In a Flash by Eric Walters Read Free Book Online Page A

profile. There was a picture of her smirking, with her two cats on her lap. It was a really nice picture, and I couldn’t help but smile to myself as I looked at her.
    I started to scroll down to look for something about...I didn’t have to go far.
    There it was under “Notes.”
    You don’t have to go to some foreign country to find out about dictators. Just visit our school. This man—this principal without principles—is dangerous, mostly because he is a chest-thumping ape too stupid to even realize how stupid he is. I’ve had enough of his tirades, of him playingmacho-man, telling us what to do. It was bad enough when he took away cell phones and iPods and hats, but now he’s taking away our right to free assembly, our dance. You’ve probably all heard that he canceled the school dance. Maybe he did it because he can’t dance or because nobody would dance with him when he was in high school. Who can blame them?
    We don’t have to take it any more. We don’t have to take his evil ways. I’m not going to be told what to do by some mouth-breathing jerk. I’m going to stand up to fight him, and you can too. How?
    Next Friday, the day when the dance is supposed to be held, I’m not going to school. If I can’t go to the school dance, then I’m not going to school! NONE of us should go to school!
    Go to a friend’s house, the mall, play football in the park, play video games, watch TV, sleep in. And you’ll not just be having fun but striking a blow against tyrants. We’ll be teaching this evil man more of a lesson than he’ll ever teach us.
    And don’t worry about getting in trouble. If we all do it—everybody in the whole school— then nobody can get in trouble...well, just one person can...that twerp of a principal. With any luck we can drive him out of the school and back under the rock he climbed out from.
    Tell your friends, tell everybody. Together we can defeat him!
    Oh, this was not good.
    I grabbed the phone and dialed Julia’s number. She picked up on the first ring.
    â€œHey, Ian,” she said, before I could even say hello. I hated Caller ID.
    â€œJulia, are you insane?” I snapped.
    â€œI prefer the term eccentric, but what are you talking about specifically?”
    â€œFacebook. Are you crazy? You can’t write stuff like that about the principal.”
    â€œSure I can. There’s a little thing called freedom of speech. Ever hear of it?” she said sarcastically.
    â€œYeah, I know about freedom of speech. Do you know anything about slander, libel and lawsuits? Have you ever heard of any of those?”
    â€œLawsuits don’t scare me,” she said.
    â€œThey should.”
    â€œDid it scare you when Frankie’s threatened to sue you?”
    â€œOf course it scared me,” I admitted. “And as I recall it scared you too.”
    â€œBut they didn’t actually do it,” she said.
    â€œNo, but that was only because I didn’t write anything that wasn’t true.”
    â€œNeither did
I
,” she said.
    â€œYou called him a stupid mouth-breathing dictator.”
    â€œLike I said, I didn’t write anything that wasn’t true.”
    â€œJulia, you have to take that note off your page. You have to cancel the event or you’ll get in trouble, big trouble.”
    â€œI’m not taking it down. Matter of fact, I’ve sent out invitations to everybody I could think of to join my page. I’ve already added over seventy new friends since I posted it. Soon everybody in the whole school will know about it.”
    â€œGreat, just great. So more and more people will see it.”
    â€œIsn’t that the idea?” she questioned. “The more people who see it, the more people who can get involved. Sort of like those stupid flash mobs of yours, except mine has a purpose.”
    â€œAnd is that purpose to get you