Armadron: The Otherworld Series: Book 1

by Corey Tate

  Scott couldn’t hold on to a single piece of information that the tweacher had been tweaching. His thoughts of Molly—and of Rick the Brick slamming him into a locker for sport—drove the entire lesson out of his head. More than that, though, Scott kept trying to think of someone he could tell about the seizures. Jared already knew, but Scott probably needed to tell a doctor or his mom or something. Or Charlie.

  The bell rang.

  He gathered up his books and slid out of the classroom as fast as he could, pointedly dodging Molly’s gaze. He didn’t want Molly to question him again about how he kept getting his ass beaten by the human-gorilla-hybrid test subject known as Brick. Not right now anyway.

  Scott walked down to English class and opened the door to find that a lot of his friends had gathered in a circle in the middle of the classroom, with Charlie at the center of the circle. Scott overhead the last few words of the story Charlie was telling.

  “Knocked him flat on his ass!”

  Everyone laughed, and all heads turned in Scott’s direction. When people saw him, they fell over laughing, clutching their stomachs and clapping their hands.

  Scott was instantly embarrassed, assuming Charlie had seen what had transpired between him and Rick the freakin’ prick.

  He made his way to the center of the group, trying to save face.

  “Hey, McEntly, you hallucinating again?” He feigned coolness, all the while shooting Charlie a look that said, come on, man, let this one go.

  “Yeah,” Charlie said, not seeing Scott’s expression, “I was telling ’em about the time when you were riding your four-wheeler and ran over that vine, and it got caught up in the tires! You flew off . . . into that little creek!”

  A lot of people doubled over laughing and came up with watery eyes and red faces. Scott relaxed, convinced Charlie hadn’t seen anything.

  “Did you happen to mention that you tried to help but tripped over your own big feet?” Scott grinned.

  “Yeah, well,” Charlie started, pretending to be embarrassed, “I was too busy laughing at you!”

  “Sure you were,” Scott laughed.

  Charlie grinned wickedly as he leaned forward on the desk. “But we had to walk back to the house so I could get clothes for you, and you had to wait outside, remember?”

  “Yesss, I remember.” Scott shook his head and smiled.

  He knew exactly where Charlie was going with this one.

  Charlie now addressed the rest of the kids and shook with laughter as he told the rest of the story.

  “When I came back with the clothes, a chicken from the Hekinsals’ farm was tryin’ to eat his shirt! He was cryin’ bloody murder and screamin’ ‘Charlie, Charlie! This turkey’s tryna eat me!’”

  Everyone doubled over again in laughter.

  “That’s not exactly what happened! And I had never seen a live chicken before!” Scott cried out in vain, laughing in the middle of his own sentence.

  Once Mrs. Fields came in, it took her five whole minutes to get the class to quiet down.

  It had been a rough morning, but Scott was finally feeling like things were getting back to normal.

  Little did he know that normal was a long way away.

  Ascension

  Scott was feeling focused during soccer tryouts. He wasn’t thinking of Molly on the other side of the field practicing with the girls, or how her unnaturally shiny, curly brown hair moved when she ran. Definitely not.

  For the drill they were doing, Scott’s teammate Devan was on his left. Their teammate Howard was on the right. Scott, in the center with the ball, sprinted up the field.

  He passed the ball to Howard as a defender came near. Howard trapped the ball and faked left. As the defender tripped, Howard danced to the right. He shot the ball at the goal.

  The goalie dove for the ball, and it hit his left knee. It rebounded toward Scott. He used his stomach to stop the ball and passed it to Devan, and Devan passed it back to Scott when the defender was away from him.

  Scott immediately trapped the ball and kicked . . . at empty air.

  At the last possible second, a defender had come from the right of Scott and slide tackled him in the ankle. Scott almost did a flip to the side and landed on his head and right shoulder.

  The defender, a lanky kid named Johnny, jogged off with the ball.

  Scott got up angrily and ran after the defender. The boy was about ten feet ahead of Scott and pulling away fast.

  Scott ran as fast as he could. As he caught up with the kid, tiny white lines appeared everywhere in his vision, colliding with each other.

  They disappeared as quickly as they had come, and Scott kicked the ball away from Johnny, who then tripped and crashed to the ground.

  Scott took a second to catch his breath before kicking the ball to Devan, who was now right by the goal. Devan trapped the ball, juked the remaining defender, and scored.

  “Yes!” Scott cheered, grinning from ear to ear as he slowed to a jog.

  “Well done, Group E!” Coach Ghentelle clapped from the bench, staring at Scott. “Very well done.”

  The coach was staring him down, and Scott had a feeling the burly middle-aged man had seen something weird.

  Scott jogged off the field with his teammates, heading toward the bench. He grabbed a water bottle.

  “Dude, Scott. That was awesome!” Howard, wide eyed, gave Scott a knuckle touch.

  “Seriously,” Devan agreed behind raised eyebrows.

  “Thanks, guys.” Scott took a sip of water. “What’s the deal with the deer-in-the-headlights look, though?”

  Devan and Howard shared a nervous glance.

  “When you was out there . . . somethin’ . . . weird happened,” Devan said. “The ground under yo’ cleats, like . . . like, moved, ’n the ground under Johnny’s cleats kinda like, stuck him there ’er somethin’.”

  “Funny.” Scott chuckled and reached to give Devan’s shoulder a playful hit.

  Devan flinched and turned away. He jogged down to the other side of the bench and started to talk to Johnny, who had a look of utter confusion on his face.

  What the hell is going on? Scott shook his head.

  He smiled nervously at several players who had been watching the exchange from the other benches.

  He took his cell phone out of his book bag next to the bench and opened the camera app, switching the screen so that it faced him. Peering into the screen, he saw a sweaty teenager with dirty-blond hair and a dimple on his right cheek. Except that his trademark dimple was not showing, because he was not smiling at all.

  My eyes are purple again, he thought as he stared at himself in disbelief.

  He closed his eyes and tried to relax, and then opened them after few seconds.

  The irises were back to blue.

  Scott shook his head and blew out the breath that he’d been holding. He put his phone back in his bag and wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.

  He tried to watch a group of boys kicking the ball around on the field near him. Instead, his gaze was drawn to Molly on the other side of the field. She was bobbing and weaving around the competition, making it look easy.

  Scott watched Molly easily pass the ball, get it back, and shoot it at the goal. Her words suddenly came to mind:

  I’ll dribble circles around those girls, and when I’m done, I’m comin’ for you.

  He smiled. The ball was flying right toward the arms of the goalie, though. The goalie was obviously going to catch it. Even his cousin Henry (who was five years old) could probably catch it.

  Just before the goalie touched the ball, Scott noticed Molly tilt her head slightly, but deliberately.

  Scott slowly stood up, getting a very weird feeling.

  The ball gained much more speed and curved midair. It whistled just past the goalie’s left ear and plowed into the net. The net became stretched where the soccer ball collided with it, barely holding the ball inside the goal.

  Immediately after she scored,
Molly cheered and high-fived a couple girls before she jogged over to the girls’ bench and picked up her water bottle.

  Molly drank some water and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. After replacing her bottle on the bench, she looked up and saw Scott.

  Molly took in Scott’s jaw that had basically dropped to the ground, along with his raised eyebrows and look of utter disbelief.

  She quickly averted her eyes and took a deep breath.

  “Great goal!” Scott yelled at her across the field, playing dumb. “That was amazing!”

  He put both of his thumbs up and smiled. Molly did the same before wriggling her eyebrows and looking relieved.

  But it was too late. He’d seen her curve the ball.

  Scott heard Coach Ghentelle calling the team in. After a quick wave to Molly he joined the other boys in a circle around the coach. Coach Ghentelle was hunched over, talking in his low, dramatic voice.

  “You showed great effort out there today. There was a lotta great teamwork goin’ on. Still, I gotta make some cuts. Don’t sweat it. If you don’t make the cut, I might ask you to be on JV. And for those of you who were on JV last year, I may put you on varsity.”

  Charlie winked at Scott from the other side of the huddle and mouthed, “That’s us!”

  “Put your hands in,” Coach Ghentelle instructed, adding, “On three we say ‘Glendale.’ One! Two! Three!”

  “Glendale!” the boys shouted in unison, their sweaty hands stacked in the middle of the circle.

  The tryout team dispersed, and Scott jogged up to Charlie, who was walking toward the school with a confident grin on his face.

  “You do okay?” he asked Charlie.

  Scott and Charlie hadn’t been near each other the entire tryout, due to Coach Ghentelle’s alphabetical way of doing things.

  “Better than ‘okay!’ I did great! I couldn’t have done any better if you paid me!” Charlie enthusiastically replied. “And I should get paid for this!”

  “I think we’ll both make varsity.”

  “Make it?! Are you kidding me?! I saw you schooling Johnny back there on the field. That was sick!”

  “Yeah, well, it’s what I do,” Scott joked, but his heart wasn’t in it. Maybe I should tell him what really happened.

  “Yeah, well, so why aren’t you using those suhweet moves against Brick?”

  Scott shot him a look. So Charlie had seen his run-in with Brick. Apparently he’d just been saving the verbal ammo to mess with Scott in private. What a . . . well, what a Charlie McEntly thing to do.

  Scott glared at him. “You’re an asshat.”

  “Oh, stop it,” Charlie grinned. “You’re making me blush.”

  They both laughed at that one.

  “Hey,” Scott said suddenly, “did you see what Molly did?”

  “What?”

  Scott looked at Charlie for a moment and instantly thought better of it. Maybe he’d tell him another time. He’d play the Charlie game on this one and keep things close to the chest. He hesitated before saying simply, “I thought she played a mean game.”

  “You’re a weirdo. And a stalker.”

  By then they had walked through the gym to the locker room. There were a couple people inside changing back into regular clothes, and Scott and Charlie did the same.

  After changing, they walked past a red brick planter filled with yellow blossoming brittlebush and headed to a patch of grass next to the late bus area. They plopped onto the grass next to their gym bags, sore from running. A few other kids waiting for the buses were scattered around waiting as well.

  “Aah,” Charlie said, “this feels good.”

  “It’s definitely a lot better than getting slammed against a locker.”

  “Yeah, you would know.” Charlie’s eyes were closed, face turned toward the warmth of the sun.

  “Yeah I would.” Then Scott added pointedly, “And so would you if you had a set of balls.”

  Charlie opened his eyes and turned to look at Scott. “Yeah . . . except that I know when not to talk, and I’m not dumb enough to go against Brick.” He poked Scott in the chest. “You’re not invincible.”

  “Don’t poke me,” Scott said, rubbing his chest. “That dude’s a bully who needs to be taken down a notch or two.”

  “He’s all that and more. But you’re my friend. Just . . . walk away next time.”

  “No,” Scott said, shaking his head. “And I don’t want to have this conversation again, dude. If I get my ass beat, then that’s honestly fine with me. At least he won’t be picking on someone like Carl again. I can’t take that. And he got away with it because Carl’s too much of a freakin’ scaredy-cat—”

  “Scott,” Charlie said, growing serious, which was rare for him, “lighten up on the kid. Carl is in the hospital. With a broken arm and a shattered kneecap.”

  “All the more reason he needs to tell the truth,” Scott answered with a scowl.

  “Scott, come on, relax—”

  “No! Dude, I’m not gonna relax!” Scott jumped to his feet. Charlie just shook his head and stayed seated as Scott continued his rant. “Carl didn’t want to snitch on him because he’s scared. Plain and simple. And I hate Brick for that. I hate people who make other people feel like that. I hate him. And I hate not being able to do anything real about it. It sucks.”

  “If you could hurt Brick, would you?”

  Scott looked at his friend with utter confusion.

  “What, like if I could bench cars before I get on the bus in the morning? Yeah, I’d hurt him if I could,” Scott answered. “In a freaking heartbeat.”

  “And then?”

  “And then?” Scott repeated, like a parrot. “And then . . . then I’d tell him to . . . I dunno, honestly. I’d come up with something, though.”

  Charlie didn’t say a word. After a moment, Scott sat back down and stared at the ground, mad at himself. He never got anywhere talking to Charlie about this. Charlie just always wanted to take the nonviolent route. The safe route. He wanted to hide.

  They both sat in silence for a minute and gazed at the passing cars on the other side of the street.

  “Yeah, I got video too.”

  Scott heard the unfamiliar voice. He looked around. He didn’t see anyone talking who would have been within earshot, besides Charlie. There was just a huddle of three kids talking a couple hundred feet away by the far side of the school.

  “Did you see Faranger running? Weeeirrd,” someone else said.

  Scott’s vision suddenly had wavy white lines overlapping everything that he saw, and he blinked a couple times, trying to get the problem to go away. He shook his head from side to side, and the lines began to subside until a third voice was heard.

  “Wait! Pause it there! Dude, it looks like he’s floating!”

  His vision now had white lines traveling every which way, colliding with each other and causing overlays of color on everything that he looked at.

  What keeps happening to me?! Scott thought as his heart rate increased dramatically.

  “Scott!”

  Scott flinched, and his vision returned to normal. He glanced next to him and saw Charlie staring right at him.

  “I called your name like four times.” Charlie laughed nervously. “You all right?”

  “Charlie, did you see anything . . . weird happen to me at tryouts?” Scott asked bluntly.

  Charlie made a face, pretending to think about the question for a minute. “Define weird. Weird is basically your level of normal.”

  Scott rolled his eyes. “Okay, fine. What about anything strange?”

  “What are you talking about, dude?”

  “Nothing,” Scott caved, dropping it.

  “You sure it’s nothing?”

  “Yeah, I’m good.”

  “Okaaay . . .”

  “Hey guys,” a girl’s voice said cheerfully from behind them.

  Having Too Much Fun Can Kill You

  “What the fudge?!” Charlie jumped up, and
Molly covered her mouth with her hand to stop laughing at him.

  Scott instantly felt like his vocal cords were being force-choked by Darth Vader.

  How long had she been standing there?

  “Wow! That Diet Pepsi finally caught up with me,” Charlie lied while holding his stomach. “Excuse me while I go drain the sea monster.”

  Scott shook his head at the lame excuse.

  Molly said simply, “Dodgeball. Nice.”

  “It’s Scott’s favorite movie!” Charlie shot back with a grin.

  Charlie jogged toward the front entrance of the school, leaving Scott sitting alone on the grass, with Molly standing beside him on the sidewalk. A couple seconds later Scott spotted Charlie hiding behind the nearby brick planter and flowering shrubs, giving him a thumbs-up sign with a wolfish grin and crazy eyes for dramatic effect.

  He turned his attention back to Molly to see her staring at him questioningly.

  “What was that?” Molly asked with an amused smile and a raised eyebrow.

  “What was what?”

  “You had a funny look on your face when you saw me standing behind you.” She shrugged and suddenly changed the direction of the conversation. “Never mind about that. I wanted to ask how you did during tryouts.”

  “I did alright. You?”

  “Well . . . I did great. Except all the girls on the varsity team think that I’ll make a perfect midfielder, but I love playing forward. And Coach wants me to play forward too.” She nervously chewed her lip.

  “Wow. Sounds like a tough choice,” Scott commented dryly. “They’re talking to you about varsity. First world problems.”

  “Jerk.” She smiled at him, showing her perfectly white teeth.

  “Bigger jerk.”

  Molly looked hurt by that comment.

  “I’m just kidding,” Scott explained quickly. “I’m sorry, I was just—”

  Molly suddenly laughed. “You’re gullible.”