Trolling the Administration (Literally): If Stuy was an Anarchy

“Good morning, Stuyvesant! Are you interested in frog dissection? Well then, you should join—” The announcements are abruptly cut short with a loud screech. You wince before looking up from your desk in confusion.

A thick, monotonous voice, which you recognize as Principal Yu’s, cuts through the speaker. “Pardon the interruption, but we’re having a party in the senior bar, so whoever wants to pull up for free food is more than welcome to!” he exclaims. Your class erupts in a united cheer.

However, you’re beyond confused. Don’t most people have class right now? Why in the world would there be a party at nine a.m. in the morning? But, to your surprise, all your classmates immediately stand up and head for the door.

Your teacher glances at you. “Hey, aren’t you going to join the party? It sounds fantastic!” they ask.  

You nod reluctantly and get up to follow the rest of the class, heading to the first floor. Most of the students walking alongside you are chatting with the use of lively hand gestures and soft giggles, as if this were a normal event. Like, yeah, of course there’s a party in the senior bar every Monday morning. Nothing odd about that.

When you get there, you don’t expect to see many people, because, duh, attending class is a thing. Yet, the entire second floor is crammed with people. Loud conversations fill the air, hitting you like a truck, and the pungent smell of pizza is impossible to ignore. But what’s even harder to ignore are the blatant behavioral violations pervading around you. Someone’s filming a TikTok with their phone propped against the bar’s vending machine, another person’s chugging a gallon of fruit punch, and… someone’s dog is running loose with their coarse, red leash dragging on the floor.

“Hey, man! What’s up?” someone calls out.

You turn around to see one of your friends approaching you. The same friend who’s supposed to be finishing their AP Biology test. In a proctored room. On the sixth floor. Though, you don’t blame them for wanting to wander. The sixth-floor gymnasium, when set up for an AP test, reminds you vaguely of a prison. Drab, gray chairs lined in rows just waiting for unsuspecting students to take a seat and round out their academic trauma with the final boss.

“‘What’s up?’ What’s up is the fact that I cut class just to see someone’s pet chasing its own tail! And aren’t you supposed to be taking your AP?” you ask.

Your friend laughs at the question. “That old thing? I felt like taking it next week, so I walked out to join the party! The proctors didn’t care. Actually, I don’t think they heard me. They had AirPods in.”

Your eyebrows instantly shoot up, but before you can respond, you’re interrupted by a loud crash that seems to be coming from the half-floor. Turning around, you expect to see another student sprawled on the floor with a group of friends flanking them on both sides. Instead, you see the lights above the half-floor flickering on and off. But before the repeated changes in lighting can send you into epileptic shock, the giraffe underneath the lights almost sends you into cardiac arrest. Yes, a giraffe. A giraffe that is currently sticking its head through the ceiling of the half floor as if there are some juicy leaves waiting for it near the electrical disaster it just caused.

“Somebody do something!” a student screams at you.

You shake your head in shock. “Do what?! Do I look like a zookeeper to you?!” 

The student rolls their eyes. “No, but you look like someone incompetent enough to let a giraffe into a high school building!” 

“Excuse me?!” you yell back, extremely offended by their bold description.

Your friend nudges you. “Hey, let’s get out of here before that giraffe breaks something other than the lights.”

You nod in agreement. “Better the lights than my bones.”

The two of you take the elevator up to the seventh floor, despite students not being allowed to use the elevator; it seems as though the administration has a lot more to worry about. As the elevator takes both of you away from the second floor, you hear teachers attempting to control the situation and escort students out of harm’s way. If teachers had it bad before, the staffing shortage isn’t getting solved anytime soon. Not after the headline “Giraffe Breaks into Stuyvesant High School.”

The elevator stops at the seventh floor. You and your friend get off, expecting to relax on the benches and finish some homework. AP season is over, but it’d be better for your grades if you didn’t get senioritis early. As you walk down the hallway, your sneakers squeak against the freshly cleaned floor, and the low hum of the AC is evident in the background. It seems quiet. Almost too quiet.

“WHOOOO WANNA ROCK WITH JENNIE?” Loud music instantly penetrates the crisp silence of the hallway, and you and your friend race down the remainder of the hall to find the source of the noise.

“KEEP YOUR HAIR DONE, NAILS DONE LIKE JENNIE,” the song continues, blasting through the once-tranquil seventh floor.

And that’s when you find the cause of the noise. Not too far in front of you, you find Principal Yu and an entire squad of teachers practicing the choreography of “like JENNIE.” Yes, Jennie is a global icon, and her song is fire, but never did you expect to find middle-aged men and women busting out those moves in the middle of a hallway. Especially when a giraffe is loose on the half-floor. 

 “Excuse me, Dr. Yu, I don’t mean to interrupt whatever this is, but—” your interruption is interrupted when another student races past you and straight to Principal Yu.

“TROLL IN THE DUNGEON,” the student barely manages to yell. What in the Harry Potter?

You stare in confusion. “Wait, what? Don’t you mean giraffe on the half-floor?”

The student looks up at you, sweat dripping down their forehead. “There’s a giraffe on the half-floor?”

You nod. “Um, yes. Stuyvesant doesn’t even have a dungeon.”

The student sighs. “You uncultured swine. I was referencing—”

Your friend quickly interrupts the out-of-breath newcomer. “Yes, yes, yes. We get your reference. Except you’re not making sense.”

The students roll their eyes. “Are you SLOW? There’s a TROLL in the chemistry lab.”

A loud bang suddenly reverberates through the walls, and the ground begins to shake, almost as if there were an earthquake underneath your feet or a hurricane fast approaching. Small pieces of plaster begin to chip off the ceiling and fall to the floor in heaps of white dust.

You stare at the student in awe. “You weren’t lying. But where’d a troll come from?”

The student licks their lips in embarrassment and shifts their eyes across the room anxiously before replying, “Long story short: I let it in. I thought it would be pretty funny, but then—”

“YOU THOUGHT RISKING OUR EXISTENCE WOULD BE ‘PRETTY FUNNY?!’” Your friend screams over the loud rumbling and shaking of the walls around you. More plaster begins to chip off the walls and crumble.

You shake your head. “Yeah, no. I’m out. You guys can deal with this mess on your own.”

You grab your friend’s hand and bolt for the staircases, in fear that the elevators might collapse if you tried them. You both run for your lives down the crumbling marble steps, but eventually reach the lobby, where a mass evacuation is being conducted. Hundreds of students and teachers are swarming the main entrance, and you and your friend fight through the crowd before you’re met with crisp, fresh air. The chatter of students hits you like a truck, but this time you’re too sweaty and red-faced to care. All you know is that this better qualify as a snow day. No shot the DOE tries forcing everyone back to school tomorrow…