Chapter 1

‘Here we go again,’ I thought as I walked uncertainly into the unfamiliar place that was known as my new school. Of course, it was completely different than my previous school, given that I had moved transferred from Earth to the Moon. And no, this was still the 21st century, not 200 years in the future. I happened to be part of an exclusive program that worked undercover to save the most brilliant minds of the world before global warming ate up Earth.
I walked up the crumbly white road into my school, a shiny white sphere, wondering if I was in some sort of delusional state. Although I was particularly smart for my age (hence my being part of the “Let’s Get Out of Earth Before We Die,” or LGOEBWD, program), I still felt like I didn’t fit in. Maybe it was the fact that everyone was wearing jumpsuits made out of moon rocks and was smirking at me for arriving on the Moon wearing a simple hoodie and pants. Or, maybe it was the fact that I had left my friends, family, the cutest bunny a girl could ever have, and my LIFE back on Earth. Either way, I missed my home planet terribly.
Although Earth, with the LGOEBWD program’s hi-tech transportation, was only a few hours away, returning back to Earth was strictly prohibited, as the president of the Moon thought that the people that went back and forth from the Earth would eventually settle down back on Earth. My family, in fact, was probably helping other stowaway new-comers, originally from the Moon, settle on Earth right now, while I was trying to figure out where the Principal’s office was. Now, this may not seem difficult, but considering that I had to figure out a new language, get past the hostile stares, and put up with the upside-down windows, floating doors, and random portals into different dimensions, I was pretty much failing.
Getting tired after searching for the office for at least 3 hours, I sat down on a bench, or at least what I thought was a bench. It turned out to be a student, whose cosmetic surgery had gone horribly wrong. He wasn’t exactly pleased at me sitting on his stomach, but he did forgive me and showed me the way to the Principal’s office.
“Thanks,” I offered as he started to walk away. “I really needed some directions. I’m new here.”
“Oh, from the Earth, aye? Don’t worry, I just moved here a few months ago, too. The principal will help you get through today and the rest of the year with a simple orientation. My name is Ben, by the way.”
I smiled. “Nice to meet you. My name is Sona.”
“Hey, now you at least have one friend.”
“Yes, I guess I do. Thanks for everything.” I waved him good-bye and started towards the Principal’s office.
When I arrived there, I expected to see rotating desks, robots serving juice, maybe even a jetpack waiting to be used on the wall. But no, I saw a normal desk with a normal-ish principal (he was bald and toothless, but nonetheless, human-looking) sitting behind it, eating an apple. I thought to myself, ‘Why, I had created some principal in my head, haven’t I?’ I laughed to myself and sat down. Little did I know, I wasn’t wrong in my first prediction at all.
The orientation wasn’t flipping through a handbook while Mr. Lentil (yes, and his name was Lentil) explained the process of the school. Instead, he just implanted a chip in my brain, and told me to hurry off to my next class.
Interestingly enough, I knew exactly how to get to the classroom, how to greet the teacher, and how to climb up to my floating desk. I had mastered the logistics of my new home; the next part, which I knew was going to be exceedingly difficult, was finding new friends.
Chapter 2


“Hey! I’m Sona. What’s your name?” I introduced myself to the girl who sat below me in the empty white room.

“I already know your name. That’s what the orientation chip is for. Duh,” she replied in disgust and turned away.

I thought to myself, ‘Well, this is going well, isn’t it? I used to intimidate people with my smarts back at home, and look at me now.’ I was still in oblivion about using the orientation chip implanted in my head, because obviously, I didn’t even know the teacher’s name yet, and he was getting ready to call on me.

“Yes, Sona, will you please explain the topic we’ll be studying for the next few days?” the teacher asked as he lifted up his white glasses.

“Are we going to study meteorites?” I ventured as I glanced around the room, wondering if anyone else knew the answer. Unfortunately, all I got were a couple of snickers and a few stares, like I was some clueless four year-old.

“No, Sona, sorry, but I am afraid that you are not even close to being correct.” He studied my deflated face for a while, but then realized that he had a class to teach. “As all of the others may well know, Sona, we are in fact not learning anything for the next few days, except for maybe how the Earth looks like when it will blow up.” He smiled and started to take attendance, as my mouth fell open and I sat there, frozen.
~~~

As I gathered my books and made my way down to the ground of the classroom, I had to steady myself every few seconds, because my head was spinning. ‘Blow up Earth? Why? What did Earth do to the program?’ I thought as I slowly walked out of the classroom, trying to find Ben, who I thought might have an explanation for the abomination that was going to happen.

I finally found Ben, trying to shoo people off his back, who apparently made the same mistake I did, sitting on him. I ran to him, panting.

“People these days. They have no respect whatsoever.” Ben exclaimed in an exasperated tone, brushing himself off. “So, what’s up, Sona?”

“THE EARTH IS GOING TO BLOW UP!” I suddenly covered my mouth, realized that everyone had turned to look at me.

“Whoa. Calm down, Sona. What do you mean, the Earth is going to blow up?”

“I mean, the program is going to blow our home planet up!” I whispered, fearing that someone might come and take me to the “loud person detention” or something.

“Haha. Sona, you actually believed them?” Ben laughed insanely. “Sona, they just say that to every new kid who comes to the classroom. Believe me, it is nothing to worry about. It was just an innocuous practical joke”

“Ok, thanks, Ben, that’s good to know.” I laughed along with him, uncertainly though, because I still had a feeling that the Earth-blowing-up plan wasn’t fully innocuous.




Chapter 3

“Sona, hurry up! We’re going to miss my appointment!” Ben shouted across the room as we ran up the white cobble-stone road into the Makeover Salon (which was, you guessed it, white).

“Why do we even need a makeover?” I asked, panting, as Ben signed in at the front desk.

“First of all, you don’t really need a makeover, I do. As you can see, people are sitting on me every day now. Although you could use one yourself,” Ben laughed as he pointed at my boring brown braids, simple t-shirt (as usual), and plain face with no makeup on. I couldn’t help but look down at myself, seeing nothing wrong. As I looked back up, though, I began to notice the others’ fashion statements: Jumpsuits with moon rocks glued to them, white ‘alien’ goggles, and knee high jet-boots (another invention I owned, but never used).

“Okay! I guess I do need a little makeover. But just a little, okay? Don’t get carried away.” I playfully pushed him away and set up an appointment for a new makeover.
~~~

“Let’s see what we’re working with here!” the makeover specialist, Barley, said, as he turned my chair around to face him. The smile on his face soon turned into a moue. “You, you need a lot of work, don’t you?”

“Look, Barley, can you ‘fix’ me or not?!” I asked angrily, probably because Ben, who, even with his bench appearance, had no problem with his makeover specialist.

“Cool down, Sona! You’ll be ready in no time.” Barley started rummaging through some cosmetic purse, and when he returned back up, although I expected to see a brush, some eyeliner, or any makeup, for that matter, I didn’t. Instead, I saw another injection.

“Let me guess, you’re going to implant the makeup into my body, aren’t you?” I asked sarcastically.

“Yes, yes I am. Say, have you been here before?” Barley replied, obviously not noticing my shocked face.

“No, I haven’t, Barley.” I grumbled as I clutched the seat, in preparation for the most grueling pain I could imagine. “Well? Can we get this over with?” I asked incredulously.

“What do you mean? Weren’t you paying attention? I already finished!” Barley twirled the chair around again, this time revealing to me a completely different person sitting in the chair.

It was indeed completely different; my dull grey eyes had turned to a bright green, my boring bark-colored hair a bright blondish-brown, and my outfit, a sparkly gray jumpsuit.

Ben had turned into a normal (good-looking!) guy, too. Luckily, I didn’t experience that much pain with the cosmetic injection. Little did I know, I was about to experience the worst pain anyone could possibly experience very, very soon.

Chapter 4

As I walked out of the makeover salon, everybody in the neighborhood seemed to stare at Ben and me. Thinking that they were oogling over my new appearance, I smiled and waved back. A crowd soon approached us, and I was so delighted that I started rummaging through my purse to get a pen and paper out for autographs. Instead, all the people moved past me and lifted Ben, saying, “Movie star Ben is back! Movie star Ben is back!” I turned around to see Ben push past the growing mob towards me.

“You’re a movie star?! Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, angry that he didn’t share all his secrets with me.

“I’m sorry, Sona. But it was all for a reason, a reason you’ll find out soon,” Ben said, in some sort of mysterious way, as he tried to push the crowd back.

“Wait, but if you are a movie star, then why haven’t people noticed you before?” I asked, confusedly.

“I’ll explain later, but for now, can we please try to escape the crowd?” Ben begged, and I suddenly noticed that he had been struggling with the crowd the whole time.

“Sure,” I said, helping him push back the throngs, which were triple the size by now. “This isn’t working,” I said, trying to think of a way to escape.

“Hey, it’s Ashton Kutcher!” Ben suddenly yelled, and when the crowd turned for a brief second, we bolted.

“I don’t think we can outrun the mob!” I screamed, unable to even hear myself think because of the fans cheering for Ben.

“Let’s use our jetboots then. Only the students receive jetboots, so the media probably won’t have them.” Ben switched mine on, and then his, and before I could say anything, we were flying above the crowd of screaming fans.
Chapter 5

“How exactly do these jetboots work?” I gulped, expecting to plummet back down to the ground any second now.

“Don’t worry, I’ve set it on auto-pilot, so you don’t have to worry about anything. Except the jetboots breaking, of course,” he replied, chuckling to himself.

“Oh, just great, this is exactly how I want to die. Falling to the moon from a pair of jetpacks,” I complained. “I’m really hating you right now for making me wear this death-contraption.”

Ben laughed, and my anger soon dissolved into laughter as well. “I can’t ever stay mad at you, you know that?” I tried to push him, but before I knew it, I was hanging upside down from my jetboots. “I didn’t even know I could hang like this from jetboots,” I struggled to lift myself up, to no avail.

Ben laughed, louder this time. “How ‘bout I just let you hang like that until we reach my layer?”

I screamed, “No! Fix me now. Or else,” I threatened.

“Or else what? You’ll try to punch me again and fall off your jetpack?” he taunted me, sticking out his tongue.

“Ha ha, very funny. Please, can you fix me? I’m starting to feel lightheaded.” I tried to make arm movements to get closer to him.

“There’s no need, actually. We are here,” he flew down, and although I tried to protest, so did I.

“Wait! I’m going to hit my head! I’m still hanging upside down, remember?” I desperately tried to recover myself, but I still couldn’t get myself upright.

As I was two feet from the ground, I braced myself for the pain that was to come with the jetboots landing (on me). Instead, I started hovering an inch from the ground, and as I opened my eyes and unclenched my teeth, I found myself staring at Ben, who was threatening to push the land button.

“No no no, please don’t, just help me out of these jetboots like a real gentleman.” I exclaimed. “Anyways, where are we?” I asked, looking around, seeing a futuristic looking house. Surprisingly, though, it wasn’t white. It was all red.

Ben laughed, and said, “Why don’t you guess where we are?”

“I have no clue, Ben, I just moved to the moon, remember? I’m not really familiar with the places here.”

“Even someone who lived on the moon for 20 years wouldn’t have a clue as to where we are.” Seeing my perplexed face, he added, “Welcome to Mars.”

Chapter 6



“Mars?! What are we doing on Mars? And how could we have flown here on JETBOOTS?!” I shouted, my voice cracking from all the previous screaming on the jetboots.

“What jetboots? There were no jetboots whatsoever,” he replied nonchalantly, and walked away to explore the planet.

“Wait!” I ran after him and swiveled him around. “What do you mean by ‘There were no jetboots whatsoever’? We strapped on our jetpacks after being bombarded by the mob in front of the salon, remember?” I looked at him intently, but all I received back was a laugh, again.

“I hate to break it to you, but none of that ever happened. I’m not a movie star, and we didn’t fly, or in your case, hang, on jetboots to Mars. Remember the shot they administered for your makeover? It was actually a sleep pill, and you were dreaming all the things inbetween.”

“Oh, okay. So we’re not really on Mars. That’s a relief.” I sighed and sat down on the nearest rock, or at least what I thought was a rock, hoping it wasn’t some sort of billion dollar science robot from Earth.

“Again, sorry to rain on your parade, but we actually are on Mars. We, along with a handful of lucky other people, have arrived here on a spaceship, just like in the movies,” he said, looking around.

“We are on Mars?! Why?! I was fine on Earth, but I had to move to the Moon. I was finally getting accustomed to all the white, and now I have to cope with red?!” I lunged at him, ready to beat him up if necessary, but he stopped me.

“No, don’t beat me up! Or at least try,” he said with a smirk and glanced at his ‘muscle.’ “I saved your life. You should at least be grateful.”

“Sure, you saved my life,” I replied.

“Actually, I did. The moon is going to be blown up, in a matter of seconds. So is the Earth.”

I bolted up from the rock-like contraption. “BLOWN UP?! WHAT?!”

“Please, don’t worry, nothing is going to happen to us. I happen to have a few friends already living here, and they said that it was necessary for them to blow up our planet to live, but they caringly let us live here too.”

“You happen to have a few friends here? I really miss my old life.” I rolled my eyes, pinching myself. “This has got to be a dream—“

I paused, mouth open, as two small specks suddenly exploded into a bright ball and bits of rock came flying everywhere. I ducked, but Mars seemed to be protected by an invisible force field that kept air in and the rocks out. I tried to recover from shock.

“Ben, look. I really appreciate you for saving me and all, but what about my parents? They would have died in that explosion!” My eyes started to well up, and before Ben or I knew it, I was on the ground, sobbing.

“I left my parents for this stupid program, and this is what I get? I would have much rather died with them!” I started to storm off, in no apparent direction, but Ben held me tightly.

“Listen, Sona. Look over there.”

I lifted my tear-stroked face to stand face to face with my family, and all my old friends. “Mom! Dad!” I ran towards them and hugged them as tightly as I could.

“Sona, we’re so glad you’re okay,” my mom exclaimed, crying and trying to talk at the same time.

Ben started to walk towards me. “There was no one on either the Moon or the Earth. Every person was assigned a planet, and I made sure that all your family got Mars, too.”

Getting over my anger, I ran towards him and enveloped him in a tight hug. “Thanks, Ben,” I said.