Team Stavius got a morale boost when I reported back about the five people who were trained and went missing six years ago, along with the possibility of agents arriving on Earth from Mearth. We spent days coming up with conspiracy theories and brainstorming ideas about what became of those kids. We were having a blast, except for when Tyler kept wanting to add plot twists to the story. I tried to tell him that it didn’t work that way but he thought I was holding out. Malik took my side and explained that I was the sole author of this story. Tyler begrudgingly accepted that decision but complained about wanting me to share the next installment. I knew he didn’t believe in my dreams, so I claimed to be having a temporary case of writer’s block.
LATER THAT DAY
Oh man, this new STEAM curriculum stinks! Math and science have always been my favorite subjects, and now they’re dreadful. The teachers want to take us back to fundamentals in science, so we’re going to spend the whole year learning different ways to measure things accurately. We’re not going to cover anything new at all.
Math class is even worse than science. We’re going way back to things we learned in elementary school and relearning how to do them using new techniques. For example, we aren’t allowed to multiply two numbers in our head and give an answer. We have to show our work, and we can’t explain our answers as numbers multiplied by their digits and added together. We have to do crazy things like multiplying similar numbers to get us close and adding or subtracting to get the right answer. None of it makes any sense, or if it does for one number pair, the same technique doesn’t work for a different pair. Mr. Cranston, our teacher, explained that we need to learn to use the proper method for each situation. I don’t agree. I think I know less math after one day of this than I did before I started.
The most memorable thing about math class is the kid who sits next to me. I’d never seen him before and immediately disliked him. He kept whispering to me, and I know that sooner or later he will get one of us in trouble and that it will probably be me. I ignored him and tried to follow Mr. Cranston’s confusing lecture, but then the kid disassembled his pen and began shooting spitballs around the room. The first couple of shots were funny, but he just kept on doing it all class long. I thought that this kid was as big of a jerk as Janus. Then I realized that this kid was acting just like Janus and I started paying more attention to him.
He dressed and acted like he didn’t care what people thought of him. His notebook and backpack already looked as abused as mine did by the end of the year, and it was only the first week of school! There were photos of horses glued to his notebook and punk rock lyrics already carved on the cover of his math textbook. There was also something else written in big, bold letters on all of his stuff. His name was Jarius Bell.
My mind raced as I theorized that he had to be Janus’ visitor. They both had the same annoying personalities and the only ways to combine their names would be Janius or Jarus, which were too similar to be a unique name. I had no doubt that I had found Earth-Janus and couldn’t wait to tell the guys. I tried to talk to him as class ended but the girl who sat behind me cut in and said to him, “Hey I see you like horses. Me too.”
Jarius didn’t even turn around as he said, “Funny, I don’t recall ever seeing you at the track,” before heading out the door. I was going to try to get his attention but now it was too late. Chasing after him would’ve looked pathetic but I will find a way to meet him because his attitude left me no doubt that this was Janus’ visitor.
Tyler and I had English class together for our lunch period, and I have to admit that this was my best class so far. I usually hate this subject, and we all had to write a short essay as soon as we sat down. The funny thing was that it was easy this time. I guess all that writing in my diary this summer did pay off.
I started to tell Tyler about Jarius and Janus while we ate but he stopped me and said that we had to be careful to only discuss topics having to do with Team Stavius in a secure environment. He leaned close and whispered that we needed to be cautious to ensure that the wrong people weren’t listening and that whatever we learned should be shared with everyone. I was surprised by his reaction, but he seemed serious and somewhat spooked. Tyler’s behavior was odd because neither Tyler nor Ethan had ever been very serious about Team Stavius. They just played along to hang out with us. However, we agreed to meet at my house after school and swap stories.
Then Ethan and I had American History with Mr. Narwani, and our world flipped upside down.
Let me start by saying that my English class is on the third floor of one corner of the building and Mr. Narwani’s classroom is on the first floor in the opposite corner. Walnut Hills is a big, crowded building, and it’s easy to get lost in the first weeks of school. It’s also a school for grades seven through twelve, so sometimes a thirteen-year-old eighth-grader can get somewhat trampled by seventeen-year-old seniors. Plus, I had to go to the bathroom, and I might have been talking to a couple of friends I met in the hallway.
What I’m trying to say is that I didn’t quite make it to history class before the bell rang, but the door was still open, and I quietly slipped into the one empty seat remaining in the front row.
“Mr. Panagopoulos, your tardiness shows a complete lack of respect for me, for my time, and for this subject,” complained Mr. Narwani.
It felt like déjà vu, and I stuttered for a moment before saying, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t sure how to get here.”
“Oh, please, Mr. Panagopoulos. I don’t want to hear your pathetic excuses, and I am insulted by the fact that you think you can sneak by me when you are the only tardy student. Did you think I wouldn’t notice you suddenly filling the only empty chair?
“I’m here to try to teach you some history, Mr. Panagopoulos, and yet I don’t think you are interested in learning. I think that you’d rather be talking with your friends. Am I right?”
“Um, no” I mumbled in disbelief.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” continued Narwani. “Are you familiar with that famous quote?”
I said, “Uh, yes,” and several kids in the class chuckled.
“Of course, you are, and do you know who said it?” asked Mr. Narwani.
I said, “I think it was the writer and philosopher George Santayana,” and the room became quiet.
Mr. Narwani glared at me for a moment, then looked at his attendance book and said, “Marius Panagopoulos, tardy,” as he forcefully made a check mark on the page. I stole a glance at Ethan, who looked as pale as a ghost.
Team Stavius had never before had a meeting like the one that afternoon. Everyone had something to say, and it took all my self-control to suggest that, perhaps, Tyler should go first since he had sent his text last night. To my surprise, he said he wanted to go last, but there was no stopping Ethan.
“Dudes, Mr. Narwani is Urtish!” he erupted as he recounted what happened in history class and reread the corresponding section of my diary aloud. We were all spooked, but Malik pointed out that this was just a coincidence. After all, they were both history teachers, and all history teachers probably behaved the same. But Ethan wasn’t finished.
“I stayed after class and checked out his desk,” he added. “And do you know what Mr. Narwani’s first name is?”
He answered his own question with, “It’s Satish!” before any of us could answer. “Urtish’s host name must start with ‘Ur,’ and he’s combined it with the end of Satish! Satish Narwani is Urtish!”
There was silence in my room, and I’m sure that everyone else felt chills going up their back as I did. I knew this was all real and was feeling scared. I couldn’t begin to imagine what the others must be feeling as they started to realize this was more than a game, especially when I then explained how I thought I’d found Janus.
Malik jumped up when I was finished and said, “All right, guys. We’re freaking each other out with ghost stories. There’s a good explanation for all of this, and it’s that we’re sim
ply seeing and hearing what we’ve convinced ourselves to be there. This is just a story from Mark’s dreams that we’ve turned into a silly game.”
“Maybe,” whispered Tyler in the now-silent room, “but all of this fits with what I found.”
I had forgotten about Tyler’s epic news text and started to get that sick feeling in my stomach again.
“I think I found the heroes who went missing six years ago,” he said.
“Come on, man! Don’t tease us. Tell us what you found,” screamed Ethan.
Mom yelled up to us asking what was going on. I assured her we were okay and told the guys to keep it down.
“I went online to check the obituaries from six years ago after Mark told us about the last group of heroes,” began Tyler. He saw our shocked expressions and continued, “Hey, we were all thinking it, right?”
I know that I had, but after hearing him say it, I puked a little in my mouth. I swallowed it back though because I had to stay and listen to what he found. After all, I’m the one being trained to go into battle.
“Anyway, I didn’t find anything,” he continued.
Let me ask your opinion. It would be called justifiable homicide if I had killed Tyler then and there, right? I mean, he so totally deserved it. I know I would’ve at least beat him up with my karate moves if I was more in shape and Malik and Ethan hadn’t grabbed me, covered my mouth, and held me back. Malik finally let me go and said the only thing that could keep me quiet. He hissed, “Your mom’s downstairs.”
Then Malik turned towards Tyler and said, “Enough of the dramatics. Get to the point, and I’m warning you that you’ll have both of us wailing on you if you’re making all this up as one of your precious plot twists!”
I could tell that Tyler was scared now, and I remembered how he looked scared way back at lunchtime. I shook off my friends and growled, “Get to the point, Tyler.”
“OK, OK, sorry,” he said. “I’m not trying to be dramatic. I’m just telling the story, but you keep interrupting. I found the four kids, and they aren’t dead.”
I breathed a sigh of relief and felt everyone else in the room relax as well. I’d find a way to get back at Tyler someday, but knowing that I wasn’t going to die due to my dreams made everything all right. I admit that I’ve been worried about the possibility of dying here if Stavius was killed on Mearth ever since I found out about the missing four heroes. I was still shaken up by today’s events but was starting to feel invincible again.
“They’ve all been in comas for the past six years.”
Boom! I felt like I’d just been hit by one of Craan’s sucker punches.
“What!?” yelled three voices at the same time.
“Boys, keep it down up there,” came my mom’s voice from downstairs.
“Sorry Mom, we’re playing a game and got carried away. Won’t happen again,” I yelled back in the most cheerful voice I could muster.
Malik had grabbed Tyler and was saying, “I told you to stop it with the drama! Tell us what happened right now.”
“Dude, I’m trying,” Tyler yelled as he began to cry. “I tried to tell you the story, and you yelled at me, and when I skipped right to the end, you yelled at me to tell you the story.”
Our friend was uncontrollably sobbing, and we realized he wasn’t trying to be dramatic. He was doing his best to deliver the genuinely major news. It took us a good five minutes to calm him down, and we were all feeling pretty guilty about how we had treated him by the time his sobs subsided.
The first thing he said, when he was able to speak again was, “I’m sorry, Mark. I know this all has to do with you, man. I apologize. I thought this was just a game and now I’m scared. I can’t imagine how you must be feeling.”
The answer was that I felt like a total jerk, but what I said was, “It’s OK, Tyler. We’re all a little stressed out from today. Why don’t you tell us what you found out in your own way?”
He looked at me, sniffled, and told us his story.
Tyler had started out looking through the obituaries for May through July from six years ago. His logic was that the people on Earth would die in their sleep if their conjoined entities expired on Mearth. He was looking six years back because that was when that batch of heroes was trained and he chose May through July because they disappeared right after they left the valley.
Now, most people would’ve quit once they came up empty, especially if they believed this was just a game and didn’t expect to find anything. Tyler isn’t like most people, though. Tyler has obsessive-compulsive behavior, even when he’s on his meds. So, he shifted to reading every local news article from that timeframe after he came up empty with the obituaries.
A week later an article from July 6th caught his eye. Two thirteen-year-old girls from Bridgetown Middle School had both slipped into comas in their sleep on June 17th. The police were called in to investigate, and suspected drugs were involved, although both families denied their children used them, and no drugs were found in their systems. Both girls were top students, and one was even considered a math prodigy. The cops finally decided this was merely an unfortunate coincidence and the case was closed.
Tyler couldn’t find any other similar stories but, again, wouldn’t let it go. He did something foolish instead. Tyler’s mom is the head of pediatrics at a local hospital, and he hacked her account. Well, he didn’t actually hack her account; Tyler rooted around her desk until he found the slip of paper she had taped to the bottom of her keyboard containing her password. Still, he shouldn’t have snuck into the hospital records to poke around, but we’re all glad he did.
It turns out that two other kids slipped into comas in their sleep on the same night, a boy who went to Nagel and another girl who went to Walnut Hills. It took him a long time to find them because they were sent to other hospitals and didn’t transfer to his mom’s hospital for several weeks.
Tyler had found a boy and three girls who all gone to bed and never awakened on a warm summer night in the middle of June, six years ago, at about the same time as four Mearth heroes disappeared. All four of these kids are still in comas today, and now I’m having dreams involving myself and three girls on the same dangerous mission to save Mearth.
I should’ve felt sick again, but I didn’t. I just felt numb. Ethan was sitting next to Tyler on my bed, Malik had dropped into my beanbag chair midway through the story, and I was standing there in the middle of my bedroom. Nobody said a word for a long, long time.
Then Tyler whispered, “You have to stop dreaming about Mearth, man.”
Yeah, it might surprise you, but I was thinking along the same lines. For the past two months, I couldn’t wait to get back to Mearth. I’d go to bed early every night thinking about Mearth and hoping that I’d have the dream, but I had no control over when it occurred. Now I was terrified of having that dream or of even going to sleep. The problem is that I still have no control over it.
Ethan suggested that we should talk to a doctor, but Tyler pointed out that they’d think I was crazy and we all knew he was right. Tyler said that the most obvious solution was to refuse to go on this suicidal quest and to hang out and enjoy life in the valley until my next birthday. That sounded pretty good to me, but Malik disagreed.
“Yeah, maybe you could do that, but not me,” he said with a pensive expression on his face.
“What do you mean?” I asked. Now those stomach cramps were starting to return. Malik tended to think things through a little more than the rest of us, and I suspected I wouldn’t like what he had to say.
“Well, what about the three girls who boldly set off on the quest ahead of you?” Malik asked. “They have no idea of the risk they’re taking. Are you willing to let them charge off into battle without knowing what will happen to them here if they’re killed?”
“Um, no,” I said, feeling like a chump because I hadn’t even thought about that. “But they left months ago. What if they’re already, you know, gone?” I couldn’t bring myself to say dead
.
“Good point,” agreed Malik. He was always our group’s leader, and I could see that he was getting comfortable settling back into his familiar role. “Tyler, you need to search for unexplained comas from late May through now and look through the obituaries as well, just in case. Mark, you need to get Stavius to find and warn the girls. The rest of us need to focus on training Mark so he can help Stavius. I thought this was just a fun game, like you guys, but now I believe it’s real.”
“I still think we should ask somebody for help,” said Ethan.
“Absolutely not!” Malik firmly replied. Then in a softer tone, he said, “We can’t just believe parts of Mark’s dreams and ignore the rest. Mr. Urtish warned him about the possibility of enemy agents coming to our world to stop the heroes. We don’t know who they might be, but I have some suspicions.”
We all just stared at him until he said, “Dudes, think about it. What does Mark bring to Stavius other than killer karate moves and his winning personality?”
“Um, I’m good at math and science, and that increases his magical powers. That is if he could figure out how to use them?” I guessed. The way I said it made it sound more like a question than an answer.
“Right,” said Malik. “And do you think your math and science skills are going to be strong after a year of our new STEAM curriculum?”
“Do you mean you think our teachers are enemy agents from Mearth trying to confuse us?” Tyler asked in disbelief.
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