All Rascals Aren’t Rascals If They Are Sacred Hearts Rascals by Calera C.

This is the first chapter in the series, “Adventures of Leonora Bumatai, the Sacred Hearts Avenger”. Leonora is a 3rd grader just turned eight years old attending Sacred Hearts Academy. Her father is Swiss-Filipino and is the senior accountant for Bank of Hawaii. Her mother is Hawaiian-Japanese-Irish, a local girl from Nanakuli, and a singer performing for Germaine’s Luau at Ihilani. Leonora has a younger brother, Filbert, who is in the 1st grade at St. Patricks. Everyone loves him and thinks he is an angel always brings home perfect report cards. Leonora’s best friends or partners in crime in the 3rd grade are Barbara and Fumie. They call themselves the “Rascal Ladies”. Barbara, a haole from New York, has just transferred to Sacred Hearts from the elementary school of the famous Julliard Academy of Arts. Fumie is a third generation Japanese-American from Aiea. Fumie, Barbara and Leonora referred to as the terrors of the 3rd grade. They are famous for their pranks such as, if the teachers ever take their shoes off, they put shaving cream in their shoes. They put white mice in people’s lockers and Jackson chameleons in people’s lunch boxes. Through friends of theirs at Iolani, they hear about a plot by a gang of boys at Punahou known as the Punahou Pirates, who are spoiled-rotton, wealthy sophomores and juniors. The Pirates decide that on Halloween night, they will sneak over to Sacred Hearts and tag (which means using spray paint) the walls of the newly built Pac Building with graffiti such as “Punahou Rules”, “Sacred Hearts Girls are Ugly”, “Sacred Hearts Sucks”, and “Only Losers Go To Sacred Hearts”. The Rascal Ladies plot to foil the Pirates scheme and teach them a lesson they will never forget.

At dusk on October 31, 2011, twelve of the Pirates head out in their parents’ Mercedes, Land Rovers, and BMWs with about 100 cans of spray paint to tag the walls of the Pac Building. Butch, the leader, says, “we’re going to teach these nerdy girls which school rules”. They park their cars on 6th Avenue and jump over the parking gate next to the Pac Building.
Leonora, Barbara and Fumie plan to meet at Longs Waialae at 5 p.m. They have one problem. That day, they put crazy glue under their teacher’s desk. Ms. Johnson was wearing her brand new, beautiful blue Cole Haan shoes. Needless to say, the Rascal Ladies were summoned to Ms. Vega’s office who then made phone calls to each of their parents. “Your daughters have refused to follow the rules constantly and there is no place in the modern world for people who act in this fashion. They will never do anything useful in their lives and they will never amount to a hill of beans. I doubt seriously if they will ever be of any value to Sacred Hearts at all”. When they got home, they were summarily grounded and confined to quarters in their rooms. They text each other to confirm their meet location (makeup aisle, Longs Drugs). They sneak out of their houses and ride their bicycles to Longs. Leonora has her backpack full of paint guns and paint gun balls which she took from her Uncle Shimo who used to be in the Army and participates in paintball games on weekends. Barbara has her backpack filled with nails and thumb tacks. Fumie’s backpack has several paint cans full of molasses.
The girls go through the drop off driveway at Sacred Hearts to get to the Pac Building. The girls start pouring the molasses on the steps of the Pac Building and then follow with nails and thumb tacks. They then take their positions. Leonora hides in the bushes closest to the waterfall. Barbara hides in the bushes underneath the Pac Building. Fumie climbs the middle tree next to the Pac Building. They are all armed with the paint guns and a supply of paintballs in their backpacks. As the Pirates jump the gate and sneak forward starting up the steps, Butch in the lead starts screaming after a thumb tack goes through his slippers. The others run to him to help. They all get their rubber slippers stuck in the molasses. They take off their slippers and start running, except now they are all stepping on nails and thumb tacks. That’s the moment when the Rascal Ladies open fire on the Pirates. The Pirates, surprised and thinking they are outnumbered, head back to the cars. As these sorry looking Pirates limp back to their cars as fast as they can, they find that the girls have, in fact, spray painted their cars with “Sacred Hearts Rules”, “Punahou Pirates are Winnies”, “Punahou Boys Slobber and Drool”, and “Don’t Mess with Sacred Hearts”. As the Pirates are driving away in their graffiti cluttered cars, you could hear them on Waialae Avenue moaning, “my parents are going to kill me for messing up the family car”. Roger, the captain of the football team and future pre-med student, says to Butch, “I’m never going to mess with the girls at Sacred Hearts again”, to which Butch replies, “don’t be such a weenie, these girls haven’t seen the last of me”.
The satire in this story is arrogance never wins; because your parents are rich doesn’t make you better; and as far as the counselor’s theories go, she probably would have felt dropouts like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs would have never amounted to a hill of beans either.
Oh yes, the most important lesson in this story is, 3rd grade girls at Sacred Hearts trump high school boys at Punahou any day!