Don't Forget Me

Time Spots

I remember once as a little kid my grandma had taken me to the Utah state fair. We had gone around and seen all the cool booths. Near the end we reached a booth where this girl was painting faces. My grandma tried to march straight past it before I noticed (she's not a big fan of body art). But she was too slow.
I begged and begged and begged until my grandma finally let me get my face painted.

The girl asked me what I wanted and I asked for a surprise. When she was finished I looked in a mirror and saw a beautiful blue flower painted next to my left eye. I loved it!
At least for about 10 minutes.       
After that the skin around the flower started to sting and burn. It turned out there was some oil in the paint that I was allergic to. My grandma washed it off me immediately but I still had a nice mark on my face for a week afterwards.

Now looking in the mirror 13 years later I saw the exact same flower. Every dot was exactly as it had been before. My first thought was that Ammon had snuck in and pulled a prank on me again. But when I rubbed the picture it felt just like normal skin not any kind of paint. Besides Ammon hadn't ever seen the face paint flower!
It was like my most painful memory come back to life. Just looking at the flower I could feel my face burning. I grimaced and walked slowly to the kitchen for breakfast.

I guess it wasn't just a bad dream after all. I thought.

"Sky?" A voice asked from the next room. "Are you awake?"

"Yea grandpa," I replied. "I'm awake."

"Well how was your date last night?"

"Pretty good, I guess, I enjoyed the movie and free dinner."

"You better have a better reason for acting so unenthusiastic," Grandma called. I could hear her walking toward the kitchen. "Better than 'it wasn't with Spencer'."

I didn't even have time to answer before she turned the corner and saw my face.

"Skylar!" She gasped. "Wh-wh-what..." she gestured weakly to my eye.

"What's wrong?" Grandpa shouted. "Are you hurt Sky?"

"You better get in here Dave." A few seconds later Grandpa appeared next to Grandma.

"Did you get a tattoo? Skylar Gonzo! You know we don't approve of that kind of stuff!"

"That's not-" I started but Grandpa interrupted.

"And I thought your friends had more sense then this!"

"No grandpa-"

"And Ammon was there to. I'll call him up and talk to him about it right now and-"

"GRANDPA!" Finally he stopped talking and listened to me.

"What?"

"We didn't go get tattoos last night. We went and saw where the portal is. It turns out that the  portal has been eating through the wall and it broke through while we were there last night. It started to pull me in but we got away."

"Put that doesn't explain that flower on your face."

"I know and that's because I don't know where that flower came from. But I can only assume it's from the portal."

"Ok... Wait the portal is opened?! I have to go call someone." And with that he turned on his heel and stormed out of the room.

DING-DONG!

I whirled around smacking my grandma in the face with my hair in the process.
I opened the door and tried not to look too flustered.
Standing on the door step with his shoulders hinched against the rain was Zach.

"What are you doing here in the rain!" I asked, pulling him inside. Zach doesn't have a car and he doesn't like driving anyways so, he walks everywhere.

"I needed to talk to you about something," he glanced at my face but didn't comment. Almost like he wasn't surprised about it.

"Ok what do you need?"

He thought for a minute. But before he got the chance to answer my grandpa came barreling into the room.

"Ok Sky..." he trailed off looking at Zach. "Are your hands alright Zach?"
"Fine, sir," Zach had this thing about addressing everyone older than him by either Ms. or sir. He says it makes them feel important and it also shows respect.

"Then why are you wearing snow gloves?" Grandpa continued. I looked down and realized that he was right. Zach was wearing these bulky, black snow gloves that are usually only used for playing in the snow. Not wearing around in the middle of September.

"Well...my hands were cold from walking around in the rain earlier this morning."
Lying. Zach was lying! I was so surprised I almost shouted out loud. Mr. Perfect was lying! He was even worse then I was. But my grandparents didn't call him out even though I knew they could tell. Instead my grandpa just shrugged and turned to me.

"Anyway. As I was saying. There's this guy I know down at the research lab that might be able to tell you more about...that." He pointed to my new 'tattoo'.

A few minutes later Zach and I were in my little yellow Slug Bug. And heading down the road to the research lab.

"So what did you want to talk to me about?" I asked.

"I don't know how to explain it,but," He pulled off his gloves and showed me his hands. They looked like someone had painted them with green glow in the dark paint.

"What is that from?" I demanded.

"I'm not entirely sure," he replied studying his hands. "They were like this when I woke up. I'm guessing I got them from the same place you got your flower."
I didn't say anything after that. There was too much to think about.

10 minutes later we pulled into the research lab parking lot. In front of the door was a really tall man. The top of his head was completely bald and what was remaining of his hair was so white it was blinding. And I swear he was nearly 7 feet tall! We didn't have to ask if he was the man my grandpa had told us about. He just walked right up to us and said:

"So I see you've discovered Time Spots."