Xanum

Chapter One

I looked down at my watch, hoping against hope that the class was almost over, and for once, it seemed I was lucky. There were only two minutes left in my history class. After those two minutes were up, I got to go home. My teacher, Mr. Noonan was babbling about the american Civil war, just like always. A few feet away from me, my friend Tony was attempting to pass me a piece of paper. "Yo, Jax, you gotta see this sick comic I drew," he whispered.

    "What? Oh, yeah, lemme see it," I said. I reached over as discreetly as I could, then took the paper from him. He had drawn a small comic about a stick man that had somehow swallowed a nuclear bomb. One of the panels had a strange spiked creature in it. "No offense, dude, but what the hell is this?" I asked, chuckling.

    "It's a stegosaurus, can't you tell?" he asked. He seemed offended.

    "Tony, Jax, focus for once," Mr. Noonan said. He walked toward us and took the paper from my hands.

    "What is this, a stegosaurus?" he asked. Tony smiled at me as the teacher walked away with the paper, laughing. "Seriously, you two, either focus in my class or write these stupid comics quietly. Do you want me to separate you guys?"

    "I mean, it would probably help the other people in here, but we'd find a way to communicate. Ooh, maybe morse code," I said, looking at Tony.

    "Or, maybe, I dunno, we could just move to the back of the class. We'd be quiet," Tony promised.

    "Shut up and go," Noonan said. He flicked the paper onto his desk and went back to his lecture. Tony and I grabbed our things and moved to the back. The moment we sat down, the bell rang. "Get out of here, I'll see you all at prom tomorrow."

   Tony flicked a piece of paper into my hair. "Video games at yours?" he asked. I nodded, then grabbed my keys and headed to my car.

Only a few minutes after school ended I was at my house, playing video games with Tony. The objective of the game was to survive against these sentient robots. They seemed to be invincible, and after attempting to kill the main villain for hours, I dropped my controller and told Tony that I was done playing. "What do you want to do now?" he asked, setting his controller down.

"Honestly, dude, I'm exhausted. I'm just going to take a nap. You want to skip school tomorrow?" I asked, rubbing my eyes.

"Sure, man. I'll see you at prom?" he asked, giving me a fistbump.

"Fuck yeah, dude. It'll be... uhhhh, legendary," I replied.

"We must go to different schools, dude. 'Cause my prom is probably going to just be a bunch of idiots standing around on their phones," Tony said.

"Bro, that's the entire point of prom, isn't that what you're expecting?" I asked as I lay down.

"I mean, good point. Alright, I'm gonna get outta here. Sleep well, you lazy fuck," Tony said. I threw myself onto my bed and fell asleep almost instantly. When I woke up, my body was drenched in sweat. I had dreamt about a tense battle, but as the seconds ticked past I slowly forgot about it. I clumsily walked into my bathroom and showered. I shaved what little facial hair I had and stepped out of the bathroom. I put on some clothes and jumped onto my bed. I grabbed the controller and turned on my console, I turned on a game and invited Tony so that we could play together.

Several days later, I had just stepped out of the shower, and it was time to get ready for prom. Several hours later after all the preparations were done, I showed up at the school and waited for Tony. He pulled up to me in his truck and hopped out. "Yo, what's up man?" Tony said as he stepped out of the vehicle.