Flash Fiction Friday: I Have the Weirdest Friends

Today's story takes us back to the Myth and Science Universe several months after the events of Culture Shock and about a week after The Move. Having read those two stories first can help make this one a bit more fun, but it's not necessary to understand the story.

If you'd rather hear the story, you can also find the audio version here.

When I first saw her, I didn’t really see her, just the pile of books she was carrying. It was almost as tall as she was, which is still pretty impressive even with as short as Lily is. I mean, can you carry a four foot stack of books?

I’m no slouch when it comes to reading. I downed the whole Harry Potter series in one month long binge back when I was nine, and I gave up going to the library at my high school last year. What’s the point when you’ve read every novel in the place? Okay fine, not every novel, just all the ones that sound halfway interesting.

Lils though, she’s something different. I could tell it even then. No one carries that many books all at once without there being a juicy story behind it somewhere. How could I not go say hi?

After the usual introductions and stuff, I asked her why she was trying to check out so many books all at once.

“I’m new to your country,” she says.

Her accent was strange too. My dad’s the same way with movies as I am with books. I mean he watches them all the time, and I must have heard most of the accents around at one point or another with that going on in the background all the time at home. But I’d never heard anyone speak quite like Lily did at first.

Of course, the librarian wouldn’t let her check out all those books. I mean, most of them were reference books, and no one is allowed to check those out ever. Even when it comes to fiction, we’re allowed a maximum of five at a time, and you have to earn that. You can’t just go up and check out half the library your first week in school, you know?

Lils was beyond bummed out she couldn’t get all of those books. I mean I thought she was going to have a panic attack kind of bummed, and all I could think about was Penny and the way she was when I first found her at the park last year. If I could take a girl from 1829 and teach her how to fit in at a public school in 2016, I figured I could help this foreign exchange student. No sweat. So, walked with her to class and invited her to join Penny and me for lunch in the school courtyard.

I swear I must be some kind of magnet for the strange and unusual, cause it turns out Lils is from a bit farther away than some tiny little country no one’s heard of on the other side of the globe. She and her family are refugees from a planet several solar systems over.

How’d I find out about that? Oh, that’s a whole other story. A long one, and I don’t have time to tell it right now. Sorry.

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Each story in this series is 500 words or less and is prompted by a first line taken either from a random first prompt like this one or reader suggestions like "Don't Forget Me" and "Culture Shock." I much prefer working from reader suggestions over generators, but to do that, I need to hear from you.

If you have a prompt you'd like to see done, comment below, send it to my Tumblr asks, Tweet it at me, or leave a comment on any of the audio stories from this series. I'll screen shot it, write it, and post it for you.

Want to hear that long story? Do you want to see more from the characters and their greater stories in the Myth and Science Universe? That's good because I have several ideas for stories in this universe that are a bit too big to cram into 500 words or less.

Take a look at the work que over to the right of this page. I'm planning a Myth and Science Universe story collection to be published sometime late this year or next year between the releases of The Icarus Project and Yekara's second novel.