You think you’re bored with life? Please, you have no idea. For the first sixteen years that I had spent my life on this hazy green planet, live was average at best. Sure, I had those days that made you smile and feel like you could dance in front of the world and not care at all, and I also had those days where you feel like you’re sinking so far inside a black hole that resides in your chest that you doubt the sun will pierce you again. That’s normal teenage life though; hormonal at best. I never had a true love though, a mystifying experience, or even a rush of adrenaline from a deadly situation. Nope. Instead, I found myself sinking into society; accepting my role as a blank robot that functioned solely for the purpose of being manipulated by adults and doing what I was told.
Except, one day, it all changed.
~*~
“Dear god, Carson, you’re going to blow this place up!” my friend Nate shouted. Once again, I had poured the wrong chemical into the beaker. AP Chemistry definitely should not have been first period. Who was ever awake during first period? After the bubbles of the now murky brown liquid faded away, Nate took the chemical and poured it down the drain. Frustrated, I swept my long honey blonde hair out of my eyes. It fell in long, spiral curls that reached just below my shoulder blades. Currently though, it was swept back in a loose ponytail and bunched awkwardly by the safety glasses I was forced to wear.
“We’re seriously starting over again?” I asked. The whine was obvious in my voice.
“Maybe you should stop messing it up,” he teased. My lips twitched in a smile, although I felt seriously brain dead.
“You’re just going to do all the work now,” I warned. He just shrugged.
“I was planning on doing it anyway,” he replied. I slumped onto a nearby stool and watched as he carefully measured the ingredients of the lab out and safely sifted them into their respective beakers. In a way, my fellow classmates should’ve understood this lab a lot better than they were. Most were dumbfounded and dazed, staring at the instructions like it was written in an alien language. This lab was all about what happened when combining groups that normally stayed together. It was pretty dangerous, considering some elements were unstable. In the classroom, we had separated ourselves by our ‘cliques.’
It was hard to have a ‘clique’ in my school, considering it was a private school in New York. We were all required to wear the same traditional prep school clothes, although some girls seemed to get away with shortening their skirts or popping a few extra buttons off their top. I ignored them though. It also amazed me how some found subtle ways to add black or bloody red into our normally navy blue and cream outfits. Then again, I never pretended to understand these people. I was average.
Nate mixed two chemicals and a puff of pink smoke appeared. He turned and gave me a thumbs up, which I heartily returned. Nate was my puppy dog. His wide eyed smiles and off beat jokes constantly made life just a little bit better. Almost all the girls at my school found him attractive, although he was a little feminine. He had brown hair that was kept to below his ears and wide blue eyes. His smile was perfectly straight and he had relatively little acne. Plus, he was somewhat taller than most people at five eleven, which was my height exactly.
I leaned my lanky body against the lab table and closed my sea-green eyes. I knew that my face was the most beautiful when I was relaxing, but that didn’t prompt me to leave the bright lights of the classroom. Instead, I was lost in thoughts of being somewhere else. I heard a popping noise and turned to see Nate put a finger up to his lips. He was playing with the Bunsen burner instead of using it for the lab. I just laughed and closed my eyes again.
That’s when I heard a shatter and a screech. My eyes popped open, but I instantly closed them in nausea. A sickening smell, along with what felt like a shockwave pulsed around the lab room. Our teacher’s footsteps came rushing in, but she too stopped. Dazed, I opened my eyes and saw twelve versions of Nate crumpling over. On the floor were two girls who had collided and spread dangerous chemicals everywhere. A silvery substance and a black one seemed to slide together before disappearing down the floor drain. The smell instantly died away, but something was not the same.
My body trembled, as did everyone else’s that I could see. My breathing slowed, black dots appeared, and I heard a siren just as I faded into darkness.
Very good. Hope to see more!
