Louise knew that the day ahead of her would not be painless. She sat, rubbing her temples, hoping to make the pain digress, but the effort remained futile. To make matters worse, the bus ride made Louise's stomach turn like a circus had begun performing their act in her stomach, including the dizzying chaos of everything happening all at once. Louise leaned forward, sitting in a fetal position, feeling as she were about to hurl.

"You know, Louise maybe you should-"

"I'm-I'm good, Lizzy. I'll be okay - I think," Louise interjected. She closed her eyes, seeing as it was how the actors and actresses seemed to get by such pain in the movies. The headache lessened, but the nauseating pain she felt in her stomach increased.

"Uh, you don't have any ginger ale in your lunch box, do you?" Louise inquired.

"Thought you'd never ask," Lizzy replied, grinning. Hastily, she unzipped her backpack, which was sitting in between her and the seat in front of them. She slipped her hand into her backpack, revealing a purple lunchbox with a plaid design.

"Aquí está tu cerveza de jengibre," Lizzy said, handing Louise a can of ginger ale.

"Ugh, Lizzy, it's too early in the morning for Spanish!" Louise exasperated as she snapped open the can. Fizz rose, filling the metallic center. She took a swig of the carbonated sugar and held it carefully in her hands. Lizzy grinned.

"Tu tienes cerveza de jengibreporque tu tienes náusea." Louise looked at her for a moment quizzically before replying, "I have no idea what you just said." Lizzy provided her an exasperated sigh and explained that first she said, "Here is your ginger ale." And what she said afterwards was, "You have ginger ale because you're nauseous." To Louise it sounded more like a whole lot of mumbo jumbo, which was assorted into a random order.

"Right. Okay," Louise finally responded. As Louise was about to retort an argument as to why she even needed to know Spanish in the first place, the bus jerked to a halt in front of Breachwood High. She glanced back at Lizzy who had a frown picking at the corners of her mouth.

"Do you ever feel like these days are kind of just an endless loop? Like, we go to school, do work, then go back home, and wait for the weekend. Once the weekend comes, we do nothing, and then Monday comes around again." Louise hadn't contributed much thought to the idea, considering her mind was set on more imperative matter like ridding herself of the nausea and what was now becoming more of a migraine. The thought that her blood vessels in her brain were enlarging made her pain all that more agonizing (though Lizzy was the one who told her that fact a while back). Before Louise had a chance to reply, the bus doors squeaked open and bustles of students filed out like a herd of zebras, moving at all roughly the same speed. Lizzy sighed. "I guess we should go before Mr. Dimono gives us all morning detention because we were late by point-five seconds."

"Agreed," Louise replied, following the large herd of students out the door.

***

As Mr. Dimono's lecture dragged on so did Louise's boredom. Why they even needed to know such history, she didn't know. Like, sure, the French Revolution was a big deal for France and all, but it wasn't like this was going to make Louise smarter in any shape or form. It wasn't like she was going to go up to some random person and say, "Hey, do you want to know why the French Revolution started and the impacts it caused on the lower and upper classes?" She smirked and glanced around, examining her classmate's stultified expressions - either twiddling their thumbs while deep in thought or speaking to one another in hushed tones. Unfortunately, Louise couldn't have the joy of talking to Lizzy, considering the fact that she was in another class.

"Louise. Is Shijie."Louise whirled around, scanning the class, assuming someone had called her, but she came to a disappointing find. Weird, she thought. I coulda sworn I heard that Chinese- Louise felt a sudden poke in her right elbow and whipped her head downwards. Shijie sat there, holding a finger to his lips.

"What are you doing here?! Wait. You're not even real - are you?" she said in a hushed whisper.

"Louise, do you have anything to add to the topic as to how Victor Hugo's interpretation of the French Revolution in the book, Les Miserables, allows us to look at the war in a different perspective?" Mr. Dimono asked.

"Er, no; I'm sorry for interrupting your class." Mr. Dimono took the reply to his satisfaction and faced towards the board, scribbling down a few more notes. Louise gazed straight ahead as she whispered, "Shijie, how did you get here? And I mean, that was a dream, wasn't it?"

"I don't know. But I real."

"Okay, but how did you get here?"

"I use... fortune."

"Wait, do you mean a fortune from a fortune cookie?" she inquired, inquisitive of this new information.

"Eh, yes. I sink so."

"Do you think you can crawl into the hallway?"

"Yes. I can get in hallway," he whispered, and as if to prove his point, he began crawling on his knees towards the exit. Louise stood up, catching the teacher's attention, and asked if she may use the bathroom. With a curt nod from the teacher, she walked slowly, keeping up with Shijie's pace, Louise walking to the right of him, so his view from everyone else was partially covered. They earned a few questionable glances from a few classmates, but fortunately no one sold her out. As they rounded the corner which entered into the hallway, Shijie stood up, seeming somewhat disoriented.

"Okay, first, walk by my side. It will look less conspicuous - or, er, suspicious," she amended. Shijie followed her lead without question. "Anyway, what do you mean you got here 'by a fortune?'"

"I pick up fortune, and then, poof. I here. But I found school. Breachwood."

"Uh-huh, and how did you find my school or even find out about it?" Louise asked, her inquisitory transitioning to disturbance.

"I cannot say."

"Can't or won't?" A lingering pause settled between them. She looked at him, expectant.

"Like this...," uttered a voice in her mind. Shijie gazed into her horrified expression as if to say, 'Say something, please.'

"Did you do that?" she asked, bewildered. Shijie nodded. "But... That's not possible! What are you - some kind of psychic?"

"I hear people thoughts from fortune."

"Oh, okay, so you teleported here by the fortune. And you can supposedly hear people's thoughts by the fortune. You do realize you are expecting me to believe either the world's greatest revelation or some made-up story created by a runaway psychiatric patient, right?" she asked. Suddenly Louise realized she'd been walking in circles around the small gym and she could feel the peering eyes from the gym teacher, eyeing her intently. She provided him a shy smile before speed-walking away from him. Note to self: don't walk in circles when a teacher is nearby, she thought.

"Note to self: don't walk in circles when a teacher is nearby," Shijie recited. Louise whipped her head to the side.

"Stop that! Or whatever it is you're doing. And let's say for a moment that you can hear people's thoughts, I'll tell you right away that most people would not like other people looking in their heads. Except for dogs and sociopaths."

"I cannot promise a thing," he replied, his expression now impassive.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Louise retorted. As if to prove her point, a cackle of thunder sounded from outside the walls of the school.

"That is odd."

"What is?" inquired Louise, perplexed.

"When I got Breachwood, no clouds," he whispered, staring up at the ceiling as if expecting an answer from someone above. Now that Louise thought about it, she came to a startling realization that Shijie was right. That morning, the sky was clear of any trace of even a wisp of a cloud. Louise recalled the wonderful sensation of the sun's rays lining her skin as she walked towards the bus stop. Her eyes wandered across the seemingly endless vast sky of blue, up in the heavens, blanketed down upon the people of the inhabited Earth. Awoken from her reverie, she jogged towards a window nearby. And indeed, the vast blue sky was replaced by a gloomy blanket of thick gray, and the sunlight merely peeked out from a small spot near the far edge of the cumulonimbus thunder cloud. Louise's heart sunk. She'd been hoping to take a walk around the development. Instantaneously, sheets of rain began falling from the sky like icicles shooting down from the roofs due to the sudden transition from winter to spring. Louise shrugged.

"Global warming?" she suggested. Shijie provided her a quizzical look at that. After a minute of explaining with very simplistic vocabulary, Shijie finally understood what she had meant.

"No, I don't sink so."

"What do you mean?"

"I sink it you," he replied. Now it was Louise's turn to provide him the quizzical look.

"You angry at me - thunder outside. You sad that you can't -eh- walk around the development - poof, rain outside." Yup, definitely a runaway psychiatric patient.

"Okay, well, don't ever come near me again, and we'll be fine. Now, if you can, please go back to the psychiatric facility that you came from-"

"No, Louise! I serious-" he interjected.

"Yeah, well, I'm serious too. Now, please GO!" Louise replied. As soon as the words left her lips, blindingly white light streaked the sky. It was as if all was in slow-motion. In that moment of paralyzed terror, an arch of lightning grew, reaching to the ground, it's tendrils sticking out like branches from a bush. It was both profoundly beautiful and profoundly terrifying as Shijie and Louise stared at the terrific streak of lightning. Seconds after, deafening thunder sounded from somewhere in the vast distance.

"What do you sink my crazy theory now?" Shijie inquired after a minute or so of awkward silence.

"I... don't know what to think. And don't think for a second-" A quick flash of lightning flashed from behind Louise. "that I genuinely believe all of this. But I do have an idea, my fellow crazy friend." Shijie's left eyebrow arched upward.

"What your idea?"

"We're gonna go on a little trip to England. How do you feel of drinking a cup of tea and eating biscuits?" she joked, sensing the anxiety in her own voice. In no way was this going to end in their favor, but the fact that Shijie was here definitely meant something. And Louise intended on finding out what this "something" was.