Mike loved Calvin Middle School. Mike loved the school because he knew it like an old friend.
Mike remembered the location of every master test and answer key. He knew the exact window of time when Janitor Norris left the door to the teacher’s lounge open to answer nature’s call.
Repeating both 6th and 7th grade gave him plenty of opportunities to learn the ins and outs of the school.
He couldn’t master the proper essay structure, turn in a science lab assignment on time, or consistently distinguish between simple and compound interest.
However, nothing happened at Calvin Middle School (or in Blackway) without Mike Sick hearing about it.
Mike sat at his impromptu “desk” (the alcove under the 8th grade stairs) doing research. His laptop was open in front of him. He had three screens open as he searched through a host of local and National news stories simultaneously.
His Bluetooth headset blinked blue in the dark of the alcove and his phone sat beside him with his encrypted messaging app open and scrolling through a sea of chatter.
In the past two weeks, Mike had been hearing some strange things. These were not the events one might expect in a small Texas town.
Teachers in the lounge couldn’t stop talking about a 6th-grade student who disappeared in the middle of a social studies lecture and appeared hours later in the middle of a wheat field two towns over.
Several students told Mike they saw a kid flying over the school. The same kids swore they saw the flying kid chasing something big across the sky and out of town.
What the heck is going on? Mike wondered, and not for the first time.