Ellie wakes up to an annoying, really loud noise. She jumps up, scanning for what is making the awful racket. Her ears zero in to her digital clock, the one Joel took from his room to Ellie's.

She grabs it and inspects it quickly. Her thoughts are moving at a million miles per hour, the blaring noise only making it worse. She finally yanks it out of the power socket. The noise abruptly stops. "And stay quiet!" she all but yells at the clock.

Rubbing her eyes, she hears chuckling. She looks to the door and sees Joel, leaning against the doorframe, laughing. "How much of that did you see?" she asks tiredly. "Enough" Joel says, smiling wide. "Well, how was I supposed to know?!" she says. "whatever, just get ready to go to school, I'l make breakfast" Joel says, while turning to leave.

Ellie sticks her tongue out at Joel as he turns. "I saw that" Joel says as he goes down the stairs. Ellie sticks it out more. Joel chuckles and then he is out of sight. Ellie yawns and goes to the bathroom. She brushes her teeth and goes back to her room.

Opening her closet door, she closes her eyes and grabs a random shirt and pair of pants. She does this every day, so she wouldn't have to puzzle over what to wear. Looking at her choices, Ellie nods approvingly. She had grabbed a blue shirt with the pattern 4 panels and a black strip near the top that says police call box. She had also took green camo khaki shorts.

She brushes her hair, struggling with the persistent knots. The hair brush is something she brought with her from the future. She takes a hair tie from a pile on her desk and puts her hair in it's signature ponytail. She freezes. Her bite looked better. As if it was just going away. She stares at it for a long time. "Ellie!" Joel calls from downstairs. She breaks out of her trance.

She bounds down the stairs and sees Sarah and Joel at the table, eating. Ellie slides into a chair and wolfs down her breakfast of french toast and milk.

When they finish, Joel tosses Ellie her backpack, filled with various school supplies. "So YOU took my bag" Ellie accuses Joel."Guilty" Joel shrugs. They go out the door and pile into the car. "I put some money in your bag to buy lunch" Joel says, fighting traffic.

Joel drives Ellie to her school first, so she would have a clear path home. "bye! And don't beat anyone up!" Joel yells out at Ellie as she walks off. Ellie smirks. This will be fun.

Pushing open the doors, she marvels at the sight of so many people in one place. And only kids. She walks until she finds a big bulletin board with names and room numbers. She looks at all the names until she finds her name. Ellie Williams. Williams. It has been too long since he heard her last name.

The room number was A002. She turns around and asks "Where is room A002?" To a boy on his phone. "go straight, then left. The first room to the right is A002." he says. "thanks" Ellie says as she walks away.

She strides into the classroom. Kids her age are all talking or giggling to their friends. She finds a bunch of empty seats next to the window and sits down. Figuring there is some time before class starts, she opens her bag. She finds binders, a pencil case, a ruler, and a bunch of other stuff she didn't know what were.

She roots around when she comes across her comics. Thank you Joel. She practically sings in her head. She pulls out issue #1 of Savage Starlight, reading again.

"Savage starlight? I hear it's perfect for nerds" Ellie looks up. A girl with several girls behind her and all of them with too much makeup are staring down at Ellie. (omg soo clichè I know) "Scram" the lead girl says.

"Why?" Ellie nonchalantly says while reading on. The girls all look shocked, an expression of makeuppy horror that makes Ellie snort. "because I said so, comic geek" the girl says. Joel said she would encounter drama, but it wasn't 0.0000000000001 percent as bad as she thought it would be.

"What power do you have, to make me leave this seat?" Ellie says, her tone as bored as she can make it. "I'm Aria White. I do cheerleading and im like' the captain of the squad so I'm really strong" she says in her already ear grinding voice. Ellie snorts again. Her? Strong? Her body is like the model's on that poster that Joel and I saw on the way to Saint Mary's hospital, it doesn't even look like she has the muscle to push over a spore. Sure, Ellie can't do a triple backflip razzle dazzle, but she can fend off a clicker well enough.

"Ok." Ellie responds. She can see that Aria and her posse are horrified that someone is actually denying the queen of her rightful seat. "Hmph, I was getting tired of that seat anyway" Aria says, turnig her chin up and away and walking off. Her posse follow with "yeah, it was so last year anyway" and "I dont even want to touch anything that girl touched anyway" and "did you see that awful scar above her eyebrow?". Ellie shakes her head and sighs, turning her attention back to her comic.

A man Ellie assumes is her teacher walks into the room. He is a wiry asian man with thick glasses. The class slowly spread out and seat themselves. Ellie puts her comic back into her bag.

"Hello class. I'm Mr. Everett, and this is your homeroom. You will be assigned lockers. Just find your name and locker number on this paper" He gestures to a paper taped to the whiteboard.

Joel drives through the morning traffic, sipping his coffee. When he gets to his destination, he parks. He steps out of his car. Stretching, he looks around. I have never seen this place before, we were working on something smaller. A very tall support structure lies in front of him. Joel spots Aaron, one of his co-workers. "Joel! Where were you yesterday? The boss needs to see you" He shouts in his british accent. "Ok, I'll go see him!" Joel shouts back.

Joel strides over to a shed where the boss usually is before work starts. "Mark," Joel says as a greeting, awaiting the scolding he is going to get for not going to work for a day.

"Joel! I have some great news for you. You are getting the work shifts you always wanted!" Mark says cheerfully. Joel was shocked. He had been asking Mark for the work shifts that go from Monday to Friday, and the weekends off. Mark never accepted.

"Why did you suddenly give the shifts?" Joel asked. "Ian asked for another shift and I gave it to him. So with that shift free, because you are always asking, I gave it to you" Mark explains.

Joel thinks it over. This is good, I will have more time to spend with Sarah and Ellie.

Ellie yawns. The class is just explaining how things work and sometimes games done by the funner teachers to learn names. They got a timetable and a bunch of other papers with information. No one seemed to talk to her, but she didn't mind. The only people that stood out in her day so far was Aria, but she couldn't care less, she was only surprised about the haughtyness and stupidity of some people in this tine.

Ellie checks the clock. 10:00. She hurries to English 9. She sits down with a sigh. "uh, hi" Ellie turns her head up and sees a timid looking girl staring at her.

"Hi" Ellie says back to her. "Mind if I sit here?" The girl says, gesturing to the seat next to her. Ellie was taken aback at her politeness. "Uh, sure" She says. She sits down, but drops her tin pencil case. It bursts open, scattering various pencils and pens around.

She gasps and frantically bends down to pick her stuff up. Ellie kneels and starts to grab pencils. When they had picked up all the stuff, Ellie dropped the pencils into the open pencil case. "Arigatou" the girl says. Ellie looks at her in confusion. "Uh, Thank you I mean" She says, looking away.

"Um. Don't mention it" Ellie says. Ellie looks at the girl. She is asian, quite tall, with intelligent eyes peeking out from behind large purple framed glasses. Very straight long black hair frames her face. "What language was that?" Ellie asks. "uh, Japanese. I accidentally say things in Japanese sometimes" she says, very quiet. "cool. I'm Ellie" Ellie says, holding out her hand to the girl. "I'm Nagisa Umino, nice to meet you" Nagisa says, taking Ellie's hand and gently shaking it.

Nagisa sits down, and the teacher stands up and starts talking about English 9 and what they are going to learn, and the supplies needed. Ellie alredy had taken mental notes that she needed loose leaf lined paper (whatever that was) and binders.

A loud buzzing noise startled Ellie. She jumped, making her chair creak rather loudly. Nagisa noticed that it scared Ellie. "You don't seem very familiar with school" Nagisa pointed out. "yeah, I had never had school like this" Ellie says, getting over her mini heart attack. "Want to have lunch with me?" Nagisa says, getting out of her chair.

"Sure, where do we go?" Ellie says, grabbing her stuff and following Nagisa out of the room. "We need to go to our lockers first" Nagisa says. "Oh, right" Ellie says, feeling stupid. Ellie and Nagisa head the way their lockers are. Ellie's locker is adjacent to Nagisa's. She grabs a plastic bag with money in it.

Ellie follows Nagisa to the cafeteria. She winces at the sheer noise of the large place. They line up to buy lunch. "What are you getting?" Nagisa asks Ellie. Ellie looks at the big board with names and prices next to them. Grilled cheese sandwich and chicken nuggets. Orange juice? Hell yeah. She looks at her money. Okay, I have ten dollars, that seems to be enough.

"I think I'm going to have the grilled cheese and chicken sounds good, I've never had it before, is it good?" Ellie shouts over the noise. Nagisa looks at Ellie. "You've never had either?" Nagisa asks. Ellie shakes her head. "Well, personally, I am not the hugest fan, but generally it's good" Nagisa says.

They get their food and sit down. Ellie looks down at her tray. There is a sandwich and some turd-looking things. She shrugs. Ellie takes one o the crispy turds and bites into it. Damn, this is good. How the hell did people complain about food in this time?! Ellie starts to wolf down her food, pausing only to breathe.

Joel looks at his hands. They are covered in sawdust from sawing wooden boards to the correct length. He sits in the construction site, looking through the fence, daydreaming. His break lasts for half an hour. I should get somthing to eat.

Joel goes to the nearest fast food place and goes to the counter. He orders what he usually gets from there and sits down to eat. As he walks out the door, he spots a woman crossing the street. He stares for a moment becuse she looks very familiar from the back.

Joel hears a car incoming and sees a car approching quickly around the corner. He sprints and grabs the woman and drags her to the sidewalk just as the car speeds by. The woman is frozen with a suprised look on her face. Joel freezes. "Tess?" he says as he lifts up a hand to touch her face.

Joel stops. This isn't Tess. Tess can't be here. "And you are?" The woman asks, taking Joel by suprise. "erm, Joel" He says, not taking his eyes off her face. "well Joel, thanks for saving my life"