June 16th Today is little Terry Andrew's birthday. Terry is turning 10 and is excited about it. Getting ready for school, Terry takes a shower, brushes his teeth, gets dressed, and heads downstairs to have some breakfast. His parents are downstairs as well also getting ready for work grabbing some papers and things that they'll need.
"Mom, Dad, can I skip school today." Terry thinks to himself having trouble having those words leave his mouth. He thinks that his parents will say no being his birthday isn't a good excuse to miss school.
"It's 6:47." the mother tells the father. "Honey have you seen the paper for our meeting today." he asked of her
"No. Have you checked your desk?" "Yes, and it's not there."
"How about your briefcase?" "I'll check." the father runs upstairs leaving his briefcase up in their room. "Terence we're going to be home late today so I prepared some chicken and mixed vegetables in the frig for you when you get hungry. Just throw it in the microwave." the mother informs Terry. "6:48!" the mother yells out. "I'm on it!"
the father comes downstairs telling the mother "I found the paper it was under the bed for some reason. That's strange."
As Terry's parents are about to leave for work, he gets a sinking feeling that his parents might have forgotten about his birthday today. He wants to remind them but can't. Feeling that his parents help run a big corporation, he doesn't want to inconvenience them.
As the parents start exiting the house Terry's mom looks at her son and asks him
"Hey honey, do you need a ride to school? I'll be happy to wait till you're done then drop you off." "No, that's okay." Terry says passing it off as no big deal.
"Okay dear, love you."
"Love you too sport." The father adds on.
Once Terry finishes his bowl of cereal, he grabs his backpack and starts walking to school.
A nice sunny day out, Terry walks to school looking up in the sky imagines soring up in the sky nothing but air beneath him, feeling free from his emotional problems feeling the breeze hitting against as him. Terry soon arrives at his school and his fantasy is now over. Walking into school, he passes by some of his friends, (Jeff Lombard and Mike Dunkan) who casually talk to him.
"Hey Terence, did get the new issue off Demon Devil." Jeff asks Terry "No, not yet." Terry awkwardly says.
The three begin to walk towards homeroom continuing the conversation. "Aw dude I hope they answer his cosmic connection to the joker." Jeff continues to. "I hope they never answer that." Mike protests to Jeff "Their relationship should always be a secret."
"Then why did they bring up in the last issue if they're not going to answer in the next?" Jeff debates with jeff. Terry says adding to the conversation "I heard it's not coming out till a week."
"Aw man a week. The start of our summer vacation." Mike complains "Hey, what are you going to do?" Jeff tells them "I'm going to the pool and pick up some chick." Mike says "Me, I'm gonna work on my muscles gotta work out if I want to be…"
while they talk Terry looks over to Sabrina. A fellow classmate and stairs at her radiant beauty.
At recess, Terry is at a corner alone watching his friends play, trying to build the courage to ask to join in. He can't and decides to give up and watch something on his phone. Terry watches a web series called The Shake-Up which is a web series about a group of friends (mainly two girls named Mary and Jane) that do things together which causes hijinks to ensue which usually results in them getting in trouble. While watching Terry notice that he got a notification that Mary and Jane will do a live Q&A later today on their personal channel. Terry has now had a goal for today. He is determined to watch their live q&a and request them to wish him a happy birthday. Having somebody acknowledging his existence would be the best birthday present for him.
In class, the teacher Ms. Walker is teaching her students the definition of science which is "About searching for knowledge in any subject." Terry disagreed with that statement believing that science is about working with chemicals and building advanced technology. Coincidentally a student tells the teacher exactly what he was thinking. "Isn't science about working with chemicals or building advanced technology in a lab"
Ms. Walker explains "Yes that’s technically true but it's all to pursue a better understanding of technology and chemicals that the scientists are working with to see what is possible. The thing about science is that what we understand all or a particular subject is no longer science but fact."
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Terry is pleasantly surprised that someone had the same thought that he did and was happy that it was explained more thoroughly but was disappointed at himself again that he couldn't ask himself.
After a few classes have passed only two more remains until school is over for today. During class, Terry pays most of his attention to the clock. Every day in his last couple of classes he always tries to make time go faster either by changing his perspective on time thinking about how he is already walking home or trying to be into what being taught that time just magically skips forward. Once he starts his final class, Terry starts to feel like he's going crazy. Starting at the clock all period trying mentally to will the minute hand forward feeling like he will pass out any moment desperately wanting time to just speed up and for class to be over. Then all of a sudden the minute hand starts moving forwards. Terry can't believe his eyes when the minute hand just keeps moving forwards without stopping once. After about thirty seconds the bell rang, class was over, and the teacher reminded everyone to do their homework. Terry was momentarily confused and disoriented about how fast class ended and that nobody else seemed to notice.
Walking home from school Terry imagines the moment when the girls wish him a happy birthday. Terry is filled with joy and excitement with the possibility of it happening. Terry then thinks about how this might change his life. This one moment of acknowledgment might give him the confidence to act out, to take chances.
While waiting for the live stream Terry occupies his time by drawing things he currently daydreams about or fanart of his favorite comic book shows (Demon Devil, Ceaser the Mighty, The Eight Legged Kid). Terry usually spends his days alone. His parents work at a company in the city and don't normally come home until about 8, he does not go out for the fear of the unknown dangers that await him outside only feeling safe in his house, so to keep company he will talk to himself for fun, for advice, and or to debate with.
Right now he is talking to himself about whether he should do his homework. "You should do your homework now if you want to want to watch the live stream." "You don't have to, you can just stay up longer than you usually do to work on it then finish the rest tomorrow morning before class." "You have a lot of homework and very little time why wait till the last minute when you can do it now and take your time."
"Because we already know most of the stuff. Math is easy and should only take a few minutes, we already know the words for our English test tomorrow. The only difficulty is science, which we won't have until the end of the day. And besides, it's not like she checks if your answers are right, just if we did it or not."
Terry decided like the majority of kids to hold off doing his homework until the last minute deciding to watch the live stream instead of doing his homework.
Terry takes a quick shower wanting to feel clean and refreshed before the time came. He scrubs his skin nice and good with soap getting all areas of his body, shampooing his hair, and brushing his teeth in the shower. Unfortunately, because he was getting too ready for the live stream he was starting to become late to view the live stream.
Not wanting to miss it he dropped everything he was doing only having time to put underwear on him and rushed to his computer to watch Mary and Jane and getting ready to sees his opportunity.
Watching Mary and Jane Q&A Terry starts to become infatuated with them. He imagines that he is there hanging out with them, being great friends. He's so focused on this concept that he can barely stand it. He cannot breathe, he has blurry vision, and his body vibrates then suddenly he feels his body shifting causing him motion sickness, and finds himself in a standing position. He falls to the floor and starts to breathe slowly. While on the floor he hears people in the room with him. "That would be so cool if we were able to do that on the show. Yeah, people listen up, go to the comment section of The Shake-Up, and potion for that to happen. Oh my gosh, we're so going to get in trouble for this" He looks up and finds that he's not in his room anymore. He stands up and finds that he's in Jane's room where they're doing the Q&A behind standing right behind them.
He slowly walks away being quiet as possible leaving her room and ending up hiding in the bathroom. The girls read from the live chat that some kid just appeared in the room behind them. The girls don't believe them at first but when the chat just continuously persists that someone is in the house with them Jane rewinds the footage and confirms. Mary someone did appear in the room with us. In fear, the girl screams for Jane's mother crying that a stranger is in the house. In the bathroom, Terry tries to teleport back to his room but can't. He is drenched in fear and confusion crouching down in the bathtub breathing heavily trying to convince himself that all this is just a dream. Mary discovers that the stranger is hiding in the bathroom. "Hey come out here I'm calling the cops!" Jane's mother yelled.
With no other option, he can think of, Terry decides to just bolt it out of the house. Terry puts all his mental energy into forcing on unlocking the door because he knows once he unlocks the door there's no hesitation he has to run as fast as possible. As he unlocks the door his body vibrates and he starts to run. As he runs he feels light like he's on the moon or underwater as he jumps over Jane that is in his way in the hallway. He runs past the family in the house surprising them on how fast he's moving that they don't have the chance to get a good look at his face. Terry manages to exit the house and runs to the point where he feels that there is no one around which ultimately ends him in the woods.
Terry walks around trying to take in what just happened. "Is this real? Am I going crazy? How is this happening? I must be dreaming. When will this end?" He stops for a moment realizing he has no idea where he is, has no phone, and he's outside only wearing underwear and begins to cry. Terry feels scared not knowing what's happening to him and he cries himself to sleep against a random tree.
Being out in the cold Terry imagines being back home in his room in his soft warm bed. Constantly imagining about this causes the world around him to subtly change, becoming his room. His bed rising from the ground and the tree turning into a blanket slowly wrapping itself on him. Terry was back in his room in his bed sleeping peacefully.