March 15, 1999



My name is David Hunting, and my life bites.



In my fourteen years of life, I've had over twenty schools. I've played the new kid shtick enough times for me to get tired of it. My father works for the National Security Agency. The NSA handles 80% of the intelligence workload and is five times bigger than CIA. They move him around a lot. By the time I was six, whenever my dad said it was time to move, I always thought "so what?"



Except that last time, my father promised it was the last time, since I was starting High School and all.



We stayed a long time. Well, nine months is a long time to me to say in one place. I started actually building a life. I had friends. Colleagues. A Girlfriend.



But Dad broke his word. And I had to abandon it all. My friends. My colleagues.



Stephanie.



So this time, I was especially pissy with the whole new kid routine. I couldn't give a damn about this town. California. Sure, it sounds nice. It didn't change the fact it was in the middle of fucking New Jersey, the shittest state in the country.



So there you have it. I was already in a bad mood, and to top it all off, I woke up late for school. It was Monday. My first day at school. My father and mother were already gone. Dad to his work. Mom, to her job at a day-care. I got dressed in a hurry, grabbed a breakfast bar, and left home. Fuck, I was going to be late. It was quite a ways to my new high school. I had to cross the fucking mall, which I didn't look forward to. Unless, I could cut through that construction site across the street.



The site was quiet as if it had no workers. Of course, it was early, maybe they didn't come till later. I walked in expecting someone to yell at me to get out of here, but the whole place was like a fucking ghost town. Big piles of rusted steel beams. Pyramids of concrete pipes. Deep pits filled with black, muddy water. A pile of gravel. Rocks the size of fucking Reese's cups.



As I walked through the site I picked one up and threw it. It hit a concrete block with a nice chaotic THWONK! I threw a few more and my aim improved. I managed to hit the block three times in the same spot before it fucking crumpled. Weird. That shit is usually pretty strong.



That's when I saw it. A small box nestled down inside the concrete block I shattered. Sky-blue. Very plain. Small. Maybe five inches by five inches by five inches, and yet something about it was drawing me to it. I picked up the box, which felt heavy for its size. It had some strange writing on it. It wasn't the Latin A to Z or any variation of it. It wasn't Greek, or Arabic, and it didn't look like any of the multitudes of Asian characters, which all looked the same to me, but I knew they were different. Still, it looked valuable. So I hung onto it.



I managed to get to school on time. The warning bell hadn't even rung yet. I got my schedule, my locker number and combo, and a map of the building without any hassle. At least this school's help was helpful. Things were finally going my way. All I had to do was get to my locker and then to my homeroom, without getting harassed by some over-friendly geek, and I would be fine.



"Yo!" someone shouted. Fuck.



"What?" I asked him rudely on purpose. He was shorter than me. He had short dark brown hair. He looked as if he was part Hispanic. Don't get me wrong, I ain't no racist. It's just I notice things like that. I didn't have a problem with him being Hispanic. I did have a problem with him bothering me while I was trying to find my fucking locker. I was still holding the blue box, and I needed to stash it because there was no way in hell I was carrying that thing all day.



"Um . . . I don't know you, do I?" He said.



"I'm new." I replied.



"Ah," He replied, than took a few seconds to process the information. What, was this guy an idiot? "So. My name is Marco."



"I'm David."



"David! Okay. Good name." Said Marco, who was definitely an idiot. Fuck this, I didn't have time for this crap.



"Later." I said as I walked away from him.



But then he started following me. "Hey, David! What's that blue thing?"



I turned back to look at him. "I don't know. I found it. It was in that construction site over across from the mall. In a hole in a wall. Inside the cement block. Like it had been put in there or something."



"Yeah?"



"Yeah. It's weird. I mean, it feels like it must be something, you know? Like it's not just a plain old box. It has some writing on it. Like it might be foreign, or something."



BRRRRRRIIIIIINNNNNNNGGGGGGG!



The warning bell rang and the jumpy motherfucker leaped about two feet in the air.



"Hey can I have it?" He asked. "I mean, it looks cool and all. I can pay you. I could pay you a dollar and thirty-two cents." Was he fucking kidding me? I looked at the change he had pulled out of his pocket. Apparently, he decided to include an old peppermint Life Saver to sweeten the deal.



"Marco, huh?"



"Yeah. I'm Marco. Nice to meet you."



"Even nicer to say goodbye."



I walked away. What an idiot! Still, he seemed pretty interested in the box. Maybe, I should sell it.





That night, Dad was going to take us all out to dinner, but I told him I didn't feel up to it. I stayed home. I decided to take a swim in our pool. It was chilly out, but the pool was heated, so it was all good. I started swimming back and forth just thinking about shit.



I used to live in southern Georgia. Down there, you can swim in an unheated pool in the middle of March.



I thought about Stephanie, or Steph as I called her. She was beautiful. A little shorter than me. Long beautiful blonde hair. Beautiful green eyes. Perfect. She was the real definition of a Georgia Peach. She was more than just a pretty face. I met many girls as beautiful as she, but a lot of them were stupid, or bitchy, or both. Steph was smart, with a great personality, and she could handle all my moodiness, which I admit, can be grating at times. She was also klutzy, which I found amusing.



I remember when I met her. We were at a pool party. Friend of a friend type deal. My best bud Jason introduced us. Now, I don't usually believe in all that Love-at-First-Sight shit, but God, when I first saw her, I knew I wanted her. It wasn't her boobs or her ass or her legs. I mean, all of those where great too, but I wasn't a total horndog. Those weren't what caused me to fall in love with her.



It was her smile. A wonderful, inviting, it's-okay-everything-will-be-fine smile. And her eyes. Beautiful green eyes.



We had some good times. The party right before school started when I asked her out. The Autumn Fair when I first kissed her. The Megadeth Halloween concert when we first told each other "I love you."



Yeah, I know. I'm only fourteen, and personally, I'm not exactly the mushy type. But, hey, when you're in love, you're in love.



Our first Christmas. Our only Christmas. She gave me a kitten. I named him Megadeth.



Boy, that little kitten got into everything. Real feisty. And while he was still little, I had to be real sure to keep him away from my pet cobra, Spawn. Good thing cats grow fast. By February, Megadeth had outgrown Spawn's preferred snack size.



God, I missed her. The day I told her I had to leave was probably the worst day of my whole fucking life. Those beautiful green eyes had tears, and not the good kind. She gave me her phone number, address, and about six different e-mail addresses before I left. I was to contact her whenever I could. As soon as possible. It had been four days since I last saw her. I should call her. E-mail her at least.



I got out of the pool, intending to e-mail Steph, but then I heard the sound of glass breaking. I looked at my window. Fuck! Somebody broke my window! I wrapped my towel around my waist and hauled ass to the house and to my room.



I slammed open my door. There I saw Megadeth, whose been a fully grown, very huge cat since the beginning of March, leaping into my window curtains, shrieking. I soon saw why. There were two big fucking birds in my room.



"Whoa!" I said, not expecting two huge-ass birds to break into my home. One looked kind of like a hawk. The other was definitely a Bald Eagle. You don't have a Dad who works for the government, and not be able to recognize the symbol of your country. The Eagle started to tear up my bed. The hawk made a grab for the blue box.



My box! I went to my dresser drawer and took out my BB gun. I shot the hawk a few times, but it was still managing to drag my box out my door. Now, I was furious. Whoever thought they could steal my box with trained birds, was sadly mistaken. I just keep shooting my BB gun, and shouting "Give me back my box!" Granted, it probably wasn't the best solution to shout and shoot at two birds, one of which I knew to be a threatened species, but like I said, I was moody.



I chased them to the downstairs sliding glass door. The floor was still slippery from when I ran in, dripping wet. While the eagle managed to get it open, I rushed the hawk who flew away frightened. Both birds flew out the open door.



"Yeah! And don't come back, either!" I yelled while shooting off a final BB for good measure.



I picked up the blue box. It was now crystal clear that whatever I had, it was valuable. Well, if the bird-man wanted it so bad, he can bid for it on eBay, like everyone else.



God bless the Internet.