Hello lovely readers! Guess what? I actually proofread this chapter! Impressive, right? XD I'm sorry for keeping you all hanging for almost two weeks! That was kind of mean, I'll admit, but I had company and then I started school and then I caught a cold (I've been blowing my nose every five minutes today. Grrr) and in general... life caught up to me! But I promise you won't have to wait that long next time around. So, who's sick of school already? Show of hands? I'm not sick of school, exactly, but I am sick of the fact that I have almost all my classes with a group of girls who are always laughing about something or other, and I'll give them a weird look, and they stop, but start giggling again two seconds later. It has been driving me up the wall. In other news, I published a new story featuring our favorite Leo, so go to my profile if you want to check that out!
I'm really sorry that I never got around to responding to your reviews from last chapter in a PM, but I'll still thank you here! So thanks to Guest, Myseybee, another Guest, Mandi2341, and MidnightEevee for your wonderful feedback!
When I got to school on Monday, I was really tired, because last night I couldn't stay still in my bed long enough to fall asleep. I kept getting up and organizing a random pile of Smelly Gabe's car magazines, or getting a drink of water, or just pacing around in my room. Falling asleep is weird to me. You're just laying there waiting, and the next thing you know, it's morning?
Yeah. Weird.
For once, Jordan was actually there before me, and he had a huge smile and held up a paper bag. "See, I told you I'd remember it!" he said really loud, and I had to tell him to be quiet so no one would know about it. "Okay… see, I told you I'd remember it!" he said again, but whispering this time.
I took the bag from him and shoved it in my desk before the teacher saw it.
"Be careful with it!" Jordan said, still in his whisper voice. "Don't mess it up or it'll ruin the joke!"
"Don't worry," I told him. "I'm not gonna mess it up!"
"Percy and Jordan," the teacher said in the loud voice she has when she thinks we're too stupid to know how to follow the rules, "I think you should get to your seats and practice writing the cursive M."
We both went to our desks and started writing. I was bad at cursive, and it didn't help that I could hardly read it because of my dyslexia. Why would I learn how to write cursive if I'd never be able to read what I wrote?
It felt like the clock was dead, because it never changed, ever! I would listen to the teacher talk for a long time, but when I looked back at the clock, it was exactly the same as it was before. We had to do reading lessons, and a girl named Amanda picked me to read, and I had to stand up to do it, and it took me forever to sound the things out because the letters were even more floaty than usual.
But that was okay, because all morning I felt like a spy! Jordan would sometimes look at me and give me the "I have a secret" smile. I would give him the smile back and then I would go back to my work. A few minutes later I would look at him again. It was fun!
It took a bazillion years, but finally the bell rang for lunch. I grabbed the paper bag out of my desk and stuffed it in my sweatshirt pocket, then got my lunch box and headed to the lunchroom. Jordan had to stay back because he was last in line to get hand sanitizer, but then he ran to catch up with me.
"Hey, are you ready?" he asked, grabbing the bag and looking inside it.
"Don't give it away!" I told him. I took the bag back and rolled the top up.
"You know what to do, right?" he asked for the gazillionth time.
"Yeah, we said it a gazillion times when I was at your house," I reminded him.
"I know! Did you forget?"
I hit him. "Of course I didn't!"
He hit me back.
"Hey!" I complained.
"You hit me!"
"Because you thought I forgot!"
"I was just making sure!"
Jordan sighed and gave me a salute. "Good luck, friend!" he exclaimed and ran off to the cafeteria lunch line.
Since I had a sack lunch, I went and sat down by myself and secretly put what was in the paper bag into my lunch box. Then I ate a turkey sandwich. It was kind of disgusting and soggy, because it was right next to the ice pack that Mom put in to keep stuff cold. After that I ate my Doritos and wiped off the gross cheese dust on my pants.
Right after I got done wiping off the cheese dust, the mean kids came up to me. I could tell it was them without even looking, because one of them breathes really loud and it's annoying when we do silent reading, because it makes it even harder to focus.
"Hey, guys," I said, pretending to be calm like Jordan said to be.
"Do you have any food for us?" one of them asked.
"No," I said, and since Jordan told me I should make it obvious I was lying, I picked up my lunch box and moved it to the other side of me.
"You're lying," another one said, and reached out to grab it. I hugged it close to myself and tried to protect it, but they still managed to take it from me. They unzipped the top and looked in,
"Hey! Oreos! I love these things!" The one with the annoying breathing said, taking out a plastic bag full of Oreos.
"How many are there?" the one who said I lied asked. "Because I should get the most. I was the one who stole it from him."
"Give it to me!" the third one said, taking the bag and counting the cookies. "There are… um… six! That's enough for everyone to have…"
"To have two, stupid," the one with the annoying breathing interrupted. He opened the bag and took out two. The others did the same thing, and they all stuffed the cookies into their mouths, only to spit them out two seconds later.
"These aren't Oreos!" one of them yelled. They were half right. What Jordan and me did on Saturday was take six Oreo cookies, scrape out the frosting, and replace it with white toothpaste. If you made it look smooth enough, there was no way to tell the difference!
They all threw the rest of the cookies across the room, as far away from them as they could get. A teacher noticed and came over to yell at them.
They ended up going to the principal's office for inappropriate lunchroom behavior.
At recess, I told Jordan all about what happened, and by the end he was laughing so hard his face turned red.
"That's great! That's just perfect! And then they got in trouble for throwing food?"
I had to smile too. "Yeah, they did."
"That's the best prank I've ever done," he said in between huge gulps of breath. "If… if you ever write a book about your life, make sure you say that I was the one who thought that up!"
"I hate writing," I said. "I'm not going to write a book about my life."
"Fine, then if you get someone else to write a book about your life, then make sure my prank is in it."
"No one is going to write a book about my life!" I said. That was crazy. "Why would they write a book about my life? I'm not famous. I didn't save the world or anything."
"Ya never know, Percy, maybe you will some day."
"What, be famous or save the world?"
He shrugged. "Maybe both!"
I had to laugh. "I'm not that cool."
"Jordan?" a voice interrupted. It was the teacher on recess duty. "Your mom is waiting at the front office. She's ready to take you to your dentist appointment."
Jordan smacked himself on the forehead. "Sorry, I forgot to tell you I had a dentist appointment today. I'll see you tomorrow, right?"
"Yeah," I told him, and he ran inside.
Since Jordan was kind of my only friend, and he was gone, I started to pace around the edge of the playground, walking right up next to the fence. It was freezing, and my cheeks were almost numb from the cold, but I was smiling so hard I thought my face might break. The prank worked! Jordan was a genius. Not for the first time, I thought about how happy I was that I was his friend.
For a while I paced quietly, just thinking, but then I noticed someone on the other side of the fence. For some reason, I felt like they were watching me. Just to be sure, I slowly walked around to the opposite fence and looked over at the parking lot, where a guy in a black trench coat was leaning against a car. I couldn't see his eyes, because his hat covered them, but I still felt like he was looking at me.
I had to pretend that nothing was wrong. Maybe he was just someone's dad who liked to wear black clothes and big hats. I walked around the playground another time, and when I got back to the parking lot side, he was closer. Standing a few feet away from the fence, and this time I was sure he was looking at me. His head turned to the left when I passed him on the left.
No! I wanted to scream at him. Not now! I was actually happy about being at school for once, I even had a friend, why was this weird, scary stuff happening to me now?
I went over to a slide and slid down it a couple times, always watching the guy, who had now gone through the gate and was in the playground. A couple kids looked at him weird, but he ignored them, walking in the direction of the slide I was on. I panicked. I started running as fast as I could, but the guy had really long legs, and he was catching up to me easy. Then I tripped over my shoelace and fell face first on the ground.
When I rolled over, the creepy guy was standing right over me, and I finally saw his eyes.
My heart had been about to beat right out of my chest before, but when I saw his eyes, it froze. I could feel my chest kind of squeezing in a little. Because this guy didn't have two eyes like a normal person.
No… he had only one.
One giant, brown, bloodshot eye that felt like it was drilling into my head.
I should have gotten up and ran, but I couldn't move. I was stuck in one place, looking into that one terrible eye.
Everything felt real again when I heard angry voices. The teachers. They were standing next to the creepy one-eyed man and telling him something. I couldn't understand it at first, because my head was all fuzzy, but then I could make it out. They were telling him to go away. They said they were going to call the police if he didn't.
I had never been so thankful for a teacher in my whole life.
The guy did go away soon, and I thought I heard him growling. That was weird, but having one eye was even weirder. It was weirder than weird.
"Are you all right?" one of the teachers asked.
"Did he touch you?" the other one added.
I shook my head. "No, I'm fine, he didn't do anything to me."
"Did you know him?"
"No."
"He won't be coming back anytime soon, Percy. You're safe."
"Okay. But…" I stopped myself from saying what I was about to say. I really didn't want to talk about it.
"But what?" the teacher asked in what I call the hospital voice. Gentle and quiet, like you're talking to someone who's almost dead.
"He had only one eye," I said quietly.
"Are you sure?" the teacher asked, frowning.
I nodded. "I'm sure. It was huge and brown. It was the scariest thing ever."
"Percy, I think you must have been imagining that part. I understand. It's natural for your mind to invent scary things when you're already scared. But you're fine now." The teacher patted me on the shoulder and walked away, blowing the whistle to tell us recess was over.
She didn't believe me? But didn't she see it for herself? I didn't care if she didn't believe me. I just wanted to forget about it. I knew what I saw, though, and I saw that he had only one eye. Something weird was going on.
The rest of the day, I couldn't think at all. I was all jittery from what happened at recess, and I had even less focus than I usually did. I got in trouble for not following along in class three times, but I was too busy thinking about other things to care much.
That stupid one-eyed man. I couldn't get him out of my head. It had scared me, a lot. Why do you always forget the things you need to remember, but you always remember the things you want to forget?
The end of school was the best part of the day. When Mom's car pulled up, I didn't even look around. I just wanted to get away from school, away from the place where I saw the man.
"Percy, you seem jumpy today," Mom noticed. Mom notices everything.
I had to tell her. She was Mom. She would believe me that he had one eye. Maybe she could help me be not as scared, too. I blurted it all out with one breath. "I was on the playground today and I was walking around and then a guy with a black coat came and he followed me and I tried to ignore him but then I tripped and he caught up and I saw that he had only one eye! Mom, he had one eye, I'm serious! It was so scary I actually froze and I think I was going to die, but then the teachers came and they told him to go away and he did, but I'm still scared, Mom what should I do?"
Mom's face turned all pale and she gripped the steering wheel so hard her knuckles turned white. "Percy, you are not going back to that school. It's not safe." She said it so serious, but I was so happy to hear those words I almost started jumping up and down.
"So you believe me? That he had one eye? 'Cause no one else did."
"Yes, I believe you," she said softly.
I knew she would. She's the greatest person ever. I was still shaking a little, but I leaned back in my chair and sighed, because I was so relieved.
It wasn't until that night, when I was laying in bed, that I remembered. It hit me like a lightning bolt hits a tree.
What about Jordan?
So, did anyone see the Toothpaste Oreos coming? XD I am aware that I used improper grammar several times in this chapter, and I did that on purpose, because let's face it, no nine-year-old is going to have good grammar. The next chapter will mainly be focused around Jordan, and I think I'll have it done by Friday or Saturday! Don't hold me to it, though, that's just my guess. Thanks for reading! Don't die!
