbing toothbrushes on my mother’s very green toe fungus until seven o’clock every night for the next six weeks!” Mr. Lynch proclaimed ever-so-proudly in his I-am-Caesar voice. “Now, since your ‘truly awesome’ teacher isn’t here, you will all be slaving for me today,” he continued gloatingly, “and between running any and every random errand I throw at you, you will all be assigned a 400-page essay to Mr. Redus describing my intelligence and flawless beauty and persuading him to let me run this school in his place for a day.” As all the awestruck and still standing kids could not close their mouths because of shock, Mr. Lynch felt compelled to help shut them by pulling a colorful plastic water gun from under the desk and squirting a liquid that was most certainly not water or fruit punch into the 13 open traps. Each helpless highschooler gagged on impact and Mr. Lynch laughed a horrible and obnoxious laugh that sounded something more along the lines of teeth on a chalkboard and a garbage disposal filled with spoons. So they all sat down, terrified, and with their mouths tightly closed.

Next, Mr. Lynch began tossing more orders. “Chance Allen, make a Rapid Robert’s run. I nee 37 ounces of Mt. Dew with nine pieces of ice, all exactly the same size and shape. Then I need a Snicker’s bar with an expiration date of precisely one week and two days from tomorrow. And you had better be back in five minutes, or the consequences will be much harsher than you can handle.” Mr. Lynch ended his terrible speech with a maniacal grin as poor Chance scurried out of the room like a beaten puppy. All the students watched him with piteous stares, but Mr. Lynch’s was more opposing. He watched Chance go with the most censuring glare, that even though he wasn’t looking at anyone else, each person could feel Mr. Lynch’s eyes boring into their soul.

“Essays! Now!” Mr. Lynch vociferated, and each person frantically began searching their destitute and blank minds for some adjective, any adjective, that could hint that Mr. Lynch was even the slightest bit nice. Their thoughts were interrupted when Dictator Lynch called, “Karissa, David, and Jeffrey! To the desk!” He slammed a yardstick on one of Mrs. Greenways picture frames (which is now shattered) and immediately, three trembling students stood before him at Mrs. Greenway’s overtaken desk.


“Go to the board, each of you, and write the square root of pi in decimal form and fraction form. Then, write a grammatically correct paragraph about it without using the letter ‘E,’ or the word ‘and.’” He smiled, “the first one done will not have to suffer the same punishment as the other two.” He grinned, and then like a gunshot at a horse race, he yelled, “GO!” and they sprinted off to the board and began to write. Jeff took the left side, Karissa took the middle, and David was on the right. David’s section of the board said “pi= 1.7” and had a bunch of scribbly equations to the side of it all. Karissa’s section had a lovely sketch of stick-figure drawings beating each other with large sticks and a caption that read “I wish Mrs. Greenway was here.” Jeff’s section had “pi= 1.77245385, 22/7, then a several paragraph essay about pi, its square root, and how to turn a decimal into a fraction. “Jeffrey!” everyone jumped and turned around in their seats to see what Evil Lynch wanted. Jeff shuffled over to Mr. Lynch who just said “Take your seat.” Jeff sat down at his desk instantly.
The rest of the class turned their attention back toward the board to see Karissa and David copying Jeff’s answer as fast as they could while wiping the nervous sweat from out of their eyes. Mr. Lynch bellowed in a deep, angry voice, “Karissa and David get over here NOW!” the two guilty failures hustled over to him without a word. In an even louder voice, Mr. Lynch proclaimed to the whole class, especially to David and Karissa, that the moment they heard Mrs. Greenway would not be to school on that day, he and Brett, the crack-crazy janitor, had installed a chokey just like the one in the story Matilda. By the time he was done, Karissa and David were begging at his feet for mercy and pleading for their lives. It was no use. Mr. Lynch did not care; in fact, he laughed. He confidently, arrogantly, strode over across the room, dragging poor David and Karissa, to the small coat closet that every teacher at Crane had in their room. When he opened the door, a horrible, gut-wrenching stench filled the entire room.
What used to be a normal classroom closet, with books, coats, a mirror, and other supplies, was now a real live chokey. It had sharp, jagged nails, a hole in the wall, and everything. Coughing, gagging, and shaking to death, the doomed duo was shoved, together, in the Lynchbull’s chokey for one. The door was shut hard and locked tightly. Mr. Lynch almost laughed again then the door opened. Chance ran in, gave Mr. Lynch his soda and candy bar, and went to his seat. And again, before Mr. Lynch could do anything, someone appeared at the door. He knocked three times and said “Uhh… Delivery. I’ve got a delivery for a Bob Lynch.” The man stuttered a lot. Mr. Lynch hurried to the door, knocking Rachel down on the floor, even though she was only up to sharpen her pencil. Then Mr. Lynch took the sign-sheet from the UPS man, signed it in his horrible three-year-old scrawl, and grabbed protectively and secretly the tall thin box from him.

After slamming the door, Mr. Lynch carefully transported the box across the room to Mrs. Greenway’s desk and pushed everything on it to the floor with his precious box. He laid the box on the now-clear desk and opened it as cautiously as he could handle. After all the packing peanuts and bubble wrap was removed, Mr. Lynch pulled out a giant mirror. It was long and rectangular with a thin brown frame and a light up crown at the top. When Mr. Lynch looked in the mirror, his reflection had a sort of cloudy picture. The whole class was very confused. Mr. Lynch put the mirror on top of the box it came in and he went to the right side of the room where Mrs. Greenway kept a large bulletin board on the wall. He took down the bulletin board and replaced it with his atrophied mirror. Someone in the room began to ask, “What’s that?” but was rudely interrupted by Mr. Lynch who barked, “Don’t touch it, it’s none of your business!” and they were instantly silent.
He turned to the mirror, smiled politely, and said ever-so-sweetly, “Mirror, mirror with the crown, who’s the best teacher around?” Everyone in the room gasped when the mirror spoke and with every syllable, the crown blazed red. “Bob Lynch, lover of Rock and Krusty, the Simpson’s clown, you are not the best teacher around. For there is another, not here today, who goes by the name of Tara Greenway.” Mr. Lynch glared hard as his smoky image in the magical mirror turned into a picture of Mrs. Greenway in her 70’s-day outfit with big hair and hot pink eye shadow. The mirror continued, apparently out of rhymes, “In order for you to be better than Mrs. Greenway, you have to obtain a degree higher than her in Awesomeness (which is humanly impossible) and you have to have…” intense music filled the room and the students sat literally on the edge of their seats. “…superpowers!” The sound of thunder and the flashes of lightening came suddenly into the classroom. Mr. Lynch walked slowly, humbly, back to the captive desk, talking to himself the whole time. “Superpowers? Mrs. Greenway doesn’t have any superpowers. And she’s not even awesome!!” Jazmyne called out before she could even think, “Oh no he di’int!” She immediately clasped her hand over her mouth as she realized the mistake she had just made. Mr. Lynch whirled around toward where the sound came from and all fingers were literally pointing at Jazmyne. He walked over to the left side of the room where Mrs. Greenway kept two five-foot-tall ugly green helium tanks from filling the Valentine’s Day balloons. Mr. Lynch grabbed a tank and hurled it with a forceful grunt straight across the room at his prized chokey. It hit the doors with a loud hollow clang followed by whimpers coming from inside. Obviously not satisfied, he took the other tank in one massive hand and moved near Jazmyne. He raised the huge ugly green thing high above his head with both hands, about to slam it on top of poor Jazmyne’s head. She put her arms up, bracing herself for pain. As Mr. Lynch’s death tank reached the short pause in between raising and beating, the door swung open and the thunder and lightning consumed the class again and 22 grateful eyes stared at the doorway.

There stood perhaps the greatest sight any man, woman, or child, has ever seen. For it was Mrs. Greenway in all her heavenly glory. She stood there, hands on hips, in her brighter-than-bright blue heels, her luminescent red tights and matching cape that still flew behind her even when she stood still. She had on white and blue “I Love Mark Wahlberg” underwear over her tights with Mark’s smiling face ironed on the butt, and her shirt was the most neon shade of yellow that is even humanly possible. “By the power of Mark!” she yelled, and thrust a fist, tattooed with the word “Mark”, into the air as she flew up and at a very stunned Mr. Lynch who automatically and quite sloppily threw the helium tank at the airborne WonderWay. She deflected the “missile” with an iron skillet she pulled out of her cape. The tank ricocheted 90 degrees to the right and fell to the floor in a fury of noise. Mrs. Greenway’s skillet burst into flames as if it was a reaction to the tank-skillet collision. She swung the flaming skillet at Mr. Lynch and hit him hard in the chest. He fell to the ground, struggling to breathe as the blow knocked the wind out of him. WonderWay landed gracefully beside Mr. Lynch who punched her so hard and suddenly in the face, everyone in the room heard her jaw crack. Surprised, she fell back a few feet, but rebounded well by grabbing him by the back of his shirt collar and the back of his pants and with one mighty heave; she chucked him out the door and into the hallway.
The now humbled and humiliated Mr. Lynch ran out of the school as quickly as he could move through the groups of kids mocking him after coming out of their classrooms. With Mr. Lynch gone, all 232 students enrolled at Crane High School gave a loud cheer and tossed roses and other various floral articles at Mrs. Greenway. She let the almost-dead Karissa and David out of the chokey and had Brett thrown in it. Mr. Stumpff declared it WonderWay Day and all the kids got to go home early. It had been a wonderful day, after all.
After all was said and done, and all the students well on their separate ways home, Mrs. Greenway made her way over to Mr. Lynch’s magic mirror. “ Mirror, mirror with a crown, just who is the best teacher around?” The smoky reflection transformed into a different image. It was the image of WonderWay, in all her Mark Wahlberg glory. Mrs. Greenway beamed proudly, but not arrogantly, as she looked around her silent, empty room. “I swear, I’m never going to skip school again.” and quicker than melted popsicle juice, WonderWay flew home.