The epsilon escape, p.1
The Epsilon Escape, page 1
Dedicated to Shena, Lucas, and Jasmine
April 15th
Ten minutes after the world-ending, earth-shattering,devastating news, I had another genius idea.
It went a little something like this:
“I’m sure of it,” I said. “No one could be awful enough to tell a bunch of kids who’ve gone to the same school together FOREVER that SOME of them have to go to a different school next year.”
“Unless,” I said after a beat. “It was like . . . a school . . . for kids with psychic powers.”
“Hm,” said June after two beats. “And it was run by an evil secret government lab.”
It was a true destiny moment. We felt powerful and brilliant, like the greatest visionaries history had ever known.
Then we both remembered the whole changing schools thing and got sad again.
Backing up a little: You’re holding in your hands the NEW greatest, most genius book ever to be written. Which it will be, soon, just like . . . you know. We’re working on it.
This is our second genius book. Our first one was about a magical land called Deltovia. It was a groundbreaking, earth-shattering, overwhelming triumph, and June’s saying she wants the pen so I’m handing it to her.
Dear Reader,
While I, of course, trust Misha, my dear friend, to do a fine job of explaining The Chronicles of Deltovia by June Okoro, Misha Schmidt, and Ollie Chen to you, please allow me to provide a detail or two more about our first book that she might have failed to include in the above.
Pages 5–12: Introduction by Misha. She informs the reader that we three are all students at Lakeview Middle School and that we intend to write a book together. This book will be a fantasy book that takes place in the magical land of Deltovia.
Pages 13–17: I introduce myself, as well as my character in the land of Deltovia. I also address several potential plot holes.
Page 17: We resolve to be true partners in our collaborative efforts on the book. In that spirit, I shall now let Ollie continue to recount our story.
My character was a cool elf
Thank you, Ollie. I am taking the pen back now.
Pages 18-19: The first chapter of The Chronicles of Deltovia. Our heroes travel to the magical land of Deltovia and realize they have great and terrifying powers, which have been awakened by their arrival in the magical land.
Pages 20–
Basically, it was a story about the power of accepting your past self:
And understanding that you cannot control what other people are going to do.
I learned how to draw a cool elf:
It was heartwarming. It was beautiful and great.A 10/10 masterpiece, etcetera, etcetera.
But right as we ran out of pages in that book, Ollie told us that they were going to change the school lines next year.
Change the lines so that kids who currently go to our school . . .
. . . end up having to go to totally different schools:
And the first thing I thought was: are they going to split up me and June?
Ollie, I didn’t have to worry about. We live basically ten feet from each other.
The way I get to Ollie’s is to turn left out of my house, go under the Death Branch, turn right, go across the Little Bridge, and you’re there:
The Death Branch is this branch that broke off ages ago but has just been sitting on some other branches in the tree it fell out of instead of falling all the way to the ground.
Everyone on our street keeps saying they’re going to call the county to take it down, but nobody’s ever shown up to fix it. So instead, Ollie and I just loop wide around the Death Branch when we go to visit each other so we don’t run the risk of having it fall and crush us to death.
But June lives far enough away that we have to do a quick car ride to get to her place, and I was worried that with the school lines changing, I was going to lose her. I think she was worried, too.
After voicing some totally reasonable concern . . .
And having some super smart thoughts . . .
. . . we realized we were just trying to avoid facing it. The devastating possibility. The chance that June and I could end up being sent to different schools, and there was nothing we could do about it.
Then Ollie said:
“What?” I said. Then I said, “Hang on:”
This was a pretty big relief. West Brook is like a little bit away from here, and if anybody who lives there ever has a party at their house, it’s a kind of annoyingly long ride to get out there. Not that June, Ollie, or me go to parties,except for Ollie, who goes to tons of parties.
It is still our plan to become extremely famous, so I’ve been assuming you already know who we are. June has probably invented a new kind of physics by the time you’re reading this. Ollie has probably invented a new kind of being good at sports.
But JUST IN CASE that hasn’t happened yet, allow me to introduce myself:
I’m Misha, author of The Chronicles of Deltovia and The Epsilon Escape (in progress). Probably in the future I’m very mysterious. By the time you’re reading this, I will have definitely perfected my enigmatic look:
We go to Lakeview Middle. It’s a pretty normal school. The other kids here are decently okay, all things considered. Honestly, there aren’t many people who I’d actually want to have go to a different school.
I mean, Greg Janssen totally could. I wouldn’t miss him at all. Just yesterday, I had the bad luck of running into Greg Janssen and the rest of his gang of dummies on my way to the vending machines.
So that guy could go to Mars, and it would be fine. Same goes for J.T. Fleet:
The rest of the kids, though . . .
. . . I wouldn’t really want them to leave.
But! I don’t know any West Brook kids, so the whole panic was for nothing except helping make this new genius idea of ours!
My character in the new story is Mischief.
She’s a trickster who loves finding easy solutions to problems that other people think are super hard. She’s also a powerful psychic with the ability to summon psychic lightning. She has one arm that is entirely made out of her psychic lightning powers. She looks like this:
June’s character is Janaia.
Ollie's character is Ollie Jr..
The way it works is that we either pass the notebook back and forth together or leave space for the others to fill in when they get the notebook and aren’t busy with some other kind of club or activity. Not that June, Ollie, or me are in clubs or anything, except for Ollie, who is in a lot of clubs.
But we’re all here now, which means there’s no better time for us to formally take a moment and officially, seriously, ceremoniously mark the beginning of THIS, our next,nonstop, action-packed adventure:
THE EPSILONA ESCAPE
Chapter 1: A Thrilling Beginning
Janaia waited by the corner where she normally met her friends to walk to school. It was 7:51 a.m. on Tuesday. The weather was mild. A few seconds later she looked again. It was now 7:52 a.m.
Mischief emerged from the shortcut she’d taken through the woods and waved at her friend down the street. She smiled in a cool way as she casually kicked a rock down the sidewalk in front of her, looking like the laidback trickster she was.
Janaia watched the rock skid to a halt in front of her. She trusted her friend Mischief to be responsible and make her own decisions. Still, she decided that a helpful, reasonable, informative comment was probably in order.
“Someone could trip on that and die,” said Janaia.
The three of them were just about to finish their second year at Pondlook Middle. It was a pretty normal school. Everyone there was decently okay.
There were the quiet, funny friends from class. There were the loud, not-funny kids that they’d known forever.
There were also, as one might expect, kids who were more “popular” than others. Janaia politely greeted one such “popular” girl with whom she was acquaintances as they filed into the classroom at 8:15 a.m.
Suddenly, the classroom door burst open! Mischief looked up, expecting to see their homeroom teacher coming through the door.
Yet it wasn’t their teacher at all. It was a strange, unfamiliar man dressed in a suit and wearing sunglasses that hid his eyes. He shut the door behind him with a click, his aura ominous and menacing with Corruption.
The man in sunglasses smiled a mean-looking smile. Then, without saying anything, he pulled something out of his pocket and let it float up into the air in front of him.
It was an orb. It glowed before them, a perfect circle. It looked like this:
From another angle, it looked like this:
Mischief stared at the Orb. It was . . . alluring. Something about it was calling to her. She took a step forward toward it, totally mesmerized.
“I’m afraid this entire class is being transferred,” the man said with a cruel edge to his voice. The Orb began to crackle and vibrate with energy.
Screams echoed all around them. Mischief shook herself back to reality. All three of them realized at once that they had to do something.
Mischief lunged at the Orb, stretching out her hand as far as it could go.
She almost had it . . .
Then, t
April 17th
Dear Reader,
I have been thinking a lot about time lately. For several reasons.
First, because my younger self would often spend lots of time describing the lore and worldbuilding of the story she was writing, which—while very important and something I do enjoy doing—could cause readers to lose track of what was going on in the plot. Since then, I’ve become much more efficient with my writing. You’ll also notice that I have clearly learned to be much subtler when it comes to communicating things to my audience.
Being efficient with your storytelling is a writing tip I learned about from our English teacher and mentor, Mrs. Hargrove.She’s strict but fair, and I truly believe she wants the best for each of us. (Note to new readers: any rumors you may have heard about us previously suspecting her of murder in our previous book are exaggerated.)
Despite my recent progress, I have much to learn about writing, and there are times when I feel like I may never reach where I’d like to be, no matter how hard I try or how much I struggle and strive.
Yet I shall have to do it in the next three months. This is the second reason I’ve been thinking about time: We’ll be eighth graders next year, so our window to do impressive things while still being young enough for it to be impressive is closing quickly. Seventh graders writing a novel, for instance, is more impressive than eighth graders doing it and much, much more impressive than a high schooler doing it.
This came up in a talk I had with Candace Mitchell earlier today. (Note to new readers: Candace Mitchell is a girl at our school who sits near me in homeroom class and sometimes speaks with me.)
Our conversation went approximately like this:
Before we finished our last book, I wasn’t sure that writing a novel in middle school was even possible, but now my plan is to apply to college having written at least fifteen.
Of course, life is unpredictable and challenging, and with Misha learning soccer this summer, our time to produce creative works may be limited. We may struggle to find even a few spare minutes to devote to our writing. As such, though the thought fills me with despair, I may only make it to fourteen.
Yours cordially,
June
Dear Reader,
I was rereading what I wrote above, and I just want to be clear that I don’t think a person isn’t worthy if they haven’t written fifteen books by the time they go to college.
A person’s worth isn’t decided by how many books they’ve written, or their test results, or their grades. I know that, of course. Misha, for instance, is somewhat unmotivated when it comes to time management. That’s just who she is. But I would never for a second value her less as a friend because of that.
It’s just that I am the #1 Student in our class, which means there are standards I have to hold myself to that others do not. It is as simple as that.
The #2 Student behind me in our class—as far as I have been able to tell from standardized exam results, regular test results, honor roll, and homework assignments getting handed back that I just happen to catch a glimpse of—is Lucien Lopez.
He is a talented student, certainly, yet he seems . . . how can I put this? Like he’s trying to Be Too Many Things.
Instead of making being a good student his priority, he lets himself be pulled away from his studies at a moment’s notice by silly, unimportant things:
CLASSIC LUCIEN TIME-WASTERS
He also spends a lot of time tutoring, which I believe can be a useful way of building one’s skills, except that he always seems to be tutoring students who are—and I don’t mean this to sound rude—terrible.
I can’t imagine what he’s getting out of spending time teaching them.
So while I am by no means an authority, I do think Lucien Lopez definitely is 100 percent an example of what can happen if you try to Be Too Many Things, which I will simply not allow myself to do.
It is critical to only spend time and energy on the truly important things in life.
THE EPSILON ESCAPE
Chapter 2: A Psychic Teen Assassin School of Magic
Dawn broke the next morning at 5:15 a.m.
Mischief blinked as the world came back to her. She had a pounding headache and was lying on a cold, hard floor. Was she in school anymore . . . ?
“We’re not in school anymore,” said Janaia from beside her. “We’re in a place with smooth metal walls and sleek glass windows. There seems to be a laser-activated security system in place. If you were to ask me to describe where we’re at, I would tell you it was some kind of facility.”
Mischief groaned and blinked a few more times as she looked around, taking in the scene.
“What kind of facility?” she asked. Around her, she saw the other kids from their class waking up, too.
There was no sign of the man who had taken them and no clues for how they’d gotten here. Thousands of questions raced through Mischief’s head, but there were no answers to be had anywhere. Had they really kidnapped her class away from the rest of their school . . . ? What had happened to the Orb . . . ?
“If you were to ask me to describe this place,” said Janaia. “I would say this looks like a location where they would train psychic teenagers to become psychic assassins.”
GASP!!!! —Ollie Jr.
“Which means we are likely psychic teenagers,” said Janaia.
cool —Ollie Jr.
“Who have been kidnapped to be forced to train as psychic assassins,” said Janaia.
GASP!!!! —Ollie Jr.
Shortly after, a facility worker got up and announced to the room that everything Janaia had said was correct.
GASP!!!! —Ollie Jr.
It was scary, but despite everything, Mischief felt a sense of calm. If they really were psychic teens, then she, Janaia, and Ollie Jr. should be able to easily use their powers to escape.
Inwardly, Janaia found herself agreeing. If they focused and used their time well, escaping should be simple.
But they would worry about that later. As the kids around them were herded off into their rooms, which were like hotel rooms but with metal on the walls, Mischief wondered what tomorrow’s gritty, harsh assassin training would be like. In the dark corners of her heart, a part of her felt terribly sure . . . that they wouldn’t all survive.
