Xion

“Xion gasped. He sat straight up and looked around. ‘Where am I?’ he whispered. His voice was scratchy, and higher than he remembered.

“Xion drew in a breath. It was harder than he remembered to breathe. Standing up, he studied the surrounding area. It didn’t look like anywhere on Earth. Am I on an alien planet? Xion wondered. Then he shook his head. No, that’s an insane conclusion to jump to after one look. He looked up, and gasped.

“There weren’t any stars in the sky. There was nothing but black emptiness. Wait- there! Xion saw a single star. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. Xion could barely see anything when he looked around. ‘Hello?’ he called out. ‘Is anyone here?’

“Wait, how can I see anything at all? Xion wondered. The light from one distant star shouldn’t be enough to create any light source at all. Then, looking behind him, he saw a bright, shining moon. Or at least it looked like a moon. It seemed to be resting on the surface of the planet.”

Lance looked up at Maya. “So, what do you think? It’s pretty good so far, right?”

Maya shrugged. “I guess. But, there’s something I want to point out.”

Lance was confused. “What?” he asked. “I thought it was awesome!”

“Yeah, it is,” Maya agreed. “But there’s something you’re leaving out. Imagine I’m someone who’s reading this for the first time. At this point, there’s something pretty crucial I would be wondering: Who is Xion?”

Lance sighed. “Maya, I thought that by asking you to help me, I would be getting a professional author’s advice, not confusing, cryptic junk.”

Maya shrugged again. “Well, I’m trying to put this as simple as I can. If you’re reading this, at this point you still would know nothing about Xion,” she told him. “We know nothing about his past, nothing about his personality, we don’t even know how old he is! He could be five, ten, fifteen, seventy five- how would we find out?”

“So, you’re saying I need to show more of who Xion is?” Lance asked.

Maya nodded. “Listen, when I first started writing, I had the same problem. I was basically telling the story like an outsider, who had no idea who the characters actually were. So then, I went back and revised it, and made it so that you could actually feel who the characters are.”

Lance sighed. “All right. I’ll go back and edit it later. But my mom is gonna be furious if I’m not back by nine o’ clock. After all, it’s a school night," he said, putting the last words into air quotes.

Maya laughed. “Well, good luck with that. Also, by the way, did you mean to name it after the guy from Kingdom Hearts?” Lance shook his head.

Lance stepped out the door holding the draft of his book. It wasn’t a full book yet, it was really just a couple paragraphs. But they seemed good so far. And now, thanks to Maya’s suggestions, it would only get better.

Lance had known Maya for a long time. They had met back when Lance was four, and Maya was five. They had been best friends ever since. She wasn’t one of the pretty girls at school, but hey, she was all right. She had shoulder-length auburn hair that she had dyed bright pink, light tan skin, and deep, hazel eyes. And, at ten years old, Maya published a book.

It wasn’t the best book ever, but it was definitely good. Ever since then, Maya had been writing for a living. She had a full job, and she wasn’t even fifteen yet. Lance had wanted to write a book too, and get famous for it.

“I’m home!” Lance called out when he walked through the door.

“Where have you been?” his dad asked.

“I was hanging out with Maya,” Lance explained. So, he hadn’t exactly told his father yet. Oh, well.

“Well, if you’ve already eaten dinner, go to bed!” his dad yelled.

Lance sighed. His father was fat, lazy, and, at times, cruel and nasty. And his mother had died when Lance was two. He was balding, he rarely wore anything but a white tank top and sweatpants, and again, he was fat.

Lance trudged up the stairs to his bedroom, where he got changed into his nice, cool, t-shirt-and-shorts summer ‘pajamas.’ Well, Lance thought, maybe things will be better tomorrow. After all, the grass is always greener on the other side, right?

WHAA! WHAA! WHAA!

Lance groaned. “Stupid alarm,” he muttered, smacking the off button on the alarm.

Lance sat up in his bed and looked out the window. “Why do I even have the alarm on?” he wondered out loud. “It’s summer!”

After changing, Lance walked quietly down the stairs, careful not to wake his dad. The Lump, as Lance liked to refer to him, was in the same position as last night: sprawled out on the couch, taking up space like, well, a lump.

Lance walked into his little ‘Nerd Nook,’ as he called it. It was a little room off the side of the living room, only accessible by a little trap door-like door down by the floor. The room was supposed to be a little doghouse, but thankfully, Lance was skinny enough to fit through the door. And since they didn’t have a dog, Lance got to keep it all to himself.

The Nerd Nook was stocked up with all kinds of gadgets, like robotic arms (built from kits), microscopes (along with petri dishes), and, of course, a computer. Lined up along the wall were shelves stuffed with books that Lance could usually spend hours reading, but not today.

Lance flipped open the laptop and booted it up. Opening up Google Docs, he clicked on the document labeled ‘Xion’ to open it. He started tapping away at the keyboard, watching the page fill up with letters and words. “I want Xion to be a character people can relate to,” Lance whispered. “I want him to be endlessly optimistic, but the reason is that he has to be. Otherwise, the pain of his past will drown him. And he also has a weapon he doesn’t know how to use, and that he’s trying to learn how to.”

After spending around three hours hammering away at his keyboard, Lance sighed, closed down the computer, and stood up. Well, as much as he could in the cramped space.

Crawling out through the doggy door, Lance noticed that his dad wasn’t on the couch. “Hello?” he called out. “Dad?”

The house was eerily silent. “Dad?” Lance called again. “Where are you?”

Lance’s pulse skyrocketed when the stairs creaked. Something was coming down the stairs. Visions of burglars and murderers flew threw his mind as he backed up into the doggy door.

Whoever it was reached the bottom of the stairs, and walked out into the living room. Lance slumped in relief when he recognized his father’s favorite cat slippers. Like bunny slippers, but with cats.

Lance shook his head. “I have a really overactive imagination,” he muttered, and withdrew back into the Nerd Nook.

Lance booted up the old NES he had inherited from his dad. It was old, but it had almost every game that had been made for the thing. After connecting it to his laptop, he opened up Super Mario Bros.

He breezed through World 1-1 and 1-2, jumping over the pipe on the second level and using the Warp Zone to teleport to the first level of World 4.

He blasted easily through the rest of the game, trying to ignore the Toads flipping him off in every castle.

Finally, Lance sighed and turned off the NES. He crawled out the back door, breathing in the fresh, summer air.

He leaned back inside and pressed the print button on his laptop, which, after shutting off the NES, had reverted back to Google Docs. The little printer in corner started whirring, and then spat out five pages of paper.

Grabbing the pages, Lance began to jog down to Maya's house. He knocked on the door, and took a deep breath. While he waited, he noticed a new car in the driveway. The door suddenly swung open. "Hey, uh..." Lance trailed off when he realized it wasn't Maya at the door.

Instead, standing there was a girl about his age, with dark brown hair and deep, blue eyes. She had light skin, and wore a blue t-shirt and jorts. "Um, hi?" she said. "Uh... do I know you?"

"Um, where's Maya?" Lance asked.

The girl sighed. "Maya!" she called behind her. "Someone's here to see you?"

Maya walked up behind the girl. "Oh, hi Lance!" she exclaimed. "I see you just met my cousin, Rachel. She's visiting us for about a month."

"Hi," Lance said, half-raising his hand in greeting.

"Hi!" Rachel seemed startled that Lance had bothered to talk to her.

"Come on in, Lance, I want to see what you wrote!" Maya told him.

"All right," Lance replied. He turned to Rachel. "Do you want to read it?"

Rachel shrugged shyly. "I don't know, reading isn't really my thing."

"Oh, come on, Rachel!" Maya cried. "You love to read! I get that you're shy, but really?" She laughed, and put her hand on Rachel's shoulder. "Come on, it'll be fun!"

Rachel nodded. "Okay," she agreed.

Maya turned to Lance. "Sorry about that. Rachel's really shy, but once she gets to know you, she'll act more friendly. It's one of the reasons she has some trouble making friends."

They walked up to Maya's room, As Lance pulled pulled out the pages, Maya whistled. "Jeez, you wrote all that since last night?" she asked. "Jeez, how long did you spend writing?"

"Only about three hours," Lance replied casually. "I could've kept going, though. I only stopped because my fingers started hurt."

Rachel shook her head. "Man, you write fast," she said, grinning. "It usually takes me days to finish a report that's a fifth that length."

"That's because it's for school, Rachel!" Maya laughed. "It usually takes me days to pass in an assignment that was three sentences long! Then I can hammer out several pages in a day for a book!"

Maya grabbed the pages from Lance's hands and began to read. Rachel read along, seemingly interested.

"Lance, this is really good!" Maya exclaimed. "It's definitely improved on Xion's character!"

Maya handed the papers to Rachel. "Here, you should read this. You're the one who keeps saying how much you love science fiction, right?"

"Not really, no," Rachel whispered. It was just loud enough for Lance to hear. "It's my mom that says that. But okay."

Lance looked at Rachel. There was something wrong, he could feel it. But he couldn't quite put his finger on it.