The Good War

The morning bell rang. Goofy Foot, aka Zach Cook, dodged through the mob funneling into Ironville Middle School.
Wearing a backpack and carrying a skateboard, he weaved and sidestepped through the crowd. When he accidentally bumped into a girl with long black hair, she snapped, “Watch where you’re going.” Other kids gave him dirty looks as he squeezed past them. But they were the bad guys. In Goofy Foot’s mind, he was in the video game called The Good War, and the entire school was enemy territory.
After stashing his skateboard in his locker, Goofy Foot enters the pissorium and is greeted by the harsh odor of bodily waste. He ducks into a stall for shelter before the next bell. Goofy Foot does not want to risk being ambushed at a urinal by the bad guys.
The boys’ room door opened with a creak, accompanied by the voices of Gavin Morgenstern and Ratface Fugard. In the stall, Zach held his breath. Ratface, whose real name was Crosby, picked on Zach every chance he got. Zach knew that if Ratface caught him in the pissorium, he’d be dead meat.
Goofy Foot hunkers down inside the stall. Through the sliver between the stall door and doorstop, he spies on the enemy’s activities.
“I heard Robbie’s parents moved to Franklin so he can play on their football team,” Ratface said, standing in front of the mirror and raking his fingers through his dark hair. His long nose reminded Zach of a rat.
“Yeah,” Gavin said at a urinal.
“Wish my mom could do that,” Ratface said. “It totally sucks that Ironville canceled football. Imagine if we could all move to Franklin and play?”
“It’s a big school,” said Gavin, who had red hair and freck-les. “Think you could make the team?”
“Hey, I may not be big, but I’m fast,” said Ratface.
Hidden in the stall, Zach wondered about that. Ratface might have been fast, but he was small. Smaller even than Zach. There were plenty of bigger kids who were just as fast. Gavin, on the other hand, was the biggest kid in the grade. He reminded Zach of Duke Nukem. You wouldn’t think a kid that brawny could be quick and agile, but when they played flag football or basket­ball­in­gym,­the­team­with­Gavin­on­it­always won.
Gavin backed away from the urinal. He cleared his throat loudly, then gazed up at the ceiling.
Inside the stall, Goofy Foot looks upward. His eyes take in an astounding sight. Stuck to the ceiling of the pissorium are a dozen dried brownish- green hanging loogies! Like a cave with mucus stalactites.
His head tilted back, Gavin hocked and fired. Splat! His loogie smacked into the ceiling and stuck. But from the mid-dle, it drooped, stretching like light brown Play- Doh Slime until the bulbous end broke and fell to the floor with a plop!
“Darn,” Gavin grumbled.
“Maybe next time,” Ratface said.
The bell rings, and Gavin and Ratface leave the bathroom.
Once again alone, Goofy Foot exits the stall. But before he goes to class, he stands in the middle of the pissorium, face tilted upward. It is too tempting not to try. He hocks his own glob of slimy ammunition, aims, then fires!
Alas, his mucus projectile lacks firepower. It doesn’t get half-way to the ceiling before it sputters and falls short.
It plummets back down and splatters all over Goofy Foot’s face.
The bell was going to ring at any moment. Ms. B had finally managed to get Principal Summers down to the computer lab to show her the eight shiny new Providia gaming computers that had just arrived.
Principal Summers was a petite, neatly dressed woman with short black hair. She was also a tough, but always fair ad-ministrator. She slid a glossy red fingernail along the top edge of one of the twenty- four- inch monitors. “How can these not cost us anything?” she asked.
“We got them with a technology grant for low- income schools,” Ms. B said. “It even includes an upgrade for our inter net connection, new routers, and these gaming setups.”
rincipal Summers nodded slowly. Ms. B could tell that the principal had doubts about encouraging eSports at school. “Can we use them for anything besides gaming?” the principal asked.
“Absolutely,” said Ms. B. “When they’re not being used by the eSports club, they’re available for schoolwork. And they can run three-D modeling programs and Photoshop, which our present computers can’t handle.”
Principal Summers picked up one of the new headsets that had come with the Providias. “I just don’t see how an eSports club will ever replace the football team.”
“It’s­awful­that­the­school­board­had­to­cut­football,”­Ms. B­said, “but hopefully this will give students something else to focus on and get excited about.”
Principal Summers smiled thinly, as if she wasn’t sure that was true. “Do me a favor? Make sure the rest of the staff knows that these computers came from a grant. I don’t want anyone to think our school spent its meager funds on an  eSports club.”
Ms. B promised she would. She’d known from the get- go that getting behind eSports in school was risky. But without their football team, she felt they had to do whatever they could to encourage school spirit.
The bell rang. Principal Summers had to get back to the office for the morning announcements. Ms. B went to her classroom. Even though school had been in session for only a few weeks, she no longer had to check the seating chart to know who wasn’t there. One student had been out for two days with a cold. Another’s mother had emailed that morning that her son wasn’t feeling well. And that left Zach Cook, who al-ways came to class late.
Ms. B settled at her desk. She was eager to see how the kids would react to that morning’s announcements.
Sitting in the front row in Ms. B’s class, Caleb Arnett chewed anxiously on a pen. Just a short time ago, on the bus to school, he’d overheard Crosby telling Gavin about his plan to cheat on the geometry test that afternoon. Caleb didn’t think of him-self as an angel, but he hated when kids cheated. The way he saw it, if everyone were allowed to cheat in school, that would be fine. Because it would level the playing field. But most kids chose not to cheat. Not always because they believed it was wrong, but because they knew that if they got caught, it would be a stain on their reputations. Caleb might have only been in seventh grade, but he was smart enough to know that once you got labeled a cheater, it stuck forever.
Caleb was trying to decide what to do about Crosby when the classroom door swung open, and Zach dashed in late as usual, lugging his backpack and wiping his face with a paper towel.
“Why are you late this time, Zach?” Ms. B asked.
Zach was squirmy kid who never looked you in the eye. Hardly spoke. Had more nervous habits than anyone Caleb had ever seen. Bit his nails, chewed on his lip, picked at his scalp, blinked excessively, couldn’t sit still. “Sorry, Ms. B,” Zach said. “I spit myself.”
The class erupted into laughter. It was classic Zach Cook. Even as he’d said it, his eyes flicked for an instant toward the class to make sure they were listening.
Ms. B stiffened. “Zach!” she snapped. “What did you just say?”
“I said I spit myself.” Zach repeated the word with  emphasis. The class was still tittering, but Ms. B relaxed. “Oh, I thought you said something else.” Ms. B...