The soft rustling of the leaves calmed my nerves. I sat quietly perched on a branch of an old oak tree in a park. It was late, and the brilliant pink sun was beginning to set. I jumped when my phone began to buzz. Brendon was calling; he normally tried to call around this time.

I had been sitting up in that tree for three days straight. My world had been twisted and rung out to bleed nothing but sorrow, but I was slowly building the confidence to fight back. I needed to find something before I went back, I just didn’t know what yet.

“Hey kid…” the static on the 99₵ cell phone was ridiculous. “…how are you holding up? Dr. Bomb is still looking for you, and Sam kinda seems like a lost puppy without his sidekick. Ready to come back yet?” Brendon had tracked me down after my break out, and made me at least take a cell phone so he could make sure I was well and safe.

“I’m fine Brendon, as usual. Dr. Bomb can go suck it, and Sam brought this on himself. As for you, I don’t want you to get fired because of me. Stop calling so often and they won’t guess who you’re calling. You’re going to have to be more careful, Brendon.”

“You know I just worry about you, 35874. And Sam has been whipped every day since you left because he has no one to try to kill, hint hint.” I involuntarily flinched at the sound of Sam getting beaten for me. Why didn’t he just break out like I did?! Oh right, his girlfriend. It was weird, I had never felt jealousy before, or even knew I could. I had always been told I could only feel anger and fear. But now, it seemed like I had developed the ability to feel jealousy, but of what? I didn’t know. Maybe it was just our friendship, which I didn’t know I could have actual friends I felt for because that would require love. And I didn’t know if it had anything to do with that gushy feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when only one person comes up behind you without you knowing, or maybe when you sit in the same hammock, just talking, for hours on end. I didn’t know what made me feel the jealousy, but I knew it started up around Sam.

Just thinking about him, his photogenic face, his perfectly proportioned body, his loose jeans that he refused to let anyone take from him, or his hair just starting to sprout again. All of it brought that mushy gushy feeling into my stomach. It felt like the whole world sat on my shoulders, and only got lighter, only made me happier, when Sam walked by. I could see it play out in front of me; Sam walks in in his blue jeans, bare feet padding against the concrete floor rapidly, and a quick head nod to say ‘hey Abcde’ in my direction.

I was jerked back to reality when a voice carried up through the branches. “Excuse me?” A quick glance down revealed someone my brain registered as a police officer. With a sigh, I landed lightly on my feet. He jumped back a few feet in shock. “Wh-what are you?!” I showed him a wickedly beautiful smile I had been perfecting on Brendon over the years, and head managed to turn his eyes enough to know he’d never seen me there. I was getting good at the whole ‘hypnosis’ thing. I was doing it on a regular basis. I had a twenty year old girl believing I was her sister staying with her for a few weeks, and another guy thinking he was my tour guide. It was great, no getting lost with these two around.

With a quick flip of my phone, Roger was on the line. “Aye-up Miss Abcde…” I explained where I was, and when I needed to be picked up. Roger’s black convertible would be easy to spot when he arrived, so I sat on the bank of a pond in the middle of Simmon’s Park. Geese and ducks fought over feeding grounds, rabbits nibbled on carrots people had thrown on the ground, and people played with dogs in a grassy field. A large grey sign hung low on a single branch above the pond. “Coming Soon!“ it read in bold, underlined letters. A picture of a shopping mall was shown in the background, and a chairman smiled ‘warmly’ down on me as I scowled angrily at him.

A black convertible pulled into my vision and Roger waved happily at me. “Ah Roger, can we head back home? I need a shower and something to eat.” I heard a chuckle come from his direction, but I brushed it off. I jumped when my phone began to buzz once more, but this time it wasn’t Brendon. A rather familiar voice came through the phone.

“Have you ever noticed how he looks amazingly cute when he sleeps? Or maybe how he…” she paused for effect, before screaming out loud, “…mumbles your name?!” the line went dead and a cold chill ran down my back. I didn’t know how 96873 had gotten my number; probably beat it out of Brendon. I felt bad for him; I was the only one who would protect him. But since I had left, he would get beat on every day by 96873 because he wouldn’t tell her where I was.

I had to keep her from getting in my head. Torturing Brendon wouldn’t bring me back, and talking about Sam wouldn’t either. Brendon talked about Sam every day, so if he couldn’t find me, neither could she.

I had noticed since being out on my own,Sam’s teachings really helped me. I had been learning how to read on my own now, but since he gave me the basics I had been able to read a lot more than I would have been able to. Just like when I got mad about the construction sign, I knew exactly what it meant instead of believing the ‘warm’ smile.

Sam, I missed him a lot; Brendon texted me a picture of Sam every day. 96873 was always hugging on him in the picture, so I deleting every one of them. I mentioned to Brendon that I didn’t want any with her in them, but apparently that was the best he could do. My Sam, I wanted to run back to him so much, but I had more pride than that. I wouldn’t let her win; because every day I was gone, was another day he thought about me.

Sarah was waiting for me at home, and it made me worried my hypnosis was wearing off. “Hey Sarah, something wrong?” she shook her head in despair. “Then why are you crying?” a tear rolled down her cheek before it burst into a river.

“Abcde, Ron just broke up with me, and I haven’t had time to tell him I’m up the duff. And he promised we’d be together forever and he…” I spaced out while listening to her ramble on about her pity problems. I couldn’t help but not want to listen to her problems. All she talked about was love relationships and sex-life horrors. Okay, I got that I’m old enough to know this stuff, but just ‘cause I’m old enough doesn’t mean I want to listen to your problems. Maybe it was because I wasn’t socialized before, but I just couldn’t handle having to listen to pity problems from simpletons who have no idea what real fret and real worry was.

“Okay, first off, if he broke up with you then he didn’t disserve you anyways.” Sarah had made me watch a sappy love story with her on Hallmark a few days earlier, and that’s what they kept saying. So I figured if it worked on Hallmark, it would work in real life. Too bad it didn’t work quite as well as in the movies.

“But he was perfect!” more tears shot down her face.

“Okay! Okay, I’ll fix this mess. Just bear with me for a minute okay?” her head feebly nodded in understanding, giving me just enough time to scoot right back out the door.

It had begun to rain in the rather dank apartment area. I could hear every drop hitting the ground with force powerful enough to spit some of them back up at me. By the time I reached the shinning house window, Ron was sleeping in his reclining chair in the living room. His blonde spiky hair was tangled and had fuzz balls all through it. After a few raps on the door, he still wouldn’t move. “God, he’s so lazy! Open the freaking door, Ron!” I miss calculated my strength needed to knock louder, and ended up breaking the door in. He still didn’t move from the chair, didn’t even try to pause the television.

I walked up to him, fairly annoyed by his attitude. “You can talk at any time you know.” I said, exasperated. I stopped a few steps away from him, putting my hands on my hips. “Hello, I’m right here,” I said, getting angrier. I put my hand on his chair and spun it around quickly.

His head rolled off his shoulders, landing at my feet. The dead, vacant eyes seemed to lock onto mine. I could see the cut bone inside his neck, his severed wind pipe almost pink. My eyes widened quickly as the realization hit me, but as his body slid out of his chair I calmed down and turned my head to keep from looking. Blood was soaked into his shirt, turning it a brownish color. My stomach turned, but I managed to get back out of the apartment before I threw up.

“Okay, he must have been worse of a guy than I thought.” My hair was dripping instantaneously from the moment I stepped out into the open sidewalk. I seemed to be acting more and more human than when I first got there. Sarah was rubbing off on me, rather than the other way around.

A loud honk brought me back to reality, right before I was struck and flung 200 yards away by an oncoming long yellow vehicle. Since I was a GE human, it only tickled. I flopped over to my stomach and tried to read the large black words on the side. School, a simple word, and yet I could grasp its meaning. “Sh-oo-l. What the hell is a school? Sh-oo-l. Why the hell did it hit me?” a man was running toward me at a fast pace.

He was dressed in a navy blue uniform with gold rope things hanging from his shoulders. “Sh-ee-rr-if. What is he?” I wasn’t going to stick around and find out. I kicked his legs out from under his and jumped to my feet. A loud gasp came from the long yellow vehicle. “Uh, later.” I ran into the alley nearby, straight out the other side.

I wasn’t far from Sara’s apartment; therefore it didn’t take me long enough to get spotted by the guy that had been chasing me. “Sara, I’m home.” She was still in tears when I got there. “I couldn’t reason with him, sorry.”

“It’s okay Abcde; Jack just called and said he wants me back. I’m so happy!” As another tear rolled down her worry stricken face, she forced a smile at me.

“How nice.” I had begun to be very sarcastic in the world of humans. “And I just got hit by a bus.” She didn’t seem to believe me, which was strange because she normally believed anything I told her.

“Don’t play like that, it could really happen.”

“No, I’m serious. I really got hit.” I shrugged off her gaping mouth for a cold root beer in the fridge. It felt amazing running down my throat; I had never had any kind of soda or coke before I broke out of the lab, but now I couldn’t stop drinking them.

“Do I need to take you to the doctor?!” the pop fell out of my hand and I whirled around, pinning her against the wall.

“You take me anywhere near that place and I’ll rip you to pieces!”

“Okay okay! Calm down! Well are you hurt?” I released her and she seemed to relax.

“Do I look hurt to you? If so we may need to take you to get your eyes checked.” She got mad enough at me she locked herself in her room for the rest of the day. That gave me plenty of free time to look up what the hell a school was. I wanted to know exactly who I was going to kill for hitting me that hard.

School:

[Noun]

1. an institution where instruction is given, especially to persons under college age: The children are at school.

2. an institution for instruction in a particular skill or field.

3. a college or university.

4. a regular course of meetings of a teacher or teachers and students for instruction; program of instruction: summer school.

5. a session of such a course: no school today; to be kept after school.

“Ok, so it’s a place to learn things? I wonder if the X-Lab is a school. They learn things about us right?” I made up my mind that I would find a way to get in to this so-called school. “I will make sure you never hit me again.” My eyes started to droop, so I closed the computer and laid down on the couch. I still didn’t have a bedroom here yet, so I had been sleeping on the couch/make shift bed.

Run Abcde, run. My feet are moving but I’m not going anywhere! What is happening?! A giant needle is right behind me! Why can’t I run away from it? Please let me run! Brendon! Help me! Please don’t let them hurt me! No! Ah! Where did the floor go? How am I falling?! Sam, help me! No! Don’t kill him! Please don’t kill him! No!

“Sam!” I woke myself up when I yelled and sat straight up on the couch, ramming my head into an art project of Sara’s. “Ugh. It felt so real. What the hell was it?” Sara came running into the room in fright.

“What’s wrong?! Who’s in here?” I calmed her down enough to talk to each other.

“Hey I have a question.”

“What?”

“What is it when you’re living while you sleep?”

“Um, alive?” I realized she didn’t understand.

“No. It’s like, when your awake, except you’re asleep. You know?” I didn’t know how else to explain it if she didn’t get it this time.

“Uh, you mean a dream?”

“I guess so, if that’s when it feels like you’re awake but you’re actually asleep.”

“Yeah, that’s all I can think of that it could be. Anyway, now that we’re up, want some breakfast?” I declined before asking her to take me to school. The mention of having to enroll was a little confusing, but I was determined.

We got a bit of a late start to the day after breakfast and a run around the neighborhood. After lots of what Sara called ‘paperwork’, I was finally on my way to a classroom. I was struggling to learn what things were called quickly, quicker than I had learned anything ever before. Classroom is a room with a bunch of people in it, the office is somewhere I don’t want to be sent, a bully is someone starting a fight, a teacher is the person in charge of the classroom, and a student is what I now was. Lots of things to learn in a short time, but I could do it.

“Ok, S102. Where is S102?” all these doors looked the same, but the lady, when I registered, said they would be labeled. “S202, so does that mean I need to go down a floor?” It took me half the third period to finally find S102.

I felt some kind of tingly feeling in my stomach when I reached for the door. Was it fear? Sure felt like it, at least, the same as with the X-Lab. I had to work up enough courage to actually knock on the door and interrupt the man talking at the front of the room.

“Come in!” I heard his muffled voice through the steel door.

“Ugh, another steel one. Don’t people ever use wood to make doors anymore?” I turned the handle and slowly pulled the door open. So far it didn’t seem like there were any threats lurking, but I was still cautious.

“Ah! Mrs. Lyric, Come in.” he turned to face the class and introduce me before I was even fully in the room. “Guys, this is Abcde Lyric. She just moved here from…uh where exactly?” it took me a minute to realize he was talking to me.

“Oh, uh, Arkansas.” I had used the computer to look up what states might be okay to say I was from, since I sounded like I was from the states rather than Britain.

“Oh, so ye ’re a states’ bint?” he was trying to sound as if he had an American accent, but it wasn’t really working, plus he had the whole British slang working against him.

“Uh, sure. Can I have a book?” as I held out my hand, he reached under his desk to grab a book.

“Here, hope you have a good night.” Before I could even register what was happening, he whipped out a 45 and the bullet traveled out of the barrel and straight through my chest. My sight went black and my whole body turned numb. Within seconds I dropped to the floor and all the screaming fade out to white noise.

Copyright © 2011 Amanda Woodson. All rights reserved.