From Fires to Wi-fi Woes: The Stuyvesant Mystery of the Century

Recently, Stuyvesant has had several issues concerning multiple fires, bad Wi-Fi, and worst of all, no AC. The school has given several excuses for these occurrences, including a random air conditioning law and a phone catching on fire, but who would believe those? I mean, how likely would it be that someone actually threw their phone on the floor because of Brawl Stars? I mean, if they had said the incident was because of a Jupiter email reminding someone that they were failing yet another class, sure! Maybe even because a teacher decided to finally grade the assignment that they thought wouldn’t ever be graded. But Brawl Stars? Seriously?

So I decided to investigate. I had absolutely no idea where to start since there were so many possibilities. Could it be Bronx Science students trying to sabotage us? Rats that took over the school? Zombies? Ghosts? Or something else entirely? I chose to start by questioning students to see if anyone had noticed anything strange lately, but it seemed like no one knew anything about what was going on.

I was beginning to lose hope, until I was approached by a junior who asked me if I was the person asking about weird stuff at school. Then, they proceeded to tell me that they had heard strange noises in the vents. “Last Friday I stayed after school to study for my AP because my house is wayyy too chaotic. I decided to study in the ninth floor hallway, and I happened to be sitting by a vent when I heard some weird sounds. At first I thought it was just a random tab on my computer, but then I heard a huge crash in the vent. I got super freaked out and ran away because I thought it was Mr. Moran spying on me. It couldn’t have been him, though, because as I approached the scanners, he appeared out of thin air and took away my airpods. I have to go see Mr. Moran with my parents now to get them back.”

As soon as they left, I ran over to the ninth floor. Weirdly enough, the vent was open. I crawled inside praying this wasn’t a false lead. I army crawled through the vent until I reached a spot where I could look into a small room. I looked through the vent and saw Principal Yu with five green creatures. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but luckily, I can kind of read lips. They either said, “So you agree to keep us a secret for the good of Stuyvesant,” or “Zoo uh great okie bus rats or the food of cry net.” Obviously, the second one seems more realistic. I mean, why would keeping the creatures a secret be good for Stuy?

I managed to find an empty classroom and fell from the vent onto the floor. Luckily I didn’t hit my head because having a concussion and forgetting what I just heard would be just about the worst thing possible. I quickly ran to the room where the green creatures were and managed to catch up to them. I could hear them in the vents and managed to follow them onto the roof. You won’t believe what I saw: it was a HUGE spaceship. I snapped a couple of photos on my phone and went to interrogate Principal Yu. Before I got to his office, I was stopped in my tracks by a freshman with a backpack almost five times the size of their head. 

“I know that you know what I know,” they said, before showing me a photo of me photographing the green creatures in their spaceship. 

Of course, I immediately asked them what they knew. “Those are aliens,” they started. “They arrived the day of the fire on the roof. Remember that day? It was so rainy. I got to skip my test. Anyways, they caused the fire when they landed that day. I was the only one to see them because I was the first one out of the building. After that, I started following them everywhere. It’s not like they’re trying to be discreet. In fact, they are the reason that the Wi-Fi’s down. They snuck into the control room and cut all the wires! And you know how we don’t have any AC? It’s because they’re living in the vents! I’m so mad about that because I almost died from the heat during my math test the other day. And they caused the phone fire when they startled a kid! It happened because they started randomly jumping out of the vents trying to scare people and a kid looked up and threw their phone at it, which caused the phone to explode. The only reason there hasn’t been more incidents is because everyone is always glued to their phones so they don’t even notice when giant green aliens are jumping at them.”

I was in shock. Who would’ve thought of aliens? I thought aliens didn’t exist! That’s why I hadn’t even considered them to be a possibility. “Why is Principal Yu keeping it a secret?” I urgently asked.

“Because they threatened him. If he tells anyone, they’ll burn down the school and conquer the world.”

Together, we decided that we would bring down the aliens. We devised a plan to trap the aliens when they would jump down from the vents. That night, we hid in the locker rooms until the school closed and placed nets under every vent. The next night, we looked around to see if we had caught anyone—and we did. We cut down the net and tied him up like in those really cool James Bond movies. Then we realized that he had fallen asleep, so we had to wake him up. Of course, the first thing we did was take a huge glass of freezing water and dump it on his head. He woke up and immediately, green liquid started running down his face.

Of course, the first thing we assumed was that these aliens were like the Wicked Witch of the West and die when you spray them with water. We ran to get towels and aggressively scrubbed his face to get the water off. “Stop! I’m not an alien! I’m human! Please stop torturing me!”

We stepped back and stared at him, dumbfounded. It was, in fact, not an alien, but a high schooler. We asked him who he was, trying to figure out if he was Jedi-mind tricking us. “I’m just a sophomore from Brooklyn Tech! Some students and I from Brooklyn Tech and Staten Island Tech decided to team up to bring Stuyvesant down! We made you suffer from no AC, bad Wi-Fi, and stole stuff to make our school even better! You must surrender!”

“Um, what’s he talking about?” my partner in crime whispered to me. “I think he’s gone crazy.”

“I can hear you! Stuyvesant will fall, and in its place, Brooklyn Tech will rise!” He shouted, rocking back and forth in his chair.

“Um, okay,” we said, unconvinced. Suddenly, about a dozen aliens dropped down from the ceiling. “What do you mean Brooklyn Tech will rise?” they asked, furious. “We agreed that Staten Island Tech would be the best school!”

We started backing away from the crowd of crazy green high schoolers as even more started appearing, arguing about which school should be the best. They started fighting and screaming that they would win. 

“We need to end this now. School starts in 30 minutes!” I exclaimed, looking frantically around the room for a way to get rid of the “aliens.” 

I suddenly saw the fire extinguisher and had an idea. I grabbed the fire extinguisher and aimed it towards the high schoolers.

“Do you know how that works?” my ally asked, anxiously.

“No idea,” I whispered back before yanking on the chain on the side of the handle and pressing down. Suddenly, a bunch of smoky powder launched towards the other students. They all started screaming as the chemicals went into their eyes. 

“WE’LL GET YOU!” they screamed, running blindly towards us.

“Let’s get out of here!” we shouted, running out of the room and down the hall. 

As we got further away from the smoky room, the others regained their sight and started running after us.

“What do we do now?” I asked, looking around to find a place to hide. We quickly ran down the stairs to the sixth floor.

“Let’s hide in the gym!” they exclaimed as we reached the sixth floor. Together, we rushed into the gym and searched for weapons to defend ourselves. We quickly grabbed soccer balls and started positioning them to kick at the doors, aiming for the students’ faces.

A few moments after we finished, the door creaked open, and we prepared ourselves. We launched the soccer balls, only to hit an AP proctor in the face. 

“We’re so sorry! You see, there were these aliens that turned out to be Brooklyn Tech and Staten Island Tech students who built a spaceship in order to sabotage us!” we frantically explained.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” the teacher exclaimed, before telling us to clean up the mess we made and go to class.

We left the gym as quickly as possible and I looked at my watch. “We have 10 minutes left until school opens.” 

“There they are!” We heard a shout and saw the green students barreling towards us.

We ran as quickly as possible to the first floor in order to alert the security guards. But as soon as we got downstairs, we realized that our plan wouldn’t work! Since we’re not allowed to be here before 7:30 a.m., we’d probably be in bigger trouble!

“Let’s push them into the pool and have someone come find them. That way, we can hide and we won’t be caught!” we quickly agreed before running to the pool.

As soon as we got in, we hid on either side of the doors. Then, as the students came flying in, we got behind them and pushed them all into the water.

As soon as we heard them shrieking in the freezing water, we hid in the locker rooms. 

“Who’s making all of that noise?” we heard a faint voice ask. Peeking through the crack of the door, we saw Principal Yu walk in with three security guards on his tail.

“You guys are in huge trouble,” he said before the security guards took the students and dragged them out of the pool.

“Success!” we exclaimed, jumping in the air and celebrating. “Now let’s get to class before we’re late.” We said, realizing it was 7:59 a.m.

Two weeks later

The students have now been sent back to their respective schools and punished for their actions. They have to attend weekly classes about Alien Appreciation and complete other tasks, such as cleaning the bathroom after school every day. The AC is now working, the Wi-Fi has been fixed, and the spaceship (which was really just a set piece they stole from LaGuardia High School) has been returned.

Hopefully, now that the mystery has been solved, we won’t have any new fires or any other incidents. But still, watch out for those Tech Engineers—who knows what else they have up their sleeves.