The blackness cleared in what seemed like minutes, but was merely a few seconds.

“Jonie! Andrew!” Cilla almost yelled, shaking me first and then rushing over to Andrew. My vision cleared and my English teacher was scowling back at me.

“Jonie, Andrew. I do not appreciate you zoning out during my lessons. I will be calling your parents,” she said haughtily, glaring daggers at the both of us. “Now, go home. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon, and hopefully, you both will pay attention.” I was thoroughly confused. What just happened?

The three of us—Cilla, Andrew, and I—stepped out of the classes, and Cilla immediately shelled out all sorts of questions. “Are you okay? What happened? Why were both of you like that? Why-” she started in one breath, until I cut her off.

“Cilla! Calm down. We’re fine. I don’t know what happened. Breathe.” I took a quick glance toward Andrew, not knowing if I even wanted to tell her. She would have overreacted, and we didn’t even know what happened, ourselves.

“Sorry, but when your best friend zones out like that, after half an hour of trying to wake her up, you get a little worried.” I smiled.

“Well, when we figure out what was going on, we’ll tell you. Right, Andrew?”

“Huh?” he asked, snapping out of some inner dialogue. “Oh, yeah.” Cilla was incredulously gawking at him, like he had to be joking. We walked her home, and simultaneously decided we needed to talk.

“So, it wasn’t a dream. You were really there,” he stated more than asked.

“Yeah. I guess.” Walking toward the park, we found a bench similar to that in the other world.

“Do you have any idea why it happened?” he asked.

“No, but it’s nothing logic can’t solve. What is the main theme for that…uh…little trip?” We sat and thought for a while until I came up with a suitable answer. “Okay. I think I got it. What are the two things we have in common?”

“Uh,” he paused to think. “I’m drawing a blank.” Not very smart, but cute…where did that come from? I snapped myself out of it.

“Our eyes. The only other people we know of with colored eyes are us. They changed to gray when we were in that world. Maybe they are some sort of portal!” I exclaimed over-excitedly.

“Oh my God! That’s awesome!” he shouted animatedly and hugged me tight. We caught up with reality after about a second, and let go of each other. An awkward silence filled the air. “Um…I mean, I thought something was wrong with us. It’s a relief to have something to tell my parents instead of getting tested for some sort of hallucinogenic disease.”

“But that’s exactly why we can’t tell anyone. They’ll think we’re crazy or worse. They might actually believe us, and the whole government would be after us. That would not be good,” I finished off morbidly. His smile faltered, as well as mine. The thought of not being able to tell Cilla was enough to make me go crazy. “Hey, but at least we can talk about this with each other. We’ll find out what we need to do with this gift, and we’ll get through it together.”

“Exactly. But for now, let’s go home.” We started heading toward my house and he grabbed on to my hand. The butterflies fluttered for the second time that day. Why does that happen every time he does that?