Danger Magellan's Invasion of Earth

Chapter 2

"I thought you signed up for English with me too," Arthur said.

"No, I decided to take Honors English instead," I said. English was one of my easier classes, so my teacher had encouraged me the year before to take Honors English. I personally didn't see why Arthur struggled with Shakespeare so much, but he was way better than me in history, so we were even.

"That's too bad," Arthur said. "I need your help in that class."

"You'll be fine," I said. "I'll see you at lunch, Arthur."

"See you at lunch, Nora," Arthur said as he headed to his first class.

I walked to Spanish class, and on my way there, I spotted Dan heading to his first class. Blaze poked out of his backpack, sniffing the air. Strangely enough, nobody seemed to notice the blue-haired sophomore with a hedgehog in his backpack.

Spanish wasn't terribly interesting, and chemistry was the same way. By the end of my first day in English and drama, however, I knew that those two classes would be my favorites for the year. I couldn't wait to start discussing Oliver Twist and practicing my acting skills. If only Drama Club would start sooner, I thought as my drama teacher started talking about the fall musical, carefully ensuring that she didn't reveal the name of the show. The first meeting wasn't until the next day.

To my surprise, Arthur, Raquel, Dan, and I all had fifth period lunch. Raquel, Arthur, and I immediately sat down at the same table, but when I saw Dan wandering around by himself, searching for a table, I invited him to sit with us.

"Nora, this doesn't have avocados in it, right?" Dan asked as he held up a slice of cheese pizza. "I'm allergic to avocados."

I shook my head. "There aren't any avocados in that," I said.

"Good," Dan said as he took a bite of his pizza. "This is delicious!"

"Is this that Dan you were talking about?" Arthur asked me.

"Yes," I said. "I should probably introduce you guys. Dan, these are my friends Arthur and Raquel. Arthur and Raquel, this is Dan. He's an exchange student from Albania."

"That's really cool," Raquel said, briefly looking up from her science textbook. "I've never met anyone from Albania before."

Dan shrugged. "I've never been to America before either," Dan said. "It's been an interesting experience so far."

"Tell us about it," Raquel said while she played with her luscious, curly hair. "What do you think of America so far?"

"It's a nice place, I suppose," Dan said. "I would like to see more of it though, especially with all of these attractive Americans around." Dan then winked at Arthur, who simply shook his head in response.

"At least wait until the second day of school to flirt with my best friend, Dan," I said.

"Let's change the subject," Raquel said. "What does everyone think of their classes so far?"

"They're awful," Dan said. "I thought that school might be more interesting if I took classes here, but that's obviously false. School might even be worse here."

"That's because the entire educational system is controlled by the Illuminati," Arthur said.

"What's the Illuminati?" Dan asked.

"Don't get him started," Raquel said as she went back to her science homework.

"The Illuminati is a secret society founded in Bavaria in the eighteenth century," Arthur explained. "They want you to think that they disbanded shortly after their formation, but that's not true. The Illuminati continues underground, orchestrating every major world event from the French Revolution to World War II to Harambe's death. I, of course, am in on their schemes, and I intend to educate the world and start an uprising against their ultimate plans of taking over the world!"

I didn't believe any of Arthur's Illuminati garbage, but it was hilarious to listen to him talk about it. If nothing else, Arthur was quite passionate about his conspiracies. "Hey Arthur, what happened to your hat?" I asked.

"It's in my backpack," Arthur said. "Mrs. Milani made me take it off during Driver's Ed."

"That's horrible!" I exclaimed.

"It's not fair," Arthur complained. "All of my other teachers have let me keep it. Mr. Cruz even said it was cool last year. By the way, I haven't told Raquel about the UFO I saw yet."

"Arthur, there's no way that you really saw a UFO," Raquel said. "All of the other ones you've seen have turned to be helicopters."

"This one's real," Arthur said. He proceeded to tell Raquel everything about the spaceship and the person inside of it, but Raquel didn't believe a word of it.

"You're just making this up, aren't you?" Raquel said.

"I'm not making it up!" Arthur said. "I promise that all of this is absolutely real! Nora even saw it too!"

"Hey everyone," someone said as he slid into the seat next to mine. I glanced over and saw that it was my friend from Drama Club, Cody Watson. As usual, he was making his rounds around the cafeteria, talking to everyone from the lowliest freshman to the senior class president. "How's it going?"

"Hi Cody," I said. "Everything's going fine. Have you met Dan yet?"

"I have not," Cody said. He turned to Dan and said, "Hi there. I'm Cody Watson."

Cody shook Dan's hand while Dan said, "Hello. I'm Dan Gallagher."

"Are you new here?" Cody asked.

"Yes, I'm new," Dan said.

"I promise Spragueville High School's not scary at all," Cody said. "Everyone is very nice here. In fact, I don't think I've ever met anyone here that I didn't like. Where are you from?"

"Albania," Dan answered.

"Well, that must be a little bit of an adjustment," Cody said. "I like your hair, by the way."

"Thank you," Dan said.

"I've always wanted to dye my hair, but my parents won't let me," Cody said. "I don't know what color I'd dye it though. Nora? Arthur? Raquel? What color do you guys think would look good on me?"

To be honest, I had never pictured Cody with any hair color other than light brown. There were a lot of colors that also wouldn't go well with Cody's slightly jaundiced skin, which he attributed to a rare blood disorder. "You could just dye it a darker shade of brown," I suggested.

"That's lame," Arthur said. "You should go with blue, like Dan's hair."

"I agree with Arthur," Dan said.

"What about purple?" Raquel suggested.

"I don't know," Cody said. "I'll think about it. Nora, have you heard anything about when the next drama club meeting is?"

"I think it's tomorrow," I said. "That's when they're announcing the fall musical too."

"I can't wait to find out what it is," Cody said.

"Me neither," I said.

"I should probably go talk to those juniors at the next table," Cody said. "They look like they could use a little company. I'll see you guys around. It was nice talking to you."

"It was nice talking to you too, Cody," Raquel said.

A few minutes later, the bell rang, and Dan, Raquel, Arthur and I went our separate ways. It was only halfway through the first day of school, and the four of us had already had an interesting day. I found it especially odd that Arthur's UFO observations coincided with mine. How could that be? I wondered. Had I really seen a UFO on the day that Dan came? However, our adventures on the first day of school were nothing compared to what was yet to come.