The Arena - The Moon Trilogy - Book #2

Chapter four:

The pizza was even better than Clarity had thought it would be, and she was done eating before she even realized it.

She almost instantly found herself wanting more, so she ordered another piece and went back to her booth.

A police car whizzed past the window, its sirens on. Clarity sighed.

She had been living her life normally for a while, but she was bored out of her mind with it. The last time she'd even legitimately produced adrenaline was when she was late for class. And when she'd been training in martial arts. That had been the last exciting thing left, and now it was over.

She missed it. She had only stopped the day before, but already she regretted not throwing the fight and continuing the lessons.

At any other time in her life, she would have envied herself for what she was doing now, but she just couldn't find anything about her life that she was actually looking forward to doing. School had quickly turned monotonous after the first initial rush of excitement, she had no friends to speak of except for Jesse to make things a little less boring.

But that was the thing. Four years ago, she would have been fine with that. She would have loved college, and not minded in the least that she only spoke to people when she needed to.

But then she had to meet an alien in her back yard and get caught up in a plot to take down an evil scientist, as if she was some sort of movie character. Now nothing could match that, and when everything fell so far short, it was bland and boring.

She finished her food in a much worse mood than when she'd started and she left the shop. The cold air hit her like a slap to the face.

She was halfway to her car when someone dashed out of the alley she had parked by. His face was hidden by a hood, which didn't strike her as unusual, as it was a cold day. The strange thing was the fact that he acted like he was running from something.

He was looking at something behind himself and he didn't notice Clarity standing there, so he full-on-sprinted right into her before it even connected in her brain that she ought to get out of the way. She fell back onto the sidewalk, hard enough to leave a bruise.

"Why don't you watch were you're going?" she asked angrily as she started to push herself up with her already-scraped hands.

"I'm really sorry." He said, offering a hand. Well, at least he had some manner.

She took his hand and used it to help pull herself up.

She brushed off her pants, ignoring her stinging hands.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that the stranger took a tiny step back. She looked up at him to see if there was something wrong.

"Clarity?" he asked, surprise written all over his partially-obscured his face.

"Yeah, do I know you?" she asked, not entirely caring for the answer. She thought he sounded a little bit familiar, but he was probably just one of her dad's old friends. She turned to finish walking to her car.

"Wait, Clarity. It's me, Johnny." He grabbed her by the arm and spun her around. "I've been looking all over for you." He had pushed his hood back while spinning her.

His eyes were the first things she saw, and they were that same blue color that was neither dark nor light that she remembered, but that was the only thing that seemed familiar. He'd gotten a haircut and dyed his hair a fiery orange color. His face almost looked different, but she supposed it was just because of his hair being so drastically different.

He was the last person she'd been expecting to see.

There was a loud crash from the ally that Johnny had just run out of, and she suddenly remembered that he'd appeared as though he'd been running from someone.