CHAPTER 3
"It can't be somewhere or another. It can only be somewhere. No matter where it is, there it is." -Unknown
There's a mysterious enigma lurking on our school campus.
Starting in mid-October of my freshman year, colorful Post-It notes started apearing all around campus in the most abnormal places: the school bathrooms, underneath lunch trays, on backpacks - and all of them signed with the name "Sexy Galactic Hero." Filling the sticky notes with little things like motivational crap and comical little doodles, he's become a bit of an icon around our school.
Sexy Galactic Hero often helped me with my problems - indirectly, of course. I'd always imagined him as some self-centered, 'popular' teenage snot who merely pasted the inspirational quotes to draw attention to himself and didn't give a shit about the rest of the people reading his notes. His name kind of gave it away, but, who cared?
I mean, for a possible self-centered brat, he wrote pretty good advice, and whenever I found these notes, I often kept them for motivation. He's pretty much the "Ask Amy" of Hardiman East, except, you know, he's a boy, I assumed.
I mean, what girl goes under the alias "Sexy Galactic Hero?" No self-respecting woman would ever do such a thing. It would be social suicide provided anyone discovered their true identity.
All possible brattiness aside, Sexy Galactic Hero was my best friend beside my best friends, as few as they came. And my few friends knew that - very well.
During lunch, I extracted more information about the ginger kid named Shaun Duncan.
After Dillon O'Shea and Gail Harris had tossed away their greasy, soggy hot dog lunches and asked for part of my sandwich, and some of Dory Pyleston’s (better known to us as ‘Dorpy') cookies, Dillon leaned in close to me and prodded my side. “What's up,” she said, munching on a slice of turkey that she had snatched from my ‘wich, “Mica?”
'Nothing."
Dillon blinked at me, searching my face through a pair of narrowed amber eyes, and then she leaned on the table and smiled suggestively.
“Mica, my homie.” Dillon sighed with exasperation, patting my back, “I know when something’s up with you. We’ve been friends since, I don't know, kindergarten?"
"Second grade," Dorpy corrected, her eyes round and chocolaty underneath her purple-tinted frames.
Dorpy's pretty much an encyclopedic robotic-computer-genius; the only difference between her and an actual robot is that she has skin, and she's the most sensitive, emotional person I know. But other than that, her brain is the motherboard and her eyes are the search engine. If she's heard something before, she'll recall it and answer you in a matter of seconds.
Unfortunately, like most computers, she can be kind of laggy, especially when it pervades to reality.
"Whatever," Dillon snorted, waving her hand. "Mica, don’t. Even. Try. Lying. To. Me.”
“You know, you're such a hypocrite, O'Shea.”
She cracked a grin at me and shrugged. “It’s for my own good.” It was true, sadly enough. Dillon was the biggest—and the best—liar I knew. Having grown up with three older brothers and one pesky younger sister, lying was practically Dillon’s middle name. That, and crazy. And daring. Heck, she even lied to me during our first meeting - and true to Dorpy's nature, we did meet in second grade.
I’d been determining whether to go on the playground’s swings or not when, boom, Dillon O'Shea sauntered up from behind and whispered in my ear, “You know, if you go on those swings, you’ll be haunted by a ghost.”
