1st Wings
"Now, if we take the 3 and divide both sides, our original number becomes a new fraction.  Now, can anyone tell me how this....."

The old man’s voice lingered for a bit as he looked around his small classroom.  The students were mostly either sleeping or talking amongst each other as his lesson went on.  This was the unfortunate routine of the remedial algebra class at Vordon Community College.  

Mr. Wonder furrowed his brow as he looked around for any students in particular that were paying the least amount of attention or that he could catch off guard.  Adjusting his red tie to give a signal to those at least looking at him that something was going to happen, he glanced around the room.  His eyes caught a particular girl sitting by the window, looking out from the two stories that the class was located on, and staring at nothing.  He grabbed a large ruler and pointed it at her.

"Miss Cissken, why don't you come out of your daze, and show the class how this problem is done?  You obviously aren't paying attention, because you already know the answer, right?"

Annabelle Cissken glanced at Mr. Wonder and blinked as if she had just awakened from a nap.  She rose from her seat and walked to the chalkboard behind the teacher.  Annabelle approached the board cautiously, and brushed back her long red hair away from her blue eyes, so that she could properly see the chalkboard.  She began writing on the board, solving the problem as her instructor had asked.  Her only concern was to prevent chalk from soling her perfectly cleaned and pressed uniform.  Annabelle finished her problem and turned her head towards the teacher, raising an eyebrow as she asked, “Well?”

Mr. Wonder smugly looked at the board, expecting a completely incorrect answer.  As he stared at the equation and the method Annabelle had used to solve it, his face seemed to morph.  He no longer looked satisfied with his previous choice of calling Annabelle up, and instead, appeared as if he’d made the biggest mistake of his life.  He growled a bit and muffled his answer.

“Yes, Miss Cissken, you are correct.  Please take your seat.”

The class chuckled as Annabelle returned to her seat, while looking neither proud nor happy in any way that she had just shown her teacher up.  She returned to staring at the spot outside the window, near the gardens by the entrance of the school, while her teacher tried to regain control of his classroom.
Annabelle was never the sort of girl to take too much pride in most work that she did.  She had grown up with mostly perfect grades, an acceptable amount of friends, and a future to think of as well.  She had also had a thing for cleanliness as well, so things such as her desk, backpack, and room back at her apartment were all spotlessly sanitized.  She was used to being what she thought was perfect in her own mind.  The only reason she was taking a remedial algebra class, was because she never did any of the assignments in her original class.  She always thought of them as useless and demeaning to her own abilities.  So doing them was a chore that she had mostly refused to do.  However, if Annabelle ever wanted to get into a better College than Vordon, she knew she’d have to meet the requirements by passing these ridiculous classes.

As Annabelle looked down through the window at the College garden, she did her best to try and focus hard on a specific spot that had caught her eye the day before.  On the previous day, she had glanced at the garden for merely a moment, while Mr. Wonder had been rambling on about algebra.  During that brief second, she had seen something appear in front of the garden, something that wasn’t familiar to her.  But as soon as she had seen it, it had disappeared from her sight.  She visited the spot afterschool, but found nothing that could even hint the existence of what she had seen.  All she could remember about the object was that it was tall, round, and extremely pale.  Now if it had been explained as simply a smudge on the window, she would’ve brushed it off as nothing interesting.  But since the windows had been cleaned the day before, she was slightly interested to see if she could spot the object again.

She had always been interested in things that made little to no sense, or things that she simply didn’t know much about.  However, with the internet being a vast source for information nowadays, she had little patience for schools.  So her interests were mainly in the supernatural area now.  This was the reason she had been so interested in what she’d seen.  There could be no other explanation for it in her mind.  Or at least, she was truly hoping that there wasn’t.  This was one of the few chances in her life that she might be able to experience something fantastic for the first time in her 20 years of life, and she was not about to let it slide.
------------------------------------
5:00 had arrived, and the majority of Vordon college students were now wandering the school grounds.  Most of the students were either looking for friends or preparing to return home for the day.  Some could be found hanging around the library, bookstore, or the benches found over by the schools memorial fountain.  Only one student could be found by the gardens at the entrance of the school:  A young girl whose patience was beginning to wear thin.

“This is ridiculous,” thought Annabelle as she sat on a table not 30 feet away from the small garden.  “Why won’t this thing appear again?  It couldn’t have just been my imagination, could it?”  She sighed heavily as she continued to stare at the spot she’d seen the object before.  To others passing by, it looked as though she was simply staring at the wall behind the garden, which surrounded the entire school grounds.  She cared very little about their opinions though, as they had nothing to do with her interests.

“Guess who?!”

Annabelle almost jumped off of the table she’d been sitting on after hearing the loud scream behind her.   She whipped around to find that her small friend Josephine had snuck up behind her.  She was a short Asian girl with brown curly hair, green eyes that could charm a snake, and a smile as big as her head.  She looked no older than a Junior in High School, which made it hard to believe she was 21.  She was pulling down her skirt a bit, coming up from her crouched position that’d she’d been in to surprise her childhood friend.  She jumped up onto the table, and snuggly placed herself next to Annabelle.

“So this is where you were, eh Anna?  I’ve been looking all over for you!  Is your phone off, because I tried calling you but it went straight to the machine, so I thought, well maybe she just has her phone off, or maybe she’s rejecting me!  Are you rejecting me Anna, because I really hope that you…mmph!”

Annabelle had placed a hand over her over energetic friend’s mouth; stopping her from continuing on a never ending one-sided conversation.   Josephine had always been something of a talker, and it seemed that Annabelle was the only one of her friends who could stand to be around her for a long period of time despite that fact.  Annabelle took a deep breath, still recovering from Josephine’s surprise greeting, and spoke to her friend calmly.

“Yes Jose, my phone is off right now.  That’s mainly because I didn’t want to be disturbed.”

Josephine removed her friends hand from her mouth, and looked at her curiously.

“Well, why’s that Anna?”
“That’s because I’m looking for something.”
“Oooooh, what’cha looking for?”
“I don’t know exactly.  That’s why I didn’t want to be disturbed, so I could find out.”
“But Anna, we haven’t hung out in forever!  Can’t it wait?”
“NO!”  Anna had almost screamed her answer out, scaring Jose a little.  She sighed and gripped her forehead, trying to remain calm.

“I’m sorry Jose; I just really want to figure something out.”

Josephine looked at Annabelle with puppy dog eyes as she spoke in a whining tone to her dear friend.

“Can’t I help out?”
“You can help out by just staying away from me today alright?”

Josephine’s face plummeted as she received the answer she didn’t want to hear.  Annabelle looked away, for a moment and sighed again.  She’d given that answer to her friend many times before.  It was a wonder they were still friends to this day.  As she heard her friend slinking away, she shook her head and turned back to Josephine.

“Listen, Jose.  How about I call you tonight, alright?  We can catch up and make plans to…oomph!”

She stopped as she took on a hug from her energetic friend, who was smiling as though she were a child in a candy store.

“Hooray!  Call me around 11 tonight okay?”
“11?  Isn’t that kinda late?”
“Come on Anna!”
“Alright Jose, I call you at 11.”
“Promise?”

Annabelle smiled at Jose as she patted her head.

“I promise Jose.”

Josephine hugged her friend once more, hurrying off towards the parking lot nearby.  Annabelle smiled as she waved, and gave a small wave back.  Though practically her polar opposite, Josephine had stuck with Annabelle through a lot of troubles in her life.  She felt like she at least owed her one phone call that night.
As she turned her attention back to her spot, she noticed that her view was obstructed by some guy on his phone.  Annoyed, she stood up to go shoo him away, not wanting to miss anything on account of some random person.  She tapped his shoulder and put on a face that could scare a snake.

“Hey, guy, mind moving from there?”

The boy turned around, for a brief moment, with a look of his own annoyance showing.  He had brown hair that fell in front of his face, which matched with his eyes.  His clothes were untidy and dirty, as though he’d just been in a fight.  It disgusted her to even look at him.  Slightly taller than Annabelle, he looked down at her with a raised eyebrow, made a sound, and shrugged.

“Whatever lady.”

Annabelle was about to respond, but the boy had already turned away towards the gates by the end of the garden.  Thankful he’d at least moved, she turned to go back to her original seat.  That was, until she heard the boy say one more thing.

“It isn’t appearing.”

Annabelle ran to her bags, and quickly grabbed them, running towards the gate to catch up to the boy.  There was no way that what she was currently trying to figure out and what this boy had said weren’t related.  She closed in on the gate, when suddenly she stopped.  She could hear the boy still talking, which meant that he was speaking on his phone still.  She stood on the other side of the gate.  Hoping that the boy was holding still, she leaned against her side of the gate, listening intently to the conversation the boy was having.

“No, I already tried that.  Yes of course I did it right, have you ever known me to fuck it up?  Yeah well, it’s not coming out.  I’m pretty sure that if I had done it wrong, half of this human school would’ve noticed the burn marks.”

Annabelle nearly gasped at what she had just heard.  “Human!?!  What does he mean human?   Is he joking around….?”  She thought as she gulped and continued to listen.

“Look I just don’t think that it’s gonna come out in the day again Dave.  Yeah, I’m damn sure of that too.  No.  No.  Not at all.  Hmmm, that’s a good point.  Alright, I’ll come back tonight.  You gonna tag along?  Hehe, now when have I ever got caught?  They can’t catch me now, and they won’t be catching me anytime soon.  That stupid Judge can send as many units as he likes, it’ll just end the same, you know that.  Alright then.  Well you take care man, and thanks for the info. No, I won’t.  Bye.”

As the boy hung up his phone, he walked back to the gate and took a peek at the other side.  There was nothing there but a garden and empty space.  He shrugged, and walked down the sidewalk to somewhere unknown.