KNOCKKNOCKKNOCKKNOCKKNOCKKNOCK
Odd jolted upright. He looked to his side and noticed that Ulrich was still missing from his bed. Figuring it was him knocking, having returned from whatever nightly activity he had planned with that Magali girl, he got up and opened the door. But instead of seeing his incessantly annoying roommate, he saw a flurry of pink run into the room, push him aside and close the door.
"Aelita?" Odd asked. "What are you-?"
"Shut up!" Odd noticed that Aelita seemed very anxious and worried, contrasting severely from their first encounter. "Okay, something really freaky is going on, and I just don't know and I-"
"Hold on, what's this about?"
"No, no, shush." She paced about the small room and then asked, "What's the name of your dog?"
"What? How do you even know I have a dog?"
"He should be here, but he's not, so he must be at your house," Aelita babbled, "but what is his name?"
"Kiwi," Odd and Aelita answered together.
Odd raised his eyebrows. "How could you possibly know that?"
"No, shut up!" Aelita exclaimed. "Okay, your father? What's his profession?"
"He was a general in the French army, but-"
"Now he's an opera singer," Aelita finished. Odd was about to asked again how she knew that information, but she held up her hand to silence him and continued. "Adele, Pauline, Elizabeth, Marie, Louise."
"Those are-"
"Your sisters. Yeah, I know," Aelita said. She started shaking her head and sat down on Ulrich's bed.
Taking advantage of Aelita's silence, he jumped in and asked, "What is this all about?"
Aelita got up and headed toward Ulrich and Odd's, but mostly Odd's, computer and turned it on.
"What are you-"
"Stop asking, I'll show you. I'll show you."
After waiting for the desktop to appear, she opened an internet tab and searched for a webpage. She then moved out of the way and gestured for Odd to look.
Odd was about to ask again what was happening, but Aelita gave him a harsh stare. He kept silent and turned his attention towards the webpage. It was the first chapter of some internet story. He scrolled through, a bit until a few phrases and words caught his attention, mainly "Kadic Academy" as well as his own name.
"That's weird," Odd mumbled to himself. Then louder he added, "What is this exactly?"
Aelita groaned, as if he had missed something. "It's a story. It's a story about us."
"What do you mean?"
Aelita rolled her eyes. "What is not clear about that? It's a story about us. About you, me, your roommate and one of his girlfriends, and some other kid."
"Is this some joke?" Odd asked, still scrolling through the chapter.
"That's what I thought too," Aelita said. "But it can't be. It's real. The story is real."
"What on earth are you talking about?" Odd had passed through some bits describing monsters and a virtual world. "This is some weird made up story, a joke or something. He went to the chapter bar and noticed the number of chapters. "A very detailed joke at that."
"It's not a joke!" Aelita exclaimed. Odd finally turned to look at Aelita and now saw that she was visibly upset, almost at the verge of crying it seemed. "I remember. I remember, it happened."
"What are you talking about?" Odd felt like he should try to comfort Aelita in some way, but wasn't sure how. He wasn't exactly good with sympathy and girls and such.
"I was reading it, and I had these weird moments. Like a flashback or a memory. Like I had lived through what was in the story. They were very short, but felt so real, and it just doesn't make sense." Aelita sat back down on Ulrich's bed.
Odd, not really sure what to do, tried to sit beside her, but at the last minute changed his mind. He hesitated for a bit, before decided to kneel in front of her. "Aelita. That's just a story. I think you might be a bit under pressure, and that could have caused-"
"Are you saying I'm imagining things?" Aelita exclaimed. She immediately stood up.
Odd stood back up, and then continued, "It's just that, it's really late at night, and maybe you're starting to feel stressed about grades and the whole tutoring thing, and just maybe you're-"
Aelita turned around and proceeded to exit the room. "I know what's real! I know what I felt!" She opened the door and was about to slam it, when Odd pushed the door back.
"Aelita, I-"
"Children."
Odd and Aelita both stiffened at the cold, guttural voice.
"Both up past your bedtime. And a girl down in the boys' level. You're both in a very bad predicament."
"We -we're sor –or-ry," Odd stammered. "It's ju-ust that-"
"Detention, after school, library." And with that, Mr. Morales and his penetrating presence left the two.
"I've never had a detention in my whole life!" Odd whispered to himself. "This is awful! But wait, Aelita, I-" He turned around to face her, but she was already gone, heading back up to her room.
Odd, defeated, dragged himself back into his own room and plopped down in the chair beside his computer. "This is all her fault," Odd moaned to himself. "If she hadn't come down here with her crazy whatever..."
He paused, thinking back to how upset Aelita looked. No, he wouldn't blame her. Something was wrong, and she came to him for help, but he didn't know how. Odd sighed, and glanced back up at his computer screen. He tilted his head a bit, noticing something different. He had only looked at chapter one, but somehow the screen had changed to a chapter in the 20s.
He figured he probably accidently had done it himself, and scrolled a bit through the chapter. "One elaborate prank," he said to himself.
But then he paused. And then he read. And then he saw.
