The TECH Project, Chapter Two

Author's Note: The second chapter of my novel, an action/adventure story. This is still setting the stage... Read the previous chapter to understand things better.

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FILE 2: Pre-Exposure

"Maria," a girl whined as she struggled to walk with someone, apparently her older sister. "Help me out here."

The older girl a few feet in front of her turned around, raised an eyebrow, then shook her head. The younger girl had a huge backpack, a huge purse, and a huge extra bag to carry. The older girl just carried a small backpack. She looked much more sensible to me.

Oh. Me.

I'm Vera Icharus. Today is my first day at my new high school. I kind of forgot that I should talk about myself. I don't usually do that sort of thing. I just watch people, and they don't notice. I bet those two girls didn't know I was watching.

I'm not remarkably pretty or anything – I'm about five feet and four inches tall, and I’m kind of skinny, which is why people don’t notice me much. They do notice my skin, though, because it’s an unusual color. Kind of golden brown. I don't know my ancestry or anything, because I was abandoned when I was born. My adoptive parents are really nice to me. My adoptive mom, Jessie, is especially nice. When I wanted to cut my hair like a girl I'd seen in a magazine, she steered me clear of that potential disaster and cut it just past my shoulders.

I was just sitting there, thinking about the first day of school. I even watched the people who walked by, trying to decide if they were high school students or college students. Our school is pretty new, and the city didn't have time to give us our own building. I guess the only alternative was to put the school on the university campus. The school is housed in a building on the smallest campus of the city university, where we have all of our classes in a few small rooms. Some of the older students – the sophomores, who make up the first class – take classes at the university, too.

But I'm getting distracted again.

"Zoe!" Maria called. She ran towards a taller girl with short-cut dirty blonde hair and threw her arms around her, squeaking in happiness. I smiled. They had to be best friends. My attention went to a set of boys coming down the small hallway towards me. They weren't very loud, but they were laughing happily. There were three: two very tall, and one about my height, but all distinctive.

The scary-looking one was half a foot or so taller than me and built like a football player. His light, golden-brown hair was cut like a Marines', and he had an unbuttoned black Oxford shirt over a black t-shirt. The other tall boy wasn't scary at all – he was skinny with curly brown hair that was long and poofy. I like that word. Poofy.

The other boy, the shorter one, was pale. He had blue eyes and feathery light brown hair, and from what I could see, he was the biggest idiot of the group. The guys looked happy to be back.

After them came another pair of girls. To me, they looked a lot alike. They were both very short, one five feet tall and the other almost half a foot less. They had round faces and round eyes, and dark blonde hair cut around their shoulders. But they didn't seem to get along.

"Just stay away from me, Amanda!" the taller girl half-yelled. "I don't want you anywhere near me today!"

"Why would I want to hang around you, Chloe?" the shorter girl, half-yelled back. "I don't want to be near the freak who's obsessed with the Team Erie Canal Heroes!"

The Team Erie Canal Heroes. Well, that's what the papers call them. I'm not really sure what they call themselves. Nobody's been near them long enough to ask. The team is a group of six people who fight crimes in the city. They're called the Team Erie Canal Heroes because of their first big crime-stopper at the old Erie Canal locks in Grand Rapids, Ohio, a few miles south of Toledo.

They're really cool. There are two boys and four girls, and they've got superpowers. Like people from comic books. I've got a poster in my room of the leader, Purple. The heroes are known by their stripe color. The girls are Purple, Yellow, Red, and White, and the boys are Light Blue and Dark Gray.

I started to notice that the hallways were clearing up. I actually wasn’t paying attention until just then. I guess I have a short attention span sometimes. I just notice the most random things at the most random times. I looked at the clock in a nearby café and saw that it was first bell. Time for class! My first period was American Studies, then Geometry, English, and finally Biology.

Biology.