The moment Franc had gotten home from school, he had gone to his room and locked the door. For the next 24 hours, he had stayed in that room ignoring sleep, food, and everything to do with the outside world, opting instead to work frantically on his project. There had been a brief momentary interruption when his mom came home, during which he calmly explained the events leading to his suspension and she calmly and willingly accepted it without further question.
That was the moment he knew for sure that it was working, giving him the motivation to finish.
Over the course of that first day of suspension, he hadn't seen Jermaine at all. He was, of course, grateful for this fact, but he was also intrigued. His brother should have been home no more than a couple of hours after him, yet there had been no sign of him. Granted, he had taken some time during his work to turn his attention toward his dear, sweet brother, but Jermaine hadn't been the target of the project until the last half hour. Was it possible for it to work that quickly? More importantly, was it possible for it to work post ex facto?
After he finally liberated himself from his room, Franc took a brief tour of his house, looking for any signs of any other life. There was none. His parents were out on their bimonthly date night, but that also usually went hand-in-hand with Jermaine throwing a party. Instead, there was nothing but silence.
Franc grinned and ran to the living room, plopping himself down on the couch. After turning on the TV and finding a channel that seemed to be in the middle of a bad sci-fi movie marathon, he went to the kitchen for some popcorn. Though he had been the last person to make popcorn and had done so only a couple days before, it took him a bit to remember where it was. He knew that it should be somewhere in the kitchen and somewhere low, but that didn't narrow it down hardly at all. He finally found it in the cabinet under the microwave, and casually put it in the machine without paying attention, pressing the buttons as though he were a pre-programmed machine.
Two and a half minutes later, Franc took the popcorn from the microwave and opened the bag, ignoring the formalities of placing it in a bowl. As he reached his hand into the bag, the room around him began to spin. He stopped, dropped the bag and supported himself against the wall until everything stabilized. Then he very calmly picked the popcorn back up, walked to the living room and firmly planted himself once more before the television.
Franc finished the popcorn long before the first movie was over and flung the bag across the room. As he lay on the couch, fully enthralled in the movie he wasn't actually watching, he was snapped back to reality by a breaking news bulletin interrupting the station.
He managed to focus just long enough to see an image of his school in flames before passing out.
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