"Honey! Marta's almost here! Are you ready to float to school?" my mom asked.

    "Yeah, I'm ready." I mumbled back to her. I never used to dislike school so much, but ever since this new rock moved into our volcano, it hasn't necessarily been fun at school. Everyone seems to love Dwayne, everyone except me. He always seems to be right next to me when I talk to my best friend Marta about my hopes and dreams of getting out of this small volcano with metamorphic rocks with small dreams. 

    Marta is the only one that actually knows how much I want to escape the volcano. Well now Dwayne knows because he eavesdrops.  

    Marta came a few minutes after, and we floated to school, re-feeling the heat and pressure of the volcano while she babbled on about something to do with science. At school, I see Dwayne with his group of friends staring at us. Not us, but me!

    "Why is Dwayne staring at you," she asked as if she knew what I was thinking, "do you think it is about the volcano, he does sorta know your plans and everything." I gave her a confused look, and she answered "I've been telling you about it on the way here! The volcano is supposed to erupt today!"

    "WHAT?" I asked, as is if on cue, Dwayne was walking up to me.

    "I bet you're excited" he proclaimed in a sarcastic voice.

    I was actually thrilled, immediately I went over the plan in my head, as I swam away from Dwayne.. Right as we start to feel the rumbling, all the other rocks, including Marta, are going to swim down in a cluster. At that moment, I am going to rush to the surface of everyone else. Therefore, I can finally go on that adventure.

    Two hours have passed, and we start feeling vibrations, the volcano is estimated to erupt in about ten minutes. Everyone else is starting to panic and swim down as far as possible while I start swimming up.

    "TORI!" I hear someone call my name, but I try not to think of who it is.

    Three minutes have passed and I start flowing over the top.

    I look to my left, nobody. I look to my right, and I see a freaked out Dwayne going down the mountain with me. 

    "What are you doing here?" I yell.

    "I saw you purposely go to the top while everyone was trying to go down. I thought my comment earlier made you do it, so out of guilt, I followed you." He said almost ashamed. As he was talking, he was getting darker and darker, I realize the situation, we're turning into igneous rocks. As we go further down the mountain, I feel a weird cooling effect and I feel stiffer. Once I can't move anymore, I start rolling down the mountain, still not saying a word. Soon after, Dwayne begins rolling with me.

    Sick of the silence I say one word, "Why?", in a somehow more ashamed tone than when Dwayne basically admitted to following me.

    "What?" He asked, clearly taken by surprise from me talking, then I realized, I've never actually talked to him before a few moments ago. He talked to me, he always eavesdrops on me, but I've never actually, purposely talked to him.

    I thought it was pretty clear on what I was trying to ask, but I finished my question anyways. "Why'd you follow me here over the volcano, when you thought I was crazy for doing so? Guilt can't make you do that."

    "I-uh" he stammered, "-I don't know." Clearly surprised by what he did and why he did it.

    After what seemed like a forever of uneven rolling, I start seeing the bottom of the mountain. Then I started to panic. What happens when we reach the bottom? Is there going to be other rocks from our volcano? Are there going to be other rocks there in general? Are they nice? Dwayne looks over at me and notices my panic expression.

    "Are you alright" Dwayne asked.

    He's worried about me? "Uh, yeah. It's just that the unknown scares me." Did I just admit that to him. Before I could regret it, he starts talking once more.

    "Well, you can just ask me." He said through a smile.

    "How would you know about any of this? We haven't learned about this yet." I said doubtingly.

    "How do you think I got here...well not here, but to the volcano."

    "Oh, I never thought about that before. So then where were you before." I asked

    "Me and my family are, don't laugh," he paused, I looked at him curiously and he answered, "we were river rocks."

    "Wait really? That's so cool! That would be my second choice. Why'd you come here?" I asked suddenly interested in this conversation.

    Before he could answer, we roll onto other rocks. Igneous rocks surrounded us. Dwayne and I look up at the mountain and see many more rocks rolling.

    "Wait, Tori, can you roll me over into that direction," he pointed to a place about 5 feet away, where not many rocks were, "I need to check something out."

    I did what he asked. I rolled him over to something that was brown. What was this brown substance called again? OH YEAH, dirt! He dug into the dirt just a little bit. I went over to go see him and feel the dirt, it was more moist than I had imagined. I realized why he wanted to go over by the dirt. He wanted to phase again. Phase into a sedimentary rock. A sedimentary rock is when you are such small particles that you can sink into the ground, then you can continue your journey.

    "I have an idea" Dwayne said right before whispering the well thought out plan to me.

    "HEY EVERYBODY," Dwayne shouted loud enough for everyone to here, "I need all of you guys to come over here and just lay on top of one another. This will create pressure, the pressure will cause us to become really small pieces. Our pieces will then, hopefully, go into the earth from the weight, this will allow us to go into a volcano."

    "What sorcery is this?" asked a sarcastic rock.

    "It's not sorcery, it is the process of becoming a sedimentary rock. This process will lead to other processes in the rock cycle." I answered.

    After a while, we got most of the other rocks to do what we asked of them, some more willingly than others. As the pressure increased, I started to break apart unpainfully, and we sunk into the earth. As we went down, the warmer, and smaller, my particles got.

    We were sinking into the earth at a consistent pace for days. As time went on, as we got deeper, we started to lose the cool feeling. I was starting to get really hot. A very familiar warmth. The same warmth that I have felt for decades in the warm volcano. I knew we must be getting close to the earth's interior. The earth's interior is a layer really deep into the earth that can get really hot. The earth's interior doesn't have magma but molten metal. It also connects to volcanos, volcanos like my home. 

    As we get closer to the center of the earth, I start imagining. Imagining of what would happen if I didn't come on this journey, what would happen if I don't come home, why Dwayne really-

    "So," Dwayne said, interrupting my thoughts, "What would be your first choice?"

    "What do you mean 'first choice'" I asked, not trying to hide my confusion.

    "You said, as we were rolling down the mountain, that being a river rock would be your second choice. I was going to ask you then about your first, but then we had other things that needed to be dealt with, so I waited"

    "Oh. Well my first choice would to be somewhere with humans, they fascinate me. Like imagine being one thing for your whole life!"

    "I don't think they are just one thing because they grow, so I am pretty sure there is an infant stage, then a toddle-ler, then a kid stage, then I'm pretty sure there is a dangerous stage called 'teenager', then old people"

    "How do you know so much about humans?"  I asked as the pressure from the earth's interior was still getting stronger.

    "I lived on a river. A river that humans also used to go fishing, a term used to eat fish that they murdered." he said nonchalantly.

    "HELLO EVERYBODY," I yelled, "can I get your attention? I am pretty sure we are about to start rising now. So if everybody could all shift to your left about three feet we should be aligned for the next volcano."

    "Wait, how do you know where we are?" Dwayne asked skeptically.

    "I actually have no idea where we are. I just know that we are at the way bottom of the volcano. Can't you feel it?"

    "Feel what?"

    "The familiarity. Everytime something seems familiar to you, your atoms can sense it. The volcano is very familiar to me so, I feel like whenever I am around a volcano, I start feeling tiny sparks throughout me because it is readjusting." I looked back at him and realized that I was dozing off into my own world because he looked dumbfounded. "Are you okay?" I asked.

    "Um, yeah." he seemed to then understand what I was seeing on his expression, "Yeah, no I'm fine. It's just that this has been the most words that you have said to me about things you are interested in. I think that's why I followed you into this situation. I wanted to see your day dreams come into a reality. Before this I never realized how much I eavesdropped on you. At first I thought it was barely any, then on the mountain I thought it was way too much. I am now realizing that it could never be enough because your opinions and beliefs interest me. It's like all of the things that I've never been unable to phrase, you say." As he said this I started to feel warm, and not because of the volcano that is soon to be exposing itself.

    After about five more minutes of floating, we see other metamorphic rocks. Unknown metamorphic rocks in an unknown volcano. Dwayne and I continue swimming through everybody as I once again get familiar with constant heat and pressure. I shouted for my family and friends but nobody answered. We got quite a few stares and judgy looks. As we were about to give up, someone came up to us.

    As the rock walked up to us, she asked, "You guys aren't from here, are you? Are you trying to find another volcano?"

    "Yes, actually. Our volcano sorta erupted, we have been trying to get back there for about a week." Dwayne explained.

    "Well, you came to the right place. I'm Vikki, and I am in an organization that helps you kind of rocks out." Vikki said.

    "So, you can actually get us out of here?" I asked, shocked.

    "You bet-" she paused for a moment, "EVERYBODY LISTEN UP! We have a code gray."

    "What is 'code gray'?" Me and Dwayne asked simultaneously.

    "YOU'LL SEE!" she yelled while her and others were swimming in circles around me and Dwayne, "HOLD ON TO EACH OTHER!" she yelled once more.

    She began mimicking the movement of a real eruption. Just like that, Dwayne and I were starting to spiral so fast that we, along with a bunch of smoke, we were shooting out of the volcano. We were so high up in the windy sky, cooling down was really fast because of the cold air but also because we were nothing but tiny pieces. Dwayne and I have become ash, sedimentary rocks. After a while of waiting in the air, we still haven't come back down to earth. We are completely stranded in a weird bubble with other sedimentary rocks that got cemented and compacted, water droplets, smoke, and sand.

    "We aren't going anywhere until a few hours." Dwayne said, breaking the awkward silence.

    "How do you know that?" 

    "On the river we learned about the water cycle, and because there isn't much water in this cloud, we are too light to be dropped out."

    The water cycle, of course! That is why we haven't been falling. It's not a bubble we are in, it's a cloud! So then he is right, we won't be able to get out of here until there is enough weight in the cloud. I guess it shouldn't take too long, we are about to drift over some wet areas, perhaps that should be enough water.