Chapter One
A shadow moves. She hides behind a corner. The darkness creeps in on her and-
I sit straight up in bed. Phew, that was only a nightmare...and a creepy one at that! I was some sort of kung-fu penguin, with an evil dolphin at my tail! Or tail feathers, whatever. But I have to admit, I've had a lot of crazy nightmares, but this was my weirdest nightmare EVER. Oh by the way, my name is Kaitlin Daisy Smith. I have shoulder length black hair, blue eyes, and slightly pale skin.
I stretch and sluggishly crawl out of bed. "Honey, breakfast's ready!" my mom calls from downstairs. I walk like a zombie downstairs and to the dining room table. I find a cup of OJ, a piece of buttered toast, and scrambled eggs. "Sweetie, today's a big day for you! Eat up!" my mom calls from the living room as she vacuums the floor. 'Oh great,' I think. 'Today's the field trip to the zoo...huzzah...' I think sarcastically. I've never actually been to the zoo, because I've always assumed it's boring. I mean, it's just animals!
After I eat breakfast, I go back upstairs to dress up. I choose a white T-shirt, black skinny jeans, and a cute penguin scarf I got from my grandma. I brush my endlessly tangled hair the best I can, put on my glasses, trudge downstairs, and put on my faded orange converses. I know, orange converses, but hey I like the style!
I walk a few blocks till I reach the bus station. "Wazzup Katy?" my slightly nuts BFF/neighbor, Veronica, greeted me. "Nothing much, just a field trip to the zoo..." I said boredly. "OMG! THE ZOO!" Veronica exclaimed."Wait, isn't that where they keep the baloney?" "No, they have animals and stuff...I think I'll just go for the popcorn..." Right after I said that, the bus arrived, and we climbed on. "I LOVE SPAM!" you-probably-know-who exclaimed randomly. "By the way, don't you think the penguins at the zoo are SUPER CUTE?" Veronica said to me. "Reminder: I've never seen them, Veronica! And I don't think penguins in general are 'cute' so to say. They're more on the 'cool' side in my opinion," "Cute...cool...cheese...whatever!"
As we kept on talking about if cheese in the catagory of 'cute' and 'cool' or not, the school bus came to a stop. I hopped out, while Veronica continued on to the private school she went to. 'Another boring day at boring New York Junior High...' I thought and sighed. "Hey look, the school nerd has come to school!" the school bully, Vic, said to his friend, loudly enough so that the whole school could hear. He went over to me and sneered, "Can't spoil your perfect attendence, can you nerd?" "Back off, I have a black belt in karate and I'm not afraid to show you how I got it," "But you can't risk a visit to dear Ms. Johnson, can you? I bet you've never been to her office except to get awards!" Not wanting to hear any more of his bullying, I walk over to my locker.
'I am bigger than this' I thought, depressed. 'I don't need to hit him or punch him to prove that...'
Ugh but I want to punch something so bad! I open my locker and punch the punching bag I have with Vic's face on it. "Much better..." I mumble to myself and walk to my first class. I plonk down on my seat just as the bell rings. "All right students!" my science teacher, Ms. Samson says in her high pitched voice. "Today we are going to the Central Park Zoo to learn about animals! How 'cold' is that?" My science teacher keeps desperately tries to be cool and modern but keeps mixing up words, like 'awesome' with 'pawsome' and 'cool' with cold'. "Single file children! Remember to stay with your trip buddies!" Ms. Samson said. Then, she assigned us 'trip buddies'. Mine is...UGGH! Bob Jr. the son of the local plumber! He's even more unpopular than ME! And that's saying something! I climb onto the bus with Bob Jr.
The ride to the zoo wasn't very long. In fact, it was only about ten minutes. 'I hope this field trip is worth sitting next to Bob for ten minutes...' I mean, seriously, he was having a heated conversation about plumbing...WITH HIMSELF! Just when I was thinking about jumping out of the bus window, we stopped at the zoo. It wasn't as bad as I thought. A zookeeper called Alice lead my group (Me, Bob Jr., Mark, and Susan) first went to the chimpanzee exhibit. They were just hanging around the trees, doing monkey business...but I have a feeling in my gut they aren't what they seem. Next, came the reptile room. It wasn't very interesting; could've used some komodo dragons here and there. We took a stop at a bench, where I found an opportunity to pull out my camera. I've heard we're going to view some more interesting animals, so I want to snap some photos. After a while, I took some neat pics of two gorillas, an elephant, a kangaroo, an otter (who did an awesome flip) and some dancing lemurs. (who I personally thought were extremely annoying) It's almost the end of the trip now, and there's only one exhibit we haven't seen.
We walk over to the penguin exhibit. I know this sounds crazy, considering I've never been here before, but this particular exhibit seems vaguely familiar, like I've seen it somewhere before. There were 4 penguins. One has a scar, another was even cuter than the rest, one was tall, and one had a flat head. They were looking... Uhh how do I describe it? Cute and cuddly, to be exact. They waved, did some tricks and people just gave them fish. Why do I have a feeling they did that on purpose? I leaned in to get a closer look. My glasses fell off into the water. I tried to reach for them, when I heard Vic's voice say, "Hey nerd! Can you swim?" I looked around, trying to locate him, but my whole world was blurry. "Yes..." I said cautiosly, not knowing why he was asking me this. "Oh ok then...have a nice swim, nerd!" I looked at him like 'What the hell, Vic?"...but then he pushed me into the water. My head hit something hard while I fell down, screaming. The last thing I heard before I blacked out was someone calling the cops, and a cute Brittish voice saying, "Skippah! That girl fell to the water!" Then everything was dark...