1. UFO-Sighting, Sorta

There are days when you wake up and just know something’s different. Has that ever happened to you? Yes? No? …Well that doesn’t matter, because that’s not how it happened anyway. I woke up completely unaware that today would be the day that changed my view on absolutely everything. Who knew I’d find a big, shirtless, macho man in my room when I got back from school?

I woke up the same way as I did any other day, laying on my stomach with my limbs in the oddest, most awkward-looking positions possible. I swear, I never slept at night. I played Twister. I don‘t know who I played with, but I probably won. I mean, who else could literally fold themselves in half?

Laying on my stomach with my leg on my back and my foot in my face, I awoke with a start to the sound of my old alarm clock. It was the classic kind, you know? With the big round face and two bells on top? I thought it was cool-looking when I got it. I didn’t give much thought to how I’d like waking up to its ear-splitting rings, though. The alarm was incredibly loud, and made me leap out of my skin and nearly smash it to bits with my bedpost (which I’d have torn down beforehand) every time I heard it. 

I wasn’t sure if I could do that - tear down my bedpost, that is. Even with an adrenaline rush. And sadly, there was no way of finding out; when I tried reaching up for my bedpost, I realized my arm was trapped between my back and my leg. By then I’d fully snapped out of my dream-state and realized that the clock posed no threat and did not need to be smashed to bits. Also, Geneene would be pissed to find my bed and my clock destroyed. Then she’d tell me to stop being such a brute and try acting more like a lady. 

Then I’d have to tell her, like I always did, that the year was 2010, and that girls were allowed to be brutes, and didn’t have to wear dresses to hide their ankles all the time. Yes, society had come to the point where female wrestlers were socially accepted. And how lady-like could they be? They fought for a profession, and showed their ankles! Oh, the impropriety!

…I liked the idea of fighting. Not like that, though - not for the sake of money and prizes, but for something like…defending a friend. That was something I really wanted to do. But I was never given the opportunity. No one would dare mess with me or my friends. At first I didn’t understand this. I mean, I was friends with absolute nerds - the kind that would have their own daily bully. And our school wasn’t really made up of the nicest students, so…

I knew now why no one would pick on my friends. I saw it in their faces that they were afraid of me. I didn’t understand that either, though - I wasn’t uber-buff or anything. In fact, I was this short little thing. But… Eh. There were a few incidents where someone would startle me and I‘d punch them right in that face. But those were accidents! And…that mostly happened amongst friends. So why would anyone else be afraid of me?

Agh. Who knew? I’d ask Geneene and my companions later what is was about me that made me intimidating - why my classmates were afraid of me. I wrinkled my nose at the thought. Sure, it was good to be respected. But then you never knew if people were nice to you because they genuinely liked you, or because they thought you’d pummel them if they weren’t. 

Geneene and Parker were my adoptive parents. They weren’t awake yet, those lucky jerks. But that was okay. Six o’clock in the morning; the sun was not quite out yet; the grass was a little overgrown… There was no way of telling whether today would be good or bad. 

I put on a nice T-shirt and holy jeans (and by holy, I mean it had holes - it wasn’t “blessed” or anything like that), zombied my way to the kitchen and, with my backpack over my shoulder, grabbed an apple for breakfast and headed for the bus stop, just down my driveway. I really couldn’t wait until I could bypass the bus altogether and just drive myself to school. Then I wouldn’t have had to wake up so early - the bus dropped us off a good thirty minutes before the first bell rang. That was thirty more minutes I could’ve spent sleeping in the morning.

“Just two more weeks,” I told myself with a mouth-full of apple. Two more weeks and I’d be seventeen years old - old enough to take a test and drive an automobile without a parent or guardian present. Geneene and Parker had already gotten me a car. I could see it now when I looked over my shoulder. Oh, she was a beautiful piece of crap; I loved her already. I wasn’t even being sarcastic. This small, blue, shiny-looking Buick was the epitome of my freedom. And I would cherish that for all it was worth.   

I took the last bite out of my apple and threw the core as far as I could, into the woods behind my house. Maybe one day it’d actually grow into a tree. Who knew?

Just as I was licking the dried, sticky apple juice from my lips and chin, my bus arrived. So I did the thing I did every day - sat back in a seat somewhere in between the front and the back, put in my headphones, and started rocking out to some old school music. I probably looked like an idiot, head banging and playing air-guitar. But no one said anything about it. They were either utterly unaffected by it, or too chicken to call me a lunatic to my face. So I continued all the way through the rest of the bus ride.

When we got to the school, I was one of the last people off the bus. Mrs. Driver-Lady smiled at me sweetly and told me to have a good day, and I grunted in reply like the grateful child I was, hitching my falling backpack up onto my shoulder where it belonged. I walked up to the old brick school building and found my friend Troy waiting for me.

Troy Robinson was one of the nerds I mentioned earlier. He was the kind of guy that showed an inhuman interest in bugs and crystal formations, and was like a robot in math class. I could name at least seven girls that literally threw themselves at him, though. I mean, yeah, he was a nerd - he wore glasses and his shoulders were a little hunched over - but he wasn’t ugly. I’d never say it to his face or anyone else, but he was…rather attractive. He hardly ever had pimples, and his face was clean-shaven. He had a very prominent jaw and a nose that reminded me of Hercules from that Disney movie. …Now that I thought about it, it wasn’t just his nose - he looked a lot like Disney’s Hercules before he became a hero. Only, Troy’s hair was shorter, and dark brown.

…He wasn’t “hot,” though. It was just his endearing nerdiness that made girls go crazy for him, and that made guys want to kill him. I mean, he was stealing their girls just by existing! And he didn’t even notice them! He just went on with his life, collecting bugs and studying for classes. I was glad I didn’t “like” him.

Oh, forgot to mention this earlier: I didn’t like anyone. Not romantically, anyway. I made it a point not to crush on anyone, too. I mean, what was the point? I knew I wasn’t gonna fall in love in high school, or marry anyone I dated in high school, and I saw how broken relationships affected other girls. So why bother? All relationships did was cause distractions, and I couldn’t afford any of those. I had to do well in school while I had the chance. I had to get into a good college and graduate and get myself a good job. Until then, there was no point in having a boyfriend.

 
All this was the reason why I wasn’t at all attracted to the big and macho shirtless guy I mentioned earlier.

But that didn’t happen until later.

Anyway, I thought more on how relationships weren’t worth the time. I mean, those set girls up for sex, babies, STD’s (err, STI’s) , angry boyfriends, clingy boyfriends, abusive boyfriends, breakups, and other things they either would never get over, or would get over a few months from then.

 
I didn’t understand why they set themselves up like that, time and time again. What really got me was when they started going out with their friend’s ex-boyfriend. If the guy was moronic enough to dump your friend, or for your friend to dump him, what would make you think he was any good for you?

Oh! And another thing that got me: when a girl would re-date her own ex boyfriend! If it didn’t work the first time, why would it work this time! What were they, idiots?
This I thought as I approached Troy, who was hunched over reading a book. “Girls are idiots,” I said.

He wordlessly held up a finger, so I waited. Then after a moment, he put his bookmark in his book and looked up at me. “What was that?” he asked.

“Girls are idiots,” I repeated, but that, too, was lost on him. He was too busy staring at something on my head.

“…Your hair looks nice down,” he said.

Oh, so that’s what I forgot to do that morning! I looked down at my wrist and saw my hair band. I sighed and brushed through my long, waist-length, nearly-black curly hair with my fingers and sloppily put it up in a quick ponytail. 

He frowned at this, but then shrugged and said, “Anyway, what were you saying?”

“Never mind,” I said with a sheepish smirk. This said and done, we went inside, just as our other friends got off their bus and came racing after us.

Morgan and Ezekiel Riddle were twins. It was hard to believe just by looking at them that they were even related, but they were. Morgan was a pretty girl. She had long, straight, ginger hair. As far as I knew, it was just naturally straight - I’d never seen it any other way. Her hair just reached her lower back, and she always wore it down or in two braids. Like a hippie. But today it was down. Her eyes were a very chocolaty brown, and were pretty small, like her brother’s. That was about all they had in common.

Zeke was emo. Enough said. Though, I have to say, he was the happiest emo I’d ever met. I remember a girl asking him why he wasn’t always depressed; why he never wanted to kill himself; and why never drank dog blood before. His make-up-ed pale face lifted in a white-toothed smile and he laughed. “Drink dog’s blood? That’s just gross. There are so many better things to do.” 

His hair was dyed black and in his face a lot. Like Morgan’s, it was naturally straight. He wore eyeliner around his small brown eyes, and black eye shadow on his eyelids. I swear he wore more make-up than half the females in the school building, including the teachers. His clothes were probably even tighter-fitting, too. I swear, you could mistake him for Jack Skellington whenever he wore black-and-white stripes. 

I'd heard rumors of him being gay. I actually wouldn’t know, and wouldn’t care either way. Sometimes I did wonder, though. He never had a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend. And whenever anyone asked him if he was, he’d say something like, “Only on Tuesdays.” So nobody knew.

So anyway, Zeke and Morgan were racing after us. Troy put himself behind me in hiding and Zeke ran straight into me, grabbing my arms so I wouldn’t fall over and bring him down with me and crush poor Troy. When he found his balance, though, I hissed at him until he let go. He then bowed his head in mock shame and faced his sister. Then he grinned. “…Win,” he chimed softly.

Morgan smirked and rolled her eyes, slowing to a walk when she reached us.
“So, Jazz, how was your morning?” asked Zeke in his passive, conversational voice as he hitched his backpack further up his shoulder. From here we continued walking on to our lockers, which were all coincidentally in the same hallway, close to one another. 

I shrugged in response. “Stupendous. I woke up with my foot in my face this time.”
He offered a thoughtful head-tilt. “Hm… My favorite is still when you woke up sitting on your head.”

 Morgan chortled and pushed her hair back, reaching her locker and putting in the combination. I opened my rigged locker easily, with no need to put in a combination, only to realize I didn’t need to go in there for anything. So I closed my locker and turned to face my friends. Troy was sitting on the windowsill across from where I stood, shoulders hunched and reading his book again. I heard Zeke close his own locker and then saw him sit on the windowsill beside him, letting his backpack drop to the floor now. “So, Troy. How was your morning?”

“Interesting…” he said without looking up,  “…a cockroach can live up to nine days without its head…”

Zeke raised an eyebrow. “That’s…very interesting.”

Troy grinned. “This is the kind of thing that makes me want to do some experiments with genetics. To make something that can grow back an appendage, or live for over a thousand years, or…”

“Survive nine days without a head?”

“Yes! All I need to do is find out how it all works, and I can make some sort of…”

“Superhuman, and get arrested for running illegal human experiments?” offered Morgan.

“Or it could turn out to be a disaster and eat him alive,” I added, “before anyone can ever know if its existence.”

Troy smiled sheepishly at us and closed his book. “…The law just spoils all my fun.”

“Aww, there, there, Troy,” said Morgan as she patted his head, “We’ll find you a place underground to run your immoral experiments, and no one will ever know, right guys?” 

“But what if I need sunlight? An underground lab would be pointless then.”

“Oh, posh. Troy, you’re the scientist; make your own sunlight!”

He frowned, pondering. “…I suppose I could do that…with the right rays and…huh…”

The next ten minutes were spent goofing off, tossing ideas back and forth on highly improbable mutations science might be able to give us. Then the bell rang and we had to start learning stuff. Like algebra. The complex kind with imaginary numbers. But we weren’t there yet - this was only the first month of school. We were doing simple things that pretty much insulted my intelligence. I mean, honestly. Negative two is less than three. If I didn’t know that already, I’d shoot myself in the kneecap with a nail gun. …The sad thing was there were actually people struggling in this class… 

I took my seat, which just happened to be right next to Scott Bottom. I didn’t go around hating people, really, but Scott… this guy was a real d****e. But my friends were friends with him (probably because they pitied him for not having any actual friends), and for this he thought he was my friend, too. 

He was full of himself. He was the kind of guy that would brag happily about running over a baby deer. He even gladly admitted to dating a girl - the nicest girl you’d ever know - as a psychology experiment. Sure, she was an idiot for dating in the first place, but still, for him to do that was just… If I wasn’t busy shooting myself in the knee with the nail gun, I’d be shooting him in the face with it.

Needless to say, my mornings were amazing.

“Test today, Jazz,” he said as I sat, “You ready?”

“Yes,” I said in my uncaring monotone. This kind of response always unnerved him a bit - I could smell how close he was to a nervous laugh. But he didn’t this time - instead he just grinned to himself and took out his calculator. I followed suit.

Now, you know the gods have something against you when your calculator has a “no” key instead of an “on” key. I mean, this thing was one of those mass-produced scientific calculators, so for it to have such an amusing flaw was…strange. I discussed this with my friends, and the conclusion was unanimous: it was a divine sign from the gods. We couldn’t be sure of what it meant, but it was probably something along the lines of, “You fail at life.”

So I turned my calculator no and took out my blue mechanical pencil, waiting for the teacher to sluggishly pass the tests out. Scott looked at me again and dared to smile. With my face resting on my fist, I glared and looked away, up at the front of the classroom, wishing for something to hit him with.

“I’m gonna ace this thing,” he replied smugly.

I wordlessly face-planted my desk. When after a moment I felt something light being placed on my head, I reached up and felt paper. So I sat up straight and took the tests off my head, keeping one for myself and passing the rest back. I sped right though it without even rushing. I didn’t even need my calculator turned no - it was just so easy. Except for the extra credit challenge question. It really was a challenge, in that it literally didn’t make sense. It was a word problem, in which Mary and Linda are riding their bikes. Mary rides for six hours. Later information tells us she started riding at ten o’clock  and stopped at two. So Mary rides her bike for four hours in a six-hour ride. …It didn’t make sense. 

So I shrugged and handed my paper to Mrs. Wesley. Just as she grinned and was about to say, “Thank you,” I heard the thudding, clap-like noises of someone running down the hallway. They grew louder and louder, and stopped just as Troy flung the door open and barged into the classroom.

“The Science Club needs Jasmine Storm immediately,” he blurted breathlessly before anyone had a chance to react.

I rose an eyebrow and looked back at Mrs. Wesley, who also was mildly shocked. Something told me the overall intrusion shocked her more than the reason behind it, though. “…Does she have a pass…?”

 “Yes!” he exclaimed, holding it up so she may see. After a moment of squinting at it, she looked at me and said, just as calmly as ever:

“Pages seventy-eight and seventy-nine, numbers two through twenty four, evens. Have it done by tomorrow.”

“Uh…okay,” I replied. Just as I was about to walk back for my stuff, Troy grabbed my arm and pulled me out the room with him, running and exasperatedly explaining:

“There’s no time for that, Jazz, you have to see this now or you’ll miss it!”

He usually knew better than to grab me or tell me what to do, so for him to do this now was…definitely saying something. So I ran as well, racing him down three hallways and two sets of stairs to his science classroom. 

“This could be the discovery of a lifetime,” I heard someone say in awe when I got in. The lights were off and I heard the clear, articulated murmur of an anchorman.  
“Unbelievable,” said a girl. I think her name was Amy…

I saw all the fifteen students sitting at the desks closest to the TV as possible. Then I felt a pressure from around my wrist withdraw and noted that Troy had just realized he’d been grabbing it the entire way here. He cleared his throat awkwardly and pointed at the TV. “Look at this,” he muttered.

So I smirked and looked up at the TV screen. Black sky, stars, bright-colored clouds… I was looking at outer space. These were nebulas. 

Then the scene changed and I saw an anchorman sitting in an office-like place. “And now, for some other news…”

“No!” Troy cried in an elongated display of agony. I just laughed at him as Mr. Dougood, the science teacher, waited a few minutes and then turned off the TV. 

“I suppose that’s all they have on that…” The tall, wrestler-version of Bill Nye wore a pondering frown on his face. I usually wouldn't put the two characteristics together - they just didn't seem to mesh right in my head. But then there was Mr. Dougood, who made that image more than possible to imagine. “…it doesn’t make any sense, though…not even light can escape a black hole…”

I rose an eyebrow. “…Um, what did I miss? Something escaped a black hole?”

Troy nodded. “Which means it either wasn’t a black hole, or this thing is…is faster than light…” He stared off into oblivion with the brooding-face of a true scientist, pushing his glasses back up his nose with his middle finger.

“But…nothing’s faster than light,” said I, confused, “I mean, what could be faster than light?”

“As you said: nothing,” replied Mr. Dougood, “which is why I believe it wasn’t actually a black hole. Which poses the question: what could it have been, then? Could it have been a wormhole, thus proving them to exist in the first place? This opens up a plethora of questions and possibilities, for if this is indeed a wormhole, it proves they exist and that they can be traversable. The question is, how?”

“Yeah, and from what year did this UFO come from?” I said sarcastically.

A few people snickered, but Troy just looked at me and said, “It’s not funny. That’s actually a good question… Seriously, Jazz, this is a discovery verging on the scale of…something epic. I mean, both wormholes and black holes muddle with space-time, so the idea of time-travel is…actually possible, if we can travel through a wormhole…but how would we control what year or universe we end up in…”

The girl I think was named Amy just stared him down with eyebrows raised and a grimace. “…Oh my God, Troy, are you a complete idio - ” then her eyes flickered in my direction and she caught herself. After letting her breath out in a quick sigh she continued, “Time travel and teleportation are not possible, no matter how you think of it. I mean, really, the idea has been disputed for so long and shot down constantly by facts and theories that actually make sense.” 

“Not possible, you say?” questioned Troy, eyebrows raised and seemingly taken aback, “Not possible?" Now his eyebrows narrowed, his voice rising further and further as he spoke, till he was practically screaming, "Just like it’s not possible for anything to fall out of a black hole!”

Amy didn’t have a response. If I were her, I wouldn’t have one either. I was completely blown away. Troy…he wasn’t the shouting type… But when he really felt passionately about something…wow. I hadn’t seen this side of him before. It was…scary. Amy should’ve been afraid of him, not me.

“…So,” I said to break the silence. I coughed. “…I guess I’m youtube-ing this when I get home?”

Troy's eyebrows relaxed, and just like that he'd lost his steam, heaving with heavy breaths; giving me a no-kidding ‘pfft’ and saying, “Yeah.”

I smirked. “Alright. While I’m at it, I’ll check my room for aliens from the future.”