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From Create Your Own Story
Chapter One: Man out of Time
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The first time it happened, you were nine years old. It was lunch hour at Nettleton Magnet Elementary School in Duluth Minnesota, and it was a sunny Spring day. This day wasn't much different than any other day, at least until it happened. Your name is Jensen Taskerhill, and you are a perfectly normal nine year old boy. You go to a perfectly normal school. You have a perfectly normal father who's a stock broker and is always away on business trips, but always gives you the time of day when he is home. You have a perfectly normal stay-at-home-mother that paints beautifully, drinks too much on Saturdays, and makes you peanut-butter and jelly sandwhiches for lunch. You run around, scrape your knees, play with your friends, read books, watch television, and do all of the perfectly normal things that a perfectly normal nine year old boy should do. Only, you're not perfectly normal. Not after today.
Maybe it's because you're not perfectly normal that Rick Timmins picked you to be his center of attention for the day. Maybe he can somehow sense it. Though, you doubt if he could sense it that he would be able to make any sense of the sensation, as you doubt his IQ could be that much higher then a frog's. Nevertheless, he's the big honcho of third grade bullies, and when you're twice as big as any other kid in your grade, your IQ doesn't really count for much. You were minding your own business with a couple of buddies by the jungle gym when this particularely daft individual was overpowered by the irresistable urge to push you to the ground. As you gather yourself up from the dirt you realise all your friends have disapeared.
Turning to face your assailant, you comfort yourself in the knowledge that Rick is only as big and scary as he is because he failed a grade. Had he not, he'd be just a normal fourth grader with an attitude problem, but in grade three he might as well be Bigfoot. When you factor in growth spurts, even just a year can be a big difference in size. You contemplate reminding Rick of this, but your precarious situation convinces you to rethink that idea.
"Well, if it isn't Jenny-boy.
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