New School

Professor Atticus stood up, rocketing the hologram chair backwards with the back of his knee; the chair, though in a hologramic form, has a sensor to detect motions.

He squinted to make sure it hadn't been a trick to his eyes. There they were—three purple marks.

While dancing an old Irish jig he'd learned from his great grandfather, Professor Atticus went in search of his mutated cat, Milikins. He found him snoozing behind the milk cupboard in the kitchen and yanked him into his arms, hugging him fiercely.

"Dearest Milikins," he said, petting him. "We must celebrate right away with some choco chips and biscuits!" He set him down. Climbing on his hologramic skateboard, he rode to the refrigerator, rummaging through it to find the choco chips. Once he'd set some chips on a plate and dropped them at the table near him, he straightened and put his hands on his hips, staring down at his whiskered friend, who licked his lips fiercely as he meowed for the plate of choco chips on the table above him.

    "My goodness gracious me." "Three picks within a few minutes of each other? I daresay we have a lot of work to do. "

                                       ~

Upstairs in his room, Tom was wide awake, despite the late hour.

He studied the first letter from M.S. until the sky faded from black to bruised purple and the first traces of dawn cast a pallid glow outside his window. The wind had picked up. The infamous branch that haunts his dreams was scraping the side of the house with its creepy claws of leafless wood. But Tom kept reading, searching, and thinking.

The words related to open sesame.

He didn't know what they were, why he needed them, or what would happen on August sixth when he was supposed to say them, but he knew they were vital and had to figure them out. And the first letter supposedly told him everything he needed to do just that.

Nothing came to him. He searched the sentences, the paragraphs, and the words for clues. He tried rearranging letters, looked for words that were perhaps spelled vertically, and sought the word "open sesame" to see if it lay hidden anywhere. Nothing.

He remembered the famous Lord of the Rings riddle where the entrance to the Moria mines said "Speak friend and enter." It literally meant for the person to speak the word "friend" in the Elven language and the doors would open. But nothing like that seemed to jump out at Tom as he sought for clues.

From the first clue, figuring out the date of the special day had been a piece of cake compared to this, and he grew frustrated. He also felt the effects of staying up all night, and a sudden surge of fatigue pressed him down to the pillow and pulled his eyelids closed.

When his mom poked her head in to wake him up, reminding him about his new school, which he had to finish up some enrollments before attending, he begged for one more day, knowing she'd have a hard time arguing with a kid who'd been severely hurt just a few days earlier.

After his mom tucked him back into bed and patted his head like a sick three-year-old, Tom pondered the pledge he'd made by the fireplace the night before—to keep going, to fight the fear, to solve the puzzle. No matter what.

I'm either really, really brave or really, really stupid.

Finally, despite the light of sunrise streaming through his window, he fell asleep.

                                             ~

That Friday, he was completely healed and caught up on the work he'd missed at his new school after his mom completed his registration and enrollment. Tom sat in his science class, trying to pay attention to the substitute teacher as he talked about the vast mysteries that still awaited discovery in the field of physics. Usually, Tom enjoys science class more than most, but he couldn't get his mind off the second clue, frustrated that he wasn't able to crack the code of the first letter.

"Mr. Noland?" Mr. Pat, the substitute teacher, asked.

Tom's attention was whipped back to the real world, and he stared at his substitute teacher, suddenly panicked because he had no clue why Mr. Pat had said his name. "Sorry, what was the question?"

"I didn't ask you a question," his substitute teacher answered, folding his arms. "I was just wondering why you were staring out the window as if there was a cheerleader parade out there. Am I boring you?" He raised his eyebrows.

"No, I was just pondering the physics of the tetherball outside."

Several snickers broke out in the room, though Tom knew it wasn't to the appreciation of his joke. Some of the kids in his class didn't even hear what he said; they automatically laughed at him as he spoke because they assumed the others would think they were cool for poking fun at the new flat-haired kid. The laughter didn't faze Tom in the least; in his mind, that type of person had ceased to exist a long time ago.

"Well," Mr. Pat said. "Maybe you'd like to come up to the board and give us a diagram of what you're thinking about?" Tom knew the man would want to give him a hard time or it would be overwhelmingly obvious that he favoured the new kid with black flat hair.

"No, sir," Tom replied. "Haven't figured it out yet."

"Let me know when you do. And in the meantime, grace me with your attention. "

Tick nodded and resettled himself in his seat, looking toward the front of the classroom. Someone behind him threw a wad of paper at his head; he ignored it as it richocheted and fell to the floor. Tom knew he was well prepared for the bullying part of being a new student. That would cause him to ignore the idiot who absolutely did it. He's handled stuff like this in Deer Park, and he'll do more than that here in Sweville. Surprisingly, he was amazed at the courage and bravery that just welled up in him. Mr. Pat continued his lecture, but faltered a few minutes later when someone grumbled about how boring science was.