Young Writers Society

Chapter Three
-Raven Artemis Lee-
Two day later, Manhattan Les Anseares, Below


The thing that Raven really hated about going to school in another dimension was that she had to wake up two hours before school started. In this time, she had to get up and ready, eat breakfast, give Annie, her personal maid a few instructions for the day, travel half a mile to the city, take the in-between dimension transportation (the Elevator, as it was unofficially called), and then walk to her Earth Manhattan high school. And usually, she was still only just on time.
Plus, people on Earth weren’t aware of the planet Below in its neighboring dimension, so it wasn’t like Raven could say, “Sorry I’m late! I woke up late and the Elevator was too busy!”

At the very moment, Raven Lee was just dashing into her new homeroom.
She took a quick seat in the back and quickly made sure her short dark brown hair didn’t look weird in its pixie cut.

The last bell rang and the short and stout teacher at the front of the room introduced herself as Mrs. Reynolds
and then passed out class schedules.
Raven scanned her list and sank into her chair; this was going to be a long year.

As the teacher let the students talk while she called the office about schedule mistakes, there was a squeal
and Raven looked up from where she was doodling on her desk. The source of the sound was Georgia Landis… a classically
evil, popular cheerleader.

Funny how movie stereotypes aren’t always totally unrealistic…

“Derek!” She exclaimed in a sickeningly sweet voice (although the way she said it, it sounded more like ‘Der-RECK!’).

Derek Gordon was the high school football star and –of course –Georgia’s on-again-off-again boyfriend.

At this point, Georgia snatched a thin red velvet box from Derek’s hand. She ‘ooh’ed and ‘ahh’ed as she
gazed at whatever expensive jewelry he had bought for her this time, “That is so sweet! Omigod; I cannot, cannot,
CANNOT believe we actually got the same homeroom!” She sighed and slapped a manicured hand onto Derek’s broad
shoulder, “It’s just proof that we were meant to be together…”

Raven shook her head and began to look down just a very, very late student rushed into the classroom.

Even though it was a very warm day, the boy with messy, dirty blonde-white hair (that was fully white in some
places and dark at the roots) was wearing a black jacket over a plain black t-shirt and wore black jeans along with –oh,
very nice –really black sunglasses.

Oh look, Raven thought drily, a blonde Gothic-wannabe dude.

He stopped at the front of the class, looking windswept (but at least he wasn’t panting).

“Oh.” Mrs. Reynolds said, looking up at him, “you must be our missing student. Jasper Cheetah, I presume?”

He nodded, turning to her.

Raven noticed how a hush had fallen over the room –basically because the noise makers had stopped talking –
and she saw that Georgia Landers and her friends in the class had all taken on the expression appropriate of someone
witnessing the most spectacular thing in the whole world. Their mouths were all opened to some degree and their eyes
were all bulging out of their make-upped faces.

Jasper Cheetah confirmed a few things with Mrs. Reynolds before turning around, walking down the aisle,
and –much to Raven’s displeasure –plopped down into the empty seat beside her, the eyes of most of his new classmates
accompanying him.

He glanced at Raven (well, she thought he did –it was hard to tell since he was still wearing his sunglasses) and
gave her a cocky grin and a raised his hand as a wave.

Raven shrugged, a little annoyed, and went back to doodling on her desk.

After the very first class of the very first day of her sophomore year, Raven was held up at the door.

It wasn’t as though anyone was stopping her, there was just a small not-so-friendly conversation going on in
the middle of the doorway.

“Think you’re so cool?” Derek was saying to Jasper Cheetah, who was apparently a new student, “you better
watch out, Cheetah, we are so ON to you.” He poked Jasper hard in the shoulder and he and his jock buddies left.

“Don’t worry,” Raven said to Jasper as she left, “they’re just trying to make sure the newbies know whose
boss around here. This school is so much like those in movies, huh?”

“Yep.”

Raven smiled pleasantly and, after checking her schedule, headed down the hall.

“Hey!” Gillian Marsters, one of Raven’s classmates greeted Raven and slid into the seat next to Raven in her
second period class.

“Hey, Jill.” Raven greeted her.

Gillian had been a friend of Raven’s since they met in their first year of high school, just the previous year,
and Raven always thought it odd that the slender, amateur model decided to join Raven in her quiet, unexciting life when
she could easily become friends with Georgia and the partying girls.

“Rumors are spreading like wild-fire.” She declared.

“What rumors?” Raven said, looking bored.

“You know, the new boy.”

“Gillian, there are more than one new boys here.”

“The one in Georgia Landis’ homeroom –hey, aren’t you in that class?”

“Yeah, so?”

“I heard news about a really cute blonde gothic dude.”

Raven raised her eyebrows in amusement, “so now his name is ‘Cute Blonde Gothic Dude’? I feel so bad for
him.”

“Well?” Gillian demanded impatiently, flipping her sleek, bouncy dark curls over her shoulder “is he as good as gossip
tells?”

Raven inhaled very slowly, as if she was about to start on that huge, detailed description that Gillian so
desired, but said instead, “As gossip tells? That is so-”

Gillian, who had begun looking full of bright anticipation, pouted, “Raaaaaven!” she cried, “Tell me!”

“Okay fine. Here it goes…” Raven said seriously, “it’s hard to tell.”

“What!? What do mean, ‘it’s hard to tell’?”

“I mean it by the fact he was wearing sunglasses the whole time.”

“So? You can still tell if he’s hot when he’s wearing –wait –what?”

“I feel like you’ve said that at least a thousand times since the beginning of this conversation.” Raven said.

“Wait a second! Whoa-ho, stop right there.” Jill exclaimed, ignoring Raven’s last comment and putting her
hands up in a stopping gesture, “what do you mean –he had his sunglasses on the whole time? That’s against school dress
code!”

Raven opened her mouth to ask why she was suddenly concerned with the dress code that was constantly
getting broken, but Jill interrupted.

“Unless…” She muttered somewhat to herself, “There’s something wrong with his eyesight. Maybe…” Jill gasped, her
expression turning to a comically surprised expression, her eyebrows raised, her eyes wide, and her mouth shaped in a
small ‘O’.

“Oh!” she gasped, “the poor boy!” She then dropped her obvious act of sympathy and said to Raven, “This is
great! He’ll need someone to help him out… someone like me.” Jill pointed to herself to prove her point and said with
excitement, “Don’t you see, Raven? It’ll be a perfect opportunity for me!”

“But isn’t that kind of taking advantage? Helping him around school just to get close to him?” Raven wondered, “And you
don’t know if Jasper Cheetah does have any issues. And he could be a total freak. You know, like the kind of guy who
drinks pickle juice… or… or… sticks crayons up his nose… or eats flowers when nobody’s looking…!”

Jill snorted with amusement but Raven carried on, sounding more and more worried, “he could be a total
jerk!” she said, gasping, “what if he turns out to join the D.C?” she said, using the abbreviation she and Jill used
for ‘Derek’s Crew’.

“Raven, honey,” Jill said, leaning back in her seat and observing her manicured finger nails, “I assure you the
Blonde Goth Dude will not be any of the above. Besides, boyfriends are like geese.”

“Geese?” Raven repeated, dumbfounded.

“Yes, geese!” Jill said impatiently, waving her hand at Raven, “they don’t stay in the same place all the time, right? They
immigrate.”

“Migrate.” Raven corrected.

Jill made an exasperated sound, “same difference!” she said dismissively.

“Okay…” Raven started slowly, after a moment of thinking, “so you’re just going to see how he is and then
give him the slip?”

“Uh, yeah.” Jill said in a way that implied Raven was sort of slow to take in the obvious.

Raven didn’t even have a chance to defend her intelligence because the teacher was starting the little
welcome-back speech that all the teachers made at the beginning of the year and everyone around the class was falling
silent.

Since she went to one of those schools that had a full seven and a half hours of school on the first day, Raven
had to endure the wildness that came with lunch.

But strangely, as she and Jill walked out of the café with their lunch trays, they found the cafeteria amazingly
quiet. Raven looked around and Jill nudged her, nodding her head toward the exit, where the school’s new male
heartthrob, Jasper Cheetah, was walking in.

A flurry of whispers was beginning in all corners of the lunch room and Raven noticed Jillian and herself were
the only others in the cafeteria who weren’t staring from their seats. Even the boys were staring with jealousy.

What seemed to be many minutes were only a few seconds and soon the noise turned back onto full power.

Jasper Cheetah moved swiftly across the room and Raven pulled Gillian to a corner table that had just been
deserted by some of the faster eaters.

As Jasper left the café with a tray of food identical to Raven’s lunch of chocolate milk, a bag of Doritos and a
turkey sub and a stalk of celery, a girl named Jocelyn Ferris waved for Jasper to join her table but Georgia Landis stepped
in front of him before he started out the door to the courtyard.

“Hi.” Raven and Jill could hear Georgia say from where they sat, “I’m Georgia Landis, from your homeroom.”

Jasper seemed to turn his attention to her, but said nothing.

“Um, so, do you want to sit with me and my friends?” Georgia asked, putting her hands behind her back and causing the
front of her small lime green shirt to strain and stretch.

Jasper shrugged and followed Georgia to her table that was nearby.

As he sat down in between Derek and one of the D.C, Robin Milano, and Georgia shot Jocelyn Ferris a nasty gloating look
of triumph.

“Hey man, welcome to the group.” Derek said in a way that suggested he had never threatened Jasper
Cheetah earlier that day.

Raven chomped down ferociously on her celery but Jill shushed her and leaned forward to hear more, but it
seemed unnecessary as the whole sophomore lunch class seemed to have quieted to hear in on the conversation.

“So, thinkin’ about joinin’ any sports?” Kevin Brown asked with a stupid grin.

“Yeah –hey, what gym hour d’you have? Fifth hour?” Robin inquired

Jasper nodded, taking a bite of celery.

“Hey, me too!” Derek boomed with a laugh, “We can see how good you play!”

“Fifth hour, do you have fifth hour?” everyone was asking each other in hissed whispers all around the
cafeteria.

“Yeah,” Raven answered when Jill asked, “do you?”

Jill shook her head.

“Hey, Jazz,” Georgia said in a carefree voice (Raven noticed she already made Jasper a stupid nickname), “loosen up,
say something!”

“I’m okay at sports, but I’m more of… an art person.” Jasper said, his voice sounding oddly silky with a little
cat-like purr that outlined it just like an accent.
Derek and his friends all grinned, “Dude, did you just purr?” Derek guffawed.

“Are you a cat? Meow, meow!” Tyler Sileno mimicked.

All the jocks at the table laughed but Georgia and her evil cheerleader friends looked serious.

“I totally think your voice sounds awesome.” Georgia said in what she obviously considered an
awed/understanding way.

Jasper nodded, but picked up his tray, looking annoyed and stood up. He looked around and before Raven
could stop her, Gillian waved him over to their table.

For some reason, Jill has some sort of grudge of Georgia and was constantly doing things to compete with
Georgia’s popularity. Raven once suggested that Jill should just try to hang out with people who weren’t losers if she
wanted to be popular, but her friend turned a deaf ear, claiming that she wasn’t after popularity and anyone that she
hung out with was not a loser.

Jasper sat down across from Raven and Jill. He took one look at Raven and said, “Same lunch,” pointing to
their identical trays.

“What a coincidence!” Jill said brightly, shooting a familiar nasty-gloating-look-of-victory at Georgia, then she
shook her head and laughed, “I’m sorry, I haven’t introduced myself, I’m-”

“-Gillian Marsters; Raven’s friend.” Jasper said, the purr from before barely in his voice except for when he
said Raven’s name.

Both Raven and Jill’s mouths fell open, but Raven recovered first, “yeah, I’m in your homeroom. You sat next to me this
morning. You do know those seats are permanent, right?”

“Yes.”

“And, um, I don’t mean to pry, but it’s sort of… well, do you have an eye-condition or something?” Jill asked Jasper.

“Yes.” He answered shortly.

“Oh, okay.”

Raven left Jill to talk to Jasper and, tuning her out, reached or her sub just as Jasper reached for his. As she
munched on her sandwich, Raven tried to figure out why she found Jasper so odd. Yeah, okay, that’s probably what
everyone thought, but there was something familiar about his oddity. That kind of purred-accent… she had heard it
somewhere before… no, not Spanish or French or anything… but there was something, and Raven knew it, something not
quite human about Jasper Cheetah.



After school, Raven snuck around the back of the school and down the street to one of the high class hotels in
the city where the Elevator was located. She had to make sure no one would question her presence in the five-star hotel
so she entered through the kitchens. Still, it was a good thing a few citizens of Les Anseares were planted there to
ensure that others like Raven could make it back-and-forth to the Elevator. All of the elevator attendants on the west
side of the hotel were from Below, along with a few waiters in the restaurant, a handful of concierges, and one of the
desk managers.

“Hey Jacky.” Raven said, stepping into the elevator and greeting the attendant who was actually a Shape
Shifter from Manhattan, Les Anseares. The city in the Below where Raven lived was different from the one on Earth.
Manhattan Les Anseares was the New York City, instead of being a part of it.

“Good afternoon, Miss Lee.” Jacky Hawk said, always formal. The thing about Shape Shifters was that their
last name was usually the kind of animal they turned into or the kind they were related to, so it was often confusing when
a non-Shape Shifter had the name of an animal. The animal surnames also resulted in some rather strange and hilarious
names, such as Macey Monkey, or Timmy Tiger.

“Manhattan.” Raven said, saying the name with the Les Anseares accent so that it sounded like ‘Men-hat-ton’.

Jacky nodded and pushed the elevator buttons in the order of the floors 7, 8, 13, and 23 before pressing the
Door-Open and Door-Close button at the same time.

Raven pulled out seven Milstuns from her book bag and gave them to Jacky, who dropped the Les Anseares
currency into a slot that had appeared on the wall of the Elevator. Les Anseares money, Milstuns, was unique looking
blood red coins with certain designs representing their value. A skull design was worth one Milstun, a coin with a design
with seven small stars around a crescent moon was worth five, a design of a snake was worth fifteen Milstuns, one with a
scull with an open Third Eye was worth thirty, one with a design of two crossing curved swords was worth fifty, and a
Milstun with a complex design of a fierce looking dragon was worth five hundred.

The Milstuns were as hard as diamond and all the designs on them were magically engraved into the middle of
the coins.

“How was your day?” Raven asked pleasantly as the Elevator began traveling (it felt as if they were not going
anywhere, but there was a sensation, as always, of losing feeling in all parts of the body).

Jacky did not say anything –as always, so, -as always, Raven talked for him.

“Well, my first day was boring, as expected. But there was this new boy…and all the girls in my year are crushing on
him.”

This caught Jacky’s attention (Raven knew that he loved a juicy bit of gossip). When Raven said no more, he finally burst
out, “what’s this boy’s name?”

“Jasper Cheetah.” Raven said with a coy smile.

“There’s a new Shape Shifter traveling the Elevator.” Jacky said eagerly, and then quickly fell quiet.

“Really?” Raven said in a mildly interested way –although she was sort of bored, “him and how many others?” she asked,
pointing out that there were many travelers all the time.

Jacky didn’t say anymore except to announce their arrival at Manhattan Les Anseares.

“Thank you!” Raven said and stepped out of the elevator and into the dimension she called home.