Chapter 1
Quiet. Quiet is horrible. I hate quiet. Why would you want to be quiet when you can sing and laugh and cry and scream? Quiet is a horrible thing.
That's why I love Earth. You can never really go to a truly silent spot. There has to be something in the background; an air-con system turning on, the pages of a book being turned by an interested reader. Earth just buzzes with noise.
But one day, I found out why I hated quiet so much.
And believe me, that one day was a VERY weird day.
Charlie rested her head against the cool window, shrugging her blazer off her shoulders. She hated the school bus when it was this hot. It was a huge double decker, and she always sat on the top deck, looking down at the cars below. But, in any case, heat rises. And buses had no exception to this rule.
"Charlie? You okay?"
Charlie looked to the fabric bench in front of her. A girl had her head resting on it, her long brown hair balanced clumsily on top. Filled with concern, her eyes gave her a bemused and sympathetic air.
Charlie grinned.
"Honestly Soph, you worry too much." She said, tying her blazer around her hips. "I'm fine! Just roasting. And tired."
"And having your shoulders broken by all the books in that bag?" Sophie inclined her head towards the comic book patterned messenger bag on Charlie's left.
Charlie laughed.
"Yep, definitely." She looked out of the window at the small park, watching the children run around, chasing each other like hyper active chipmunks.
"Oh crap!" she exclaimed. "This is our stop!"
Pulling her bag strap onto her shoulder, she ran precariously down the aisle of the slowing bus. Feeling quite smug, she stepped down onto the stairs – and then flew forward into the opposite wall.
The Year 7's sniggered around her as she dusted off her skirt and hopped out of the still moving bus onto the grassy field alongside. Sophie, in a joking manner, started clapping and laughing. She loved her best friend and her random ways.
"Well done Charlie!" she shouted, jumping off the bus as it came to a halt. "10 out of 10 for your jump, 0 out of 10 for falling down the stairs before it."
Charlie laughed and hit her friend playfully.
"I'll see you tomorrow." She said, starting off towards the park. "I've got a ton of French homework to do. C'est tres tres ennyeux!"
Waving at Sophie's slowly shrinking figure, Charlie pulled her bag further up her shoulder, grabbed her iPod and headphones out of her blazer pocket and strode through the grass towards the park.
Now, in this situation, two things could of happened. The first being that Charlie could of plugged in her headphones, gone on the internet and watched the latest video by her favourite vlogger. As it happens, her dog had managed to get hold of her headphones the night before, leaving the wire tangled and the buds chewed beyond repair. Charlie sighed as she looked at her wrecked headgear, and stuffed it back in her pocket.
And then she looked up.
Right in front of her, so close that if she had just taken one more step she would of smashed straight into it, stood a huge old-fashioned royal blue police box.