Popularity, Assassins, and Other Lies I've Believed

Destiny was the popular girl, the queen of high school. Now you think you know her. You think she’s blonde and says “like” way too much. Let me set you straight. She’s brunette, same as me, the girl you think is invisible. You’re right that we don’t hang out, so I don’t know if Destiny says “like” too much, or not enough, or not all, so I can’t set you straight on that one. But maybe give her the benefit of the doubt?

Let me set you straight on some things about me. I’m not the invisible girl who needs to take her glasses off to become drop dead gorgeous. I look good in my lime-green glasses; I chose them over contacts. Who wants to stick plastic directly on their eyes? Also, I have friends: Brooklyn, Tessa, Jared.

You probably want to set me straight about yourself now, don’t you? Like, you’re not that judgey. Okay, if  you’ll believe I’m not telling you about shallow teenagers, then I’ll believe that you’re not a Judgey McJudgeypants. Deal?

Anyways, you wanted to hear about the weirdness at the library. It’s not my natural habitat (thought it was, didn’t you?). My natural habitat is surfing and the yarn store. Knitting needles make good hair-sticks when they’re not in use. But when there’s an essay deadline coming up then the library is the adopted habitat of all teenagers. There’s computers and books there, while at home there’s just the computer and though I’m going to blatantly assume I can out-Google you, sometimes it can only do so much before you need to look up deep facts in a book.

It was a group essay: Destiny, myself, Ethan, and Lizzie. Topic: Overcoming Fear. Lizzie nabbed the only free computer, logged on and muttered, “Everyone meet back in twenty minutes, ’kay?” Ethan already had a list of books and disappeared into the shelves. Destiny and I sorta looked at each other.

“We’ll ask the librarian for ideas?” I suggested.

“Yeah,” agreed Destiny and we headed to the front desk.

That’s when the weirdness started, but I didn’t know it. The light went a little funny and the bookshelves waved for a second, but since I’d never gotten stuck in an alternate dimension before, how was I supposed to know? Destiny froze. I raised an eyebrow at her, but she kept going and asked if I had weekend plans. So we chatted about my surfing competition and about her shopping plans (ha, you think that proves everything you’ve been thinking about her. Don’t lie.)

The front desk was empty. No librarians. No anyone. Just the sound of our voices that were suddenly too loud. 

Something whizzed past my face and Destiny shoved me to the ground, shouting unintelligiblely. After I got my face out of the carpet and retrieved the knitting needle that fell out of my hair, I got a good look at… a bunch of jellyfish-like lights. They glimmered yellow-white, then green, then purple, red, and back to yellow. And they were ramming into Destiny. Or at least they were trying to. Like I said, she was shouting who-knows-what which seemed to be pushing them back. They’d get close to her and then fly back. One of them hit a bookshelf and exploded into purple flames. I gulped.

Whatever crazy magical thing was going on, I wanted to help. It wasn’t fair to leave Destiny with all the work. On the other hand, I didn’t want to distract her either. She was all that stood between us and purple flames. I threw a book at one of the jelly-blobs. It sailed right through. Unfortunately, that brought their attention to me. They started dodging around Destiny and barreled straight for me. So I whacked at them with the knitting needle. Pop! Purple-green-yellow splatters went everywhere. I didn’t have time to consider that a thin needle was doing what a fat book couldn’t; I just kept stabbing jellyfish until they were gone and Destiny stopped shouting.

“What was that about?” I asked, looking around to make sure there really weren’t any more.

Destiny sighed. “It’s… a long story. Short version, my family travels to other dimensions, and we act as ambassadors. There’s sorta a war on right now and some people want us all dead. I didn’t think I’d run into assassins at the library though.” She laughed nervously. “Uh, what’s your… dagger-thing made off?”

“Knitting needle,” I said, wiping weird jelly splatters off and tucking it back into my bun. “It’s aluminum I think.”

“My mom will want to know that. Anything that can help… Guess you’d better come over once we’re done with essay. Come on, let’s find the way out of this dimension before Lizzie notices we’re not back in time.”

Still dazed, I followed her, when my brain finally computed everything she’d said. Did I just stop an assassination attempt?

And yeah. That was the weirdness at the library. I know there’s a technical term for it, but parallel universes are all brand-new to me, so cut me some slack, okay? Now that you know what you want, maybe you could explain if I’m a target for jellyfish-light assassins. I want to know how many more knitting needles I need to buy. 

Prompt: Popularity, Assassins, and Other Lies I've Believed. It came from a random pick your title list. I'm not sure if it still fits as a title, but that's where the ideas came from.