Written: Saturday. March 28, 2020.
The next hours of the day were the same as always. Today was P.E. day, which meant that Toby’s class had to change into their P.E. Uniforms and head down to the still being renovated gymnasium. If the gym wasn’t available due to on-going constructions, the class would just have to stick to the court in front of the cafeteria. The Physical Education subject was placed at the most ridiculous time-slot for Toby’s section. It was the last subject before Lunchtime. So it was either they’d beat themselves up to the brink of the high-school teenager’s physical threshold, as most of the male percentage usually did to get their stomachs empty for lunchtime, or lay low and stay hydrated the rest of the session, pretending that it’s just not your day today, cause doing the prior would cause you to spend twice as much on the food that you’d eat in the cafeteria. Nevertheless, you’d still end up with healthily-stretched limbs, good amount of blood flowing in your veins, sweaty uniforms, and smell of feet aroma inside of the class for the rest of the day.
So it came to everybody’s excitement when they learned that the P.E. teacher, Mrs. Castro — the hard-faced, but very young, coach who always wore her P.E. Teacher’s uniform rather than the assigned blue or pink blouse that often showed her athletic physique, which always caught the unyielding attention of the older male professors. Especially the gray-haired Science Teacher, Mr. Reyes — was nowhere to be found.
That meant two things: one would be that they didn’t have to go and wear their P.E. uniforms. Although it was too late for that, since the class President had learn of Mrs. Castro’s absence only once they were all lined up and ready for their last names to be shouted into their faces, by Mrs. Castro herself, if she was around. Two, would mean the arrival of a substitute teacher. Usually, in the case of missed classes, especially due to the fire that happened last week, one teacher from another subject would takeover that time-slot in order to conduct a very unwanted special class.
Which actually brings us to a third possibility. Most times, if the second option were to happen, the students would vote — which really meant to revolt — on the idea of ganging up against the substitute teacher who’s courageous (stupid) enough to even try conducting a special make-up class with them. Most of the time, the students won.
But today was unlike most days, and Mr. Reyes arrived just in time to snatch the attendance sheet from the class President. Almost everybody in the class booed him over. Some placed their hands firmly on different sides of their faces, showing as much of their agony as humanely possible, in hopes that Mr. Reyes call off his make-up class. To no avail, Mr. Reyes places the attendance sheet inside of a folder he was carrying, along with other folders and papers that seemed to wield the secrets of the universe, just by merely examining the long-divisions and the mishmash of scribbles and upside-down sentences written in several of them. Was he trying to solve the formula for correct and full-proof time travel? Maybe he was trying to create a teleportation device that may or may not cause him to accidentally splice his DNA with those of a fruit-fly. Nobody ever knew what Mr. Reyes was up to in that make-shift laboratory of his, which was really just the school’s A.V.R. Room.
Mr. Reyes fixed his thick-rimmed glasses. How many fingers would he be able to count if a jock were to take them from him right now and raise his hand to ask? “And here I thought I was too late.” He said to no one in particular. “I was just by the cafeteria, you see, looking around to see if dear young Sister Tabitha was there to bring me my usual order for the day, and maybe catch a little bit of her beauteous — err, never mind that. I specifically timed my entrance by looking at my wristwatch — as you see here — to the moment when I’d see your class President arrive with an attendance sheet in her hand. Well, that was of course to insinuate the absence of sweet Mrs. Castro. May the gods that be watching, if there were any to begin with, be thanked a thousandfold for that luscious, ever-so supple — err, never mind that now! Not important.” Several girls in the class looked at each other, and stepped back a few inches. Mr. Reyes combed his hair, and licked his lips just to add in some more of the creep factor he was already emitting. “Where was I? Ah, yes. All of you head off back to your classroom. We’ll be having our special class to make-up for last week’s fiery accident. Though I doubt anybody would believe me when I say I saw one of the female faculty members start that fire, with her… well, even I can’t understand it myself. Oh, never mind that, again. Off we go!”
Several students booed Mr. Reyes. But eventually went back up the high-school building. Some of the groups trailed off towards the cafeteria. Toby and his friends were at the very back end of the ones who planned to go back up the classroom, to hopefully get some plus points for being present in Mr. Reyes’s five minute lecture on the actual subject, before trailing off to the time he thought he’d went back to the 1910’s to live a life with a beautiful woman, who’s probably dead by now if he managed to look through the history books. Never mind that. He would always say at the end of his trance.
Toby stopped dead in the middle of the first and second flight of stairs. It took about three seconds for his friends to notice this. Toby was looking up towards the second floor, so they followed his gaze, and saw the cause of his pause.
Mara was walking alongside a young man. Only it wasn’t a young man. To them, it was Ervagh, Lady Veergha’s well trusted servant, still disguised in his human form, John. Toby reanimated, and hurriedly ran up towards Mara. Nobody tried to stop him, June noticed. She glared at Tom and Drew, piercing them like her eyes were made of knives.
“Why didn’t you stop him!” She yelled out.
“We didn’t know!” Tom answered, raising his hands up. June ended her stare, and ran towards Toby. Tom and the others followed shortly after.
Toby caught up with the two and nudged both of them on the back. Mara and Ervagh looked back at him and stopped where they were. Toby was catching his breath, and tried not to look at Mara in the eyes. He motioned his hand to her, and looked at Ervagh. “Where have you guys been?”
“As I recall,” Ervagh started. “we were supposed to be finding the other pieces of the Omnian entity. Which I have been doing on Lady Veergha’s command. But I have met no successful leads on my search for those other pieces.”
“You and us both, pal.” Tom and the others arrived. Ervagh continued, as if nobody had spoken.
“Then, upon my return to our ship — which is still a bit damaged from Tobias’s fiasco, if I just might tell — Lady Veergha was nowhere to be found! That was two of your Terran days prior. So I thought she might’ve searched for the pieces herself. Then I remembered her current condition. This… younger Terran-form. Though I don’t see much difference. You Terrans look much like each other to me.”
Tom starts clapping his hands in beat, and starts dancing. “Cause Ervagh is a racist. He’s a damn racist.” Drew and Amanda joined in on the second chorus. “Ervagh is a racist. From outer space!” June held her head down and pressed her finger on the middle part of her glasses, trying her best to stifle her laughter.
“Well it’s true.” Ervagh said to them. “Needless to say, I went back to this institution of yours to hopefully find my Queen. But look what’s happened to her. Her memories are scattered everywhere. And some are not her own. This is your doing!” He points a finger on Toby.
“Me?” Toby asks, surprised.
“‘Me?’. Of course it’s you, fool! You two have been gallivanting in each other’s thoughts since the first mind-breach happened! Which resulted in her mistaking her thoughts for that of the Terran girl who’s skin she’s wearing right now.”
“She’s not literally wearing Mara’s skin,” Tom whispered to Drew. “is she?”
“We just saw the real Mara awhile ago, man. Keep up!”
“Oh, yeah… “
Toby hesitated, but finally got the courage to look to Mara’s way. She was looking down, dazed and unsure of what was happening around her. She kept looking sideways every now and then, as if a familiar word got to her head or something. “Hey.” Toby finally said to her. He slowly put his hand under her chin to hopefully raise her head up to meet his gaze. When both their eyes met, Toby saw no recognition from hers, which sent a chill on the back of his neck. “You knew me this morning… now you can’t even remember who you are.”
“My name… “ she looked as if she was struggling just to get a thought out. “is… Mara. I am Mara. And I… well… that’s all I could… r-remember.” Her voice quivered by the end, and her eyes started to get wet. Toby noticed this immediately. So he tried calming her down as much as he could by putting his hands on the sides of her shoulders.
“Hey, hey. Look at me.” He said. Mara sniffed a few times, before setting her eyes on Toby. “We’re gonna help you get better, okay?”
“Help me… get better?” She asked, blinking back the water in her eyes.
“Sure.” Toby said to her. She nodded, and Toby let his hands fall sideways. He stood up straight and took a deep sigh. “We’ve got some serious fixing to do with her.”
Just then, Mara landed a knuckle on his shoulder. Toby was caught off guard, and squealed because of this. “Definitely need to fix her now before she learns she could do that to people’s faces too.”
“But first,” June chimed in to the conversation. “we need to head back to class. Mr. Reyes is waiting for us.”
“Meh,” Tom said. “Lesson’s probably over by now, anyway — Ow!” June elbowed him in the gut. “What is this? Attack of the Maidens? I mean, yeah. We should head back for now. Don’t want people getting suspicious of us.” He rubbed the part where June hit him. “Jesus, woman. A simple wink would’ve been enough. I swear, I’ll be killed by you ladies one of these days.”
“It wasn’t that strong.” June said to him.
“Probably not as strong as this.” Amanda elbowed Tom on the other side. It took the air out of him.
“Son of a bitch!” Tom was able to say, after regaining his balance.
The five of them laughed together. Mara started giggling from behind. Toby was the first to notice. The others started to notice as well once Mara was full on laughing. Tears started coming out of her eyes again. Her laughing stopped when she noticed this. She brushed the tears away.
“It’s… happening again.” she said.
“Yeah.” Amanda said to her. “But this time, that’s a good thing!”
“A… good… thing?” She asked slowly.
“Is she always gonna be talking like this from now on?” Ervagh asked the group.
“You should see her air-friend, Taoe’ras.” Toby said to him. “He was way worse to talk to back in the mind-breach.”
Mara chuckled at this. “Yeah. It took forever for… for him to… who are we talking about?” Her eyes met everybody’s.
“It’s a start, at least.” Toby said to Ervagh, playfully. “Next thing you know, she’ll be running after us again with her magma-hands, like the first time.”
“I suppose.”
The next hours of the day were the same as always. Today was P.E. day, which meant that Toby’s class had to change into their P.E. Uniforms and head down to the still being renovated gymnasium. If the gym wasn’t available due to on-going constructions, the class would just have to stick to the court in front of the cafeteria. The Physical Education subject was placed at the most ridiculous time-slot for Toby’s section. It was the last subject before Lunchtime. So it was either they’d beat themselves up to the brink of the high-school teenager’s physical threshold, as most of the male percentage usually did to get their stomachs empty for lunchtime, or lay low and stay hydrated the rest of the session, pretending that it’s just not your day today, cause doing the prior would cause you to spend twice as much on the food that you’d eat in the cafeteria. Nevertheless, you’d still end up with healthily-stretched limbs, good amount of blood flowing in your veins, sweaty uniforms, and smell of feet aroma inside of the class for the rest of the day.
So it came to everybody’s excitement when they learned that the P.E. teacher, Mrs. Castro — the hard-faced, but very young, coach who always wore her P.E. Teacher’s uniform rather than the assigned blue or pink blouse that often showed her athletic physique, which always caught the unyielding attention of the older male professors. Especially the gray-haired Science Teacher, Mr. Reyes — was nowhere to be found.
That meant two things: one would be that they didn’t have to go and wear their P.E. uniforms. Although it was too late for that, since the class President had learn of Mrs. Castro’s absence only once they were all lined up and ready for their last names to be shouted into their faces, by Mrs. Castro herself, if she was around. Two, would mean the arrival of a substitute teacher. Usually, in the case of missed classes, especially due to the fire that happened last week, one teacher from another subject would takeover that time-slot in order to conduct a very unwanted special class.
Which actually brings us to a third possibility. Most times, if the second option were to happen, the students would vote — which really meant to revolt — on the idea of ganging up against the substitute teacher who’s courageous (stupid) enough to even try conducting a special make-up class with them. Most of the time, the students won.
But today was unlike most days, and Mr. Reyes arrived just in time to snatch the attendance sheet from the class President. Almost everybody in the class booed him over. Some placed their hands firmly on different sides of their faces, showing as much of their agony as humanely possible, in hopes that Mr. Reyes call off his make-up class. To no avail, Mr. Reyes places the attendance sheet inside of a folder he was carrying, along with other folders and papers that seemed to wield the secrets of the universe, just by merely examining the long-divisions and the mishmash of scribbles and upside-down sentences written in several of them. Was he trying to solve the formula for correct and full-proof time travel? Maybe he was trying to create a teleportation device that may or may not cause him to accidentally splice his DNA with those of a fruit-fly. Nobody ever knew what Mr. Reyes was up to in that make-shift laboratory of his, which was really just the school’s A.V.R. Room.
Mr. Reyes fixed his thick-rimmed glasses. How many fingers would he be able to count if a jock were to take them from him right now and raise his hand to ask? “And here I thought I was too late.” He said to no one in particular. “I was just by the cafeteria, you see, looking around to see if dear young Sister Tabitha was there to bring me my usual order for the day, and maybe catch a little bit of her beauteous — err, never mind that. I specifically timed my entrance by looking at my wristwatch — as you see here — to the moment when I’d see your class President arrive with an attendance sheet in her hand. Well, that was of course to insinuate the absence of sweet Mrs. Castro. May the gods that be watching, if there were any to begin with, be thanked a thousandfold for that luscious, ever-so supple — err, never mind that now! Not important.” Several girls in the class looked at each other, and stepped back a few inches. Mr. Reyes combed his hair, and licked his lips just to add in some more of the creep factor he was already emitting. “Where was I? Ah, yes. All of you head off back to your classroom. We’ll be having our special class to make-up for last week’s fiery accident. Though I doubt anybody would believe me when I say I saw one of the female faculty members start that fire, with her… well, even I can’t understand it myself. Oh, never mind that, again. Off we go!”
Several students booed Mr. Reyes. But eventually went back up the high-school building. Some of the groups trailed off towards the cafeteria. Toby and his friends were at the very back end of the ones who planned to go back up the classroom, to hopefully get some plus points for being present in Mr. Reyes’s five minute lecture on the actual subject, before trailing off to the time he thought he’d went back to the 1910’s to live a life with a beautiful woman, who’s probably dead by now if he managed to look through the history books. Never mind that. He would always say at the end of his trance.
Toby stopped dead in the middle of the first and second flight of stairs. It took about three seconds for his friends to notice this. Toby was looking up towards the second floor, so they followed his gaze, and saw the cause of his pause.
Mara was walking alongside a young man. Only it wasn’t a young man. To them, it was Ervagh, Lady Veergha’s well trusted servant, still disguised in his human form, John. Toby reanimated, and hurriedly ran up towards Mara. Nobody tried to stop him, June noticed. She glared at Tom and Drew, piercing them like her eyes were made of knives.
“Why didn’t you stop him!” She yelled out.
“We didn’t know!” Tom answered, raising his hands up. June ended her stare, and ran towards Toby. Tom and the others followed shortly after.
Toby caught up with the two and nudged both of them on the back. Mara and Ervagh looked back at him and stopped where they were. Toby was catching his breath, and tried not to look at Mara in the eyes. He motioned his hand to her, and looked at Ervagh. “Where have you guys been?”
“As I recall,” Ervagh started. “we were supposed to be finding the other pieces of the Omnian entity. Which I have been doing on Lady Veergha’s command. But I have met no successful leads on my search for those other pieces.”
“You and us both, pal.” Tom and the others arrived. Ervagh continued, as if nobody had spoken.
“Then, upon my return to our ship — which is still a bit damaged from Tobias’s fiasco, if I just might tell — Lady Veergha was nowhere to be found! That was two of your Terran days prior. So I thought she might’ve searched for the pieces herself. Then I remembered her current condition. This… younger Terran-form. Though I don’t see much difference. You Terrans look much like each other to me.”
Tom starts clapping his hands in beat, and starts dancing. “Cause Ervagh is a racist. He’s a damn racist.” Drew and Amanda joined in on the second chorus. “Ervagh is a racist. From outer space!” June held her head down and pressed her finger on the middle part of her glasses, trying her best to stifle her laughter.
“Well it’s true.” Ervagh said to them. “Needless to say, I went back to this institution of yours to hopefully find my Queen. But look what’s happened to her. Her memories are scattered everywhere. And some are not her own. This is your doing!” He points a finger on Toby.
“Me?” Toby asks, surprised.
“‘Me?’. Of course it’s you, fool! You two have been gallivanting in each other’s thoughts since the first mind-breach happened! Which resulted in her mistaking her thoughts for that of the Terran girl who’s skin she’s wearing right now.”
“She’s not literally wearing Mara’s skin,” Tom whispered to Drew. “is she?”
“We just saw the real Mara awhile ago, man. Keep up!”
“Oh, yeah… “
Toby hesitated, but finally got the courage to look to Mara’s way. She was looking down, dazed and unsure of what was happening around her. She kept looking sideways every now and then, as if a familiar word got to her head or something. “Hey.” Toby finally said to her. He slowly put his hand under her chin to hopefully raise her head up to meet his gaze. When both their eyes met, Toby saw no recognition from hers, which sent a chill on the back of his neck. “You knew me this morning… now you can’t even remember who you are.”
“My name… “ she looked as if she was struggling just to get a thought out. “is… Mara. I am Mara. And I… well… that’s all I could… r-remember.” Her voice quivered by the end, and her eyes started to get wet. Toby noticed this immediately. So he tried calming her down as much as he could by putting his hands on the sides of her shoulders.
“Hey, hey. Look at me.” He said. Mara sniffed a few times, before setting her eyes on Toby. “We’re gonna help you get better, okay?”
“Help me… get better?” She asked, blinking back the water in her eyes.
“Sure.” Toby said to her. She nodded, and Toby let his hands fall sideways. He stood up straight and took a deep sigh. “We’ve got some serious fixing to do with her.”
Just then, Mara landed a knuckle on his shoulder. Toby was caught off guard, and squealed because of this. “Definitely need to fix her now before she learns she could do that to people’s faces too.”
“But first,” June chimed in to the conversation. “we need to head back to class. Mr. Reyes is waiting for us.”
“Meh,” Tom said. “Lesson’s probably over by now, anyway — Ow!” June elbowed him in the gut. “What is this? Attack of the Maidens? I mean, yeah. We should head back for now. Don’t want people getting suspicious of us.” He rubbed the part where June hit him. “Jesus, woman. A simple wink would’ve been enough. I swear, I’ll be killed by you ladies one of these days.”
“It wasn’t that strong.” June said to him.
“Probably not as strong as this.” Amanda elbowed Tom on the other side. It took the air out of him.
“Son of a bitch!” Tom was able to say, after regaining his balance.
The five of them laughed together. Mara started giggling from behind. Toby was the first to notice. The others started to notice as well once Mara was full on laughing. Tears started coming out of her eyes again. Her laughing stopped when she noticed this. She brushed the tears away.
“It’s… happening again.” she said.
“Yeah.” Amanda said to her. “But this time, that’s a good thing!”
“A… good… thing?” She asked slowly.
“Is she always gonna be talking like this from now on?” Ervagh asked the group.
“You should see her air-friend, Taoe’ras.” Toby said to him. “He was way worse to talk to back in the mind-breach.”
Mara chuckled at this. “Yeah. It took forever for… for him to… who are we talking about?” Her eyes met everybody’s.
“It’s a start, at least.” Toby said to Ervagh, playfully. “Next thing you know, she’ll be running after us again with her magma-hands, like the first time.”
“I suppose.”
End of Chapter.
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