I can't take my eyes off of him. Semaj keeps selling bread and pastries to customers and is somehow looking extremely hot while doing so. I feel a blush start to creep up my neck towards my pale face and I feel my jaw start to drop slightly. Addie rolls her eyes and laughs, bringing me back to reality. "Yeah, Semaj is attractive, isn't he?"

  The blush goes twice as fast to cover all of my face. "No, I mean, uh, yes? But I'm...uh..."

  Addie begins to laugh even harder, "I think you might have a crush on him. Come on." With that, Addie grabs my arm and starts to drag me in his general direction. My heart starts thumping against my chest like I'm experiencing an adrenaline rush or a rabbit that's cornered by the fox. I'm the rabbit approaching the fox. 

  I am dragged by Addie towards his booth, silently screaming no repeatedly in my head. She stops once we reach the booth and I realize that I am within direct sight of Semaj if he looks in my direction. From this distance I can hear the sound of his voice. He has this light, joking voice that seems to lift in and out of conversations. I notice that he has a dimple in his right cheek that appears each time he smiles, which seems like every other second. I feel like I'm about to die.

  It's not that I've never encountered a cute guy before, my school has a lot of those guys. But those are often the guys who trip me when I'm walking down the hall and laugh in my face as I scramble to pick up my books. Those are the guys who will move out of their way to either make fun of me or avoid me at all costs. Those are the guys who will spend time with me and pretend they care and then send a picture of themself making out with their new flavor of the week texting "U thought!", just when I started to think that they cared.

  These hot guys are some of the tormentors I have in my daily life. I can't stand it if Semaj is the same way. I start to turn around when Addie grabs my shoulder and literally forces me to turn back around. "Semaj." Her melodious voice caught his attention.

  "Hey Adleremse! Haven't seen you in a while!"

  "Yeah, been kinda busy this week. Looks like you've had some business lately."

  "Yes," his smile returns, "business has been good. People really do like pastries this time of year." Semaj then breaks eye contact with Addie and looks at me, "Who is this?"

  I can't talk. Literally, I try to open my mouth and make use of my vocal chords, but I just can't. Addie comes to my rescue. "This is Riley. She's visiting us for a little while."

  He smiles brightly, "Hey Riley! I'm Semaj. I make pastries and at market, sometimes I get to steal a glance of pretty ladies such as you when I'm working," he then winks at me. I didn't even realize that this stuff even happened in real life. He's gotta be one of those cruel, yet attractive people. I start to form a mental wall between myself and this angel.

  "Uh...hi? I, uh...am...well...you know...uh" I just fumble on. I seriously can't english now or ever.

  With a smile on his face and a dimple showing up on his cheek, he replies, "Don't worry about it. I mean," A blush starts to creep up his face, "That was probably a little TMI if you know what I mean. I mean, I meant what I said, but" He rakes his right hand through his hair, giving it a more tousled look. Semaj then gives a sigh, mutters under his breath about what an idiot he is to start a conversation like that, and then directs his green eyes at me. He looks freaking gorgeous. "I probably should have worded it in a different way."

  Addie just laughs outright, "Oh my heck Riley! You are truly amazing! You can make a boy speechless within the first couple of minutes that he meets you!" She smiles brightly, looking off in the distance, mumbling slightly, "Your powers just never seem to end, do they?"

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  I am a tomato. That is just now a fact of life. I am so red from mortification and embarrassment and just communicating with people who don't seem to hate me in general. Addie, fortunately, notices, "Goodness, look at the time!" Addie looks at her bare wrist, "We gotta be heading out! I mean, Ma needs some bread and we need to get some pastries for little Mal. Can you get those for us Semaj?"

  "Sure thing Ad! Coming right up!" Semaj looks at me and turns around to grab the items for Addie. He grabs each item with a gentle touch and carefully places them in a brown bag. "Here ya go!" He gives the bag to Addie and looks at me once again, "See you Riley and it's good to see you." His dimpled smile returns along with a sparkle in his eye, "If you're ever in this area passing by, give me a hoot and come and get a pastry from me." He winks. "Have a good day!"

  "You too!" Addie says as she grabs my arm. She pulls me away from the crowds and back towards her home. She whispers quickly into my ear, "You've already been here for longer than you're supposed to be."

  I look back at her, "What do you mean?"

  She looks at me and sighs, "Right, I guess I forgot to tell you another part about the portals. The longer you stay in a foreign world, the harder it is to go back to your time. Look," she grabs me by the shoulders and stares me straight in the eyes, "Since you've been here a couple of days, it's going to be kinda hard for me to return you back to the time you left, so you don't appear missing or anything like that. 

  "With the portals, they're unpredictable. An average person could try to get back to their homeworld only to find that they've gone fifty or so years into the past," Addie flips her hair, "But lucky for you, I am no average person. I can make you a portal pretty easily going back to your own time, but the longer you're here, the more of a chance that the portal will choose the time in which you return. Does that make sense?"

  I look at her with a look of the most serious expression I have, my heart is starting to thump rapidly like a horse galloping across the plains, "Will I be able...ummm...to come back?"

  "Oh! Forgot to tell you that part. You can teleport too with the leftover energy that you've used. It's kinda weird, but when you go through a portal, you have the capabilities to teleport on your own once or twice. It's tough, but it's not impossible. Anyways, you gotta go!"

  "But wait...I"

  Addie is pushing me along with a hurry in her steps, "What? You gotta go! No offense, but if you want to go home, you gotta go now!"

  "I, uh..." I look at her, fear seeping out of every pore in my body from the memory of my last trip through the portals, "how do I make it not hurt?"

  "Oh!" Addie smacks her head, "Yeah, apparently forgot to give you that too. Here." She handed me this small blue pill, "eat it."

  The pill honestly looked like it came straight from one of those 'Don't do drugs' commercials. Every instinct I have tells me not to eat it, I look warily at it, "Are you sure?"

  "Yes! Or don't eat it, but you'll suffer the consequences. Hurry up!"

  "Okay." I grab the pill from her hand and cautiously put it into my mouth. Gosh it tastes bad. Bile is rising up my throat and my gagging instinct is working pretty hard to get the foreign nasty body out of my mouth. Tears are coming to my eyes since I'm squeezing my eyes so hard.

  The initial taste honestly isn't bad, but then there's an after taste. It slowly climbs from the back of my throat and slowly crawls onto the rest of my tongue. If you guys wonder what exactly it tastes like, take some couple week old trash, blend it into a food processor, and then eat it. It's nasty.

  After a minute or so, I am finally able to swallow the foul pill. Addie juts rolls her eyes and mutters, "Of course she's being overly dramatic." In a louder voice, she calls out, "Planet: Earth, send Riley back home." The eels are back and are swirling in a giant vortex that's being created right in front of me. The gust from the portal takes my breath away and I just stand there. No, I don't want to go back, there was all of this pain. I have to go, now.

  I try to turn around and run, but Addie spots my movement and shouts, "Oh no you don't!" She shoves me into the vortex and my screams accompany me. The white, slithering strings of the cyclone are closing in around me, seeming to draw my every breath and leave me with no air.

  Along with my problems of being an outcast, I'm also claustrophobic. They close in tighter and tighter and I feel like I can't breathe. The stress and the scariness of the situation starts to make my eyes flutter. Things are now starting to blur together and I feel a little dizzy and light headed. My eyes finally give into gravity and all goes black.