3 Chapter 3: After School Activities

As it turned out, Aaron didn't have to try all that hard to find something to do that evening. As history class came to a close, and the final bell rang, the entire class got up to leave. As Aaron passed in front of Mr. Walters, the old, bald headed man piped up: "Aaron, you mind staying after class for a minute?"

Aaron, of course, couldn't say no, so he sat back down, and waited for a minute while Mr. Walters pulled out a sheet of paper.

"So, Aaron," he began, "It's my understanding that you aren't entirely happy with your grade in Spanish, right?"

"It's not the best, Mr. Walters."

"But you don't seem like the type who would be satisfied with such a dismal grade. Am I correct?"

"Yeah."

"In that case, Aaron, let me run this by you. Me and a couple of the other teachers have gotten together and made an after school program for students we think deserve better grades but seems to falter in one kind of subject. We've gotten permission from a whole bunch of the teachers, your Spanish teacher included, that participation in this program can raise your grades. What I'd like to know, Aaron, is if you'd be interested in participating or not."

"It sounds pretty good, Mr. Walters. But what am I gonna have to do?"

"Well, Aaron, it's pretty simple. A lot of reading involved though. But it's mostly focused on problem solving. Very general stuff."

Aaron thought about it for a minute. It would be nice if he could get his Spanish grade up. Heaven knows that he was tired of his mom being on his case about it. He hated how passive-aggressive she was about it. But he stopped going down that rabbit hole.

"Yeah, sounds good, Mr. Walters." The teachers face cracked into a warm, beaming smile.

"Glad to hear it, Aaron. The first official meeting for this program is 6 o'clock this afternoon. Think you can make it here?"

"I can."

"Great! When you get here, come in through the front entrance, and someone will be waiting to take you to the room we'll have you guys set up in. Sound good?"

"Sounds good."

"Ok, then, we'll see you at six."

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Aaron's bus pulled around the corner, and he could see his house. His mom's white Acura was pulled into the driveway. She was home early. Aaron sighed. What he hated most about his mom or his dad being home was that they interrupted the peaceful day that he managed to have when he was alone.

He pulled his backpack up onto his shoulders, and got off the bus, humming along to Supertramp's "Breakfast in America". Aaron sure did enjoy headphones. Life, plus music, minus the people.

He walked to the porch, and saw through the glass storm door that his medium-sized black Springer was wagging his tail with such ferocity. He did that every day, and no matter how much Aaron had been beaten down by the day, no matter how depressed he was, that dog was always able to make him feel a whole lot better.

Aaron walked himself up to the door, and stared into the deep brown eyes of his dog before opening the door. His pupper ran out of the door like a bullet fired from a gun, ran a circle around Aaron, and then jumped up, putting his front paws on Aaron's legs.

In response, Aaron dropped to a knee, and began to pet his dog and play fight with him. They did this almost every day, Bullitt (named after the Steve McQueen movie) fought to try and lick his way through Aaron's gaurd to his face, while Aaron tried his best to not get his face licked. This went on for a few minutes before Aaron stood back up and opened the door.

His mom was in the kitchen, preparing dinner.

"Hi, honey. Any homework?"

"No"

"Any thing happen today I should know about?"

"I'm going to a thing to raise my spanish grade at 6."

"Oh, honey, that's great."

Aaron's mom looked vaery much like your standard mom, except you could tell her one and only child had been well behaved. She was still thin, only about a hundred pounds (and she got angry any time that that number went up), and had shoulder length brown hair. An angular face, with apparently minimal make up, she was a good mom. Not much good to talk to, but that was both of his parents.

"So I'm going to need to borrow the car."

"I can drop you off."

"Mom, I'd really like to drive myself. Please?"

"Fine. When do you think that you'll be home?"

"Eight, maybe. I'm not sure. I didn't ask, and they didn't bother to tell me."

She gave him a humph, and returned to her cooking. Looked like spagehtti, at least to Aaron. He went to his room. It was only recently that Aaron had been feeling how small the house was. It was all on one floor, aside forom a small basement, and it was cramped.

Aaron put his bluetooth speaker on, and tried to pass the rest of the evening without getting yelled at for being on his phone. Since his mom thought that his phone was the root of all problems.

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Dinner was uneventful. Around 5:45, Aaron said bye to his mom and got in the car. Aaron loved driving. He felt free, like maybe he could go anywhere. He wanted to go a whole lot of places, but he wanted to go with someone. And that someone was not going to be his mom. Although she always offered.

Aaron continued to drive on the rural streets, cracked with use. He mostly let his thinking go, other than simple functions, and listened to the radio. Well, not the radio. His phone, since most of the music on the radio sucked.

The school was only a ten minute or so drive from his house, so he pulled into the mostly vacant parking lot. The sky was beggining to turn a darker orange, but Aaron thought that it would probably take another two or so hours for the sun to set.

Aaron felt weird looking at the building where the gym was. He thought about his nightmare, which seemed oddly stuck in his head. He had had plenty of strange dreams, most of which he wrote down in case he felt like writing about them later. This one, he wanted to forget, but couldn't. He pulled into a parking spot that was far away from the gym, and made the short walk to the doors.

There were a few cars parked around, most closer to the door than his. He wondered if he'd know anyone who was here.

He opened the doors, and walked inside the school. A teacher he didn't recognize took him downstairs, to C-106, an ampitheater like room. Four other students were sat in it. One of them, suprisingly, was Fuzz. They looked at eachother for a minute, but Aaron moved on and sat in one of the theater chairs in the back row, folding the desk out in front of it.

The teacher that Aaron didn't know introduced himself as Mr. Showsend. An odd name, Aaron thought, but not the oddest that he had heard.

"What you guys will be doing today is looking at these photocopies, and trying to solve the code on them," said Showsend. "Don't worry if the answer isn't immediatley apparant, I'm sure you'll all get it eventually." He passed out the papers and then left the room. What sat in front of Aaron now was what looked like a picture of an old piece of paper with weird symbols on it.

To Aaron's limited knowledge, some looked like hieroglyphs, some looked like nordic runes, and some almost looked asian in origin. Then there were ones that he had no clue for. They were just shpaes, like circles or stars or something.

In front of him, Fuzz got out of seat, and moved into the one next to Aaron. Aaron was, suffice it to say, a little bit angry, but he kept his cool. Fuzz, an athletic type, played on most of the sports teams and lifted weights for fun.

Fuzz leaned over and asked, "Do you have any fucking idea how we're supposed to solve this?"

"Not really."

"Well, I'm just gonna sit here and copy off of you."

Aaron groaned, but let it go. He couldn't really do anything about it anyway. The other strange thing, Aaron noticed, was that Fuzz had a different paper. The symbols were in a different order. Aaron pulled his phone out and took a picture of the paper, starting with a google image search. He couldn't find anything, so he took a picture of one of the hieroglyphs and google image searched that.

It appeared to him that the heiroglyph meant "dark" or "darkness". He wrote that in for that symbol each time he saw that. He got distrated by the hum of the ventillation, which he thought that the school turned off after hours.

He did his hieroglyph thing a few more times before he began to get a headache. He was used to having headaches. He had once had a migraine so bad that he thought he was having a stroke. It was weird, and scared the shit out of him. Now everytime he got a headache, he got a little nervous that it was going to happen again.

But he kept working. It suddenly seemed like everyone in the room was groaning and rubbing their heads. Maybe it was something with looking at a single piece of paper for such a long period of time that threw people off. He wasn't sure.

Soon, though, it was like something began to clcik in Aaron's head, and he started to connect the dots between symbols. He suddenly was able to piece hieroglyphs together to form entire new words. This did not seem strange. It was as though this was always lurking in the back of his mind and had just came out.

He was most suprised about the weird symbols he couldn't identify. He jsut began to know them. Like he had been reading them his entire life. But Aaron really had to pee. Normally he had to only go once or twice a day, but god-damn did he have to take a leak.

He got out of his seat and found that he had lost all balance. He almost tumbled over the row of seats in front of him, but he kept his balance and kept moving toward the door. He felt real weird, and the walls all seemed slightly off-colored. Also, his headache was bad. he hadn't noticed until now, but it was real bad.

He opened the door and stumbled down the hallway, looking for the bathroom. Oh, look, a teacher's bathroom. Screw it. That would work. He opened the door, and found himself walking down some steps. A little odd, but what did he know about teacher bathrooms? Nothing. He had to pee.

He eventually came to another door at the bottom of the steps. He opened it, and did not find a bathroom. Instead, he found a circle of black robed chanting figures in hoods. Aaron decided that he really had to pee, and so he did, right there, in his pants, with these people looking at him. the chanting had stopped, and one of them shouted something.

Somewhere, in Aaron's mind, something shouted run, and so he turned and ran. But it all felt so weird. So dreamy. His body felt like it was on autopilot, but his mind was free, free to go wherever. Does God exist? Who am I? Where do we go when we die?

He suddenly had a vague sense of getting in his car and driving off. But then everything went black.