LYTTON - A west central Iowa teacher's quick thinking probably saved a 12-year-old girl's life. Mackenzie Twyman and a friend were skipping through the hall when Mackenzie fell. As the Rockwell City girl brought her arm up to break her fall, the pencil she was carrying went right through her chest and pierced an artery.

"When I fell over, some of my friends were laughing because I was wearing a skirt and you could see my underwear," said Mackenzie Twyman. When that laughter suddenly changed to cries for help, Twyman knew something was wrong...she just didn't know what.

"It just felt like I had tripped and fell and I didn't realize it until I turned around and everyone started screaming," said Mackenzie Twyman. They were screaming because a number two pencil not only punctured her skin -- it was sticking out of her chest.

"The older people that saw the old 'cowboy and Indian movies' to where someone got shot with an arrow and it just stuck out. That's exactly what it looked like," said Teacher Dave Birks. Birks heard the commotion, but was a bit skeptical when a student told him Mackenzie had been stabbed with a pencil.

Even Mackenzie's mother didn't get too worried when she got a call from the school. "At first I was kind of thinking we're a little accident prone and I wasn't worried, but then when they said, 'Don't worry she's talking.' I thought, 'Why do they have the need to say that?'" said Carole Twyman.

In all the commotion that surrounded Mackenzie, someone suggested trying to pull the pencil from her chest. But Dave Birks' gut told him that was not the thing to do. Birks said, "Whether it be something I read at some point or somebody told me that, but I knew that we didn't want it out."

"If the pencil would of been pulled out, I would of bled to death," said Mackenzie Twyman. And that's something Mackenzie's mother tries not to think about. "I try not to think about that. I'm just glad that everything happened like it should happen and I can't think of what would have happened if someone pulled it out," said Carole Twyman.

A doctor with Iowa Health Physicians and Clinics says if you're impaled with an object, do not remove it. You're supposed to wrap any sort of gauze or blankets around the object so it doesn't move and cause anymore internal injury. And get to a hospital immediately so a doctor can remove it.