Golden Boy

P R O L O G U E

(A/N: This is a completely revised version of the original story. The plot is different.)

It was the biggest night of the year. The one day where everyone left behind the thought of their mundane lives, got all dressed up, and spent their night trying to show up to every party they were invited to and even to some they weren't. It was Halloween, and everyone was having fun except for me. I was stuck at home working on a midterm project for my geography class, which if I didn't get a solid A on, I was most likely to fail for the whole semester, something I couldn't afford since I had my eyes set on UCLA for next fall. If there's one thing that is getting me through senior year, is the thought of being on the other side of the country by the end of it. 

Being from a small town meant that exciting things didn't usually happen. Halloween night probably carried just as much energy as any regular night in an actual city. It was the one day everyone—and I mean everyone—including people in their 70's who frequented the local recreational center, were dressed up and spending the evening surrounded by friends, having a good time. 

I, on the other hand, was the only person in Ardsley who was home curled up in a bathrobe, hunched over a desk trying to bust out three more pages about the Amazon Rainforest and its impact on human lives. 

Since I was home alone, and no one was around to judge me, I was blasting my favorite Bad Bunny song on repeat with all of the lights turned off so that I could at least pretend that I was out with Cami right now. Granted, it probably wasn't the best for my eyes, but at the ripe age of seventeen, I wasn't really worried about worsening my eye prescription, just the current vibes of my homework excursion. 

The song glitched as if someone was scratching it on a record, and my lights flickered on momentarily before shutting off entirely again. My head snapped up from my computer screen as my heart raced in my chest. I enjoyed being home alone, but not at night, and especially not on Halloween where the town kids were always up to no good, looking more for the trouble than the innocent treats given at the knock of a door. 

Once everything was back to normal, I refocused my attention on my computer screen. It was probably a short power outage caused by my neighbors, who were currently throwing a party in their back yard and had used a million string lights to brighten up their space. I could hear the faint thumping of their music through my walls, almost aligning with the thumping of my speakers. 

My computer screen went dark, but not in the usual way where the screen fades to black. The brightness came out from my screen in a sphere of light that bounced over my shoulder towards a shadow on the opposite wall next to the window. My eyes landed on a figure within the shadow. They were holding a device shaped like a globe in their left hand that captured the light and in their right hand, an electric baton that hummed away the silence that appeared after my computer shut down, no longer playing my music.  

My body froze, but my mind raced with a million thoughts. My house was being invaded, and not just by a normal burglar, but one with a strange capability that I refused to wrap my head around. I didn't dare move as I watched the figure peek through my curtains and quickly duck back to flatten themselves against the wall, cursing under their breath. 

I tried to speak, to say anything that would make myself seem more intimating, but I couldn't get my jaw to unhinge to get the words out. Possibly my only fear in life was becoming a reality in front of me. All I could do was watch dumbfounded as someone broke into my bedroom.