When the Monsters Roam: Part 1 (Short Story)

Chapter 1, Part 1: The Emails

~Ashlynn Blue~

Evelynn walked into her homeroom early as usual, and sat at her desk. It was in a good spot, around the back of the middle. She pulled out her book from her heavy backpack that she was too lazy to move from in front of her, and buried her face in it. The only thing she could see now was the words on the pages because her brown hair fell over the sides of the book. She had been letting it grow out a lot, and she started to think about when she should cut it again. Then, suddenly, she heard loud laughing and talking enter the room, jolting Evelynn from her calm state. She looked around and saw two boys walking in.

They were the popular boys, which was made evident by the fact that they were now crowded by her peers after being here for only seconds. Evelynn was about to turn away when she saw another boy walk in with three others behind him. She groaned, tired of this other kid. He was a bully, but he just annoyed her. She knew that he was just jealous of the two boys’ popularity, but did he seriously have to be so rude about it to everyone?

The annoying boy and his three idiots behind him walked up to the two, saying, “Hey Luke, do you have an umbrella?”

The boy to the right with the bright red hair turned around, looking bored and annoyed. “No, Jack. I don’t have one. Why would I need one anyway, it's not raining?”

The boy named Jack continued with a smirk, walking closer. “Because your hair is gonna set off the sprinklers in the school. It’s practically fire it’s so red.”

The boy to the left of Luke with blonde hair looked at him with a questioning look, “Then I guess you shouldn’t be allowed in pools, since your hair is like mud.” The boy pointed towards the rude one’s brown hair.

Jack was infuriated by this statement and stomped away, his disappointed goons running to catch up. Luke and the blonde turned back to the kids around them and talked away happily, as if it all never happened.

Evelynn went back to her book, seeing that the commotion was over. However she didn’t notice that someone was watching her intently the whole time, until the bell rang for class. Then she got up, swinging her heavy bag onto her back as she started to walk towards the door, looking down.

Out of nowhere, she bumped into someone. She looked up, rubbing her head up a bit, while saying a quick and panicked, “Sorry!-”

She stopped her apology when she saw who it was. It just so happened to be Alex Hutcherson, the blonde boy that she had barely ever spoken to before outside of class. She doubted he knew her name. But she was surprised the most that he was alone and was one of the last two to leave the classroom. He always left with his pack of friends almost as soon as the bell rang.

He looked at her with his one blue eye and one hazel eye kindly. He smiled looking slightly concerned as he said, “It’s alright. Are you okay, though, Evelynn?”

Her eyes widened when he said her name, surprised. She looked at him, “U-uhm yeah, I’m fine. You?” She wasn’t exactly sure how to act in this situation, being pretty anti-social, and was panicking a little bit. However, he didn’t seem to notice.

The boy smiled wider, “Well, that’s good to hear. And yeah, I’m fine, thanks for asking. Oh! By the way, I’m Alex.”

She already knew his name, of course, everyone did, not to mention they’d been classmates for years at this point. She would have to be brain-dead to not have learned his name by now. She replied, “Right, I’m Evelynn and...” She trailed off, remembering he had already known her name and getting embarrassed.

His eyes bored into hers, causing her to get a little fidgety. Tilting his head to the side a bit, he asked, “Hey, are your eyes blue or--”

He got cut off as she suddenly remembered about class. She started to run to her first period, calling out to him, “Sorry! But I can't be late to class!” She mentally face-palmed at her rudeness, but hurried off to class. Evelynn then noticed how she felt like someone was watching her.

~ (Written by Ashlynn Blue, do not try to copy.)~

It was now around lunchtime, and Evelynn was heading to her locker. Ever since she had left her homeroom she had this feeling lurking in the back of her brain that someone or maybe something was watching her. This made her feel crazy since no one was watching her. Plus, it would be extremely boring for them. After all, she was just taking boring classes all day. 

She shook her head rapidly, weirded out by how she was thinking so much about this since she was not being watched. Still, she decided to keep an eye out just in case. Evelynn grabbed her lunchbox from her locker and headed to an empty table outside the main cafeteria. People in her grade often tended to eat inside, but she didn’t want to deal with the immense noise of all the kids’ voices echoing and combining from the huge room. When she used to eat in there, Evelynn would always get headaches from the noise. Not to mention how nobody sat with her, which was incredibly embarrassing on its own.

So she took a spot outside at the same gray and dull table every day, reading a book as she ate her sandwich silently. The only problem with where Evelynn sat was that there were usually all the 8th graders from the year above usually sat outside as well. They didn't pay much attention to her, but they thought she was weird. But she didn’t mind much about that either. It’s not like any of them mattered too much to her.

Evelynn was reading her book silently, but then looked up at a squealing noise nearby. She spotted two girls to her right, peeking into the cafeteria, squealing together and jumping. Evelynn raised her eyebrow a bit curiously as she tried to see what they were looking at.

The girl to the left was short, at least compared to Evelynn, and had straight black hair with purple hair dye. Evelynn thought she looked pretty with her mocha skin and pretty brown eyes that complemented it. Now with her insecurities creeping in, she decided to try to look at what the other girl was staring at instead.

The girl to the right had espresso skin and black and blonde permed hair tied back with a green scrunchie. Her eyes were a nice shade of blue, a shade that made her think of the Pacific Ocean. This girl was looking in the back left of the cafeteria where the 7th-grade boys were.

Evelynn guessed that they both probably had a crush on either Alex or Luke, like literally everyone else. She recognized the two girls as classmates of hers, the brown eyed one was Lily, and the one with the green scrunchie was Astrid. She had never really thought of these two as being boy crazy. Now that she thought about it, they were always so troublesome..    

Suddenly, she heard a bang as the girls started laughing and then ran off. Evelynn got up fast and looked inside the cafeteria at a glance to see the havoc of one of the lunchboxes having exploded slime everywhere. Her eyes widened as she saw the mess, and for some reason, she started running after the two.

Evelynn didn’t understand why her legs were moving at a fast speed toward the two girls, but she pushed that away, trying to focus on catching up to them. She was very impressed after all. Evelynn eventually succeeded in getting close enough to grab Astrid’s shirt. This made Astrid fall, which made gravity decide to push Evelynn down evilly as well.

They hit the ground with a thud and looked up at each other. Though Astrid looked the most surprised of the two. The girl Lily ran up to them and pulled them up. “Are you okay, Astrid?” Lily asked when she had finished pulling them both up. Astrid nodded, and then Lily turned to Evelynn, saying, “Why did you do that? You’re not trying to get us in trouble, right? You know you have like zero evidence.”

Evelynn looked at her, in a bit of awe and shock, “No, of course not, I just wanted to say how cool I thought that was and…” She looked at them. She searched for more things she wanted to say, trying not to panic from her social awkwardness. “H-how did you do it?” She panted finally.

Lily looked at her, smiling a bit. “We used a confetti cannon and stuck a failed slime in it,” she looked at Astrid before continuing, “We didn’t know if it would even work.”

            Astrid nodded and smiled too. “Their faces were priceless too.” The two started laughing again.

Evelynn felt herself smile a bit at the two, “Yeah, I bet they looked hilarious.”

To be continued, maybe? -Ashlynn Blue. (This is my original work, do you not try to steal.)