The Ripple Effect

Finding A Way

Daniel Wright woke up on the 11th of December to the usual sound of his alarm clock. The boy got up with a strange feeling inside. A feeling as if he were forgetting something incredibly important. It bothered the boy but he couldn't quite think of what it could be that he was forgetting. Instead of lingering on the subject, Daniel tried his best to ignore it while he got ready for the day.

Daniel started by getting dressed before he went downstairs to eat breakfast. Then he went to brush his teeth before going back to his room to get his backpack and left his house to go wait for the bus. After standing at the bus stop for long enough the bus arrived and the students boarded in a somewhat orderly fashion. The bus ride to school was as hectic as usual before arriving at the school upon which the bus' population whipped into a frenzy trying to get off. When the boy finally got off of the bus the bell for first period rang.

Daniel then made his way to biology. As he entered the classroom he walked to his spot at the back of the class where he sat alone. When he sat down in his spot the feeling that he got when he woke up returned to him. It was now clear to him that he was forgetting something. Something told him that he didn't used to be alone in his spot. He had the faintest feeling that there was someone at the back of the class with him.

"Daniel?" Daniel's teacher called out to him.

"Yes, sir?" Daniel asked.

"What are you doing?" the teacher asked him as the entire class turned around, looking at him.

"Umm," Daniel started, confused, "I don't quite understand what you're asking, sir."

"What were you just thinking?" Mr.Scott continued.

"Come again?" Daniel asked, still confused.

"You were thinking of Acacia Taylor, weren't you?" Mr.Scott added.

"I," Daniel started, "Who is Acacia Taylor?" After he asked this the boy got an instantaneous terrible headache that caused him to close his eyes in pain, but in doing this the pain vanished completely.

"Are you okay?" a nearby student asked. When Daniel opened his eyes the entire class was back paying attention to Mr.Scott as he was lecturing.

"Yeah," Daniel said, hesitating for a moment, "I'm fine."

With that the student turned back around and began paying attention to class again. Daniel was now confused beyond belief. He wasn't sure who Acacia Taylor was but he had decided to keep everything but the name out of his mind. Daniel wasn't sure who she was but for some reason her name brought a familiar feeling to him. It was because of that feeling alone that Daniel decided to hold onto her name and just her name.

After biology Daniel continued his normal day going to his usual classes before lunch. At lunch Daniel waited in the usual line for the school served lunches and instantly threw away the toxins he was served as a meal before walking to his usual table of friends. While he walked to the table he felt an odd drawing to an empty table not too far away. It was one that no one ever sat at and Daniel wasn't sure as to why that was, but something felt like that was the table he was supposed to sit at, not the one he was at now.

"Hey, Daniel!" one of his friends called from his table.

"Yeah?" the boy called back, turning to go sit with his friends.

"You alright, man?" the same boy asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine, Jackson," Daniel replied.

"You were lookin' at that table?" Jackson asked.

"Yeah," Daniel said, "I'm just feelin' a little weird today is all."

"If you say so, man," Jackson dismissed.

Daniel spent the rest of lunch as he usually did, but while he sat with his friends he constantly repeated Acacia Taylor's name in his head. The boys went through their usual vulgar banter between each other while occasionally tagging Daniel to join into an argument to prove something. To these five boys, Daniel was their king. All of them were violent misfits who didn't feel like they had a place in the school. Each of them were delinquents and each of them were broken enough that a speech from Daniel, explaining what they were doing wasted their potential, would snap sense into them.

Because of the speeches Daniel gave to every last one of them, they forged a group of friends around the boy who helped them. Along with creating the group they also created a set of rules to keep everyone in check and out of trouble. The rule everyone was the most fond of was the rule that claimed that they had to let the rest of the group know if they weren't going to be at the lunch table and give legitimate reasoning as to why. The boys tended not to tell anyone about the rules or even mention them amongst themselves due to how silly it sounded to have rules in a group of friends but the boys still followed every rule and overall it kept them out of trouble.

Daniel was more than pleased with what he was able to accomplish with the boys, but after the group of friends began to serve its purpose well enough, Daniel began feeling like he needed a way out. He didn't despise anyone at the table by any means, but after the group had initialised Daniel felt like he was an inessential part of the group. Before the group began, Daniel used to sit alone and relax for a lunch period and he looked forward to lunch for that reason. Ever since he became a central part to a group of friends that when teamed together could probably kill him, he wasn't able to grab onto that free time as often. This wasn't the end of Daniel's world by any means, but it did make his days a fair bit more stressful, as he usually didn't care for any of the conversation that happened at the table and only fed it when he was upset and needed venting. It was for that reason that Daniel was trying to find an excuse to leave the group. Any excuse would do for him, as long as he could get back the valuable forty-five minutes of peace.

After lunch concluded, Daniel went to his last classes for the day, keeping the name of the mysterious girl fresh in his mind until the school day came to an end. After the last bell rang Daniel decided to do something stupidly insane. The boy walked out to the middle of the school campus and tried to remember as much as he could about Acacia Taylor. He tried to remember her hair colour, her eye colour, the sound of her voice, where she was from, how old she was, when she had her birthday, any detail he could fetch about her including, most importantly, why she was so imperative for him to remember.

As the boy did this, the students leaving class and going to whatever mode of transportation they would use to leave the campus started staring at him. The more Daniel remembered the appearance of Acacia Taylor the more he realised that he was going into a world that wasn't his own. The boy wasn't sure why he was able to realise this with the simple fact of people paying attention to him as they walked along, but it was clear that he was in an alternate world and that alternate world didn't want him to remember Acacia Taylor. If Daniel were to start letting go of details about the girl, the students would pay less attention to him. He had a feeling if he were to completely let go of everything but the name he would be back in his world.

"Who is Acacia Taylor?" Daniel thought out loud. Deep inside, the boy felt like he was unraveling a mystery he already knew the answer to and he was determined to find out who the girl was just as much as he was determined to find a way to meet her.