"MILLICENT HALL-E'STRANGE!" roared Miss Bindle as I slowly walked into the classroom, dragging my feet as my Animian Literacy teacher loudly announced my arrival and glared at me across the classroom. Crud, I thought. Late again. Every single pair of eyes in the room was on me, including those belonging to my two best friends, Bee and Fiona. Bee, the model student that she is, wouldn't be caught dead turning up late for class, or doing anything else that could result in a negative reaction from a teacher. She put one hand on her forehead and sighed as she looked at me, as if to say, Honestly, Millicent, you really need to get your act together. Fiona, the sporty, bubbly one who could sometimes be a little too loud and enthusiastic about things, looked at me as if my late arrival, accompanied by Miss Bindle's uncomfortably loud yelling, was completely normal. Which it sort of was, given my horrible luck when it came to things causing me to be late for stuff.

I walked over to my usual spot in the corner of the classroom, by the window, to the left of the desk that Bee and Fiona shared (the desks were only big enough for two people, so one person in our trio had to sit alone, and I found it easier to focus when I was that person). Miss Bindle was saying (well, she was practically screeching), "Miss Hall-E'Strange, I do not understand why you are always late to MY class! If you are late ONE MORE TIME, Miss Hall-E'Strange, you will be sent to DETENTION!" Oh boy, I'd really done it now-I'd never seen Miss Bindle this angry before-and she had a bit of a reputation as one of the school's crankiest teachers as it was. My stupid locker was broken, and when I'd opened it the door had come off (for the third time that week). I'd tried to put it back on again but the locker was old and beyond repair; the hinge was rusty and it pretty much sounded like nails on a blackboard every time I opened it. Usually I can fix pretty much anything that is broken-including clocks and a random old radio I found at my grandma's house one day-but not this locker (at least not without replacing the hinge). Bee had seen what had happened but, wanting to be sensible and get to class on time, she went off to Animian Literacy, leaving me to try to fix it by myself (I mean, there wasn't much she could do about it since the locker was, as I said, beyond repair, but I was still a little annoyed that my friend hadn't at least tried to help me when it happened right in front of her). Of course, Miss Bindle probably wouldn't accept that explanation, even though Bee had witnessed the incident herself; in fact trying to explain why I was late would probably make my situation even worse.

It turned out that I hadn't missed anything terribly important; we just worked on our current assignment, an essay about "The Moment Everything Changed" in our lives. The only problem was that nothing had ever really changed in my life. My life was less exciting than watching the grass grow, and it pretty much always had been. Every day was the same: Get up. Get ready for school. Pray to Anatia that you haven't missed the bus. If you've missed the bus get Mum to drive you to school. Get through another usual day at school. Get the bus home. Sit at your desk and do homework all afternoon. Wait for Electra to come home and start making noise. Complain to Mum that you can't concentrate due to your sister's noise. Have dinner. Go on the internet or something for an hour or two. Get ready for bed. Go to bed. Well, that's been the usual schedule all week, and it was now Friday. I'd missed the bus that morning and Mum had had to drive me to school. The car started to be difficult halfway there and as a result I was late to school. AGAIN. Guess what? I'd been late the previous day too.

The last bell of the day finally rang. I grabbed my book bag and some textbooks from my broken locker, slammed the door against the frame of the locker (hoping it would stay there and not just fall off again) and walked off with Bee and Fiona. We sat down on the bus and talked about the sleepover we were having at my house on Saturday night. Electra was staying with her new boyfriend Sammy so we had decided to have a sleepover at my house seeing as we'd have the place to ourselves. We were going to watch a movie or two, then the next day we'd go to the shopping centre near my house so I could be one of the first people in the neighbourhood to get my copy of the new Pokemon game, Bee could get this expensive top she's had her eye on for a while (she's a bit of a fashion freak), and Fiona could look at the surfboards in the sports shop. It'll take forever for her to save up for the one she wants, but she likes looking at them anyway.

We finally reached my stop and I got off the bus. I ran to my house and sat down on the couch. I turned on the television. There was absolutely nothing on after school, so I turned the thing off and got an apple from the fruit basket and took a bite. I walked upstairs to my room and sat on my bed, eating my apple. My room's walls were covered in posters of stuff, Pokemon and other videogame posters, movie posters, sports posters (all of which were gifts from Fiona-I'm not really into sports), and even maths posters. I LOVE maths. I wanted to become a maths lecturer or a mathematician when I grow up. I could just imagine myself standing on a platform or stage, with someone saying, "So, Professor Hall-E'Strange, how did you come up with this new mathematical answer? It's probably one of the biggest things in mathematics since Pythagoras or Fermat or even the current biggest known prime number!" And then I would go on to tell everyone watching just how I came across this answer. Maybe I'd even be able to solve one of the Millennium Problems-who knows?

Suddenly I heard the door slam and the sound of Electra and her friends coming in, interrupting my fantasy. They're home early, I thought. Normally Electra didn't get home until just before dinner. I knew I had to finish that essay by Tuesday but I had the whole weekend plus Monday evening to do it so I couldn't be bothered. Besides, it had been a long day. Bee and Fiona consider me the smart one of the group, the one who does homework as soon as I get it and can easily resist the temptation to procrastinate, but lately I'd been really slack with that sort of thing for some reason. I'd been having these feelings that something was finally going to happen. Soon. I wasn't the sort of person who believed in fate or predetermined destiny, but this weird feeling just wouldn't go away. And it had been getting stronger over the past week.

That night was relatively normal. I tried to do more on my essay but I couldn't because, a. Electra and her pals were making such a din that I couldn't concentrate, and b. my life was so uneventful I couldn't decide which change was bigger: starting high school or meeting Fiona (I'd known Bee since I was little but had only known Fiona since year six). Unfortunately, a lot of people were also doing their essays on starting high school or meeting a new person. I knew that such a mundane topic that everybody had experienced would never get me anything higher than a B grade. I was known as a straight A student. That might sound a bit snobby, but I wanted to get good grades so- you guessed it- I could eventually fulfil my dream of becoming a maths lecturer/mathematician.

I got into bed that night and fell asleep straight away. I woke up in the middle of the night and thought about me and my life. I usually did that when I couldn't sleep because it's so BORING that I usually bored myself to sleep. Although my life was so frustratingly dull, there were a few strange things about me. I looked nothing like my mum or Electra (for example, both of them have black hair and brown eyes, whereas I have light brown hair and green eyes), and had never met my dad. And I acted nothing like my mum and Electra. Nobody in my family was into maths, or tinkering with machines. I just sort of...discovered those interests on my own. And I definitely didn't share any interests or hobbies with anyone I knew. It was like my brain was programmed differently to theirs, like I wasn't even related to them...

I got up and looked at my bedside digital alarm clock. 7:14. Nobody else was up yet. That always happens on weekends; I wake up early and I am ready for anything. But when I wake up at a similar time on a school day I feel like staying there all day and can't be bothered getting out of bed. Weird. After having two slices of marmalade toast for breakfast I picked up the novel I was reading at the moment, "Percy Jackson and the Battle of the Labyrinth" and read another chapter. I'd read it a million times but I really like it. It was my favourite Percy Jackson book. I liked all the weird things that happen in it. I never got tired of it no matter how many times I read it, even though I always knew what was going to happen next.

By the time I heard everyone else stirring I had finished the chapter and I figured it was about time to get dressed so we could pick my friends up. I put on a white t-shirt and some light green shorts with a pink belt that came with them. I quickly brushed my hair, but as usual, no matter how much I brushed it, my long-ish light brown mess of hair refused to go into any sort of neat state.  After giving up on that tedious chore Mum and I got in the car to go pick up Bee and Fiona from their houses.
It was quite a hot day; Bee and Fiona were wearing t-shirts and skirts. We went back to my house and did some dancing and singing to CDs in my room.

"This place about to bloooo-ooo-oooooooww!" I sang. I liked singing and was quite good at it; Bee and I had been in the school choir in primary school. We danced and sang crazily until it was about noon. After lunch (which was pies and chips) we went off to the park for some fresh air before we planned to go to the shopping centre. We ran around the circumference of the park a few times. We liked to get it all out of our systems after being stuck in those stuffy old classrooms all week-we did this almost every week, in fact. We were really hot and sweaty after all that, so we sat down on a bench and began to talk about our plans for the sleepover.

Then we heard it.

Clunk. Clunk. Clunk. A loud metallic noise that practically shook the ground. With each clunk it sounded as if the source of the noise was getting closer. What in the name of Pythagoras is that noise? I thought to myself. I turned to Bee and Fiona but I could tell from their faces that they were as puzzled as I was. Clunk. Clunk. CLUNK. CLUNK. The noise was so close. There was a tall shadow looming over us. I turned my head and saw it. A huge robot thing, as tall as my two-storey house. It had a big rectangular body, with two huge, powerful looking legs and two powerful looking arms with dangerous and sharp-looking claws on the end. The whole body of the robot was silver; the sunlight being reflected off it was just as blinding as the real sun. Despite the fact that the robot was humanoid in shape, there was a dome at the top of its body instead of a head. The dome appeared to be made of glass; I could clearly see a crazy looking man inside the robot-and by crazy, I mean the guy literally looked completely insane. He had spiky black hair that made it appear as though he had just been electrocuted. There was an evil-looking grin on his face, at least it looked like that from down on the ground. He was wearing a black sleeveless shirt that had some sort of gadget attached to it. And he had mechanical parts himself. Not just his arms; the parts went right up to the middle of his neck. Something told me that his head was the only part of him that was still human. The mechanical parts were mostly silver and white, with some bronze highlights where the joints would be. They looked just as futuristic as the huge robot he was controlling-and just as dangerous.

Though I didn't know it at the time, this was the Moment Everything Changed. Not just for me, but for all of Animia as well.