Wait! I Wrote That? A Collection of Old, Horrific Stories

A Textbook of a Tale

Song: "All Earth Time" - Lyrics by Mr. Parr (Original Lyrics by The Script)

        "Ah, ha! I thought I'd find you here." Amanda fluffed her poofy brown hair and settled beside me. She pushed her black glasses close to the bridge of her nose, giving her the appearance of a teacher, and smiled with all her white teeth.

"Of course I am, Amanda!" I said, flipping the page of our 8th-grade geology textbook. I rested my hand on the picture of the colorful geologic time scale, which looked like a rainbow. With my other hand, I clicked the computer's mouse. "I can't help myself," I said, jiggling uncomfortably in my seat. "This is all so fascinating!" I think I knew what I wanted to do when I grew up.

Amanda's chocolate-colored eyes rolled over to my open notebook, which rested between the computer and my palms. She propped up her head. "Let me guess, you're going to write a story about geologic time?" She knew me all too well.

"Sure am," I said, my voice full of joy. I pulled up an image of a long-necked dinosaur known as an Apatosaurus. "I want to write a time-traveling story, but I don't know where to start."

"Let me. Scooch over." Amanda bumped my shoulder, nearly knocking me off my chair. The computer lab's tile floor was mere inches from my face.

Amanda clicked away at the computer. The sound soothed me to the point I almost fell asleep. I already had writing fatigue, and it hadn't even been an hour yet. Luckily, Amanda snapped me out of my trance. "Ah ha! Here we go!"

"What is it?" I asked, squinting my eyes until they were mere slits. The webpage before me showed a swirling ball of dark matter in outer space. Attached to it was a strange tunnel that fed out of a ball of white matter.

Amanda ran her tan finger across the tunnel. "Legend has it that if someone travels through a black hole, wormhole, and white hole, they'll time travel." She slapped her hands to her khaki pants and scrunched them into fists. "This is perfect!"

Um, what exactly was she talking about? Tilting my head, I gave my friend a bewildered look.

"Don't you see?" Amanda asked, turning to me. "What if your main character travels through a black hole, wormhole, and white hole to time travel?"

Oh, my gosh! Why did I not think of that before?

I slapped my palm to my Caucasian face. "Amanda, you're a genius!" Grabbing her shoulders, I shook them like they were a set of keys. My feet danced under me. The whole time they did, I scooped up my mechanical pencil and started to write in my notebook. Notes I would never use unless I somehow decided to keep writing in the future trashed it.

Amanda flipped back and forth from prehistoric web pages to pages about black holes. She dragged our textbook close to us and pointed at the Precambrian Time on the scale. "For example, let's say your protagonist starts in the Precambrian Time and then travels to the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic Eras."

Huh, that wasn't a bad idea. It was perfect! I was so perfect that I felt beyond excited to start a new story. "Should he be from the future?" I asked. My fingers gripped the edge of the filthy tabletop.

"Oooh! Yes, yes, yes!" Amanda sounded like a little kid all over again.

I couldn't help myself. I leaped up from my chair and ran around the lab like crazy. "What should it be called? What should it be called?" I asked the entire time I did.

Amanda shrugged. "How about something simple like Through the Wormhole?"

Through the Wormhole. That was quick and painless. "Oh, it's perfect!" I said, screeching to a stop at our computer. My shoes sounded like tires trying to save a car from a head-on collision.

"All right, I've got it." Amanda penned down the title. "And what should your main character be called?"

"Dan! Dan!" I said, thinking about my dad, who always listened to my stories at night. There was something seriously wrong with me. I really should not be getting so excited about writing. Hobbies were quiet, little things. Nobody needed to know I had an unnecessary obsession with the arts.

Amanda tossed my notebook into my arms. "You've got this, Victoria!" She smiled just as much as I did.

"Through the Wormhole, Through the Wormhole. Let's do this thing!" I cheered.

The school's bell rang. "Dawg gone it all," I mumbled under my breath. For once, I did not want to go home. I would be chewed out by Mom if she saw me writing again. But I had an amazing idea under my Palmetto-patterned belt!

I knew what I would do. I would wait until nighttime. Once everybody was asleep, I would study my textbook some more and start Through the Wormhole.

"Thank you, Amanda," I said, giving her an enormous hug. I nearly cracked her spine in the process.

"No problem," she breathlessly told me.

Before I could suffocate her more, I let her go and picked up my book bag. "It's time to get this show on the road!"

"Don't forget this," Amanda said, holding out my notebook.

I blushed. "Oh, yeah. I might need that." Like Swiper in one of my childhood favorites, Dora the Explorer, I swiped my notebook and jogged out of the lab, excited to start a time-traveling story like none other—all thanks to my best friend.