It was the dark of night when Skeet slipped into the computer lab. He was on a dangerous mission, one that was likely to throw the entire school into turmoil.
As quietly as he could, the ten-year-old boy turned on all of the computers. He cursed at how they beeped impudently as they turned on. "Can't you be a little quieter?" he hissed at the computer he had chose to sit at. But of course, being an unthinking machine, the computer paid no attention to him.
Skeet quickly logged on to the Internet and went to a web page his class had visited the week before. As he waited for the web page to load, he recalled how his older brother, Sean, had duped him into this whole thing.
It had started last Saturday, when Sean had bet Skeet that his horse, Top, could clear a six-foot stadium jump with ease. Skeet had agreed to the seemingly pointless bet, never dreaming that the little bay Morab colt could perform such a feat. Much to his dismay, he had lost the bet, and his brother had given him a nearly impossible, (but fun sounding), task to do.
Skeet was far from a computer genius, but Sean's instructions had been very specific. "Log on the that page you mentioned yesterday," he had said to his little brother. "Choose 'Trading Card' from the list of places to go on the site. When it loads up, right click on the image and choose the 'Set As Wallpaper' option. Then get out of there and..." from this point, Sean's explaination had become highly technical, describing how exactly to lock the computers up so that the patterns of wallpaper could not be altered in any way.
The page finished loading, and Skeet snapped out of his memory lapse to perform his nearly impossible, (but fun sounding), task. It was remarkable simple. He finished the first computer, then moved on to the next one, then the next one. By the end of a half-hour, all of the computers had their brand new wallpaper.
"Whew! Skeet exclaimed. 'I'm sure glad that's over with!" Then he thought of something else to say. As he pushed back his chair, Skeet announced, "My work here is done!" He had always wanted to say that. Having done so, he turned off the final computer and swaggered out of the computer lab.
Yet the little boy was not out of danger yet. Once he was out of the school itself, he surreptitiously sprinted across the front lawn and squeezed between the bars of the gate in the front of the school.
Quickly and quietly, Skeet crept over to the patch of brush against the wall where he had hidden his bike. He wheeled it out to the street, hoped on, and pedaled as fast as he could to the edge of the town, and from there to his family's farm. He unlocked the barn door with his key and put his bike in the area beside Top's stall, which had been put aside for just that purpose. "I hope you're happy!" Skeet grumbled at the little Morab. "Your talents made me get sent to school real late at night!" The boy did not even stop to think that he could have just not gone if he'd wanted to, and that it really wasn't Top's fault.
Top looked almost apologetically at the little boy. Skeet just scowled and stomped out of the barn. He was very tired, and being tired always put him in a terrible mood. It wasn't until he was back in bed, with his wonderful white dog, Sheba, beside him, that he felt better.
"Everyone's bound to be real surprised when they turn on the computers and they're all covered in Sheldon Oberman wallpaper!" he told Sheba. "Maybe Mr. Oberman himself will get called in to have a look!" Then, his face screwed like a little cork as he realized the terrible truth. "No one's gonna know that I did it!" he wailed.
Sheba was very unsympathetic. She licked her young friend's face happily. "Oh well," Skeet sighed. "It was still a lot of fun, even if no one will know that it was all my doing."
copyright 1997, Jadis Darkmore
