Connection of the Worlds: Second Edition (First Chapter Preview)

Chapter One: Tor

September 10th, 2017; San Diego, California 

Thirteen year-old Tor Anderson was jolted from his sleep at the sound of a paper pamphlet slamming onto his desk, and laughter from several other kids in his history class. He looked up, rubbing his eyes. Dang. He’d really fallen asleep again in class? His parents would kill him. And so would his teacher. 

Mr. Jared, a balding man with hardly any wisps of hair left - thin, vulture-like, purple-faced and always scowling - was giving Tor a look of disapproval. Mr. Jared wasn’t at all surprised by the fact that Tor had fallen asleep during his lecture (this tended to happen a lot at North San Diego Middle School). 

“Sorry,” Tor muttered hastily. As the bell rang, he grabbed the pamphlet and stuffed it into his backpack (the same one he’d had since last year, after his old one broke). He left for his next class, trying to hide his embarrassment.

Tor hadn’t meant to be average. When he was younger, he had thought himself something of a superhero. Like Thor, or Batman, or something. But when he realized that a career as a secret agent or a world-saving god wasn’t exactly possible… well… that could really put a damper on life. 

It wasn’t as though he was a failure. He got okay grades, C on a bad day (especially in Mr. Jared’s history class), B+ on a good one. He ran track, though never really competitively. It was enough to have a handful of participation awards, he supposed. But more importantly he was a good guy, or at least, he tried to be. He loved his mother, tolerated his sporty stepdad and bratty half-sister. He even looked kind-of average: not overweight, not too skinny. Light brown hair, bright blue eyes, a smile on his face most of the time. He was almost fourteen, so he figured he was doing alright in life… even if he didn’t have a girlfriend and the closest he had ever been to getting an A was in a fake classroom in a video game he liked. 

The point being, he wasn’t anything special, but at least he wasn’t a sad case. Like his tormentor and the worst bully at school, Wilson. 

Wilson (no one knew his first name) was a jock who had been picking fights with Tor since the sixth grade. This year, Tor had hoped there wouldn’t be any being stuffed into a locker, or tied to a pole without a shirt in the hot sun. But alas. The eighth grade brought nothing but more misery. Wilson, who happened to be six feet tall already, with pale skin and a crew cut, had unfortunately chosen to pick on Tor because Tor was average. Wilson had a ton of problems: poor grades, borderline schizophrenia, selective mutism, and there were rumors that he had abusive parents, too. So it was understandable that the victim would become the bully, right? Tor always tried to see the best in people. 

“Hey, Anderson!” 

“Mother-” before Tor could get his cuss out, Wilson had already come up to him, and had yanked his arm so Tor was flung towards the nearest set of lockers. A couple of girls who had gathered there before their next period yelped and moved out of the way, not wanting to be witnesses of one of Wilson’s scenes. 

“Hey, hey, don’t push away!” Wilson spun Tor around to face him. “Just want to give some advice, man.”

Tor narrowed his eyes. Wilson had to be kidding. The kid never gave advice; he was a asshole and everyone knew it, even if he came from a bad home. 

“What is it this time,” Tor sighed, “another bloody nose? A trip to the dumpster?” He should have just shut up and tried to run away. Now he would be late and his English teacher would yell at him. 

“Hey, don’t be so salty!” Wilson grabbed Tor by the face and forced him to stare at the ground. “You gonna fight, punk?” Wilson chanted, snickering as Tor tried to look back up.

“Get off,” Tor muttered. He couldn’t afford to fight like this. He couldn’t look up to see if the teacher in charge of monitoring the halls today was there. He couldn’t get help from his friends either. (Well, that was because he didn’t have any. Okay, not any. Only a few average Joes like him who he ran with for track, and his best-friend who wasn’t in any of the same classes as him this year.)

“Yeah?” Wilson didn’t say a lot. He just put Tor in a choke hold, and Tor suddenly wished he hadn’t quit karate lessons back when he was in elementary school. 

Tor had tried to stay calm up until this point, but now he was loosing air. Fast. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see. He could feel Wilson’s arms clenched around his neck. But… wait, what was that? Tor felt a surge of anger, only it was different than other times he had gotten upset. He felt himself getting more and more angry, and then...

Bang!

One moment, Tor had been choking. Next, he and Wilson were both flung apart from each other, as though an earthquake had occurred. 

Tor groaned from his spot on the floor. He was okay, he realized, only he had a few bruises. Wilson, on the other hand, had been flung into a locker, and had left a human-sized dent in it. His face was bleeding.

“Oh…” Tor murmured. Then he was alarmed. “Ahh! No!” Wilson’s skull had cracked, and the bully was loosing blood pretty fast. 

“Help, somebody, help!” Tor shouted. Even though he knew Wilson had suffered concussions before (being a football player and all), the kid was still an eighth grader who needed help. 

The rest of the afternoon was a rush. 

“I didn’t.” Tor was sitting in the principal’s office, in the hard chair across from the head of school herself, Mrs. Ward. She was frowning slightly, clicking a pen in her hand, taking notes every once-and-awhile. She closed her eyes, and a few locks of grey hair fell out of her tight bun. She looked upset.

“Mr. Anderson,” she began, opening her eyes, sadly looking at Tor, “this is the third time since August. Do you remember what I said to your parents at the beginning of the year?” She always had a habit of bringing up conversations with Tor’s parents. (Unfortunately there had been several incidents like this since the start of school.)

“Yeah…” Tor felt his heart sink. He knew what was coming. 

Mrs. Ward cleared her throat, and Tor knew that she didn’t want to say it. She did give many chances. But she was the principal, and even if Tor hadn’t caused the problem with Wilson’s bullying, he had still done something. He knew he had somehow (but he didn’t know how) caused whatever explosion had sent his bully flying into the locker. Because of him, Wilson was at emergency care right now, getting numerous stitches in his head. 

Mrs. Ward set her pen down, and clasped her hands together. She leaned towards Tor from across the desk. 

“I don’t enjoy being the one to say this, Mr. Anderson…” She took a moment, and then plowed on. She had her mean-principal-business-lady face on, now. Tor hated that face. 

“It’s been three times,” she repeated. “I’m getting tired of this.”

Tor was about to apologize, but she shot him a glance, and he held his tongue. 

“I said to your parents, that you’re a good person.” She sighed, “But unfortunately, Mr. Anderson, that doesn’t mean I can let you walk back into school tomorrow, punishment free.” She fixed him with a stern gaze, “Do you understand?”

Tor looked down. He did. And he hated himself. He knew what a disappointment he would be when he walked into his house later, what his parents would think when they learned about this. 

Mrs. Ward picked up her pen, and took a small sheet of paper from a neat stack of them on the mahogany desk. She wrote while she spoke. 

“Most students would have been punished very harshly for what you have done, Mr. Anderson.” She scribbled something down, and Tor got a glance at her tidy handwriting and signature. 

“So… am I being punished?” Tor asked. “Um, harshly, I mean.”

Mrs. Ward didn’t respond. She finished signing the form. Then she slid it across the desk to Tor. He read it, dreading the punishment. 

Hope flared inside him when he read the title. “Suspension?” he asked, trying to keep his voice neutral. This was better than what he had expected. “So… I’m not expelled?”

Mrs. Ward gave him the faintest smile. 

“Holy-” Tor stopped himself. “Uh, I mean, thanks. Thanks Mrs. Ward.” 

His principal nodded, and spoke again, not unkindly. “You are a good kid, and we both know that. In fact, I can see you have potential. Just…” she looked at him, and he couldn’t exactly read her expression, “Try to stay out of trouble from now on, will you?” 

“Yeah, okay.” Tor agreed. He didn’t think he could handle any more trouble today. 

No one gave him trouble on the way out. No one helped him get his things out of his locker, and no one even said goodbye, or asked what his punishment was. As annoying as it was that no one seemed to care, it was almost peaceful. But in a sad way. Like, when someone you find super annoying moves away, and you realize you needed the negative energy because it makes you feel like a better person. Or when you’re left at home for the day because you weren’t invited to a fun outing, and even though you’ve said that you need some peace and quiet, you realize you want to be part of something, even if it’s just some tasty fish tacos on the boardwalk by the ocean. 

Tor made his way out of the building, backpack slung over one shoulder, suspension paper in hand. He tried to summon his inner surfer-dude. 

Gotta chill out, he told himself. So what if no one cares? Just enjoy the two weeks of free time.

As ‘chill’ as he tried to be, he couldn’t help staying mad at himself. Why couldn’t he have just made some snappy comment or tried to run away from his bully? 

He normally took the bus or biked, but today since he was let out before the end of the day, he decided to walk home. It wasn’t way to far, just far enough that walking was inconvenient for early school mornings. It wasn’t really that scenic either - there were just other suburban houses like his, a few palm trees here and there, and dried up lawns. The fires in California, combined with the drought, made the whole walk a little more dismal than usual. Tor was suspended, sweaty, angry, and it felt like his lungs were dying from the smoke in the air. There was only one thing to do. 

He took out his iPod from his backpack, plugged in his earphones. The right one didn’t even have the plastic thingy to cover it. Whatever. Tor unpaused the music that he had been listening to on the bus this morning. 

He didn’t know the singer, but longed for what the song spoke of: adventure, love, friends. He sighed. Wouldn’t that be nice, to have an adventure. He should have been careful of what he wished for. 

He closed his eyes, and let the music flow through him. The sidewalk wasn’t too crumbled, and the road was empty today - it was a neighborhood and not the highway, afterall. He wouldn’t fall down. And after this morning, how much further could he fall? How much worse could it get?

“Ouch!” He had collided with someone. His iPod flew out of his hands, and broke into a dozen pieces on the sidewalk. “Dang it!” he scowled, and glared up to see who he had run into. 

She looked like a movie star - hollywood 1950’s glam (Tor’s mom had studied fashion history in college) he thought. She had a yellow scarf around her hair which complemented her dark, olive skin tone, and a pair of cat-eyed sunglasses covering her eyes. Her dress was beige, thin, and revealing; it was strapless with a v-neck. She looked about thirty or forty - Tor didn’t know exactly how old she was. 

“You…” Her thin lips curved into a smile. It wasn’t kind. In fact, Tor thought it was kinda creepy. 

“I… sorry. Sorry ma’am.” Tor didn’t know what to do. He was clumsy, but he hardly ever ran into people - he usually tripped over the sidewalk or walked into a pole or something. (His sister made fun of him a lot for that.)

She lost the smile as easily as it had appeared on her face. She was one of those psychos who could turn their frown upside-down and vise-versa as quickly as the blink of an eye. Tor was seriously scared by those people. 

“You mess with me, child?” The woman seemed to be speaking with an accent. But Tor didn’t know what it was. He hadn’t been to many other countries, just Canada a couple of times for hiking and Mexico for his stepdad’s birthday. So yeah, he really had no clue what accent this was. But it wasn’t like anything he had heard before. 

“No, no! Sorry ma’am I didn’t mean to-” he was cut off. 

“Yes, you mess with me.” She was muttering now, sounding angrier by the minute. Her long fingernails seemed to scratch her skin as she clenched her fists. “You mess with me so I mess with you, don’t I?” 

“Um... is that rhetorical?” Tor asked. When the lady didn’t answer, Tor decided he had better get on with his walk. It would still take him a good amount of time to walk home. At the rate he was going, he would have been better off waiting another hour for the schoolbus. 

“Okayyy, I’m just going to go…” He started to back away. 

“Oh, no mortal.” The woman snapped at him, harshly. “I do not think so. I will teach you a lesson… why not to mess with me.” She started to take off her sunglasses. 

“I think not!” Both Tor and the woman whipped around to see who had spoken. Tor ogled in shock. 

It was a girl close to his age. She looked about a year or two older than him, maybe fifteen? She was tall, Tor’s height, with olive skin (it wasn’t as dark as the other woman’s, but close) and she had very broad shoulders. Her hair was reddish-brown, curly, and a little lower than shoulder length. She was wearing a tank-top with a picture of a cartoon labradoodle on it, and some words in an alphabet Tor didn’t recognize. Russian? He had no clue. 

“You.” The woman glared at the newcomer. 

“It is I.” The girl met the gaze. Tor saw that she had very fierce hazel eyes, which seemed almost - but not quite - grey. She had a clipped and formal way of speaking - not like any teenager Tor had met before. It was as if she had come from a completely different era. 

“You mess with me too? You foolish girl,” the woman snarled, “you have no idea of what you mess with. You ambassadors are always like this.” The lady paused to examine a claw-like fingernail, and then smiled in the same creepy way as before. “That is why I always try to kill your kind.”

The girl circled the woman, eyes blazing, jaw set. “Try. Try to kill me, I dare you.”

What? Tor thought immediately. Was the girl going crazy? Was he? The way these people acted, spoke to each other… it almost seemed like they were aliens from another planet. Maybe they were cyborgs. But either way, they were obviously involved in something that Tor, average, boring-old, suspended Tor, definitely did not want to become involved with. 

Tor coughed, and they both looked at him. Tor took a step back, seeing their intense gazes. 

“Uh… I was just going…” he muttered. 

“Like hell you are!” the girl - his age - shouted. “You aren’t safe anymore. Stay behind me and do not move.” She fixed him with a glare, and added, “Whatsoever!” 

Tor stood there, mouth open like some idiot. 

The girl turned back to the woman. “I will destroy you,” she snarled. 

The woman looked her up and down, and laughed heartily, only there was nothing funny about the situation. “You catch me first,” she taunted. The girl looked like she wanted to attack the woman, but something stopped her. The woman touched a finger to her sunglasses and the girl looked terrified, an expression Tor believed she didn’t show much. 

The girl stood there, and the woman took that opportunity to run. How she did it so fast, with heels, was anyone’s guess. That left Tor and the girl to stand awkwardly next to each other. 

“What now?” Tor asked. The girl opened her mouth to respond. But then Tor shook his head, “Actually, I don’t want to know. I’m going home.”

The girl scowled at him, and it was enough to stop Tor in her tracks. “I just saved your life, mortal.” 

“Mortal?” Tor echoed the word. “As in, like, human?”

“Argh!” The girl tossed her hands in the air.

“Um, I really have to leave…” Tor began.

The girl clenched her fists. “Do. Not.” 

“Why?” Tor demanded, suddenly angry. “I’m just trying to go back home! You and that lady can go fight each other to the death someplace else!” 

The girl met his gaze. Tor gulped. He had never seen a stranger who was this intense. Or one this hot.

“Uh huh…” he stammered.  She was looking him up and down, analyzing him, as though she was reading his mind. 

“You need to come with me,” she said slowly. Her thin brows furrowed together, and she looked puzzled. “I can’t explain yet, but… you must come with me. It is very important.” 

Tor knew it was messed up to trust a stranger. He looked at her, confused, scared, worried. But most of all, he was curious. There was something happening, something big. And he wanted to know what it was. 

“Fine,” he said. “But if you try to kidnap me, my stepdad will crush you.”