When they were all settled in the classroom again, Mrs. Stogbuchner said, "Thank you Baartock, for showing us another kind of fire drill. Now, does anyone else have anything for show-and-tell?"
Chapter 14
It was raining harder than ever when they went to lunch. Looking out the classroom windows, Baartock couldn't see the trees or the houses across the wide grass strip next to the school. He couldn't see the street. He could just barely see the grass outside the window. It was a blowing, dark gray rainstorm. At times, the wind would blow the raindrops right at the windows. Just a little while later, the rain was pouring straight down. Everybody seemed to be thinking of other things. Even Mrs. Stogbuchner kept losing her place in the story she was reading, whenever the rain would come crashing against the windows. Finally it was lunchtime.
Baartock bought milk in the lunch line, but the fruit they had were some long yellow things that he hadn't seen before, so he didn't get any. When he sat at the table across from Jason, the red-haired boy asked, "Why do you call that a fire drill?" "Drill. Make holes same way," Baartock answered, and made a
back and forth motion with his hand.
"I guess you could get through wood. But it must take a long time."
"Wood. Stone too," replied Baartock.
"You can drill through stone like that?"
"Use many shafts," said Baartock, making an up and down motion, meaning the straight stick he had used. "Make hole."
Jason was about to say something when there was a sudden flash of light and a tremendous thunderblast right outside the cafeteria. The people sitting by the windows jumped up, and someone knocked a lunch tray onto the floor. One of the women who worked in the cafeteria brought over a mop to clean up the spilled food, and everybody who had been sitting next to the windows moved to different seats. The rain was now squirting against the windows, and some water was coming in under the door to the playground. The woman with the mop went over to clean that up too.