By: Isaac Yuan

Terry never agreed to do this. He never agreed to join this club, he never agreed to “save the world,” and he never agreed to risk his life. But, then again, who even asked him?

It was an average sunny afternoon, and Terry was having fun in his backyard. He, probably unlike you, lives in an average world where everything is almost always average, kind of like the planet Camazots from A Wrinkle in Time. He had an average family, average neighbors, and average friends, and his house wasn’t very old, or very new. The only exception to this averageness was Terry himself.

Terry didn’t like watching television, he liked to go to school, and he ate everything that was edible (in other words, he didn’t care if his dinner was made of broccoli or eggplant, unlike the other kids). Anyway, Terry was playing in his backyard, and he thought today was going to be a very good day since he had nothing to worry about. He completed his homework and did all his chores, so his parents let him go out early. He watched as the birds flew around and the squirrels ate tree nuts. Terry was an outdoor guy, and he liked camping more than anything else. He also liked to watch the sun go down, and that’s why he always sat on his wooden chair for thirty minutes when it was almost sundown. Today, he waited and waited on his wooden chair, but the sun never seemed to go down an inch. Weird… Terry thought. It seemed like way more than thirty minutes, and it was winter. Sure enough, it was already half past six, and there wasn’t a hint of a star in the sky (Tom lived in the mountains, and it was very easy to see a star most times). Terry waited for a few more minutes, and, to his relief, the sun finally started to go down. He waited, and, soon enough, it was dark outside, and he could see many stars sprinkled across the sky.

Terry was about to go back indoors when, suddenly, everything went dark. At first, he thought that it was a power outage, but when he looked up, it seemed like all the stars had agreed to stop shining. Now, Terry was really starting to panic. Using his hands and feet, he felt his way indoors and turned on the lights. When he did, though, he immediately regretted it. There was an old man smiling at him creepily through the living room window.

“Your different Tom… You’re different…” He said this in an eerily quiet voice.

Then, suddenly, he walked through the wall like it wasn’t there, and, when he was about to attack Terry, he woke up in a cold sweat. “At least the dream was over,” Terry thought. For some reason, it didn’t feel like a dream. Terry remembered hitting his elbow on the wall before “waking up,” and his elbow still had a bruise mark on it… but he forgot about all of this when he went to school. When he heard his friends chatting and teasing each other, he joined in. Everything seemed so normal, so average, so right. He didn’t care if he was different. He could fit right in with everyone else if he wanted to. The creepy guy is right Terry, said a negative part of his mind. You were never like the others. You never “fit right in.” Do you remember all the teasing you had to go through? “Shut it,” Terry said to himself. Everything was normal. It’s all fine…