Chapter 3

The next day, Cloe's mum dropped her and her sister off at school early because she had a 'thing' at work that she just HAD to be early for. She said that if they didn't want to walk to school and end up with a heart attack at the hospital, they had better hurry up and get in the car. She seemed to be a bit pissed off about having to be early herself.

When she dropped them off, Cloe and Claire, as usual, went their own separate ways, to their own separate classes with their own separate friends and you get the idea.
"Hey, you're early today. What's up?" Emily said as she ran up the stairs to Cloe.

"Not much, my mum had a 'thing' at work that she had to be early for, she even threatened us with heart attack issues to get us to hurry up," Cloe said as she paused for Emily to catch up to her.

"Oh," said Emily with a little giggle.

Just before they went into the ninth grade corridor, Emily grabbed the day's issue of The Chronicle, the paper student journalists report on regional events in.

"Oh my god!" said Emily as she stared at the front page in disbelief.

"What?" said Cloe as she stopped and looked at the page.

"They found a seven-hundred year old cave like thing in Alaska that people used to live in," said Emily pointing at the article. "And look at these symbols on the walls,"

"Oh my god, aren't those…" Cloe started, looking down at the picture.

Emily pulled Cloe in a corner so that nobody would overhear them.

"When I'm bored, I start drawing the same symbols. Its like my body just does it, I don't know why, I don't even…" Cloe interrupted her, "…know what they mean…" her voice faded away with a slight look of fear and disbelief.

"Yeah, you do it too?" said Emily as she looked up at Cloe.

"Sometimes,"

"Archeologists and scientists are unsure of the origins of the strange language, but are completely sure that whatever it was that drew these symbols, they weren't from around this part of the world. 'It may seem bizarre, but the reason this theory has been put into consideration is due to the fact that the substance used to make those symbols is unknown to man.' says Dr. Alexander Novato, the head of the Archeological Team of Nebraska." Emily read.

"Do you realize what this means?" Emily said looking up at Cloe.

"It means…" Cloe paused for a brief moment. "We could be from a completely different race, let alone planet!"

They looked at each other for a moment, then the bell rang.

"Oh no, we're late," said Cloe as they hurried down the corridor to their class.

When they reached their class, Kyle wasn't there. He hadn't shown up that day and neither Cloe nor Emily knew why.

Cloe's mind was flooding with questions.

She didn't understand. How could she be from a different planet? She's human, she has human DNA, she even LOOKED human! She was born here, on earth. It was just impossible. If that cave was seven-hundred years old, it could mean that people like her were around over a thousand years ago! But they had only been found out about twenty years ago, had they been hiding it all this time? How did the humans find out? She was so confused by it all. She had started to get a headache from it; she just didn't want to think about it. She decided to just forget about it and try and concentrate on her work.

At lunch, both Emily and Cloe tried to avoid the subject as they didn't quite understand it all and they didn't like thinking about it.

"Its best we try not to bring up that article thing at school, let's wait till after school, then we can try and figure out this whole thing," Cloe suggested.

"Yeah, never know who's eavesdropping," Emily said drinking her coke.

"Hey, you know why Kyle's not at school today?" Cloe asked.

"Nope, it's quite unusual of him not to say anything about it," Emily said.

"Yeah, wonder if he'll be at the clearing with Simon later today," said Cloe.

The day went by pretty quick, as usual. Cloe and Emily didn't have much trouble keeping normal through the day, even though the only thing they could think about was that article.

By the end of the day, Cloe and Emily were pretty frustrated. They had to sit through four different classes in which they just sat about and did nothing, and they had done three different kinds of AMS tests, which was against the school policy of ONE a day and only THREE a week. All they wanted to do was go home and collapse on their beds, so they could take a nice long NAP. Although they both thought it was quite stupid and babyish to take naps, but they were pretty tired and down from the day's work.

"Oh man, I just wanna go home and sleep," Cloe said tiredly.

"Join the club," Emily answered.

"I INVENTED the club," Cloe said sarcastically.

"Well, we HAVE to figure out what's going on here, I mean it DOES have a lot to do with us!" Emily said.

"Yeah, I guess your right. Lets just go on down to the stupid lab then," said Cloe as she went down the steps out side the school administration.

"Maybe the guys are already there,"

"Yeah, but if they're not, I'm outta there," said Cloe.

"Fair enough,"

When they reached the old lab, there was no sign of Kyle or Simon, they decided to stay for a few minutes just to make sure they weren't late, but they never showed so, they went home.

"Well, there doesn't seem to be any sign of them, so I guess I'll be going then. How 'bout you?" said Cloe as she picked her backpack of the ground by a tree.

"Yeah, me too, I'm just going to go home and finish of my homework then study for a bit," said Emily gathering her stuff too.

"Yup, me too, see ya on Sunday then I guess," said Cloe.

"Yup, okay," said Emily as she walked off towards her house. "Bye!"

"Bye," said Cloe smiling.

When Cloe got home, she was tired and had a lot of studying to do as the mid-term exams were coming up soon, and her teachers weren't being nice with the homework. Instead of reducing their homework, Cloe's teachers increased it. They said that the more homework they gave out during these two weeks, the more the students would practice the material meaning they would be doing better. But what they didn't know was that by telling their students about this, they were in fact encouraging them to NOT study. The students thought that because their homework only doubled the amount of study and that it was practically the same thing, they wouldn't have to study, so they just did their homework like good little children.

"Mum, I'm home!" Cloe called as she stomped up the stairs.

"Why are you home so early honey?" said her mum as she walked up to the foot of the stairs.

"Oh, I was really tired, didn't want to hang about the lab, so I came home," said Cloe as she went into her room.

"Alright then," said her mum, going back into the kitchen.

Cloe shut her door and collapsed on her bed. Noel trotted from under the sofa and climbed up onto the bed and settled down beside her.

"Hi Noelly," said Cloe as she petted the little fur ball on it's soft little head. "How has my little kitty been today? Good?"

Noel gave a meow in response.

Cloe was too tired and frustrated to do her homework or even think, so she turned on her laptop and finished off the HTML coding for the front page of her website while she listened to her Ipod.

"Cloe," said her mum as she walked in. "Common down, dinner's ready,"

"Okay mum, just a sec," said Cloe as she shut the laptop.

"Common Noelly, lets get you something to eat too shall we?" she said as she picked up Noel of the bed and went downstairs to the kitchen.

After Cloe had finished her dinner, she went up to her room and did all of her homework and studying for the day. When she was done, she got ready for bed, did a little prayer and went to sleep.