by Travis McBee
The tryouts were going decently for Will at first. He wasn’t the best by any means, while others bounced, careened, and swept across the gym with the grace and agility of swans; Will bounced, blundered, and ricocheted about like the metal ball inside of a pinball machine. However he did manage to get to where he needed to be most of the time, graceful or not and that was something a handful of people were having immense difficulty accomplishing.
Jon was not one of those people. Will watched in amazement as his friend flew through the air with more skill than a bird could dream of managing. He bounced around alighting on objects and departing instantly as he managed to score more and more points with such ease that his body language suggested he was bored. He was easily the best in the room, and another freshman was by far the worst.
Brandon displayed his lack of coordination as soon as the gravity disappeared. He didn’t so much as bounce off of the walls as slam into them headlong and careen wildly back into the gym and while in the middle of the gym he got clubbed more often than anyone else and found himself glued to the wall as often as a poster in a dorm room. It became fairly obvious halfway into the mock game who the one person that would fail to make the team was, but somehow that one person didn’t know it himself and he ended up being the highlight of the tryouts.
Will had managed to secure the ball and simultaneously rocket himself off of a satellite towards the wall less than a hundred feet away when he saw a blur of color barreling towards him out of the corner of his eye. He knew he was about to get clubbed and passed the ball towards a teammate who was streaking by under him. His teammate caught the ball, and the streak caught him.
The small body in the zegma suit slammed into him and the boy inside latched onto him like a koala cub latches onto its mom. The pair of boys sailed quickly towards a side wall and Will tried to get his arms out to cushion the impact but he found they were stuck to his sides by his unwanted baggage.
“Ugh, let go man!” Will shouted at his unknown assailant.
“Not a chance Terry,” The weedy little voice of Brandon replied, his trademark sneer obvious even under the visor.
The two boys slammed into the wall and Will groaned as his body sloshed around inside the suit. They were ricocheted back into the middle of the gym and Brandon still held him tightly.
“Time for some payback Terry!” He yelled at Will’s unseen face.
He slammed his club into Will’s stomach with as much force as he could muster. He obviously intended the blow to hurt but the padding of the suit and lack of force he could generate in his strange position caused the blow to barely be felt by Will.
Apparently the attack had been planned as he went along because Brandon forgot what those clubs were for in the first place. As soon as it touched Will’s suit a small current jumped from the club and into the zegma suit. The suit instantly became magnetized and propelled Will towards the wall on the far side and with the large distance to travel Will would have time to pick up some serious speed before slamming into it. Along for the ride was Brandon who couldn’t worm his way off of Will’s back as they began to move, and since he was on Wills back, he would hit first.
Will registered what was going to happen as soon as he felt his suit stiffen and he began laughing almost maniacally. He felt Brandon trying to abandon his free ride and managed to grab the would be mastermind’s wrist as the smaller boys arms flailed to free him from his unwanted voyage.
The two slammed into the wall at incredible speed. Will felt his breath leave him again and behind him he heard the sharp crack of a bone breaking as Brandon’s arm was dashed behind him at a strange angle between Will’s body and the wall.
Coach saw the incident and immediately demagnetized Will’s suit freeing the two boys. Will drifted forward and turned around to look at Brandon who was clutching his arm which seemed to have grown a new elbow halfway down his forearm. Brandon was crying silent tears of agony as he stared at his mangled limb.
“What happened here?” Coach screamed as he ascended towards Brandon.
“He clubbed me and got stuck behind me,” Will replied
“That’s a first,” Coach whistled as he examined Brandon’s arm, “Was he trying to grab you?”
Will thought quickly. If he told the truth Brandon would probably get into trouble but Will was no snitch and never would be, no matter how much he despised the boy.
“No sir, it was just a freak accident,” Will replied looking into the honest eyes of Coach Bower.
Coach looked at him seriously. Oh crap he saw the whole thing and knows! I’m going to get in trouble for lying or at least not make the team.
“Okay then. Off to the infirmary Mr. Crosby.” He said to Brandon, “The rest of you come on down and I’ll turn the gravity back on!” He called to the boys who were still bouncing around the gym.
After the boys had all touched down Coach Bower returned the gravity with a casual press on his Micro and they all felt themselves grow heavy on their own feet again. One boy wasn’t quite ready and he fell to the ground in a heap. The others laughed at him as two boys bent down and helped him up, and when he regained his feet he was laughing as well.
“Good one Mcorley,” Coach said laughing along with the rest.
“Now that we’re all here and standing on our feet,” He winked in the direction of the boy who had fallen, “Let me congratulate all of you on making the team!”
The boys broke into a cacophony of cheers, whistles, and pats on the back.
“Luckily for us the worst player took himself out,” He nodded his head towards the door, “So we get to skip even that little embarrassment. I will send out a message to all of you informing you about practices when I figure out a good time to hold them. Until then guys, and congratulations once again,”
Coach smiled at all of them before turning and walking out of the gym. Will looked at Jon whose face was threatening to split in two along the large smile that stretched from ear to ear.
“Well buddy we did it,” Will said slapping his friend on the back
“Yes we did,” Jon replied and then added, “And you broke Brandon’s arm. Life just doesn’t get any better does it?”
Will shook his head and both boys broke into laughter as they headed towards the locker room to change back into their monogarbs.
* * *
When Jon and Will arrived in the freshman lounge fifteen minutes later they found Abby sitting in their normal corner reading intently from her Micro.
“What you reading Abby?” Will said as he plopped down into a chair across from her.
“Oh just a book I found on the database,” Abby replied, “How’d tryouts go?”
“We both made it,” Jon replied sitting down in an empty chair and throwing his feet onto the table.
“Oh good job!” Abby shrieked hugging first Will and then Jon
“Oh yeah guess who showed up,” Will said trying not to blush from the hug which he could still feel.
“Who?” Abby said looking from Jon to Will with intense concentration.
“Brandon,” Jon replied, “Guess he wanted to try out, but he ended up attacking Will instead.”
“Ha-ha, yeah he did,” Will laughed, “Broke his arm doing it.”
“What?!” Abby half shouted looking between her two friends, “Tell me what happened!”
Will told her the story about Brandon coming out of nowhere to attack him and his unfortunate ride across the room. Jon finished off the story by adding in what he saw of the trans-gym flight and crash. After they finished all three of them burst into fits of laughter at their mutual enemies incredible misfortune.
They kept laughing even after the door slid open and Brandon trooped in with his arm wrapped in a sleeve of hardened plastic and held gingerly by his side. The infirmary had managed to med the break almost instantly but it would remain fragile and hurt for many days. He scowled at the laughing trio.
“Laugh while you can,” He muttered under his breath before wa
lking into the boy’s dormitory, “Laugh while you can.”
Chapter Ten
Return to Earth
The morning after the zegma tryouts Will, Abby, and Jon met in the lounge before heading down to breakfast. They normally did this since they were allotted an hour between wake up and breakfast to do whatever they deemed necessary to prepare for the day and seeing as a shower on Bridgeworld lasted only a few seconds, even the girls found time to spare.
“Morning,” Abby yawned as she staggered out of the sliding door to the girls dorm.
“Good morning!” Jon chirped back happily. Jon was a morning person and Will sometimes felt that there was nothing more annoying in the universe than a morning person.
“Mornin Abbz,” Will said slouching down in one of the metal chairs.
Abby sauntered over to the group of chairs and sat down as gracefully as eight-thirty would allow and stared bleary eyed at her friends.
“So anything exciting happening today?” she asked trying to stimulate conversation and consciousness.
“Nope. Just another day in school.” Replied Jon smiling as he said it. Every day Abby would ask the same question and every day he would give the same answer
Will looked up at Abby, “Yeah I mean…What the heck?!”
A blaring alarm had interrupted Will’s concurrence an alarm that was very different from the morning alarm that woke them up or the buzzing bell that indicated meals and class change. This alarm sounded like the tornado siren that sat in the city hall tower back in Pleasant Valley.
A few years previous Pleasant Valley had been on the receiving end of a ferocious storm that spawned dozens of tornadoes that ripped through the city like a raging giant. Will had hid in his basement shivering with fear between his parents and had never before been so scared or intensely convinced that he was about to die as he was hiding in the dark listening to that klaxon of doom. The siren that now wailed at his new life snatched him back to that moment of fear with cruel effectiveness.
Red flashing lights accompanied the siren that was bouncing noise about the freshmen lounge in Bridgeworld like a ping-pong ball in a milk jug. All around them shrill screams rose from the throats of their classmate to add to the pandemonium.
“What’s going on?” He cried out to Jon.
Jon looked at him with a terrified face of ignorance while Abby ran towards the both of them, her drowsiness forgotten, and tried to hide between them.
“WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON?” Will repeated screaming at his friends this time. He felt his heart racing from fear and sweat had begun to make a salty trail down his back.
“I don’t know,” Jon replied so softly it was little more than a whisper, “Something bad, this is real whatever it is.”
Will was about to open his mouth to scream at his friend for more information when a new voice filled the room. The voice resonated from the overhead P.A speakers that were set into the gray ceiling and it swam out of the dozens of pockets of the monogarbs that the confused freshman that filled the room were wearing.
Will reached into his pocket and extricated his Micro. Around the room countless other hands were reaching into their pockets to pull out the source of the new voice. Will glanced down at his screen and saw the calm face of Dean Norris staring back at him. Her cool voice came through the tiny speaker set into the back of the Micro,
“All students are to report to the third floor and take refuge in an interior classroom. We are under threat of a meteor shower. I repeat all students are to report to the third floor and take refuge in an interior classroom. We are under threat of a meteor shower.”
Will looked up at his friends in utter terror. He was suddenly certain he was about to die as certain as he had been during those tornados years before. He sat paralyzed from his fear, unable to even speak to Abby who mirrored his terror perfectly. He probably would have even sat there all day if it hadn’t been for Jon.
“Come on you guys,” Jon shouted at them, “We’ve got to get to the third floor!”
He reached down towards Will and pulled him to his feet by his armpits before doing the same to Abby who had slumped onto the floor between the two chairs the boys had been sitting in.
“Get moving!” Jon shouted as he pushed them each towards the door that was open wide as students poured through it.
After the push start from Jon, Will and Abby began to run along with the current of students that surged through the doors and up towards the next floor and the classrooms. As soon as they exited the door they saw the masses of other students that streamed from the Sophomore and Junior dormitories that were on the second floor along with the Freshmen.
The hordes of bodies converged on the central staircase that groaned and swayed as the mass of humanity assaulted it in their flight for safety. Jon grabbed Will and Abby’s hand and drug them through the crowd towards the staircase teaming with panicked and screaming students. The three freshmen made the staircase with surprising ease and soon found themselves on the third floor which was also inundated with panicky students.
“In here!” Jon shouted and pulled Will and Abby into a classroom they had never been in before.
They fell from the jostling crowd and into the room. As soon as they crossed the threshold, Jon placed his palm on the green reader and the door slid closed with a stern hiss. The siren continued to blare in the hall outside but the room was devoid of a siren, a fact of which Will was very thankful.
Will glanced around the room and discovered it was one of the science labs. Massive tables adorned with glass beakers and harsh chemicals sat silently along the periphery of the large room. At one sat a boy who looked to be utterly at ease as if the alarms were nothing more exciting than elevator music. His calm blue eyes surveyed them from under a wild mop of blonde hair while his muscular arms rested on the table in front of his thick body that sat comfortably reclined in his chair.
“Hello folks,” he greeted them in a deep voice, “Welcome to the party.”
Will was about to return the greeting when a sharp ping resonated through the school. Will thought it sounded like a rock falling on a tin roof and unfortunately for him, the simile was not far off.
Jon dove under a table with incredible swiftness. Will stood staring at his friend who cowered under the table full of chemicals when another ping rocketed through the school, which was followed swiftly by another and another after that.
Will dove after his friend as the pings began to intensify in volume and frequency. Will glanced at Jon and saw his friend’s eyes had opened as wide and round as half dollars, each one resonating fear out towards Will.
Above him he could hear Abby dissolving into a torrent of tears and screaming. He wanted to comfort her but the paralysis that had plagued his body when the alarm had first sounded had returned.
Will began to tremble as fear took a stronger and stronger hold on his body. The constant ping ping of the meteors striking the outside of the school reminded him of hail striking relentlessly on a roof millions of miles away as he lay cowered between his parents.
The onslaught lasted for five minutes. Those five minutes were not the short minutes that his mom would often grant before having to wake up, those five minutes were the horrifically long minutes of the end of a class. When the pinging finally stopped Will found himself covered in a cold sweat shaking violently. Jon sat across from him under the table. His skin had taken on the same color as the whites of his eyes which were opened wide and unblinking.
“It is now safe to return to your dormitories, the shower has passed and we have sustained no major damage,” The cool voice of Dean Norris called out into the school, “Thank you for remaining calm, breakfast will be served shortly.”
Apparently calm on Bridgeworld was not quite the same as calm on Earth Will mused to himself as his tremors subsided. What he had just witnessed on the stairway and in the halls had appeared to be complete panic.
After another minute or so he regained the use of his extremities
and forced himself out from under the table and stood up.
He looked towards Abby and saw her wrapped in the arms of the thick, blonde haired boy. She was still sobbing but the sobs were slowing down rapidly as the boy comforted her with short murmurs and pats on the back.
“You’re okay,” He was saying to Abby softly before noticing Will.
“Welcome back up top big guy,” he laughed
Will felt himself blush as he realized what a fool he must have appeared to be. The boy didn’t seem to mind however and as he turned Abby loose he addressed Will again without mockery.
“My names Corey Edgar,” He introduced himself, “You’re Will Haynes aren’t you? The one who knocked out that annoying twerp?”
“That’s me,” Will said offering his hand.
Corey glanced at it in confusion raising an eyebrow. Will quickly retracted the hand and used the patented hair swipe to try and pass off the movement.
“And who is this?” Corey asked pretending to ignore the gesture and leaning under the table to look at Jon.
Jon glanced at the boy but didn’t say anything to him as he continued to shiver his nerves away.
“That’s Jon,” Will replied for his friend, “Will you help me drag him out?”
“But of course my good friend,” Corey replied reaching an arm out to grab Jon and pull him back to sanity.
* * *
The following week saw Corey join their circle of friends as easily and thoroughly as kool-aid dissolves in water. He was in three of Will’s classes and the two got along almost as well as Will got along with Jon. He found out during their conversation on the way back to the dormitory after the meteor shower that he was from Broglio like Jon. However the two had not known each other before Bridgeworld and Will was surprised to find that he hadn’t thought of Broglio as a whole planet, instead he had considered it a small community like Pleasant Valley.
The Wednesday after meeting Corey, Will found himself sitting along with the group in the Study Hall enjoying each others company as they each played on their Micro’s or daydreamed while staring at the gray ceiling.. The students were given Wednesdays off, a fact that both surprised and delighted Will when he had first found out. The students were given free reign of the school with the only scheduled events being meals. Will and his friends spent most of the free time either in the lounge or the Study Hall.