For my entire high school career, I’ve been doing crazy shit: pranks, disrupting classes, and just being generally disorderly. It was a sort of competition that my best friend Jules and I had started. We were very competitive. We’d been friends for nearly a decade when he got sick. I’ve never felt more helpless than when I had to sit and watch him slip away. Before he died, he made me promise. Promise to get expelled before the end of senior year.

He didn’t want me to be sad, so I’m not. Sometimes I’ll look over and begin to say something to him before remembering that he’s not there. But I have a promise to fulfil. A mission to accomplish. And I only have 11 more days to do it.

Today is the day- I can feel it. I get ready for school and pack my bag. Not with books and pens and gum like the rest of my classmates; but with every weapon in my arsenal. No, I’m not talking about guns! I’m not gonna shoot up the school like a psycho! I pack it full of toothpaste, spray paint, laxatives, hair-removal cream. Every weird and wonderful thing you could possibly think up.

I walk into the last class of the day, full of confidence. “This is for you, Jules,” I say to the ceiling lights as I prepare for an epic final showdown.

I reach into my backpack and pull out the green swimming cap that Jules insisted on wearing to school after he lost all of his hair, and pull it over my face. I cut eye and mouth holes into it, so I look like a Mexican wrestler. Mrs Razidi turns away from the board and stares at me. “What on EARTH are you doing, Mr Drew?” she manages to say before the first rice pudding bomb hits her square in the face. Then chaos erupts. The rice pudding-filled condoms that I dealt out to the class earlier find their way into eager hands and sail across the room. Mrs Razidi screams and ducks for cover as her precious diagram-filled board is repeatedly defiled.

I sneak to the disused bookshelf at the back of the class (a full-blown food fight has broken out so nobody notices me) and search the shelves. There it is! Using a pair of tweezers, I reach into a large crack in the wood and retrieve a flash drive. It seems all the pudding has been used up, and everyone is laughing and having a great time. I smile.

“I want you OUT of my class, Alex!” screams Mrs Razidi from behind her desk. I remove my mask and exit the classroom. This was my plan all along, ha! Once inside the principal’s office, all I need to do is insert the flash drive into the announcement system. Then Jules’ good bye message to the school will play. I wipe away a tear. I’ve kept my promise.