Ok, home sick and finished with all my homework, so you guys get a new story.

This is about a girl named Jade Greene, things start happening to her, things that she doesn't understand. She remembers tales that her grand mother told her when she was young. Jade must go to her grandmother's home town to find answers to what's happening to her. Who will she find there? What will she learn about herself, and her heritage? A Jacob imprint story, don't worry nothing too radical, just unexpected.

“CUT!!”

I jumped slightly, I had been so into the dance I hadn’t been paying attention to anything but the music. Jodie walked forward to work through the dance with Kelly Jonas, a little sophomore girl who wasn’t getting the steps.

She helped Kelley a little bit, and then restarted the jazzy music, “Okay one more time, from the top!”

We all lined up against the back wall, the snapping started, then the souped up symbol, time to go forward, stop slink foot and shoulder around, lean back on left foot. Snap, Snap, Snap. The vocals started.

“It’s too darn HOT...”

Three steps to the right. Snap, Snap, Snap.

“It’s too darn Hot...”

Sudden shift, “ I want to sup with my baby tonight...but its too darn Hot...” Shift, Shift.

The music picked up tempo, we took three steps to the left, turned around took two steps, spun back around, stepped forward, slunk foot and shoulder around. Snap, Snap, Snap, going faster as the music picked up tempo. “And play the pup with my baby tonight...”

“Cut!”

This time I wasn’t caught off guard.

“Okay! Kelly, Lindsay, Brian, Shane, and Tauni. You come over here, and I am going to re-teach you your steps. The rest of you 10 minute water break. When we get back I want the actors and actresses for Hattie, Kate, and Fred. That means Bree, Ashley, Colleen, Judy, Lane, and Devon. The rest of you do something productive for the next 20 minutes.”

I grabbed my water bottle and went out the door into the parking lot. I was at Heppner High School, in Heppner Oregon, yes smallest place on earth. I started practicing the moves for another dance, but it was hard to do on the blacktop so I stopped and collapsed onto a parking block. My school drama club was putting on the musical Kiss Me Kate and I was Auntie, a character with enough lines to get a name, but not enough lines to have an understudy. I started practicing my solo, singing softly under my breath “Another opening, Another show, In Philly Boston, Or Balti----...mo’...”

My voice trailed off as I looked up the steep hill on the other side of the parking lot. The track field was easily the highest point in Heppner, and standing with only its silhouette visible was a hulking creature, the only reason I knew it was alive was that even from here I could see the rise and fall of its breathing.

For some reason this, this creature, thing both terrified me and exhilarated me. I could feel the connection pulsating between us. I couldn’t see it’s eyes but still I got the feeling I was looking directly at them. I half rose from my seat before I knew what I was doing.

Just then strong arms wrapped around my neck, pulling me backwards, and making me almost fall off the parking block, as a laughing voice screamed “JADE!!!” into my ear. I shoved Nick off of me, laughing and rubbing my neck and my ear. My eyes flicked back to the horizon, but the creature was gone.

“Ow Nicholas, why the hell’d you do that for!!” then mocking his deep south accent “Why you wanna playa sista like that?!”

“You sho as hell ain’t my sista, I didna see no skinnyasswhitegirl sitting cross the table grownin up!” He laughed “See, you’re losing your whiteness every day, pretty soon, there’ll three people of color at this school!”

Nick was always making fun of how white I was, which was ironic, because I was1/2 Mexican, 1/4 native American, and only 1/4 white. Nick was only half African American, so my skin was almost as dark as his. We were best friends and were always joking around like that. “You’re daddy looks white, so that makes you a white girl.” and I’d tell him “ Yea well your mamma looks white, that makes you a little white boy.” Calling Nick little, yea that was ironic too.

We both laughed and joked around in the parking lot, until we heard Jodie yelling for everyone to get their asses back in there. Between Nick and the dancing and Jodie, I forgot all about the hulking creature until practice was over and I was walking to my car at the far corner of the parking lot. I looked back up the slope, and for a moment I thought I saw a boy standing there but then I was at my car and, if he really had been there, he was gone.