Android

12

When something is up you know it, no matter how hard you try to deny it, and at first you will. You will pretend for as long as you can that it's all a bunch of coincidences and misunderstandings that you should ignore, before finally being able to acknowledge the existence of the issue. My official wakeup call was seeing myself in the photo with Pluto and Jupiter.

Then, once you acknowledge it, that's when you sort of lose your mind.

After I went up into my room and shut my door, I pulled out a magnifying class and tried to find even the tiniest shred of proof the photo was photoshopped or fake. While I did, I tried to ignore my buzzing phone from Mac texting and calling me. I didn't want to talk to him until I was positive, he wasn't playing games with me. I think, deep down though, I knew he probably did legitimately stumble onto something. First there was the nightmares, then Jupiter and Pluto appearing, my dad's gasoline incident, the car incident, the metal thing peeking through ours windows, and my mom's odd behavior. Also, I noticed I was locked out of every single one of my social media accounts. When I tried to change the password, it said they didn't exist, which was driving me crazy. I also couldn't log onto my school website.

Following this terrifying realization, I decided to google the image Mac had given me, and sure enough the article, the photo and everything else Mac said showed up on my screen. There wasn't much information about the experiment though, just the name and when I googled the scientist Kingsley nothing came up except that he was deceased.

Badly, I wanted to run to my parents and show them the photo and demand an explanation, but Mac's warning rang in my ear like the blaring siren of a fire alarm. "Don't say anything," He said and the more I thought about the more I started to think he might be right. In my entire life, I never had a reason not to trust my parents, but due to the circumstances and their odd behavior I had to assume they were untrustworthy. So instead of running to Naomi or Gemma or Toby instead, I decided to write everything down first and get my head clear so I could decide what to do. With that in mind, I grabbed the nearest notebook and began to write paragraph after paragraph even though I had only intended on writing a bullet point list.

At first, I started with a short, sweet paragraph about everything going on but then that paragraph extended over half the notebook as I wrote down my theories, clues, anything that came to mind. Still though, no matter how much I wrote, or didn't I kept coming to the same conclusion, I knew nothing except something was wrong and Mac was probably the only person I could talk to about it.

Sighing heavily, I put down the notebook and slid off my bed. Maybe instead of trying to figure this out alone, I should let Mac in on it. At this point, after hours upon hours of breaking it apart, I truly believed he wasn't playing me for a fool. 'Hey, sneak out to your front yard, we need to talk.' I texted him before grabbing my camouflage jacket and sneaking out of the room so I wouldn't wake up Naomi. She was out cold, something I wish I was. Half way down the hallway, I peeked into Gemma's room and saw she was sound asleep as well.

Quietly shutting her door, I shuffled down to Pluto and Jupiter's room and glanced inside to see if they were up. Immediately then, I frowned because they weren't in bed. In fact, their beds were still made from earlier and looked like that hadn't been touched all day. I could've sworn they were in here. Come to think of it, I don't think I had seen or heard either of them since I got home from school. It is possible though they knew I was in a mood and were avoiding me. "Pluto? Jupiter?" I called out softly as I turned on their light, but the light just confirmed what I already knew, they weren't there. "Hmmm...Weird." I mumbled as I glanced at the bathroom just down the hall.

Deciding that them not being in their room was worth investigating, I made my way down to the end of the hall just to check my parent's room to see if they were up.