Interlude Two:

Breaking News

"Finally, I'm done!" I announced early Saturday afternoon.

Seconds into completing my homework, the cell phone vibrated on the computer desk. My happy mood was broken by my mom's nagging voice, which reminded me consistently about leaving enough time for laundry and making sure I had enough groceries for the week. I know how much my mom and dad worried about me up at college, but this was ridiculous. Plus, this was the fourth time in a row, this week, my mom called me.

I had to end the discussion before it turned one-sided. "Mom, I need to go and thanks for telling me about the laundry. I'll make sure to get to it this weekend."

"Erita, there's something I heard on the news about –" I hung up the phone, cutting my mom off in the middle of her sentence. She called me back immediately, this time her voice was sharp and frustrated, "Erita Rashkin, it's rude to hang up when someone is talking."

"Sorry Mom, but I really have to go. Can I call you back?" I asked, in a feeble attempt to end this conversation. I hoped Nett wasn't calling me right this second, even though I told myself he would call sometime this afternoon.

My mom asked, curious now, "How is Nett?"

"What?" I asked, not fully understanding the question.

She caught my reaction at once, throwing me off-guard. "Erita, don't tell me you haven't seen him all week? He's your best friend." My mom then added happily, "I'll call Nett's mom up and see if we can get together –"

How embarrassing! Thinking fast, I told her, "Mom, I have to get off the phone. Nett will call me any second. Can I call you back when I have a chance to talk?"

I felt certain she got the hint. Calmly, she replied, "All right. If you need anything, you know the home number."

"Yeah, I do. It's in my cell phone. Goodbye," I said and pressed the button End from my cell phone. Three seconds later my phone vibrated again, this time in the palm of my hand. After quickly flipping it open, I answered in a cheerful voice, "Hey Nett. What time are you coming over?"

I must have beaten him to the question because he answered, "In a little bit. I'll be over in five minutes, after I finish this last story problem." Five minutes! Before I had time to think straight, he ended the conversation. "I'll see you soon."

"Bye," I said slightly dazed, and then closed the cell phone a second time.

What was I supposed to do now? I couldn't put my homework away in five minutes, but I certainly tried. As I pulled The Fellowship of the Ring book out from the bookshelf, there was a loud knock coming from the front door. My three roommates were home for the weekend, which left me stuck with the chores, such as taking out the trash and putting the dishes inside the dishwasher - that's not part of this story either.

What was I saying?

Oh yeah! Now I remember: Briskly, I walked out into the kitchen and opened the front door to the dorm suite. Behind the door stood a young man in his late teens, with light-brown hair and green eyes. He wore a buttoned black-striped shirt that covered his casual teal-colored T-shirt, blue jeans with patches above the knees and ankles, and white tennis shoes.

Although Nett looked like an average teenager, fresh out of high school, I knew him better as your classic bookworm. Even though he didn't want to admit it - trying all through high school to be the in-between person that everyone liked - I always tried to worm his secret talent out of him. He never wore glasses, but he felt he needed his contact lenses in order to see where he was driving, as well as what he read. From his point of view, glasses strained his eyes and he was perhaps right in his opinion. I wouldn't know since my eyesight has always been slightly average, but there were times when I couldn't see anything from very far distances.

Nett and I have been friends since middle school. One reason behind this is because he knows enough about textbooks to get through a class, whereas I know how to communicate with people enough to enjoy a conversation with friends. Nett was always an outsider of the crowd, but he was lazy when it came to homework and classes. I was better off telling Nett that he should stay in school, let alone figure out how I would pass my classes without failing a few for the second time in a row (first time, if it happens up at college, due to my excitably urge to mess up The Lord of the Rings book trilogy). Even at college, Nett and I have found the need to help each other out in problematic times.

How would I tell Nett about my little fiasco with the book trilogy?

Just as I left the front door momentarily wide-open, Nett immediately charged into the dorm room, texting his roommates and other friends, he had only met but hadn't yet introduced me. After closing the front door and barging into my dorm room, shutting that door after me as well, Nett put his slider cell phone away inside his pocket before he asked me, "Have your roommates left for the weekend?"

"Yeah," I answered. I knew right away something had gone wrong. "What's the matter?"

He turned to my laptop computer, which had been turned on, due to the fact I was about to look up some information. Nett returned his gaze to me, "You should look up YouTube and type in the keywords, 'Lord of the Rings'."

This shocked me. How did he know? "What do you mean?"

"Just do it, Erita," he told me, as I sat down on the chair and googled from the video search engine 'Lord of the Rings'. As I watched the news announcer on one of the YouTube video talk about The Lord of the Rings books and movies being messed up by a "mysterious trickster" (I realized the "mysterious trickster" was me), I whirled around after the video ended and found Nett staring at my copy of The Fellowship of the Ring book.

Calmly, without meaning to, Nett asked sharply, "Erita, the last time you saw your cat, what were you doing?"

"Not much, but I do remember my cat running underneath my bed, a moment after he forced me to throw that book under the springboard... Nett, what is going on?" I asked, not understanding where he was headed.

He nodded, before handing the book back to me. "You should read the passage in Chapter 4, concerning Frodo Baggins and a black cat." He emphasized the words 'Frodo Baggins' and 'black cat', as if they were important.

As I scanned the pages Nett had marked with my eyes, I spotted the name "Mr. Cuddle-Muffin" in Frodo's new dialogue. That couldn't be right, unless I hadn't looked properly. Immediately, I glanced up at Nett with a bewildered look on my face.

I needed to know the truth about my cat, but my best friend seemed to have already figured out the answer to the riddle. "How long did you know where my cat was hiding?"

"Almost three months now. I skimmed through the timeline in the Appendices of The Return of the King, but this isn't possible. Your book cannot be jinxed, Erita. Even I have put pencils in my copies of the book trilogy, and none of them have fallen inside the pages; not even me. It's a miracle you're still here, or else you would have fallen in as well," he said half-hearted, showing some shock in his eyes.

"Yeah," I said, chuckling half-hearted at this. The thought made my stomach perform back-flips. "At least the world doesn't realize what else I've done to the book." He now stared at me with a confused gaze. I decided to lay the matter to rest. "Look through the first five chapters. You'll see what I mean."

Nett sat down on the bed in shock. Even as he skimmed through the first five chapters, he already appeared to be bewildered. "How long have you known how to drop items into the story?"

"Since last week," I answered as soon as his question came out from his mouth. "I thought this would be a good thing. I could change Legolas' character; make him the way I want him to act. Besides, he wasn't always in the present in the books; so, this case it might do him some good to be in the present."

"You realize you're changing the very fate of the story. You're changing the way people are going to look at the books. You'll be sued for messing with the story. I'm going to be sued just for knowing you, Erita," exclaimed Nett, horrified from shock.

I had to calm him down. "Nett, relax for a while. No one needs to know it's us because as far as I'm concerned, the news anchors are claiming me as the 'mysterious trickster'. I could use that to my advantage. Meantime, you can make the character Arwen do whatever you please." He stared stunned at me, like I had revealed one of his most precious secrets.

Immediately, he snapped at me. "How did you know I like Arwen?"

I chuckled happily at this question, telling him at once, "You told me early on in high school. I guess we both like the Elves from The Lord of the Rings trilogy."

"One can only hope," said Nett in a calmer tone. He paused, and then asked, "So, what else did you do to the four hobbits? Surely, you messed around with their personalities."

"All I've been doing is dropping various items and altering a few details, but I haven't really..."

He interrupted me, giving me his thoughts and suggestions as if he had been asked, "Erita, if you want to mess up a storyline, you start out small and then go big, before the press ruins your reputation. We can't always have the last two books on us; so one of us will have to convince our friends to take your copies of The Two Towers and The Return of the King. It's the only way we won't get caught. I'll only ask you, Erita, if you know what you are doing."

"I hope so. Besides, I don't know how to mess up a good storyline. The Fellowship of the Ring is very linear, while the other two... are broad and have a lot of stories in three books," I said hesitantly.

"That's why I suggest we ask our friends and siblings to take your copies of The Two Towers and The Return of the King. Besides, I want to mess with the four hobbits' characters, long before they reach Bree and Tom Bombadil," said Nett in excitement.

Although I was very surprised with his reaction, I told him, "I've already put several of my objects into the book."

"Well, did you ever trying shaking them out of the book?" asked Nett at random.

Immediately, I told him, "No, I never thought of that."

"Well then, let's try it. Shall we?" he asked, as he moved the book out towards the center of the room.

As he shook the book, all except four items fell onto the carpeted floor: my collectible gold plates and ceramic tiles were damaged beyond repair; the fake One Ring was still intact; the grey mop bucket and silver cooking pot had dents on the bottom; the gold dinner fork shattered like glass as it crashed on the floor; the white rabbit's foot and the four-leaf clover were nearly destroyed; a small crate was empty and split in four jagged pieces; the horseshoe was rustic and worn with age; and miraculously, the cymbals I didn't have appeared out of the golden-brown dust, but they no longer could carry a tune because of overuse. The pencil followed after the cymbals, nearly scratched up and dulled to the point where I couldn't write with it anymore.

Nett shook the book again, causing a small, plastic screen door to land on the floor, shattering in so many pieces that I found was impossible to repair. As far as I knew and from what I told Nett a few moments later, the decoy duck call, dream catcher, and yo-yo were still missing. Nett guessed the same as I did: those three objects were still in the book, probably with the four hobbits and kept in a safe place, should anything like this happen. My earthquakes must have startled them enough to keep a few items hidden from the reader's eyes - let alone my own.

*.*.*

After he handed the book back to me, Nett told me we would go over Chapter 7 to see if we could mess up what the four hobbits said or did, including switching around their personalities. We both knew we would be in major trouble for screwing up the small and large details in the book. I was just lucky nearly all my lost objects had returned.

My only problem now, as Nett surprisingly encouraged me not to worry so much, was my black cat Mr. Cuddle-Muffin, who I had now learned had mysteriously gone missing in the book. Why hadn't my cat fallen out of the book like my objects had? This was very strange, yet at the same time I knew my black cat wouldn't stay in the book trilogy's world, Middle-earth, forever. There had to be a way to get him out of the books and back to the real world. I only needed to search around until I found the answer.

The only question that remained was how would I accomplish this, even after Nett decided to help me with my new round of schemes? Our meddling with The Fellowship of the Ring book had only scratched the surface. Now, things were about to get interesting, and still no one else knew who I or Nett was or what we were about to do.

However, the character Frodo Baggins was growing suspicious about my actions and who I was. I knew tomorrow Nett and I were about to throw Frodo off-guard, but would he leave me alone once he learned I had an accomplice? Even I didn't have the answer to this question yet, but I was growing as wary as the Ring-bearer, hero, and protagonist in The Fellowship of the Ring book.