It all began with a normal Thursday afternoon when I came back from school and saw mom and dad anxiously watching the news, both of their eyes glued to the screen. It wasn’t very interesting, so I just went up to my room. For some reason, I badly wanted to hear what mom and dad were watching. The living room (where the TV was) was right underneath my room, so I put my right ear on the floor. 

After hours of hearing what the news was saying, I finally heard the craziest thing I had ever heard in my life. School is being shut down because of a pandemic, and we will have school at home!?

That day was just a normal day, March 13, 2020. I had no idea it would be history. By the way, my name is Hunter, Hunter Harper. Right now, I am 12 years old and am in the sixth grade. Many say that I have ears as small as a toddler’s, and eyes that are dark navy blue like the Pacific Ocean. Many also say that I don’t shower (I actually do) because I wear the same clothes everyday: a simple, colorful t-shirt and track pants as black as the sky at night. I have a great family and a mind blowing history. I am going to tell you just that. The history of me. I was in the fourth grade when online school started, and I thought it would be the best. I mean, come on, you can’t pass up school at home. Somehow, it was not the best. At least fourth grade online was fine, there weren’t to many Moozes (an app where you have meetings), I could survive that. However, the fifth grade was a whole different ballgame.

The reason I would definitely prefer regular school over online school is because in online school, it feels like you have double homework. Instead of doing schoolwork at school with the teachers managing it for you, you have to do schoolwork you would do at school and homework you would do at home with only you managing it for yourself. Now you know how happy I would’ve been when it was finally summer break. Sadly though, summer break was over and fifth grade started, with like 10 Moozes a day and endless homework. I was anxiously waiting for Covid to end and summer break to start.
It never happened.

Time passed, and I somehow survived almost all of the fifth grade. Everyday, I would do a Face2Face call with William, my best friend. I would always start with, “Hi man, it always feels good calling you, what’s up?”.
He would reply, “Are you surviving school, I feel like giving up,”. 

“I guess we are on the same boat. I can’t wait for summer, Covid could be gone, and it will be endless fun,”.

I know. We just have to wait. Only one week left,”. ...

The next morning, the teachers would usually talk with their normal hypnotized-like voices like, “Hello kids. It Is lovely to see you. You will sadly have very less homework today. Just 500 pages of writing, 1000 pages of math, and 100,000 pages of reading,”.

Today was different though. The teachers could not hold their smile at all, it was literally splitting their faces in half!

“Kids! We have an announcement to make! Due to Covid-19, we are having school this whole summer!!! Lets have a party!!!” I almost fainted, my jaw dropped to the floor, and I could not hold the tears in my eyes that were pouring down like a  waterfall. That was the saddest day of my life. I froze for so long. When I could move again, I unmuted myself and asked with plead, “Why? Why? Why is there school in summer. It’s not-

“Quiet Hunter! If you say anything about this next time, I will call your parents!” the teacher interrupted and muted me, her big, bold black eyes right on my face.

After school, I immediately called William. We had such a long talk that it was instantly nighttime. I realized that I skipped lunch and dinner. My parents didn’t look suspicious though. I was also not sleepy at all. My mom came in my room and asked, “Aren’t you hungry  sweetie? And what are you doing?”.

“Nothing. Just having a nice talk with William. I am not hungry, but not sleepy either,” I replied.

“Well, you’re gonna have to sleep. Just take your time,”.

She turned off the lights and left the room.

Hours passed by and still no sign of tired eyes. I checked the clock and it said that ‘twas almost midnight. I tried to sleep but I just couldn’t. All I could think about was the talk I had with William:

“Did you hear the news? We are having school in summer!!” I told William while weeping.

“I know, why is this happening? It’s like the teachers are trying to torture us!” William replied, his freckles redder than usual.

I don’t know what to do. We are hopeless!”. ...

We just spent the whole day coming up with ideas to stop us from having school in summer.

All of that thinking soon made me doze off to sleep.

Few hours later, I woke up and rubbed my eyes. I noticed that I wasn’t at home. I quickly ran down the stairs and saw my parents.

My mom told me, “Come on, let’s go for a bike ride. I’ll race you on,”.

“Sure mom, but heads up, I’m gonna go as fast as lightning!” I replied.

Then I come in this dark room and can see nothing. I was scared, but I tried to calm down

myself. I was in that room for a long time. Then suddenly, it came up to me. It was a sign, the bikes. I’m good at bike racing, so why not make a race to see who gets what they want, I thought.

I woke up and jumped out of my bed. All of the dark room and bike stuff was a dream. I had came up with greatest idea in history to solve this problem.
A bike race.

After school, I quickly got out a pencil and a paper and started writing. My idea was to persuade the school principal to make a bike race by writing an essay. Usually, I am not a fan of writing, but while writing this essay, I kept writing because I knew it would be worth it.It took me almost 6 hours to finish it, but I did it. Now I had to mail it to the school. The tricky part was to get it past my parents.

 I asked my dad, “Can you help me mail this to the school?” I had it inside an envelope. I maybe also showed a bit of a sad puppy face expression.

“What is it that you want to mail?” my dad replied.

“It’s just some homework that I have to send to the teacher. She said specifically to mail it.”

“Okay. I will do it after dinner.”

That went perfect. All I had to do was wait

The next morning, I surprisingly joined my school Mooz early because I was eagerly waiting for the race to be announced.

The teacher said (with her normal voice), “Good morning children, we have an announcement to make. The principal said that there will be a bike relay race between the students and teachers. It will take place at the school campus on the last day of school.

Wear your masks and be there at 10:00 A.M. sharp,”.

My smile instantly split my face in half. I was so happy that I almost cried! It was the best day ever! I wanted to unmute myself and celebrate, but I knew that wouldn’t be very smart.

Before school was about to end, I unmuted myself and told the kids to join another Mooz, a private one.

One by one, everyone was coming to the private Mooz. Once it looked like everybody had joined, I exclaimed, “Nice, everyone is here. Now we can talk about our plan!”

One kid asked me, “Hunter, why is there a race to see if we have school in summer? I mean, I would always be down to stop that plan, but a bike race seems just weird in this case,”.

I replied back to him, “Well, I came up with that idea. Don’t worry. It will work out. The first step is to have our  bikes ready. It’s a relay race, so everyone needs it.”

William asked, “Do we just use the bike we would ride on everyday, or do we make one?”.

I replied, “Good question. Hmmm... just use a bike you already ride on. If you can, try and modify it a bit to make it go faster,”.

A girl asked me, “Do we have a plan?”.

I said, “You know what, we only have 2 days, but just focus on modifying your bike today. We will do everything else tomorrow,”.

I started working on my bike that afternoon. While working, my dad came up to me and said, “Ummm, this seems pretty weird, but there is an announcement from your school that there is going to be a bike race the day after tomorrow,”.

I said, “I know, our teacher told us. Can you drop me off at the race?”.

“That doesn’t seem like a problem. It’s at 10:00 A.M., right? We will drop you,”.

“Thanks,”.

I had been working on my bike for really long and had gotten nowhere. At some point, I tried watching videos of bike races to see how they go so fast. I kept focusing on the video, but still didn’t get an idea.