2: Something Blue, Something Mysterious

He woke up five hours later and realized that the strange events of early morning must have been nothing but a dream. Smiling in the knowledge that he wasn't going mad, he got up and got ready for school. He was still convinced that he had dreamt the whole thing when he noticed his muddied shoes lying on his bedroom floor. Snapping out of his reverie, he realised that the events of five hours past had really happened, however improbable they may have seemed. He walked down the stairs in a daze, eating breakfast and leaving for school without really noticing what he was doing. It was only when a familiar, sweet-sounding voice cut into his thoughts on his way to school that he came back down to Earth.

"Will! Wait up!"

"Huh?" he turned around, seeing someone rushing towards him.

It was Ariel Jones, his best friend and the girl of his dreams. Not that she was aware of that last part of course. Ariel had mid-length brown hair tied in a pony-tail and blue eyes that twinkled with mischief. She was one of the few people Will actually trusted.

"Hey Ariel." he said smiling.

"Hey, you seemed totally zoned out just a second ago, what's up?"

"Oh," he realised that even Ariel would think he was insane if he told her what had happened. "Just… stuff."

"What kind of stuff?" she asked, persisting. "Good, bad, happy, sad, freaky, weird, boring?"

As she rolled off this list of possible emotions that were running through his head, he couldn't help but smile; her excitable, out-there personality was already brightening up his day.

"Uh, more the freaky weird category."

"Oooh, tell me more!"

"You'd think I was crazy."

She gave him the "are you serious" look.

"Come on, I'm the craziest person you know."

"Yeah, even so."

Will was struggling to find a competent excuse to maintain his appearance of sanity.

"Beans. Spill."

"Fine," he sighed. "Basically, I was trying to sleep when…"

They were walking in the school gate when he finished telling his insane story and Astrid's mouth was hanging open in awe.

"Radical!"

He was surprised.

"You don't… think I've lost my grip on reality then?"

She giggled.

"Oh, come on Will, you lost that the day you met me."

He smiled, she had a point.

"So I think the first place to start is finding this mysterious man, seeing as you didn't fare so well with the hooded creature last time."

"I'm sorry I ever doubted you." he laughed, making a note to himself to never try and keep anything from Astrid ever again. Aside from his unrequited adoration.

"It's okay, I get it, it does sound pretty crazy. So anyways, describe him to me again?"

At his point they had reached their respective lockers. Will glanced at the time, a minute to the bell.

"Recess?"

"You got it!" Ariel winked. "Your sanity is safe with me."

Will daydreamed through the morning, his daydreams switching from the strange events of early morning to his love for Ariel. Occasionally he would have to snap back to reality and participate in the class, but even then his mind was elsewhere. When the bell rang for recess, he was relieved to get out of the classroom. As he was walking out of the corridor to the other side of the school where his locker was situated, he spotted something out of the corner of his eye, something sitting across the road from the school, something blue and very out of place. As he turned around, there was a noise like the groaning of engines and when he focused on that space, the object was gone. Perplexed, he continued on to his locker. Opening his locker and taking out his recess, he shut his locker door again and turned around to be greeted by a very enthusiastic Ariel Jones.

"Come with me." she said determinedly, grabbing his arm and dragging him outside.

"Where. Are. We. Going?" he asked in-between breaths.

"Somewhere no one can overhear our conversation." she replied matter-of-factly.

She finally stopped behind the bike shed, pushing him against the wall and staring him in the face.

"Talk. Man. Describe."

"Um…."

There were so many places he wished this were going right now, but it wasn't, so he described the mysterious man who had saved his life as best he could from the two seconds he had laid eyes on him.

"He was tall, with… floppy hair?"

"Don't ask me, I didn't see him."

"Um, yeah his hair looked kinda floppy and he was…. oddly dressed."

"Oddly dressed how?"

"I don't really know, it's just the impression I got."

Ariel looked at him as if she expected more.

"Is that all?"

"Remember that this was about two seconds in the dark."

"Okay, I'll let you go."

Ariel released him, stepping back and taking her hands off his shoulders.

"Thank you." Will smiled, he couldn't help but be amused by her curiosity.

"So we really don't have much to work on then." Ariel said glumly.

"Not at all, although I did see something weird just before…."

"Weird! Good! What was it?" Ariel pushed him against the wall again.

"I may have been hallucinating." he replied weakly, trying to control his hormones, which were going mad at the fact that the girl he liked had him pushed against a wall and nothing in that sort of area was actually happening.

"I don't believe that for a second, the only time you ever hallucinated was when you ate that weird mushroom on school camp."

He winced. "Don't remind me."

"So, what do you think you saw?"

"Something blue that disappeared when I turned around to look at it."

"That's it?"

"Um, there was a weird noise?"

"Right, so you saw an oddly dressed man with floppy hair chasing a weird creature with an ear-piercing scream and something blue that disappears." Ariel said, noticing how insane the sentence sounded as she was saying it.

"Pretty much, still not got any lingering questions about my sanity?" Will replied, smiling grimly.

"Not at all, this is brilliant! Most interesting thing to happen in this neighbourhood since… well, since nothing interesting happened in this neighbourhood."

"Which is every single day up until today right?"

"Exactly."

Ariel grabbed Will's hand and pulled him close to her. This made Will confused and excited at the same time.

"Thank you, Will Chesterton, for bringing this fascinating matter to my attention."

"No problem." he replied quizzically, still not quite comprehending why she needed him at such close proximity.

This question was answered half a second later when she embraced him tightly, putting her head on his shoulder and whispering:

"Also, you're the best friend a girl could ask for."

With that, she kissed him on the cheek and let go of him. Still slightly startled, he rubbed his cheek, red-faced.

"Oh don't look like that, what did you think I was about to do?" Ariel said, laughing and punching his arm.

He started to speak, but stopped, getting too nervous to say what he had wanted to for the past three years.

"Anyways, I need to go to the office to pick something up, so I'll see you in English." she said rapidly, darting off with a little wave over her shoulder.

Will just stood there, half happy to have a friend like Ariel, half annoyed that he had wasted another opportunity to tell her how he felt.