I shiver. I should not walk home alone… at night. I should have let Mom pick me up. My red high-tops flopped on the pavement. I pulled my green windbreaker closer to my body. I pull my Browns cap lower over my rusty, red hair. Leaves swirl around my legs in the cool, fall night air. Just one more turn and I’m at home watching Star Trek re-runs.


I see a bright green meteor streaking across the sky, getting bigger, and heading in my direction. “AHHH!” I scream and drop to the ground as the thing shoots past my head and crashes in the woods behind me. I, being of curious nature, follow the trail of churned up dirt to the meteor.


The thing is ten feet tall and about as wide across. I walk up right next to it and its luminous glow casts a shadow across my face. What I did next would impact my life greatly without me knowing it. I touched it. It cut my finger, so I pull away.

The thing hisses and shoots off this lime green gas. Little did I know this gas would be the cause of my problem. Anyway I freak out, thinking the gas is toxic and run back home.


I wake up the next morning with the image of the meteor still fresh in my mind. I walk down stairs and smell my mom cooking her famous choco-berry-pome waffles.

“YO, SQUIRT!” I shout at my little sister, “Save me some waffles!” I walk downstairs and see my blond, pig-tailed sister pushing away her waffles. I start piling my plate with about six waffles, “What the heck, squirt, I thought you loved waffles?”

“No,” She replies, “I’m watching my figure, plus the other girls think these are gross, so I do too.” I can tell she’s lying by the way she’s looking longingly at my waffles.

“Watching your figure?” I snort, “What figure?” She lets out a scream that resounds through our small, yellow kitchen. My little sis is in first grade and I’m in tenth grade, but she has more peer pressure than me. Everyone in my family is short, plump, and blond. I am tall, skinny as a rail, and have rusty red hair.

I squirt some syrup on my eggs and ketchup on my waffles. Did I mention how weird my taste buds are? Well they are. I look at the clock and almost choke on my milk. 8:00! I’m supposed to be a school by now! I shove all my food in my mouth and run out of the house.

“Honey!” My Mom yells,” You forgot your backpack!”

“Oh, for the love of Spock,” I mutter in my “adorable” Irish accent, “Just throw it!” I shout.

“I know, I’ll fly it out on one of your UFO toys!”

“They’re not toys!” I say, exasperated, “They’re scale models!” I grab my backpack off of my scale model and continue my mad dash for school. Just because the universe hates me, it starts raining.

I slog into school and deposit my jacket and boots in my locker. My watch now says 8:05. I hear the bell ring and run to my first period Spanish. I drop low to the ground and slide into my seat, which is next to my best friend, Jesse.

Jesse sees me sitting and looks around the room to see if our teacher is watching. He leans over to me and says,”Dude! Do you know how late you are?” I start to speak, but he answers his own question, “Five minutes!”

“I know Jess, but Mom didn’t wake me up and …” He puts his finger over my mouth.

“We’ll talk at lunch.” I sigh, walk through my next couple of classes, and notice a lot of kids are missing. I grab my lunch out of my locker and walk to my lunch table.

See, my lunch table is weird because I am, admittedly, a nerd and Jesse is a pyromaniac, so the only people other than the two of us are some random ADD or ADHD kids who have no real friends because they annoy people too much to be liked. “Jesse, I saw …”

He stops me. He pushes his blond hair out of his face, its favorite resting place, revealing his sparkling, green eyes, “Did you notice a lot of kids are missing?”

I look around the half empty lunch room, “Uh, yeah why do you think that is?”

Jesse grins his “idea” grin, “Let’s find out, you know, ask around.” After a bit of arguing we finally agree to ask the siblings of the kids who are out what’s going on. We walk around and get similar ‘I don’t know’s and ‘who cares’s. That is until we ask the weird girl, Tommy Riddle, who follows people around.

“Well,” she starts, “You know Ronnie McFarland?” Jesse and I nod as she continues, “Well, I saw him this morning and he looked paler than usual, so I asked him if he was okay and he could barely respond because his throat was so sore and since we were by my house I took him in and called the hospital. The EMT guys drove up, sirens blaring, and took him away on a stretcher, it was SWEET!”

Jesse and I confirm her story with actual siblings of kids. Most mentioned throatal swelling and paleness. We sit down at our table after twenty minutes of searching to summarize our notes. Jesse runs a hand through his hair and sighs, “So Rich, after a painstakingly long time of talking to people, half of who told us to quote, unquote ‘Get lost!’, what have we learned?”

I adjust my glasses and shuffle my papers, “Well, we learned a mysterious disease is running rampant and no one has any idea where it came from or how to stop it.” Jesse slams his head down on the table. The bell rings.

I grab my backpack off of the table and stand up, “Got to go, see you after school?”

He shakes his head, “Got a psychiatrist appointment, see you tomorrow!” He runs out of the lunchroom.

“Try not to light her office on fire again!” I shout.

He laughs, “No promises!”

The next day I make sure to wake up early so I can beat Jesse to school. But, when I get there not only did I beat Jesse, but I beat every kid in school. I walk around for a while, but only teachers are there. I see one of the janitors pushing his bucket around and run up to him. “Hey. HEY!”

He looks at me, “What? I thought all the kids were sick?”

“Sick?” I say, “With what?”

“They have that disease that all the kids are getting, the mysterious spacey disease.” He walks off after saying that and I sit down to think. Disease, what disease? Why don’t I have it? Why am I not sick? Why only me? What did I do or not do that the other kids didn’t or did?

And then I think of what that janitor said, spacey. The meteor! I touched it! The gas from the meteor is like weed killer and the kids are weeds. For some reason or another, these aliens must want to do away with children!

I take this assumption to the woods where the meteor is and chip off a piece. Practically tripping over my extremely large feet, I make a quick dash to the hospital. I run up to the nurse’s desk, panting and sweating. “Jesse St. Monica.” I say.

“Room A-17.” She says without looking up. I run down countless hallways, muttering to myself,”A-17, A-17, AH-HA! Here it is!”

I fling open Jesse’s door. Before he can say anything, I shove the rock at him, but nothing happens. I jump on top of him and shove the rock against his skin. And nothing happens. I am about to give up when I remember something. The rock cut me.
I hold up Jesse’s hand and slice it with the sharp edge of the rock. He yelps, but instantly looks better. I call in one of the doctors from the hallway. “… and I swear that’s what happened!”

The doctor scratches his head, “Well, it would require testing for at least three months.”

“We have lives on the line and you want to test it for extensive amounts of time!” I snatch the rock from the doctors hand, “If you won’t save these kids, I will.” I run into every hospital room and start to cut all of the kid’s pinkies.

About thirty kids in, I stop myself. There are hundreds of kids in this hospital. I turn to Jesse and break the rock into two pieces. I toss one piece to him,” Jesse, start running into rooms and cutting kids fingers,” He grins, “With the rock.” I add.

Jesse turns around to start curing kids and stops,”Uh, Dude, we got company.” I spin around and see a fleet of doctors and nurses. Jesse taps my shoulder and I see another group of nurses.

Jesse and I spin toward each other and I say, “Run.” We dash through the hallways until I reach a nurses desk with an intercom microphone. I grab up the intercom and say, “Will all patients please walk out into the hallways. I repeat, Will all patients please come stand in the hallway.”

Pretty soon Jesse and I are dashing down hallways, slicing peoples fingers as we go, dodging the occasional doctor or nurse until, finally, after three hours, the deed is done. My legs ached, my knees were weak, but there was a smile on my face. A smile because I knew we had done good, me and Jesse.

I was on TV, the local news, and Jesse and I grew apart. The fame died down after a year, and I went back to my regular life of eating junk, playing superhero based video games, and watching Star-Trek re-runs in my basement bedroom.

Jesse and I are best friends again, just in time for senior year. We started the arsonist’s club for kids like Jesse, who like to light things on fire. Not just pyromaniacs, but regular psychos too. So far Jesse is my only arsonist, but, whatever. Things have pretty much returned to normal.

That is, until late one night when I was walking home from Jesse’s house. A bright blue meteor streaks across the sky and lands in the woods behind me. I start to walk away, until Jesse runs out of his house. He stops at the edge of the woods where the meteor landed and runs in. “I wonder what this is?”

I run towards the woods and stop myself. Let Jesse have this one.

The End.