The Keeper Chp 1

The Keeper
Chapter 1
My cab driver runs us into a wall


Scribble, scribble…look up…scribble, scribble, scribble, peer around, scribble, scribble, scribble…


This is just me entertaining myself in my class, about one week before the end of school. This means that I would leave my junior high and head off to high school, which is pretty creepy. I still can't see myself in high school; I mean thinking about it is so nerve racking. Plus I'm so short, how would I be able to survive?!

Anyway, I was in my language arts class being bored yet again. We were watching a poetry video with a whole bunch of poets sharing their work. Some of them were pretty interesting. Funny? Yes. Some on the other hand were just too serious and boring for my taste. I really felt like doing something else but Mrs. Sadler, my teacher, told us to put everything away and concentrate on the video. And of course I didn't listen.

I love drawing, and I mean love. Everyone draws when there little, but only a few continue with that little talent. I'm a fantasy artist, meaning that I like to draw the stuff that isn't exactly real. I don't like drawing realism though. Don't get me wrong I like the work of others on the subject, I just think that's they're thing and not mine.

My favorite thing to draw is dragons. I love those guys, you can mess around with their features and it'll look cool. There're so much things you can do with them. That's what I was doing now. I wanted to draw something different, some type of dragon that I haven't really tried before. A different style other than my own I guess. It took me a while to plan out; at times I would drift away from the topic and watch the video. Then I would snap out of it and get back to work.

My dragon turned out differently than I expected it to look like. He was a dark gray Fire Dragon (I call it different cause most of my fire dragons are a red-orange type color) with crimson markings all over his body. He had two big crimson tear drop shapes surrounding his eyes with a tip that dipped down by his mouth. There was a line that stretched from the bottom of his nose to the top of his forehead, where his fur line started. His fur line went from the top of he's forehead to the bottom of his tail. It was a mix of yellow and red; yellow being on the bottom, red being on the top. He had huge wings that were stretched out as far as they could go. The webbing of the wings is a red color, the same color of his eyes. He had a light brown breastplate and the same colored horns. His horns were curved at the tip, in a way it's like a ram's horn. He had an angry, determined expression, like he was glaring at an enemy and they were going to fight.

I took a look at my dragon, he was so sweet. I mean sweet as in cool, not the cute kind of sweet. No not for this dragon! He needed a name. I always name my really good drawings. I thought about it for a while but nothing came to mind.

Hm, how about…

"Cailyn put it away." Mrs. Sadler called from her desk. I quickly slipped my drawing under my desk and glanced over at the screen. I looked at Mrs. Sadler but she was drawn into her grade book. I wrapped my free hand around my drawing.

You must be named! I will not stop until you are named!

But I couldn't think of anything good at the time. When the period ended I walked up to my friend Sonja. "Oh, you got caught again." She laughed.

"Right, like I haven't before." I rolled my eyes, "Hey I gotta ask you, what should I name this guy?" I asked her, showing my picture. She thought about it for a minute.

"Hm…how about Flame?" She suggested.

I shrugged, "I'll think about it." I said goodbye and walked into my next class. At lunch I asked the same question to practically all of my friends. Some were like Sonja's idea; others came up with weird names like Comet, Racer, and Bob. "Bob? Seriously?"

"Hey, it's an awesome name!" My friend Alyssa told me.

I laughed and continued to eat my taco. There's no way I'm naming this dragon Bob. I thought again about Sonja's idea. Flame did should like a good idea, and that's when it hit me. I clapped my hands, "I got it, Scorch." My friends nodded their heads and agreed that was going to be my dragons' name. I smiled and took out my picture, making sure I wouldn't get taco stains on it. I carefully scratched the name Scorch on the top left hand side of the piece of paper, slipped it back into my binder, and continued to eat what was left of my lunch.

By the end of the day, I packed up my backpack and speed walked all the way to my bus. I found my sister sitting in a seat already so I joined her. "Hello Jodie!" I said, making her scoot over so I could get the window seat.  

For some reason, people have the tendency of thinking that Jodie and I are twins.  She is about my height, which sadly is exactly five feet, with long dark hair like mine.  She has these blue rimmed glasses and this green leaf necklace that she got one day.  (I'm not sure how she got it, or in fact when she got it, but she got it).  Though our faces are totally different, I'm still not sure how people think were twins.  My guess is that people think that were like fraternal twins or something on that line.

"Hello Cayleon. What's up?" Yeah Cayleon is one of my many nicknames.  

"Dude, check this out! I drew this is 3rd hour, it is so cool," I dug around my backpack and found my picture. I handed it to Jodie, "His name is Scorch. You like it?"

I saw her mouth drop, "Holy crap! This is awesome," She franticly looked around the bus. She spotted her friend Morgan get on the bus, "Morgan! Check this out, Cailyn drew it." Morgan sat down and looked at my picture.

"Oh that's cool!" She said, I grabbed my picture from her and placed it back in my binder. When I got home I didn't really have any homework, so I went up to my room. I grabbed out my picture of Scorch and took a pair of scissors and tape. I cropped the picture so it was only him on the page. Then I got some tape and taped the picture in my dragon collection.

Yes another fun fact, I collect dragons. I have a bunch of different varieties; sculptures, dolls, books, glass, necklaces, pewter, I even have a dragon from Mexico made out of fish bones. My favorite dragon sits atop my highest shelf, the one I can't reach. It's a Rainbow Dragon that my sister's friend Jade gave to me for one of my birthdays. I think it's so beautiful. I smiled and walked back downstairs to get something to eat. Don't know why but I had a sudden urge to eat something chocolaty.
  
The rest of week seemed to go by pretty fast. Though to me and my friends it still didn't seem like the end of the school year. Even on the last day of school it didn't feel like we were going to be in high school in three months. But I liked this day, the last day of school. Not just because school was over and summer was on, but because this day we all get our yearbooks and listen to our iPods. Being lazy rules!

When Jodie and I got home it was in the middle of the day, so technically nothing was on. I went on the computer to draw while Jodie played Tekken 6. It wasn't long before our parents got home, and Jodie and I planned to go to the park. Jodie even insisted on it. I didn't want to go at first but she gave me no choice, we were going and that was that. It was weird, but I got over it. The park isn't far from our house, we could walk if we wanted to though we took our bikes.

"Hey!" I yelled as Jodie passed me up. It seemed that she needed to get to the park in a hurry.  

"Sorry!" She said, and yet she still kept riding faster.  She biked so fast and far that I couldn't see her anymore. I didn't really feel like biking faster because I knew she would be at the park anyway. Once I got to the park I couldn't see Jodie's bike. In fact I couldn't find her, only little kids scattered the park.

"Jodie?" I yelled, I looked around but still couldn't find my sister. I got off my bike and strolled around the park, maybe she was just hiding from me. "Ha Ha! Very funny, now come out." I searched high and low all over the playground but couldn't find her.

"Hey Cailyn!" Jodie's voice said, "Over here." I turned around and saw Jodie with her bike by the edge of the sidewalk. Weird, I could have sworn that she wasn't there before.

"Jodie? How, how did you get there?"

She didn't answer my question, so I biked over to her. "Hey check this out." She said gesturing over to the street. I looked up and down the street but couldn't find what I was supposed to be looking at.

"Um what am I-" I got cut off by a loud and long beep from a car, a cab actually. Okay how about a rusty beat up cab. The window in the back was cracked, one of the headlights were busted, some of the tires had tape on them, the hood of the car was badly dented, and peering into the car the cushions were seriously torn up. I thought that thing would collapse any second.

A college lookin lady opened the door and said, "Get in." I was about to ask if she was talking to me when I got pushed into the car.

The door quickly slammed behind me and the car went into gear. My heart was beating a hundred miles a minute. I looked behind me and saw Jodie bike back to the park. Leaving me to be…well captured. "Who are you?" I demanded.

The lady put up her hand. "Do not worry child. Everything is going to be alright."
I didn't listen to her. "Help! Somebody help!" I screamed. I banged on the window, desperately trying to get someone's attention.  

"Hey, hey!" The driver yelled, "Stop hitting the window! Stop! You're not going to get hurt kid!"  

"Oh she is just scared. I would be too if I had to see you for the first time." That's when I slowly stopped hitting the window. That was actually kind of funny. I cracked a smile but didn't look at the two.  Something caught me off guard - I know some stuff about kidnapping, first aren't I supposed to be tied up? And these people weren't telling me to shut up they were actually making me laugh.

"Come now, it is alright. We are not here to hurt you." The woman said, she placed a hand on my shoulder and I tensed up. I slowly turned around to looked at the woman. She was very pretty, I guess. She wore a gray business suit and heels. She had long flowing brown hair in a low pony tail with two strands of hair on both sides of her face. She sat upright and had her hands carefully placed on her lap. She reminded me of someone from a castle, all proper and all. I wanted to be afraid, but something in the way she looked made me think that she was harmless.

"Hey Christy, I can't find anything so I'm gonna stop a bit." The driver said. I felt the car park by a curve.   

"Do not call me that!" The woman snapped. The man gave her a smile. He looked like he was in his late-twenties. I could see that he had a couple scars on his face and his ratty red hair with what looks like swimming goggles on his head. I think the weirdest thing about the man was his eyes. They were this bright yellow and his left eye was a little too lazy.

He looked at me and stuck his hand out, "The name's Hennery, Hennery Warrior at your service!" He said, adding some spit to my glasses. Ew! I thought I was going to puke. I quickly took my glasses and wiped the spit off.

Ew, so gross! Get it off, get it off!

"Yes, he is aggravating," The woman complained, "You do not have to shake his hand if you do not want to," And the way she said it, I didn't feel like shaking his hand anymore. Well truthfully I wasn't going to anyway but her saying that helped. I smiled a little, this is not how I thought being kidnapped would be like. "What?" The woman asked, sounding concerned.

"Huh?" I breathed.

"My dear, you think you are being kidnapped?" My face turned pale. How the heck did she know that I thought I was being kidnapped? It's like she was a….a…."A psychic? Well yes I guess I am that," She said, finishing my thought. "Of course I am a lot of things too, but at this situation I am a psychic," Before I opened my mouth she cut me off. "My name is Christina Light. I am the headmistress of a summer school called Calvatrace. At our school we teach our students to control and master there, um, special abilities."

"Um, did you say special abilities?" I mumbled.

"Well yes, um…" She thought, drumming her fingers on her lap. "How can I put this delicately?"

"They teach kids how to control their powers." Hennery said abruptly. My jaw dropped. At first I thought it was a joke; then again I didn't hear any sarcasm in his voice.

I laughed halfheartedly, "That's funny, but seriously why am I here?"

"No it is true, you are a Muneris. Meaning you have a gift, a power. One single power that when at Calvatrace you will learn how to control and master." Christina explained.

"I still can't believe you. I mean it'll take you a whole lot to convince me of 'powers'. I mean sure it would be cool to have such a thing but..." My voice trailed off. I wanted to believe that powers existed, but my daydreams of the idea slipped my mind long ago. I remember wishing that fairy tales could be true and that superheroes do exist. I mentally shut off that thought and began a new one.  From what I could tell I'm going to this place, like it or not.  So I felt like I needed some answers.

"Um, well," I started, "Let's just say that I did believe in all this stuff. How long will I be staying at, err, Calva-somethin?"

"Cal-va-trace," Christina pronounced, "And you will stay there for a whole year. Time moves slowly in Calvatrace, so while it feels like a year there will be a whole summer here. You will learn what type of Muneris you are, what animal you will obtain, and you will learn the history of how these powers came to be."  

Perfect. I get to learn about stuff, during the summer, and it feels like a year. Though, I did think that the animal thing was pretty sweet. What kind of animals can I get? I hope we can pick a dog. That would be awesome. "Well what about my parents? And my sister? Won't they be worried that I'm gone?"

Christina chuckled, "Do not worry. Once you stepped into this car, a replacement was formed to be you."

"Yeah but what if my parents find out that it's just a replacement, and not me." I countered.

"Kid," Hennery said, "Your replacement is you."

I tilted my head, "Come again?"

"It's impossible for anyone to find out that you're not really there. Before picking you up we got some of your DNA, so technically you can be in two places at once!"

My stomach twisted. Another me? That's some serious creeper business. And that they were able to get my DNA?! Someone should give them a shirt saying "I'm a professional stalker".

Christina nodded her head, "Yes that is true, and whenever you like you can check up on how you other self is doing."

"How is that possible?" I asked.

"Oh it is so hard to explain right now. Your roommate will do that for you once we get to the school."

My roommate? Why can't she just tell me now, and she never told me about a roommate. This was so much information that my head was spinning. And on top of that, I still didn't believe this joke. I was still uneasy about this whole idea, and the fact that I'm holding a conversation with two complete strangers was also freaking me out. If I haven't said it before, I'm shy. Well I'm not shy once you get to know me, but if it's something like making a public speech, or even asking for an extra plate at a sit-down restraint, I'm completely terrified. This experience was still freaking me out and yet I've managed to stay calm. Why did I manage to stay calm?! I took in a deep breath to get my thoughts together.

"Fine," I finally said, "I still don't believe you though, but fine. So where is this Calvatrace?"

An annoying beeping noise started in the front of the car.  I looked and saw Hennery press a button on the dashboard. All of a sudden a touch screen appeared. There was a map, a green triangle (I was guessing that was us), and a red dot that was synchronized with the beeping. And that dot seemed to be moving, just a little.

"Ah glad you asked sweetheart!" Hennery said. I got a little ticked off when he called me sweetheart. Like I said. Creeper! "It looks like I've found a portal. Hold on, I'm going in!" He laughed and placed his swimming goggles over his eyes. The cab rumbled then jolted with incredible speed, much faster that I thought this hunk of junk could go. I braced on to my seat for dear life.

While I was preparing for my death, Christina sat there all calm. These people had some serious problems, I thought. Hennery turned the car so fast that my face pressed against the window hard. Then he went over a pothole and I banged my head on the top of the car. And yet Christina didn't even struggle with Hennery's crazy driving.

Hennery swerved around and drove into a parking lot. When I looked out the window, I recognized this place. It was the library, the closest one by my house at least. Hennery raced around the building and in the back road. I looked at the touch screen, now that red dot that we've been chasing was right in front of us.

That's when I looked up, and saw the most horrible thing. We were going eighty miles an hour towards a wall in the library. I was so terrified that I couldn't look away, I was going to die!

"Hey what are you doing?! You're going to crash us!" I yelled, but both Christina and Hennery didn't seem to care. Christina was still calm, and Hennery only sped up the car.

I'm going to die…

My eyes were still open when we were inches away from it. I screamed when we made contact with the wall. Actually we didn't run into the wall, we ran through it.

What was a red dot on the touch screen was a blue dot on the wall. I saw it right before I thought we would crash. And right before we came in contact with the wall, I saw that blue dot grow bigger and bigger. It grew so big that the blue dot engulfed us right before we crashed. We got surrounded by swirling blue light as we traveled into the portal.    

The car made a bumpy entrance when coming to the other side. It jerked and bumped and skidded to a stop. My head banged up and down from the intense landing. Then all was quite.

"Wh-what just happened?" I asked nervously, still very shaken from my near death experience.

"We just traveled through a portal to the road leading to Calvatrace." Hennery explained.

"But," I stuttered, "How-" And that's when I started to believe in what Hennery and Christina were saying; about the Muneris and powers and things of that nature. I gulped, "O-okay…I believe you. So where's Calvatrace?"

"Well in reality, Calvatrace does not exist." Christina said. "Calvatrace is located in a remote forest that does not exist either." That was a very cool twist that I didn't know about. That's when I started to get it.

"Oh, and the only way to get to Calvatrace is through those portals, right?" Christina nodded her head, "And there thousands of them, and they move too."

"Correct you are."

I smiled, didn't really know where that came from but it made me look smart. I guess that's all that matters for me right now. I looked out the window and hadn't realized that we were moving. Trees were passing by everywhere I looked. Up ahead I could see nothing but a long vast road, I'm guessing this was going to be a long ride.

Once again I was dead wrong, while we were driving me and Christina talked for a while. She told me that the school is guarded by a boarder. This makes sure that only Muneris can enter the school and that anyone else that isn't one is booted out immediately. After a couple of minutes the car jerked. We hit something, but I couldn't see anything. I could hear the wheels squeak and try their hardest to push through whatever we hit but they weren't strong enough.

"Hold up. I got this." Hennery said. He kept flooring the gas but we didn't move anywhere. He grunted and flipped a few switches on the dashboard. The car jerked forward a bit, then we inched our way through. That's when I realized what we hit; it was the boarder to the school.  

As we slowly made our way through the border I could see the image change in the front window. It wenta from a long stretch of trees to a huge hill with a forest nearby. I think I also saw a beach.  

On top of one of hills was a huge yet totally techy school. The school reminded me of an office building except more futuristic vibe to it. There were floating orbs around the building that cast a light over the students that were passing by. Kind of like a street lamp only this one has its own power source. The building also had a chrome trim along the bottom and it was so shiny clean that I had to look away before my eyes starts to burn too bad. Above the main doors of the school, there is a symbol of a white diamond with olive leaves around the edges.  I watched as students of the school walked around the campus: taking to their friends, hanging out with a lot of animals, and exploring the place.

Now that I see it, these people do have powers. It was unbelievable!

I could see an outdoor fighting stage where these two guys were battling. One had this crazy green hair and it was standing straight up. The other was wearing all black and he had these super red eyes that I could see from this distance. The green haired dude charged up his power and launched a blue and red orb at the other guy; I couldn't tell what type of power that was.

The punk looking dude jumped in the air and countered his attack with this dark sphere. It hit him right in the face and sent him flying down the hill and into a group of girls.

The girls got mad at this guy and each attacked him with their own power. It really looked like it hurt. The other guy watched the green haired dude suffer for a bit before he walked away from the fight. Okay, so I guess this place isn't that bad. As long as you're strong and don't pick a fight with others, you'll live…

"Welcome to Calvatrace Academy!" Hennery said. He drove up the road to the school and parked in this one spot that seemed to be preserved to him. I got out of the car, no, scratch that. The beat up cab didn't look so beat up anymore. It looked like this awesome dark blue sports car that you would only see in a auto show. Though I'm not a real fan of cars nor do I know the names of most cars, but this one was very impressive.

"You like it don't you?" I turned around to see Hennery leaning on the car. Seeing how ripped up and dirty his clothes were, it didn't make him look good enough to drive a car this cool. If only his appetence changed.

"I have to disguise it as a crappy old cab because of Ms. Stickler over there." He groaned, arching his head toward Christina.

She got out of the car and smoothed out her clothes, "Out of all the people here in Calvatrace, you manage to annoy me the most." She grumbled.

Hennery placed a hand over his heart, "Aw, thank you!" I smiled and tried not to laugh. Apparently it didn't work since Christina snapped her head in my direction. I quickly looked away and focused on a new topic.

"Well, the school certainly is nice. And cool looking." I said.

Christina walked over to me, "Yes it is. Over the years we tried to improve the image for the comfort of our students, making Calvatrace an enjoyable place to be," She clapped her hands, "Now! Let us get you signed up."