First day of school in a new town. Math class, period three.
I just walked into this class, and I'm already bored. The bleariness of first and second block has worn off, and boredom has set in. I didn't get a lot of sleep last night, so my thinking is still a little fuzzy, but now that I'm at least somewhat awake, it's really sinking in that I'm going to be here for five more bland hours before I can leave.
And tomorrow will be the same.
Ugh.
I walk with defeated strides over to one of the corners of the classroom (front left, to be specific), take off my backpack, and sit down, twiddling with my thumbs. Maybe I should take out my botanical notebook, or my architectural sketchbook. Those have always been comforting. I pull my botanical notebook out and flip through it, wondering if there's a plant that can make me invisible.
The nature of plants has always been interesting to me, considering my… condition.
It's also the reason I don't want to get close to anybody. I feel like a freak.
Luckily, it's my first day at a new school, and I don't know anyone, so I'm nailing the 'being alone' thing. I don't like the solitude, and the loneliness is really getting to me, but I'm a lot better off without other people and the world is probably better off without me, too.
A girl and a boy, who I gather are siblings, walk through the door, somehow appearing to be enthusiastic about their first day of high school. They are accompanied by someone else who I assume is their friend. All three of them were in my past two classes, and I didn't pay much attention to them because I was too busy fighting to stay awake.
As they walk closer, I notice that the siblings have differing eye colors. The girl has one eye that is blue and her other is brown. Her brother has the same thing, except his left eye is green.
Huh. That's pretty cool, I guess. I realize that I'm staring, and I examine some of my drawings and notes on invasive species in New England that I studied over the summer.
I turn back to the entries on native flora, because the term "invasive species" is how I would describe myself in relationship to the human race.
They scan the room, and start coming towards my corner of the room.
They come close enough for me to catch their conversation, but that doesn't have to be really near, considering the girl's voice carries quite well. The girl asks her brother, "Hey Theo, what do you think we could do in this class?"
He replies, "Well, according to the polls I sent out to the student body, this teacher does absolutely nothing. So we could do basically anything."
"Hmm. Alright then, let's see what we have to work with," she muses.
They come over to my corner, and I look away, hoping they'll leave. Last thing I need is open, friendly people reaching out to me.
I stare out the window, pretending to be lost in the well-forested and radiant fall landscape outside, but I feel a shadow creeping up to me. I hear the same voice from earlier, now much softer, gently ask, "Hey, do you mind if we sit here?"
"Oh! Um, sure," I say, not wanting to be rude. I felt uncomfortable even with the small interaction, and it bothered me to think about how I've basically forgotten how to talk to people properly after being a loner for all of middle school.
The girl sat to my right, with her brother behind her and their friend to her right.
People continued trickling in, and the girl resumed talking with her brother, pulling some blueprints out of her bag, as he did likewise.
How did they fit those huge blueprints into their bags? I wonder. Well, it's not like I'm interested in them. Until my eye catches what's on the blueprints.
It was a completed building design, and to an architecture geek like me, it was genius. It seemed to be some kind of art or history museum, but not like anything I'd seen before. Where on Earth did they get their hands on those blueprints? I refused to believe they made that.
The girl looks them over, and seems pleased. "Theo, while I love this iteration of the original design, there's a measurement issue here." She taps the blueprint lightly. "We'll check again later, but we won't be able to execute that until we look it over again."
Wait. Does that mean that these kids intend to build that? I thought they were ambitious with the design, but actually creating it would be insanity. The best kind of insanity.
The bell rings with a soft and surprisingly pleasant ding, ding, ding. Which brings me to the fact that the teacher hadn't arrived, but nobody seemed concerned. Other than our little cluster in the front row, the rest of the class was in the back of the room, chatting among themselves.
"Well, that's my cue." The girl casually rolls up her brilliant plans and returns them to her bag, which is comfortably sized but still seems to be small for its contents.
She catches my eye as she notices me gawking at her, and says, "Oh, I didn't introduce myself! I'm Chelsea, my brother is Theo, and our friend is Cody."
Cody puts up his hand in greeting, and I feel like something is off, until it dawns on me that he has six fingers on each hand.
Huh. They're kind of like a ragtag bunch of misfits, almost like every band of protagonists in those fantasy novels I read during rainy days to escape reality.
Misfits. Like me, I guess.
I realize that I've been looking at her without responding, so I say, "Um, hi! I'm Meryn."
I hesitate, and then blurt out, "Your blueprints were really cool."
"Hey, thanks for noticing! Yeah, it's kind of what we do. We build stuff and go on adventures, and then do it again. Speaking of, Theo, do you want to build an observatory on the roof?" She points to the roof of the lower levels, which was located comfortably below the window.
Okay, there's no way that she could actually pull that off, right? That's ridiculous.
She pulls out some more oversized blueprints with the design of a small observatory on them. It was rounded, housed a powerful telescope, and pretty impressive for some kids who haven't even completed a whole day of high school yet.
I can't help myself. "There's no way you're building that in this one class period, right?"
Chelsea winks and says, "We've got our ways." She gestures towards the window, revealing that the observatory is already there. I had just been staring out that window less than ten minutes ago - the fact that it was there now was physically impossible.
Unfazed, she opened up the window and climbed out onto the roof. Theo and Cody followed her lead, unconcerned. She headed towards the observatory, stopped, and started back towards the window. She stuck her head back into the classroom, and asked "Hey, Meryn, do you want to come with us? I mean, you don't have to if you don't want to, I just didn't want to leave you behind if you wanted to come." She seemed to be genuinely interested in having me come along, despite us only having met a few minutes ago.
I hesitate, thinking about how bizarre the events that just happened were. And then, against my own good, I decided, yes, I want to do this. I can busy myself with how what just happened is completely and utterly impossible later. I can let myself have fun for now.
I'm sure this is just a one-time thing, them being nice to me. I can go back to being a lone wolf later.
I put my botany notebook back into my bag, and climb awkwardly through the window, lacking the grace that she had just a moment ago.
I'm helped down onto the roof, and follow her into the observatory.
It's filled with futuristic-looking tech that looks like it's from NASA, not like something that high schoolers built in one class period.
I'm amazed, and confused, and don't know where to start. So I ask, "How… how'd you get this here, and onto the roof? Did you build this yourselves? What just happened is impossible. Did you-"
The girl laughs a little, and says, "I'm grateful for all of the questions, but slow down a little and let me answer them first! Anyway, I'll give you the short answer."
She is silent. I look around for a moment, and then murmur, "Are you going to tell me?"
"Oh, sorry. I was just imagining some epic, dramatic fanfare in my head… yeah, I know it's stupid. Anyway, our little secret is time travel."
That was the moment I knew that there was no going back to solitude.
