Author's Note: I updated! Wowzer! I know it's later than I promised and blame my English teacher for that. She's a lovely lady, but a homework demon. Well, I was also a little lazy, but I was trying to update some of my other fics. Let's see...the narrator will change with every chapter, and next chapter will be Rachel, who I can hopefully write a little better than Cassie. This was my first time writing from Cassie's POV, so I don't know how good it was. And all questions about the plot will be answered in due time. You'll just have to wait. =P
Chronicle One
-Cassie-
My name is Cassie.
I've never thought of myself as someone special, and I guess I've never had any reason to. I'm not the kind of girl that stands out in a crowd; you know what I mean? I'm more the kind of girl that everybody gives strange looks to.
"Hey, Cassie! You look so dashing in bird poop!" I look up at Andy Brigham and his lackey Tap-Tap. They're two bullies that go to my school. Big guys who think that just because they're big guys they have the right to go and harass anybody they like. It's pretty sad, but with time, they should get over it. I hope.
"Yeah, I just love the way you've got it placed all over those ravishing overalls of yours." Tap-Tap said.
I was amazed at the fact that Tap-Tap knew words like ravishing, but I kept that little fact to myself. Instead I just shrugged and let them go on. At least they weren't shoving some poor kid's head down a toilet right now, right?
"What? You don't see the sheer beauty of your fashion sense?" Andy teased me. There was a look on his face I didn't like at all. Sure, Andy teased girls like there was no tomorrow, but he never laid a finger on them.
Not as far as I knew, anyway.
I picked up my backpack right about then. I knew that Andy and Tap-Tap were only insecure underneath it all, but that didn't mean I had to put up with their harassment. I walked over to another empty table across the room.
Andy and Tap-Tap, of course, followed me. I frowned at them and put my backpack down. This was enough.
"I'm going to get Mr. Chapman if you two don't cut it out." I told them. Both of them snickered, then burst out laughing.
"Oh no, not Mr. Chapman!" Andy gasped in mock horror. "Anyone but him! I mean, he'll give us detention!"
"No, not detention!" Tap-Tap mimed back. "I don't know if I can take that!" Then Andy smirked at me.
He placed a hand on my shoulder and leaned in closer until his face was almost pressed up against mine. I froze. I should have told him to knock it off, or even shoved him off of me, but my body had gone numb. I could not react.
"What would Mr. Chapman do for you?" Andy asked in a silken voice, a dangerous voice and he added a word I won't repeat.
Then I reacted. I know violence doesn't solve anything but Andy did deserve a good slap across the face.
As my hand smacked against Andy's flesh and the whole cafeteria turned to look, something weird happened.
Flash!
"You don't like black people, Mr. Davis?"
"No problem. I can turn white. Watch me." I said. Then I began changing into polar bear.
As Andy's eyes turned to ones filled with malice and hate, as the cafeteria gaped at and Mr. Chapman came running in to see what was going on, my mind was filled with one question.
When did that happen?
"You know our school does not tolerate such remarks, Andrew." Mr. Chapman replied in a sharp-as-pins voice.
Andy didn't even give Mr. Chapman a reply. He was too busy glaring at me to do something like that.
I guess Mister Chapman gave up after that. He'd been trying to get Andy to apologize to me for about a straight hour and a half, and the farthest he'd gotten was a muttered "Hell no."
Mister Chapman closed his eyes and took a deep, deep breath. "Mister Brigham, if you will not apologize to Miss Branch, then I suppose we'll have to use other tactics. Your counselor Mr. Amaranto will escort you to the detention hall for the rest of the day. Now, leave." Mr. Chapman and Andy stared each down.
Andy got up in a huff. His chair swiveled to the right and hit me on my arm on the way out, and Andy used that word again.
I thought Mr. Chapman could have incinerated the door with the look he had on his face as he started down Andy's path. After a moment, to my relief, Mr. Chapman's face relaxed a bit. He turned to look at me with regret written all over every line and crease of his face. "My apologies, Miss Branch, since Andy isn't a gentleman enough to do it himself."
I blinked, surprised. I know that most people aren't bigots, but Mr. Chapman's reaction surprised me. He was being very nice about what had happened. Almost too nice, I thought, but I brushed that away. There wasn't any reason for me to be paranoid. Mister Chapman was being a nice guy. "Thank you, Mister Chapman." I said.
My vice-principal gave me a kind smile. "Think nothing of it. I only wish Mr. Brigham had better manners."
I laughed. "I think that'll be a long time in coming, Mr. Chapman." Chapman laughed in return.
"I would say you're more than likely right, Cassie." He told me. Then he gave me a speculative look and put his hand on his chin.
"You know, Cassie, I must say I'm impressed." Mr. Chapman told me in a low, soft voice. Despite myself, I shivered.
"Impressed with what, Mr. Chapman?" I asked as I ignored the shivers running up my spine.
Mister Chapman shook his head. "You can call me Hedrick if you like, you know." He said, and added a wink.
"Just not out of the office, of course." He said. I swallowed hard. My mind was hammering, screaming at me.
Get out of there, get out of there, get out of there... But I fought it back and shook my head.
Mister Chapman was just trying to be friendly, I told myself. There wasn't anything more to it. Besides, I was his daughter's age!
Mr. Chapman, excuse me, Hedrick Chapman, went on talking. "I'm impressed you were strong enough to not take Andy's comments personally. I am impressed that you seem to realize that you're better than whatever an ignorant little boy will tell you, Cassie." Mister Chapman gave me a look of pride. "Who knows?" He mused.
"You might just be able to change Mr. Brigham's perspective." Chapman told me with a smile. I wished he would stop smiling.
"Do you really think so?" I asked, eager to leave the office. Mr. Chapman nodded with full confidence. "Yes, I do."
Then my vice-principal started rummaging in his desk for something. I waited for a moment, then I decided to take my chance and leave as quick as I could. Mister Chapman must have found what he was looking for, though, because he leapt after me. "Wait!" He cried out.
I turned back to look at him. All Mister Chapman had in his hands was a small, white card. "Take this." He gasped.
Against my better judgment I took it from my vice-principal's bony fingers. There was a look in his eyes at that moment that bothered me, even more than his behavior earlier. "What is it?" I asked.
"It's for the," Mr. Chapman groaned gripped his head. Then he sunk down to the floor. I jumped to my feet and ran over to him.
"Mr. Chapman! Are you okay?" I asked. There was a wild, crazed, horrified look in his eyes. It hurt to see.
In a mere moment, though, it faded away. Mr. Chapman looked up at me and smiled again like nothing was wrong.
"I'm fine, Cassie. Just a..." Mr. Chapman took a deep breath and picked himself up off the floor. "Just a migraine."
"You should go to a doctor for that." I said, knowing how stupid it sounded. A twisted smirk crossed Mr. Chapman's face.
"Yes." He said in a slow tone. "Perhaps I should go to a doctor." I nodded over and over, edging closer to the door.
"Oh, and you can leave now, of course. I apologize if I scared you, Cassie." Mr. Chapman said. "Don't forget to look at that card."
"I won't, Mr. Chapman!" I chirped. "Hedrick, Cassie." He reminded.
"Right. I won't forget the card, Hedrick." I said in haste and ran out that door like there was no tomorrow.
When I slipped into my seat during second-period French, I looked at the card Mister Chapman had given me. Nothing spectacular, just a plain white card and these words:
When I got home my parents were both there, for once. I'm not a latchkey kid; of course, it's just that both my parents are vets and they both clock long hours. My dad runs the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic, and my mom is a lead vet at the Gardens. I hope to follow in their footsteps someday. I love animals, and I clock some pretty long hours myself helping my dad take care of sick or injured animals in our barn. It's hard but I adore every minute of it. That might be part of why I don't wear fancy clothes from Ralph Lauren or the Gap. Not only would I ruin the clothes taking care of the animals, they just aren't my style anyway. A pair of overalls does it just fine for me. Even if they are, as Tap-Tap enunciated, decorated in ravishing bird poop. Back to my parents, I love them. I'd say I'm a pretty lucky kid as far as my parents are concerned. Unlike a lot of kids I know, they trust me and they've never laid a hand or my head or yelled at me when I didn't deserve it. That makes me a heck of a lot luckier than most people are in the world and I don't know what I'd do without my parents. To be honest, I don't want to find out.
"Hello, pumpkin." My dad said as I walked in. "How was your day?"
"Okay, I guess." I told him. "I passed my French test and I sent a bully to detention. That's not too bad, is it?"
"What's this about a bully?" I heard my mom asking from somewhere deep within the bowels of the kitchen.
A second later she was in the living room with dad and me, frowning. Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned Andy.
"He's a boy in my grade who likes to pick on kids. Give them swirlies, call them names. It wasn't anything big." I said.
But Mom used those eyes on me. I'm sure you all know the kind I'm talking about. The kind of eyes that bore right through you until every last detail is revealed. Those eyes that uncover your failing grade, the vase you broke, your crush, and everything you've ever wanted to keep hidden. She used those eyes on me.
"What did he do to you, Cassie?" My mother asked. I wilted under those eyes. So I told her what Andy had said.
I could see and feel their reaction. Their anger was almost tangible. "Don't worry." I said. "He got in trouble for it."
"He better have." My dad growled. Mom's frown stayed on her face. "You do realize that boy's only a jerk, right?"
Yes, I knew that. I nodded back. I knew that very well. Andy hadn't bothered me that much, I knew he was just an ignorant high-school kid. The person that was weighing on my conscious was Mister Chapman, whom by some miracle, Mom's eyes hadn't caused me to talk about. But, I assured myself; he was just a nice guy trying to be friend with his students. A nice guy who had migraines. That was it.
"Well," My mother said a moment later. "Do you want to help me and your dad with dinner?"
I shook my head in regret. "Can't." I said. "I've got French homework and an Algebra test."
"That's a pity." Dad said. "You know what your mother's cooking is like." Mom gave him a playful tap on the arm.
"I was only kidding!" Dad protested. I laughed and went to my room. But first, there was something I wanted to know.
"Have you guys ever heard of The Sharing?" I asked my parents. They both looked at me with blank faces.
"I don't think so, pumpkin." Dad told me. Mom put a finger to her lips and thought a moment. "Isn't it that new Boys and Girls club?"
"You know, I think you're right." Dad said. "Why, honey, you want to join?" My dad asked me.
"No, I just heard about it from someone at school." I whispered and headed up to my room to work on my homework as my parents made dinner. I would worry about Hedrick Chapman another day.
School the next day was interesting to say the least.
First I got Andy coming up to me and apologizing for everything he'd said. It wasn't like him at all; he was being nice and courteous to everybody, not just me. I'd heard that he'd gone around school apologizing to every kid he'd ever made fun or beaten up in his long academic career. I can't say the change was a bad one, but it was creepy. Maybe he'd undergone some sort of deep spiritual transformation in the last twenty-four hours. That theory seemed as possible as anything anyone else was coming up with.
I bumped into Mr. Chapman fifty or so times that day as well. The first time he'd asked me if I knew where The Sharing was, then his second question was if I could come to the next meeting on Tuesday night. Mr. Chapman assured me it would be the biggest event of my entire social life. I would love it. Lucky me that I had plans with my parents on Tuesday. I was thinking about going to one of the counselors about Mr. Chapman's behavior. Or maybe his daughter Melissa. I sort of knew her from French, after all, and if he was hanging around me all the time, then what about his daughter? Call me paranoid if you want but Mr. Chapman was worrying me. The fact that I couldn't sleep the night before because I couldn't stop thinking about what had happened proved that.
I was in Algebra when it happened. I was listening to my teacher droning on and on about reciprocals divided by the tenth power or something like that. I confess I may get passing grades in it, but Algebra is not my top subject. That could have something to do with the fact that my teacher is as exciting as drying paint, but that's not his fault. He wasn't teaching the most exciting subject on the planet, after all.
"So then you take the exponent and divide it by the denominator." Mr. Luke, my Algebra teacher, said.
I heard some boy in the back of the class snort. "Divide the exponent by the denominator?" He asked unbelieving.
"It sounds like instructions to make a fricking alien spaceship." One of the boy's friends added. His friends laughed.
"Well, yeah, but it's not like we'd ever get any aliens here." Another guy in the room commented.
Mr. Luke turned around to look at the whole class. "You can discuss the existence of extraterrestrial life in our town on your own time, kids, but this Algebra time." He said in a clipped voice.
In the back of the class I heard a girl say "Woohoo."
About thirty-five minutes later Mr. Luke had ended his riveting lecture on whatever it was we'd been learning.
I started to wonder about Mr. Chapman again, which seemed to be a disturbing habit now. I felt that I should talk to someone about his odd behavior, but who? The counselors were my best bet but I didn't want to arise a lot of suspicion over what could be nothing. So whom else could I choose from, then? There was Melissa Chapman.
Maybe she knew what was up with her dad. It would be the safer route to go.
"I'm telling you it's aliens!" I looked over to see half my class debating. Mr. Luke was back at his desk tuning us out.
"You are so full of crap!" I heard a girl shout. "Aliens don't exist, and if they did, why would they come here?"
"Yeah, why would they come to sunny California?" Mused a guy in the midst of the debaters.
"To take over our brains." Said one football player (he was wearing his letter jacket) with a disturbing grin.
"Yeah right." Said another girl, who rolled her eyes. "Anyway, you should just ask the aliens yourself."
"How?" Asked the football player. The girl shrugged. "Go to the construction site. You know that weird 'firework incident' last night on the news? I bet you it's really aliens." The girl said with a flourish.
"Aliens in the construction site? What a load of bullcrap." The football player muttered.
Flash!
"It's a flying saucer!" I shouted.
"A flying saucer?" Marco laughed, but then he looked up.
"It's coming this way." Rachel said.
"It's hard to be sure." Jake's voice wasn't far above a whisper.
"No," Rachel protested. "It's coming this way."
Rachel was right. It was coming this way, and it was coming slower. Almost like it was going to crash.
I could see it better now. It wasn't very big, about the size of a school bus. The front end was a pod. It looked sort of like an egg with a long, narrow shaft sticking out of it. There were winglike things with long tubes that glowed bright blue on the end of them. All in all, it was really a cute ship. Except for the tail thing at the end.
"That tail thing," Jake said. "It looks like a weapon." I agreed. That thing had to be a weapon.
"Definitely." Marco said, agreeing with Jake. The ship kept coming closer and closer to us, slower and slower.
"It's stopping." Rachel said with a voice that I almost could not tell was my best friend's. I could tell that she couldn't believe any of this. I was having a hard time accepting it myself.
"I think it sees us." Marco said. "Should we run? Maybe we should run home and get a camera. Do you know how much money we could get for a video of a real UFO?"
"If we run, they might...I don't know, zap us with phasers on full power." Jake joked. Or tried to. He didn't sound very amused.
Marco rolled his eyes. "Phasers are only on Star Trek." He said. He was trying to make this seem normal, too.
The ship stopped and hovered about a hundred feet above our heads. Everybody's hair but mine was going in wild directions from the static electricity the ship was giving off.
"What do you think it is?" Marco asked. I could hear the panic in his voice clear as day.
Tobias was grinning and smiling, just like his father had come home from work. "It's going to land." He said.
I felt like running right around then, but I knew I had to stay. I can't explain why, but I knew I couldn't leave.
As the ship began to settle among junk and tumbled walls, I noticed burn marks down the ship. What happened?
Everyone's hair settled back to normal. "It isn't very big, is it?" Rachel whispered.
"It's about three or four times as big as our minivan." Jake said.
"We should tell someone." Marco said. "I mean, this is kind of major, you know? Spaceships don't just land in the construction site every day. We should call the cops or the army or the president or something. We'd be totally famous. We'd get to be on Letterman for sure." I was sure Marco wasn't kidding, and it wasn't a bad idea, but I think he knew as well as I did, as we all did, that we could not leave. We could not leave the construction site now.
"Yeah, you're right." Jake agreed. "We should call someone." None of us made a move.
"I wonder if we should try and talk to it." Rachel suggested. "I mean, we should communicate. If that's even possible."
Rachel was right and strange as it sounds, I kind of wanted to communicate with whatever was in there, if only to see if they wanted to be peaceful or kill us. Tobias nodded in agreement to what Rachel had said and stepped forward to the ships, palms open. Trying to show he didn't have a weapon of any kind. "It's safe. We won't hurt you."
I know.
I froze. I knew I had heard someone speak. But how? From where? I looked at Jake. Under normal circumstances, I would have been thrilled that he was looking into my eyes. These were not normal circumstances. Rachel was looking all around her trying to find the source of whatever that voice was.
"Did everyone hear that?" Tobias whispered. We all nodded in unison in slow, reluctant agreement.
"Can you come out?" Tobias asked whatever was inside of the ship.
Yes. The voice answered. Do not be frightened.
"We won't be frightened." Tobias assured it.
Jake chose to crack a joke then. "Speak for yourself." He muttered. We all laughed nervous, scared laughter.
A thin arc of light, a doorway, appeared from the smooth side of the pod part of the ship. The opening grew from a crescent shape to a full bright circle. Then he appeared.
My last memory was of everything fading out before I hit the floor.
I opened my eyes and everything looked very fuzzy. Where was I?
"She's waking up!" I heard someone shout. Their voice sounded familiar but I didn't belong to anyone I recall.
"Thank you." I heard our nurse say. "Cassie, how are you feeling?" She asked me.
"I'm fine, thank you." I said, blinking my eyes until they refused to adjusted. "What happened?"
"You fainted in Mr. Luke's class and you also took a good bop to the noggin." The nurse told me.
"I've called your parents and they should be coming to pick you up soon." She added. I nodded to show her I understood, and she left me in a bed. I heard footsteps and I saw a girl. Five-foot-eight with perfect skin and perfect blonde hair, piercing blue eyes, and impeccable fashion sense. A girl who had been my best friend in that strange memory.
Rachel Berenson.
To My Reviewers:
Puar Briefs - I'm glad you liked the last line. It was my favorite part of that chapter, too. I loved Lackofa! And Aguella! I like Solo Cassie books, too. This one won't be a strict Cassie-only fic, though. It's more like a Megamorphs, I'd say. Still, Cassie's the big figure in all this. Go Cassie. I dunno about Erek yet. I'll try to think of a way!
Minual - Glad you likey, now come ready. =P
Heartsyhawk - I did update! See? And within a logical timeframe! Now you have to read more.
Oedipal Kat - I hope this fic turns out interesting. I'm debating the C/J thing (a friend jokingly dared me not to write it in), but more than likely, this will be C/J. And as for Ronnie? **conjures up a Mary-Sue to screw Ronnie** That'll keep him happy.
Angelofcloud9 - I'm glad you like this, especially since I really like your fic. Wow, you like my writing style? I think you're the first person to ever tell me that. l shall write more!
JCtigerwolf4e - I'm glad you liked it! See? There's more now. I hope you like the rest.
Chaos - Yep, the Ellimist got the smack across the head he deserves. I updated soonish, does that count? And I hope you liked this new chapter just as much!
Julie - You think changing narrators is a good idea? **sighs in relief** That's good. And yeah, the Ellimist is irritating. He's hard to write for. Of course, he will show up again, though not until the second part of this fic a long, long time away.
Alikat - Something tells me you better like this story! =) j/k.
Zaron of the Red Moon - Wow, compliments. I'm...um...not sure how to respond. Gah. ** author flounders and tries to look smart and cohesive. Fails. Horribly.** I'm really glad you think it was so wonderful, though, all joking aside.