The Icebreaker Assignment

Justin, Craig, and Trevor stood around at Samantha’s house, each sipping from their respective drinks. Samantha’s parents were out of town and she was throwing a small party. While they had allowed Samantha to host the party in their absence, they had stipulated no alcohol. Samantha had followed that stipulation.

However, when word got around about this, others took it upon themselves to bring some for themselves and a little extra for anyone they liked. In this case, Justin and Craig had each brought a flask, “borrowed” from their older brothers. Whatever was in them was potent. The smell was eye-watering to Trevor, who opted to stick with the soda offered by the hostess.

It was some off-brand stuff - wasn’t awful. She’d been so worried that people weren’t enjoying themselves or were getting carried away, Trevor had accepted it when she offered, hoping to ease her discomfort. Samantha just wanted to host a fun party, after all.

Suddenly, all three boys received texts, and each pulled out their phones to check them.

“What the-?” started Craig, “Ugh. It’s from Alan.”

“Mine too,” Justin said with disinterest. Both of the brothers instantly slipped their phones away without reading whatever Alan sent.

“Yeah,” added Trevor. Unlike the other two, however, he actually read the text, “Looks like he needs some help with homework. He’s at the… pond?”

“What?” asked Justin, and the brothers both retrieved their phones again, this time actually reading the message.

‘Hey, I need HELP! ASAP! Big homework assignment due tomorrow - I need help at the pond by my house!’

“Is he talking about that assignment due for Ms. Santiago?” asked Trevor, “I thought he wound up having to write about a pear tree or something?”

“Tch. Yeah, he only bitched about it all last week,” nodded Justin. Trevor looked at the weather app on his phone, confused.

“So why is he at the pond? It’s past midnight and below 30 degrees right now….” The brothers shrugged at him, eyeing a few of Samantha’s friends who had recently shown up with interest.

“You’re so worried about it, you go,” Justin said dismissively before he and Craig pushed past him to go talk to the girls. Trevor stood, uncertain, and reread the text.

‘On my way. Walking - be there in like 40 minutes,’ he sent. He finished his pop and headed towards the door. When he noticed Samantha watching him leave, he waved her over.

“Hey, sorry. I’ll try to make it back, but this guy in my writing class needs help with something. I don’t think I’ll have time to walk there, help him, and walk back, though. It’s been fun - thank you for having us over. Maybe next time I can stay longer to hang out.”

“Oh, okay,” Samantha nodded sadly, “I’m sorry to hear you’re leaving, but it’s cool you’re going to help someone. I hope everything works out - thank you for coming over!”

Trevor was about 5 minutes into his walk when he received a response from Alan.

‘Thank you, Trevor! Do you know if Markson bros are coming? It’s going to take forever if it’s just us!’

Trevor sighed. He didn’t have the heart to tell Alan what had happened. He struggled to find the words to send back as he trudged along on the snowy sidewalks. So far there were only a few inches, but several more were supposed to fall that night. Just what was Alan doing out there?

‘I don’t know if they’re coming. What are we doing, anyway?!’ Trevor sent. He pulled a pair of gloves from his coat pocket and slipped them on.

Several more minutes passed. It was quiet, save for his footfalls in the powdery snow. Finally, his phone indicated another text.

‘You’ll see. Just know I need your help - it’s for a huge part of my assignment for tomorrow.’

It was known in their classroom that Alan was struggling hard with the class. With that being the final assignment before holiday break, it was going to be the make-or-break paper for Alan’s grade that semester. But for the life of him, Trevor couldn’t understand what Alan was doing at the pond this late.

‘Maybe he was able to switch his topic last minute since he was so unhappy with his pear tree,’ he thought to himself.

Trevor finally approached the pond near Alan’s house. The entire walk had taken closer to an hour with the snow and ice, and it was nearly 2 in the morning. Looking around, at first Trevor didn’t see any sign of Alan. He thought he heard a strange, repetitive sound, but he could neither identify or locate it.

‘Where are you? I’m at the pond,’ he sent.

Suddenly a beam of light illuminated Trevor, and he blinked against the brightness. He heard Alan exclaim his name, slide across the frozen pond, and then run up the bank as fast as he could. The younger boy looked cold, and his face was red.

“Thank you so much!” Alan said, tackling Trevor in an appreciative hug.

“Uh, sure. Now, what the heck is going on?” inquired Trevor. Alan sighed.

“So, you know I’m not doing well in Ms. Santiago’s class, right?” With Trevor’s nod, he continued, “And you know how the cover page for the assignment is worth 20 percent of the grade?” Again, Trevor nodded, uncertain where the conversation was going, “Justin and Craig were screwing around with me earlier and started chasing me home after school today. A bunch of my papers went flying out. I thought I got them all, but when I was trying to put everything back together to turn in tomorrow, I noticed the cover page was missing.”

“Oh man!”

“Yeah! So I came down here, hoping maybe it was just along the bank in a snow pile or something, right? I mean, I kinda figured it was lost and I was screwed. I just gave up and started heading home… Figured I’d have to tell my folks I failed the class,” By this point, Alan had led Trevor onto the frozen pond a ways, “And I shined my light around, and what do I find?”

Trevor notices something off in the ice just ahead of them. Something bright and unnaturally shaped lies trapped within. When Alan illuminates the area with the flashlight, Trevor can’t believe it.

A colorful, pear-shaped blob lay suspended in the ice. Around it, Trevor saw the fruits of Alan’s labors as he struggled to chip around the item with a sharp rock. He looked at Alan incredulously.

“Okay, that sucks. But why don’t you print off a new one? Draw a new one? Why work so hard to get this out?”

“No computer or printer - I drew that one. And I did it with colored pencils and markers of my little cousin’s when she was in town, but she’s gone home with them. I don’t have that kind of stuff at home.”

Trevor thought for a moment. He had a laptop, but his family didn’t have a printer either - he’d printed his homework off at his girlfriend’s house. And he wasn’t dragging his classmate over there at this time of the night to ask to print something out.

He turned to look at Alan’s progress again. He’d clearly been working at it for hours. Trevor realized that must have been the source of the repetitive sound he’d heard.

“Why not take a photo of it on your phone and explain to Ms. Santiago? I’m sure she’d give you an extension if she knew.”

“I tried! The pictures aren’t very clear, though. The ice makes it hard to tell just what is on the paper. There’s no way they’d convince her - she’d think I was just making it up to avoid part of the assignment.”

“Okay… So say we do get it out of the pond? Then what? It’s still in the ice.”

“I dunno. I figured if I could carve it out and bring it to her, she could see for herself. Maybe she knows how to thaw it out?” Trevor frowned.

“Honestly, I think you’ll have to redo it. I don’t know if there’s salvaging it once the ice melts. But yeah, if she sees it for herself, maybe she’ll give you an extension.”

“So you’ll still help?” asked Alan. Trevor shrugged.

“I mean, I guess if my homework was frozen in a pond and the only way I could think to convince the teacher of that was to bring it into class frozen… This is crazy, by the way. But yeah - let’s do it. Where’d you find that rock?”

They located another rock for Trevor to use and returned to the spot. Sitting opposite one another, each worked around the long sides of the paper. It was terribly slow going. Alan didn’t have gloves either, so he had to stop and warm his hands often. Eventually, Trevor removed and extended one of his gloves for him to use.

“I owe you!”

“You can help me and Samantha clean up her place later,” Trevor remarked.

“I wish Craig and Justin would have come to help - we’d be done already. It’s their fault it wound up here.”

“Kinda,” Trevor nodded, “but you didn’t mention that in the text.”

“I did! In theirs!” exclaimed Alan excitedly, removing his phone from his pocket to show Trevor the texts he’d sent to the brothers.

‘Hey, I need help! One of my papers that fell out today was for my assignment due tomorrow! You guys chased me - you think you can help me get my homework?’

“They never responded?” asked Trevor. Alan shook his head.

As they continued working, they began talking about their assignments. Alan admitted he’d had more fun than he thought he would researching the pear tree. Trevor spoke of constellations he had featured in his paper, disappointed they weren’t visible. By the time dawn broke, they only had one final side to go.

Ms. Santiago glared at the students coming in the class late the next day, interrupting the already shy new student, Angie, as she gave her presentation. Once she realized they carried a block of ice, though, her annoyance turned to curiosity.

“I’m sorry, Angie, one second. What do you two have there? Why are you late?”

“Sorry, Ms. Santiago,” Alan began. Before long the boys explained the situation. Both the classroom and teacher were silent as they finished, Santiago thinking hard.

“So, let me understand this. The Markson brothers chased you, Alan, and your papers fell out. Then your cover page froze in the ice, and you both spent most of last night chipping it out of a pond?”

“Yeah, that’s about how it is,” Alan nodded. He showed her the photos on his phone, and she agreed, she would not have believed him based on them.

“How do I know this is even your cover page?” she asked, indicating the paper trapped in the ice.

“I guess we don’t until it thaws, and that’s only if it’s still intact after that,” Trevor shrugged, reminding Ms. Santiago that he didn’t even know and he’d spent the night helping to chip it out, “but here are the texts we sent back and forth, and I swear we were both working on that last night.”

The teacher looks the texts over and nods. “All right. A moment, please.” Ms. Santiago then paged Justin and Craig. When they appeared, she questioned them about the incident. They denied knowing anything about it, but Alan then showed her the texts he’d sent to them and Trevor testified that he’d seen them check the messages.

Ms. Santiago paused, thinking, then dismissed Alan and Trevor, “You may go. Get some coffee and warm up. You both get A’s for the assignment.” She waited until they left to continue, “As for you two,” she turned to the Markson brothers, “your grades for my art class now depend on how well you thaw out that paper.”

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