I saw my very life flash before my eyes. I shielded myself as best I could with the already disposed carcass of one of my friends, and prayed for redemption. Six of my friends were hit that day, and they were never the same. It started out a normal school day at Dobson High School, but after the events in the cafeteria, I went home shaken.
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The cafeteria was always crowded with pushy sophomores, pushy juniors, and the occasional pushy senior, but after a full semester of coping with everyone’s pushy-ness, it went to the background of your mind. My friends had a table that we sat at every day, without fail. No one sat there if we were late; it was our table. That’s the glory of highschool politics: once a clique is formed, that clique is established until graduation day. Though the clique is a set thing, the members drift in and out. One week, we might have twelve people sit with us, and the next it would be just me and two other people wondering why the world hated us so. This particular life changing day found me sitting in the midst of the full lode of my friends – all 14 of us. We sat at our table eating lunch, doing homework, and grouching about classes, just like every other day of the week. There was one thing – and one thing alone – that was different about that day: the cafeteria ladies had switched over to a different brand of milk. This may not seem interesting to any normal, mature individual who had better things to do than get mad about a change in milk, but – let’s face it – we were sophomores, and as such, we were allowed our petty grievances.
It was my friend Becca who noticed the change. She took a huge gulp of her half frozen chocolate milk and simply stared at the carton for a few long seconds. Then, ever so slowly, she set it down as if it was an accursed object. “Guys?” she gulped, “They changed the milk.”

This announcement was followed by the usual moanings and groanings that come from any group of sophomores. I, the casual observer who was innocently reading a book at the far end of the table, did not notice the very perceptible change in the atmosphere of my table. I was too busy destroying my mind with a certain teenage vampire romance; though I would take a death by bad writing a thousand times than suffer through what happened next.
Apparently, my friends had decided to protest this unexpected change in milk brands by building a huge milk carton tower. Somehow, this appealed to their very tiny minds, and so they proceeded to build a Leaning Tower of Milky Doom. Again, I was so absorbed in my very fascinating and altogether well written teenage vampire book that really has no depth whatsoever, that I did not get the chance to warn them of their lunacy. They borrowed a few cartons from surrounding cliques, and walked toward their doom.
Finally, I was so disgusted by the lack of personality in the lead female character that I looked up, and saw what they were engineering. “This is not going to end well.”
My friends had stacked fourteen empty milk cartons on top of each other, and it seemed that the fifteenth was on its way. Already the Most Horrible Idea that Ever Graced the Mind of a Sophomore was oozing chocolate milk out its sides. My eyes opened in horror, and I sat, aghast at this monstrosity they were creating. I ducked behind my book, but peeked just in time to see a rather marvelous thing: sixteen milk cartons. As they reached to place number seventeen on its calcium enriched Throne of Death, I very subtly angled my chair to where I was behind one of my dear friends, another spectator to our downfall. Peering around his shoulder as Eighteen found its way to the top, my eyes closed of their own accord, unable to handle this Apocalyptic horror. The unfortunate person who placed Eighteen at the top had obviously not taken Physics yet, the poor sophomore. As soon as she had removed her hand from the Evil Thing, someone opened the door to the cafeteria. Two rather unfortunate things happened next: as our table was one of the closest tables to the door, a gusty and malignant Breeze of Destruction made its way to our table. This Breeze of Unfortunate Timing and Horrible Accuracy gave just enough push to send The Tower of Hades and all things Chocolate-y to its death. But it didn’t go down without taking as many innocent sophomores with it. Upon impact with the table, milk splattered in a rather fantastic way. It layered everyone at my table with a nice layer of Anti-Osteoporosis Liquid, the horrifying and terrible drink that I used to refer to as milk.
One good thing came of this traumatizing incident: my book, which will remain nameless as I wouldn’t want to offend the many teenage girls who would rather talk to a fictional sparkly vampire than a real person, was also layered with a disgusting film of milk. I wasn’t able to save the book, though it saved my face. Later that day, as I was walking home with my rather unfortunate smelling friends, the sun set in the distance, and I knew that this twilight was a gift: it meant that I was finally free from the trappings of bad sophomore decisions, bad writing, bad smelling friends, and…bad decisions.