After Alex left, I had to find a way to get the tablet back. While my parents were busy talking to one another in the kitchen I sneaked into their bedroom. I looked through all the nooks and crannies. My parents had hidden it in one of the drawers, which was good to know. I left it there for now because they would surely know if I had taken it. I silently sneaked back out of the room, hoping they wouldn't see me, which they didn't.
The next few days of school were uneventful. Mrs. Sastro was as jolly and nice as ever. She even was kind enough to let me know by treating me especially lovely. If ya can't tell, I'm being sarcastic. She still hated my guts. I knew I was getting under her skin because there was simply no way she could pick on me since I was way better than all the other children in the class. Instead, she vented all her frustration on the other kids, especially Alex.
"Are you going to complete your work in this life or the next? You're already behind the rest. Perhaps a different class for the slow is more suited to you. If so, I may have to speak to your parents about that," Sastro said as she chided Alex.
The kid squirmed as everyone stared at him. He quickly picked up the pace, "No I'm almost done Mrs. Sastro."
At recess, Alex and a few of his friends wanted to hang out with me. I was originally intending to go to the computer lab to browse for more information. But I thought I could help the kids out a little bit and be nice to them. When we walked into the school's backyard, we were ambushed by a few children throwing chestnuts at us. They hid themselves behind trees and bushes, being careful not to reveal their identities. I was originally planning to hunt them down to punish them a little but I noticed some of the kids that were with me started to cry, so I stayed back to console them.
After that incident, I tried to figure out who was responsible. In the day that followed a group of children would again attempt an ambush. That day I had gotten thicker clothes underneath my uniform to protect myself from the chestnuts and I had hidden underneath my clothes a modified frisbee with a stick in the middle that I had fastened to it using two screws. I borrowed the screw and drill from my parents of course. The clothes were a little too hot for Fall conditions, but they offered decent protection. I took out the frisbee shield as soon as the attackers came and covered my face and part of my body by fully extending my arm outward. As soon as the attackers threw the chestnuts, I picked some of the thrown chestnuts up and threw them back. Then I started to chase the attackers. None of the kids were as fast as I was and I quickly caught one of them. A skinny kid with blonde and blue eyes looked up terrified at me.
I asked, "Why are you guys attacking us?"
"Clara told us to," the kid responded nervously.
"Why?"
"Um, 'cause she doesn't like you."
"Yeah, why though?"
"I dunno."
"Fair enough."
I let the kid go and tried to think about what to do about Clara. I was kind of confused. I had no idea what I had even done against her until I remembered the entrance ceremony. Then I figured she must be jealous. In either case, over the next few days, these ambushes became more and more frequent. In response to the provocation, I ended up stooping down to their level. I created a team of first-graders who became sort of my bodyguards. Every day I would try to bring useful tools from my house to school, sneaking them by my parents either through my clothes or schoolbag. As soon as recess started we would run outside and quickly gather as many chestnuts as we could find and bring them to a couple of hoarding places.
We divided into three different squads. One squad was responsible for attacking and drawing in the enemies. Our fastest runners would end up in that squad. A second squad would be responsible for waiting somewhere concealed and ambushing the enemies once the first squad had drawn them in. A third squad would be responsible for keeping a lookout, especially for teachers. I didn't want to get in trouble, which is also part of the reason I stayed away from any fighting. I already had two strikes and if I got a third I would be expelled, which I really didn't want. Also, I didn't feel like beating up first-graders, I simply wanted them to stop attacking me because getting hit by chestnuts all the time is unpleasant, to say the least.
This fighting continued for several weeks. Many of the children started to fondly call it the 'Great Chestnut War'. The 'Great Chestnut War' continued into the classroom, but instead of involving the use of Chestnuts, the kids used spitballs which they blew through rolled-up paper and rubber bands. The biggest issue was making sure that the teacher didn't catch you, which happened once or twice to some more unfortunate children.
One day as we went outside to gather our hoarded chestnuts, we found out that all of our hoarded stuff was gone. In our moment of weakness, we were attacked by the enemy who bombarded us with an endless stream of chestnuts. They didn't let up even a little bit, pelting us relentlessly. We tried to return fire, but most of my team was already on the ground crying.
It was the most humiliating defeat possible. Clara had secretly bribed a couple of children on my team using candy. I was somehow outwitted by a six-year-old. I don't think I am ever going to recover from that. After that incident, a large part of my team started to defect to Clara's team. Recess became a living nightmare. Clara was not merciful and I desperately needed a countermeasure against her. I had started amassing all the candy from home that I could, I tried to find spare change everywhere and stole some from my parents so I could buy as much candy from the convenience store as possible. I even tried to ask my parents for a bit of cash in return for doing most of the chores around the house. To which they agreed. With my large stash of candy, I bribed some of my classmates back to my side, but I knew that it wasn't enough. The damage had already been done and Clara was just way richer than me and had far more candy.
I needed a different approach. First of all, I had to take her supply of candy away and secondly, I needed to thoroughly humiliate her in front of the class. The problem was that she would not easily part with her bag of candies. She took it with her wherever she went and had one of her loyal classmates guard it when she couldn't take it with her. I could always just attack her and steal it, but then I would probably be simply found out by a teacher and expelled. I needed to get her to drop her guard and make the candy bag vanish without leaving a trace.
The only time at which her candy bag was left unsupervised, was gym class. All children had to participate so none of the children could guard the bag of candy. All I had to do was make sure I knew where she would leave the bag and get it. Luckily I had managed to get a double agent on my side by the name of Andrea Meinhold. She was a little girl with wavy brown hair who had gotten a childhood crush on me. Andrea knew where the bag was, so I created a decoy bag to exchange the bag. I used discarded candy wrappers from my own candy stash and from discarded remains that I fished out of various garbage bags to create fake candy by wrapping them around paper balls, rocks and anything round. I handed over the decoy bag to Andrea, who during gym class switched out the bag and got me the bag full of candy.
With this, my side finally had the upper hand. It ended up taking Clara a whole period to realize her bag had been switched at which point she threw a temper tantrum about her candy having been stolen. She of course accused me of being the culprit at which point half the class went on to accuse me of stealing it. The other half of the class was on my side and a shouting match ensued.
Mrs. Sastro interrupted the shouting by bellowing, "Alright enough, Sam give Clara her bag of candy back."
"But I didn't take it Mrs. Sastro," I said as innocently as possible.
"You obviously took it so now give it back or I'll call the Principal."
"How do you know that I took it? You are just accusing me without proof. I think your bias is affecting your judgement here."
"I will count to three and if you do not return the bag, I'll call the principal. One... Two... Two and a half... Alright, you asked for it."
The Principal ended up being called in. He made us sit in the classroom until one of us fessed up to stealing it, though none of us did. In the end, the Principal could get no solid proof of who had taken the bag so he decided to let us go.
The 'Great Chestnut War', ended up taking till the end of Fall to conclude. Clara's parents were immensely wealthy so they just ended up buying her a new bag of candy, which she used to continue to bribe her classmates. Meanwhile, I ended up using my stolen goods and the candy I got from the allowance my parent gave me for doing chores to bribe the children a relatively equal amount. I used sabotage and infiltration to get an upper hand and since I was only fighting first graders I had little issue winning most fights. For example, I set up a booby trap with shaving cream I stole from my dad at a location where I leaked to the opposing side that I hid my candy. By the end of Fall, everyone had enough of the war since getting hit by chestnuts all the time hurt way too much.