The bus is empty, but he still sits right next to me. Straight guys don’t do that. They always leave the obligatory eight-foot distance.

“Are you kidnapping me?”

He shoots me a dastardly glare. “You’ve found me out. I remember you said you hate busses, so I had to be stealthy.”

He remembered that? Damn.

Digging into his pocket, he pulls out a handout for me. “My creative writing professor has us dissecting the Hero’s Journey.”

Your Task: In order to better understand the characters you’ve created in your first short story, you will act as that character and go on a quest of your own making. Traditionally, a quest is something a hero must accomplish in order to find something of importance that restores order to their world. Using the Five Stages of the Hero’s Journey below, develop a quest for your main character and actually go on that quest. Use your imagination (and the questions below) to transform CIA’s campus, the college town, or the surrounding areas into a new, exciting land that you’ll write about.

“I figure who better to help me visualize a new world and go on a quest than another storyteller,” Jack says. “Plus, quests are always better with friends.”

There’s that word again. Friend. Color me defeated. Slightly. The magnetic allure to Jack is still there, but perhaps Chloe was right. I do need to protect myself a bit more.

“You okay?” he asks, swiveling his body so he’s facing me.

“Yeah, why?” I do my best monotone straight-bro voice.

“No reason. You just look a little … I don’t know.” He settles back into the seat.

“Who’s your character?” I ask, doing my best to perk up.

“That’s the thing,” he says as the bus brakes at our stop.

I follow him out. He hops off the bus, and once he’s at a safe distance, he turns around to face me. “I’m not entirely sure yet, and I was hoping you’d help me figure that out.”

“How?”

Jack’s right eyebrow arches, and he smirks. “The place where all great quests start: a sweet old bookstore. I’ve been dying to visit this place, and I saw online that they have a whole section of art books dedicated to animation.”

“Oh. Cool.”

Again, I hate myself for being so monosyllabic, but honestly, who does that unless they’re interested? Right? No, I refuse to keep overthinking.

I’m just going to go with the flow.

Or at least pretend to.

As problematic fave RuPaul might say, “Your inner saboteur needs to STFU.”

Jack leads us along a cobblestone street that leads through the center of the small town. The street is lined with brick and stone buildings and is closed off to cars. Most of the businesses are bars and restaurants. There’s the organic smoothie and waffle bar, which I’ve heard is owned and operated by a local commune, and the outside looks carved out of a weirwood tree, and cute antique boutiques and specialty soap shops. Along the pathway are informational signs about how every building in town is one-hundred-percent green-energy efficient thanks to solar panels.