Graduation Day Nightmares

A/N: I was sorely disappointed by the absence of some great characters like Miranda and Larry, from the Lizzie McGuire movie. So here is my version of what happened on the field trip to Rome which Miranda and Larry were a part of as well. This will follow the same plot outline as the movie with the addition of these characters making it that much more fun.

Disclaimer: Disney owns the Lizzie McGuire show, The Lizzie McGuire movie, the characters, the plot and some of the dialogue. If I had owned any of it, I wouldn't be writing this; I would have made it into a movie.

Anyone wandering into the auditorium of Hillridge Junior High on that particular morning could be forgiven for thinking that they had walked into room which had seen a particularly violent explosion of blue. But there was a perfectly simple explanation for this, viz. that it was graduation day and all the students of the graduating class were dressed in their blue robes, wearing their blue caps with blue tassels. It was an almost festive atmosphere, with parents milling about, giving their children advice (advice that was forgotten the very next moment) and teachers rushing around trying to get their students to follow some discipline on this, their last day at junior high.

And presently, another member of the graduating class entered, accompanied by her parents and her younger brother. Her name was Elizabeth Brooke McGuire, or "Lizzie" as everyone called her. Lizzie was a pretty, brown-eyed blonde, and at that moment those eyes were clouded over, as she desperately tried to detach herself from her parents so that she could avoid any possible embarrassment that they might bring upon her. But like most parents, they too were hanging on to her in a manner more characterized by limpets on rocks. What was bothering her mother, Jo McGuire, wasn't so much the fact that her baby was now grown up and was heading off to high school. No, what worried her was that her baby was now grown up and was heading off to Rome on a two-week class trip without her. And Jo was putting this thought into words.

"Honey, just yesterday you were in diapers-now you've graduated junior high, and you're growing up, going to Rome for two weeks all by yourself," said Jo, "Without me. Without me there. Without me with you. You there. Without me."

"Mom," interrupted Lizzie, determined to nip this in the bud. She knew that her mother could go on for hours when she began to babble like this, "That's just about all the combinations of those words you can make."

"This is a big day for you, sweetheart," said her dad, Sam McGuire. Lizzie knew what that meant.

Uh-oh, Dad's gonna quote some dead guy, she thought.

"As William Shakespeare once said," Mr. McGuire continued, "Be not afraid of greatness; some people are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them."

"Thanks, dad, but I'm just trying to survive graduation. Greatness can wait till this nightmare is over," replied Lizzie, looking winded by this flood of philosophy.

Her brother, Matt McGuire, had no such words of wisdom for her. He was too occupied with his video camera, which he intended to use to record any possible catastrophic moments that might occur during the graduation ceremony. His silence suited Lizzie just fine; she had, after all, spent her whole life trying to pretend that she wasn't related to Matt.

Just then she heard her name called, and looking around she saw Miranda Sanchez heading her way, after having successfully shaken off her parents. Miranda, an attractive brunette of Filipino descent and with a penchant for trying out strange colours in her hair, had been Lizzie's best friend and fashion confidante for a long, long time. Lizzie quickly guided her own parents to some empty seats and then walked over to meet Miranda.

"Hey Miranda, you look great." Lizzie told her best friend.

"You look fabulous too, Lizzie," replied Miranda sincerely.

To a casual observer, this exchange would have been somewhat perplexing, since both Lizzie and Miranda were wearing robes of the exact same colour and hue; after all, it was graduation day. And one person who was about to be very perplexed was their other best friend, David "Gordo" Gordon, whom they had just spotted in the mass of students.

Lizzie had known Gordo since they had been a day old, and they had been inseparable since then. The best way to describe him would be to mention his moniker 'Gor-dork', and there you have it, a perfect word picture of the boy. Gordo was as smart as they came, and this was complemented by a healthy dose of common sense; which, incidentally, was the only thing that set him apart from his closest rival for geekiness, Larry Tudgeman. Gordo had curly hair that was longer than necessary, possibly to make up for his lack of inches lengthwise. Though Lizzie wouldn't admit it, she valued his opinion highly (even if she didn't agree with him on occasion) and this led her to ask him about her appearance.

"Hey Gordo!" Lizzie called out, walking up behind him, and then, gesturing to Miranda and herself, she asked, "So, do we look okay?"

To his credit, Gordo took a good, hard look. Though, it is possible that he was looking to see if she was joking. He had not failed to notice that Lizzie and Miranda and indeed every other student in the hall, including himself, were wearing robes of the same colour. Finally he settled for discretion being the better part of valour.

"Lizzie, I'm your guy best friend, why don't you just talk to Miranda about it?" he said.

"I did, but we wanna know what you think," Lizzie replied.

Gordo sighed. "Yes, your blue robes look way cooler than all the other girls'," he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

Unfortunately (or, perhaps fortunately for Gordo), the two girls took no notice of his sarcasm as they beamed at him. "Thanks, Gordo," they said in unison. Gordo shook his head, wondering if, even after all these years of having two best friends who were girls, he'd ever really understand women. He was saved from making another sarcastic comment, by the appearance of someone who could do it for him, Kate Sanders.

Kate Sanders had once been Lizzie's best friend, but all that had changed when Kate had become one of the most sought after girls in the school, and that had been when the boys at Hillridge had woken up to the fact that she was hot. Naive and with an ego larger than a hot-air balloon, Kate was now a member of the cheerleading squad (something which annoyed Lizzie no end), and she usually had all the boys swooning over her (also something that annoyed Lizzie no end). Since then, Kate had treated Lizzie like dirt (for want of a 'cleaner' expression). And now she came up to Lizzie, her trademark sneer plastered all over her face.

"Only you would think that you could hide that powder blue, puffy sleeved, it's kind of a peasant dress, but it's really a questionable disaster of fiber content that you wore to the spring dance," she said, and then she unzipped the front of Lizzie's robes, revealing the outfit in question. Triumphantly, Kate declared, "Lizzie McGuire, you are an outfit repeater!", and with another annoying smile, she walked away.

If Lizzie had been worried that her parents might have embarrassed her, she needn't have worried any longer; because Kate had embarrassed her much more than her parents could possibly have done, even in a hundred lifetimes. The whole auditorium fell silent and everyone turned to look at Lizzie with a great deal of interest.

I may be an outfit repeater, but Kate is an outfit rememberer; and that's just as pathetic, Lizzie thought, furiously zipping up the front of her robes.

Lizzie, however, didn't say this out loud, and neither did she contemplate revenge. There is the small problem in being a spineless jellyfish, or a pacifist as Lizzie preferred to call herself, in that it makes you incapable of responding to events such as these, other than with the usual sheepish grin and a fervent wish for the earth to swallow you whole.

"Does she not have anything better to do than make my life miserable?" she asked Miranda and Gordo. Thankfully, not for nothing did she have two best friends who had stayed with her through thick and thin.

Miranda placed a soothing arm around Lizzie's shoulders. "Don't worry about Kate, Lizzie. She's got her nose so far up in the air, that she'll probably need an oxygen tank soon," she said, grinning widely.

Lizzie smiled too, though it was a watery effort. "I just cannot believe that we used to be best friends," she complained to the world in general.

"Ah, but you're forgetting. That was before she became popular," said Gordo sagely.

They would have continued ripping apart Kate's many faults, something that had become a sort of pastime for them, if they hadn't been interrupted by the clarion call of Mr. Escobar shouting "MCGUIRE".

Wondering what Mr. Escobar could possibly want, Lizzie walked up to him. "Hi, Mr. Escobar," said Lizzie, brightly, and then she crinkled her nose at the strange smell that assailed her. "Nice aftershave," she managed to gasp.

"Oh thank you," simpered Mr. Escobar, "Anyway, Margaret Chan seems to have a very bad cold, so… you're up."

Lizzie had a feeling a great foreboding. "Up where?" she asked carefully.

"At the podium. You're going to deliver the class president's speech," explained Mr. Escobar.

Lizzie's resemblance to a goldfish was particularly striking at that moment. Her mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. Her mind was taken up with envisioning the horror of having to make a speech in front of the throng of students, parents and teachers that surrounded her. Wildly she looked around for an escape route, preferably one that would take her to China. Unfortunately, all exits had been sealed off and she was trapped. With a great effort, she ditched the goldfish imitation and managed to find her voice.

"What about the vice-president?" she asked, her voice rising a couple of octaves higher than usual.

"He's not graduating till next year," said Mr. Escobar, "The secretary-treasurer is next in line."

"All I did was handle petty cash," said Lizzie, desperately trying to find a way out of this predicament.

"Well, I'm sorry but you're not buying your way out of this," said Mr. Escobar, laughing at his own razor-sharp wit, and then he continued, "Now I want you to deliver your speech with as much pride, and commitment as Margaret Chan would. Even though, you're no Margaret Chan." And with these words of cheer, he flounced away.

I'm no Margaret Chan; I'm no Margaret Chan. Gulp…RUN, were the jumbled thoughts that were whizzing around inside Lizzie's brain.

It's a strange thing about time. Up until that moment, Lizzie had been wishing that the whole graduation ceremony would rush by without incident, but time had been crawling along unbearably slowly. Now, when she wanted time to slow down, so that she could think of something to say, it felt as if the clock had been put on fast forward. In almost no time, the ceremony had begun, and soon she was being called on to speak. The fact that the MC referred to her as "Loozy McGuire" caused Lizzie's already low self-confidence to plummet a few notches lower.

Lizzie walked over to the podium, her feet feeling as if the bones in them had been replaced by lead. It seemed to take an inordinately long time for her to reach the podium, and when she got there, the feeling of wanting to be elsewhere had never been stronger. And it didn't help that at that moment, the spotlight swiveled around to settle squarely on her, blinding her momentarily and giving her that strange feeling of being all alone in an unforgiving world. Lizzie gulped a couple of times more and then, as if from a great distance, a voice began to speak. It took her a few moments to realize that it was her own.

The reactions of the rest of the McGuire household to this turn of events were as interesting as they were diverse. Mrs. McGuire gave a convulsive leap when Lizzie's name was announced, and then she grabbed her husband's hand, somehow hoping that this gesture would inspire Lizzie to hitherto unknown heights of eloquence. Mr. McGuire, for his part, writhed like a tortured snake and said "Ouch", when his wife's fingers closed around his hand in a vice-like grip. In all their years of marriage he had never suspected that Jo McGuire had a grip like the bite of a crocodile. Feebly, he attempted to loosen her fingers from his hand, speaking softly to her all the while and advising her to stay calm. All that achieved was to cause Jo to hang on even tighter, and so Sam gave up, praying that she would let go before gangrene set in and they had to amputate his fingers. Matt, on the other hand, looked as if Christmas had come early. He knew only too well of his sister's inability to face large crowds, and he confidently expected that when she did end up making a fool of herself, he'd be ready to capture the moment for posterity.

"Um… Margaret Chan couldn't make it tonight, so I'm going… I'm going to be filling in for her," Lizzie began, and then she lost her way. She took a look at the large picture of Margaret Chan, hanging next to the podium, willing it to speak instead of her.

"Not that anyone can really do that," Lizzie continued when Margaret Chan's picture gave her no sudden burst of inspiration, "but…um, anyway…I think that we can all agree that junior high is filled with embarrassing and awkward, and sometimes some downright humiliating moments. Right?"

A deafening silence filled the room, and her parents smiled weakly at her. Lizzie felt as if the temperature of the auditorium must fast be approaching the level more common to a hot day in the Sahara.

"Uh… oh, me neither," said Lizzie quickly, a feeling of being unable to breathe settling over her. It didn't help that Kate and Claire Miller were giggling wickedly and making some very unflattering remarks behind Lizzie's back. Desperately, she looked around at Gordo and Miranda for help, but for once her best friends were at a loss and couldn't bail her out. Miranda threw her hands out in defeat, while Gordo, though not much better, gestured that Lizzie get a drink of water to calm down. Feeling that this was better than nothing, Lizzie mumbled something unintelligible about how Margaret Chan would have wanted her to have some water, and she made a break for the jug placed some distance behind her.

"Klutzy McGuire" was a term that had been much in use when Lizzie had been in fourth grade. And though with the passing years, she had learnt to handle herself with poise and grace, there were some moments when her inherent klutziness shone through, such as when she was under tremendous stress. And if you, the reader, don't think she was under great stress at that moment, then I, as the narrator, have failed spectacularly. The short trip from the podium to the jug of water was a simple matter of ten steps at the most, yet on the fourth step Lizzie managed to get her feet mixed up, tripped, and she sprawled to the floor with all the grace of a rhinoceros. If it were only her on the ground, it may not have been too bad. But on her downward descent to meet the unrelenting floor of the auditorium, she flailed around for something to hold on to, as the world disintegrated around her (or so it seemed to her). What was worse was that she did find something to hold on to, the edge of the curtain which served as a backdrop for the stage; and she took it down with her. With a sort of domino effect, the rest of the curtain collapsed right on top of the graduating class, who suddenly found themselves ensconced in a cocoon of canvas.

Mr. Escobar felt as if he had stepped into a teacher's twilight zone, and admitted himself at a loss. There are things that a teacher wishes he will never have to experience in his professional life, and this was one of those things. So he did the only thing he could think of; he ran up to the conductor of the band and instructed him to play anything that came to mind, even if it was "Mary had a little lamb" (though "Rockabye baby" might have been more appropriate).

Lizzie watched, her face a mask of horror, as the students who had eluded the attack of the backdrop, aided the others in escaping its clutches. There was no doubt in her mind; she didn't need the earth to swallow her up at that moment, it would take the whole galaxy to do that. Deciding to get a head start on it, Lizzie went to ground, covering herself with the canvas.

The auditorium was in an uproar, students screaming, parents yelling and chaos reigned supreme. In the midst of this cacophony of noise one person stood completely unconcerned, and perhaps even, deliriously happy. Matt McGuire had recorded the whole incident. And he had plans for that tape… big plans.