*MIDDLE SCHOOL BLUES*
The summer in Sudden Bluff had passed quicker than any of the kids could have imagined, and too soon school schedules had appeared in the mail. Despite the fact that Izzian was terribly worried about the lack of response from Klesia, he had earth issues that demanded his attention.
Izzian had stopped for a snow cone on his way to meet Paksha and Eliza. They were anxious to compare school schedules. He hoped that he and his earthling friends would share some classes and that they would help him in the strange world of middle school on earth.
Memories of his old Klesian teacher, Mrs. Kleevox, surfaced. She had accidentally referred to middle school on earth as middle earth and he feared for the worst.
Izzian watched in horrified awe as his plascreen flashed terrible images of middle earth; complete with gargoyles, pits of flames and frightening horned creatures. He was so engrossed in the hi-def images on the plascreen; Izzian was caught unaware when the twins sabotaged him as he walked down the path.
Again, working in an obscenely orderly tandem fashion, Lucas ended up knocking Izzian to the ground and Link put the icing on the cake, which was actually the snow cone on the head. Izzian lay on the ground, stunned, once again wearing his snow cone as a hat.
Orange Herbert Sherbet was not particularly Izzian's favorite flavor and he didn't like tasting it running down his sweaty, salty skin. Tired of being the target of twin rage, Izzian decided to take a stab at negotiating a peace treaty with the bombastic boy duo. This must stop, he thought.
"Listen, is there any way I can make you two clones stop attacking me? I am honestly sick and tired of having a sticky snow cone dribbling down my head. There has to be something you two want from me."
One of the twins, Izzian guessed it was Lucas, due to the fact that Lucas seemed especially brutal, said, "Sure there is. Leave town. Then my little bro and I will stop torturing you. Or, you could just stop hanging out with that loser Eliza and come be our minion…I mean our friend."
The other twin, Link, turned to his brother and said, "Stop calling me your little brother. I'm only seven minutes younger than you and you act like you are so much more mature than me. Cut it out, Lucas!"
Lucas did not like to be corrected. He got right back in his brother's face, yelling, "You are seven minutes younger than me and I will always be older than you." Lucas started poking Link in the chest and added, "So, quit your complaining, little bro!"
The two brothers began scratching each other like alley cats in a brawl and throwing useless punches. They rolled around on the ground, paying no attention to Izzian as they dealt with their own issues as brothers often do.
Izzian decided it was a good time to leave. As he snuck away from the brawling brothers, he actually giggled when he heard one brother say, "I'm gonna tell mom!"
Besides the latest chapter in the book of Lucas and Link, and the chilling reality that middle school was only a few days away, Izzian's main concern was the inability to contact Klesia. Were his people misplaced, or had some terrorist group under the leadership of Zelph Elegueria overtaken the CIC? He couldn't quite get over the fact that he may end up stranded on earth forever if Enot didn't find some answers.
Enot had tried time and again to contact anyone or anything beyond earth but had so far received nothing in return. Suddenly the image of Ojolian and Mirtheea, his Klesian-bound parents, popped into his head. Izzian realized how much he truly loved his ortnots, even though they were always telling him what to do.
He felt childish all of the sudden, for giving his mom and dad such a hard time. What were parents for if they weren't supposed to tell their child how to behave? Izzian promised himself that if he ever got to see his ortnots again, things would be different.
He promised himself that in the future, he'd listen when his father corrected his behavior and he'd take out the trash when his mother asked-the first time. Mirtheea wouldn't have to ask thirty five times. Izzian longed for a simpler time, back when emptying the garbage was the worst of his problems.
After being tortured by the twins, and torturing himself with worries of home, Izzian was happy to see Paksha and Eliza sitting on a tree stump, comparing schedules; happy and…jealous. He didn't understand why he felt that way, but he and Eliza had grown close over the summer and Izzian felt a strong connection to the odd human girl.
Before considering the truth, Izzian saw red and rudely uttered, "Am I interrupting you guys?"
"Of course not. You told us to meet you here. Why would you be interrupting us?" Eliza barked.
Eliza grunted after inspecting Izzian. She noticed the sticky goo plastered on his hair and face. "The twins got you again, huh?" She said shaking her head.
She began wiping away the remaining snow cone juice from Izzian's face with a napkin.
She stuck her finger in her mouth, paused momentarily and said, "Peach Huckleberry Hives?"
"No," Izzian answered with a sulk, "Orange Herbert Sherbet. You weren't even close."
"The twins must be stopped," Paksha exclaimed, raising his fist in the air.
"But how? We need to come up with a plan soon if we ever want to eat a snow cone again, rather than having it running down Izzian's head," Eliza said as she offered a fresh napkin to the sticky boy.
"By the way," added Eliza, "looks like you and I get to suffer through Mrs. Maddlington's class together. Lucky us."
Izzian reviewed Eliza's schedule and was relieved to see that they shared two classes- Maddlington's English class and Mr. Buckner for Science.
"Oh man," said Eliza, "you'll just love Mr. Buckner's class. He calls the kids in his class Buckner's Buckaroos and has this whole western theme going. It's quite sad really. The man needs a life and a wife. "
Paksha agreed, "I will join you both in Bucker's class. There's nothing worse, really, than starting off the morning watching a grown man wearing a ten gallon cowboy hat, saying well, howdy there pardners." Paksha rode an imaginary horse and swung a pretend rope around his head, until the imaginary horse bucked him off. He ended up rolling on the ground, laughing at his own silly antics.
"What's so bad about this Maddlington lady anyways?" Izzian asked after wiping away tears of laughter. Paksha had a talent for making his friends cry, in a good way.
He knew of a few horrible teachers back home that must be worse, like Mr. Muckleback. Fearful of sitting in the dreaded man's classroom, students had been known to falsify their school schedules to get out of Muckleback's class.
Some had been successful for a day or two, but eventually they all got caught and sent to detention. If they survived a Klesian detention, they reported directly to Mr. Muckleback's class. That man never took it easy on a student who'd tried to beat the system.
"You do not want to get on Maddlington's bad side," said Eliza. "She hates kids. It's as simple as that. She's been a teacher at Sudden Bluff Middle School for years. No kid is safe from her wrath, not even Lucas and Link. Get ready for detention, Izzian. Maddlington does not mess around."
He was not scared of earth detention. Paksha and Eliza looked worried, but Izzian didn't believe the Maddlington lady could compare to the evil Mr. Muckleback, either.
On Klesia, kids were terrified of Muckleback, the Advanced Particle Replacement teacher, and for good reason. Certainly the man was known to send each of his students to detention at least once, and that was bad enough because Klesian detention was a dangerous place. But a student's very existence could be placed at risk in Muckleback's class. Mr. Muckleback had surreptitiously turned a kid into a piece of cabbage for simply talking in class.
The rumor went as such: The class was studying Universal Vegetable Reconversion one afternoon and some unlucky student had spoken out of turn. The next day, a piece of wilted cabbage sat at his desk, a sure sign of displeasure on Mr. Muckleback's part. The kid was never heard from again.
All the students were certain Mr. Muckleback had done it, but Izzian figured most of that was unreliable goss
ip. Mr. Muckleback was only a Flitter from the Famen Constellation after all, and Izzian didn't understand how anyone could be scared of a glowing fairy-type creature.
Even so, Mr. Muckleback had every student in Klesia fearful of misbehaving, due to the cabbage incident. Reputation could be a powerful weapon for a teacher, Izzian had learned.
How could Mrs. Maddlington be any worse than Mr. Muckleback? Of course, Izzian couldn't really share his tale of the woeful Mr. Muckleback, because to do so would require giving up his true form and purpose. He was tired of lying to his friends about his identity.
"Izzian," prodded Eliza. "Where have you been? You must've been daydreaming again. I was telling you about Maddlington's third period English class and how one kid's entire head of hair turned white from fear, and you were off in la-la land. What's up?"
"Oh, I was just thinking of this teacher back home. All the kids were scared of him too, but when it came down to it, he was just a…a…man? I mean, his bark was probably worse than his bite, if you know what I mean," he added.
"Sure, but Mrs. Maddlington's bite is vicious. She's probably actually bitten someone at one point or another," Eliza said with certainty while Paksha enthusiastically nodded his head in agreement.
"I am working on a theory that Maddlington is an alien in human disguise," said Paksha, nodding his head again, causing his big lofty curls to revolve into mysterious shapes.
Izzian cringed at his words. He wished Paksha had never brought up the A-word, alien.
"She's really quite strange," added Paksha.
"Well, strange is irrelevant. I mean what if I had, say, green skin or something. Would that mean I'm strange too?" Izzian asked, testing the waters.
"Hate to tell you Izzy, but your skin does have a green hue to it, especially when you get nervous or angry. When the twins were attacking you I swore your cheeks looked like two pieces of broccoli," said Eliza, to Izzian's horror.
Paksha nodded his head again, adding, "More like a celery tone."
Izzian thought Paksha looked like a bobble-head toy with oversized glasses, with all the agreeing he was doing. But Izzian didn't mention that. Courtesy is contagious, he thought.
"Well, thanks. That's just great I guess," said Izzian worriedly. Am I that obvious?
"No worries, Izzy," Paksha added. "I'm from India and people are always mistaking me for a Spanish guy or a Native American. They don't really think I'm strange, they just don't know. They are uneducated about my heritage, my mother would say." Paksha had ended his comments with a spot-on imitation of his mother's Indian accent.
Izzian could say no more, afraid that his secret was already too exposed. Pretending to be an earthling was a pretty big secret in Izzian's mind, and he knew neither Paksha nor Eliza would easily believe such a thing. Hiding his true identity was only part of his troubles.
To fix the problem of the missing Klesians, Enot had suggested requesting help from the secret aliens already hiding on earth. Unfortunately, Izzian had no idea how to go about finding any.
He could use the help of his friends, but he couldn't ask-not ever. He certainly could not walk up to Mrs. Aloris J. Maddlington and ask her if she was a secret alien, just based on Paksha's observations. He wished he could ask for help.
Melancholy overtook the little alien and his shoulders slumped forward. Paksha and Eliza had his back, time and again, but he still had to lie. Small conversations with friends were becoming too stressful for fear of slipping up.
It was too much of a burden not to be able to share the cabbage incident and Mr. Muckleback. It was too hard to keep making excuses when he accidentally blurted out some Klesian word such as Simbiots.
Not only that, but Eliza hated liars. She had a serious problem being lied to and Izzian lied to the girl every second of every day.
Paksha's mobile phone jingled in his pocket, awaking Izzian from his miserable musings. The ringtone sang of some prince that was seeking a town called Bel Air.
Izzian had never heard of the prince, the song, or the town. Paksha danced along with his ringtone before answering the call, rapping something about whistling for a cab.
"Hullo?" Paksha said, finally answering the call.
The music stopped and Izzian never did find out if the prince made it to his throne.
Any person within a five mile radius could hear the voice of Paksha's shouting mother on the other end of the call. "Okay mom. I am on my way, and no I didn’t forget to take out the trash…or clean my room…or wash my clothes."
Paksha signaled that he had to leave while Izzian and Eliza chuckled at the poor boy, walking away, trying to get a single word into a one-sided conversation. Izzian missed his mom and wondered if Eliza missed hers as well, but kept quiet on the subject for fear of being smacked.
He'd learned over the weeks to allow Eliza to gradually speak about painful memories, and not to pound the girl with questions. And if he did pound the girl with questions, she would more than likely pound him with her fists. Dismissing his desire to discuss mothers, he decided it was a nice evening to walk a girl home.
The two meandered through the trees, headed for Eliza's back porch. Izzian wanted to reach for her hand, but thought better of it.
Instead, he walked Eliza up to her door and said, "See you tomorrow?"
"Yea, weirdo. Of course I'll see you tomorrow," Eliza responded.
She grabbed Izzian's hand for a shake, but faked it and proceeded to smear the front of Izzian's shirt with dirt and leftover Orange Herbert Sherbet snow cone.
He was momentarily irritated that Eliza had ruined the moment. He was surprised that it irritated him, too. Had he hoped for something more, perhaps a kiss? It was a startling revelation to the boy and it made him feel lightheaded.
Izzian soon forgot about his messy shirt. He headed home in the fading twilight, feeling like he was a Flitter, floating through the Famien Constellation.
***