Jason Nissan isn’t exactly my bestest friend in the world, but for the purpose of describing something out of the ordinary I have chosen him. I’m not really sure what makes him so unusual. Whether it’s the fact that he arrived in the middle of an earthquake or the fact that he sometimes, actually quite often, makes these bizarre comments that make absolutely no sense to the given circumstance. Plus the fact that he has green eyes, is rather short, and has unmistakably grey hair even though he is only eleven. Also he has an uncanny ability to tell when someone is watching him, and this is the time when he chooses to direct some odd comment to the class, making the teacher sigh in frustration and making everyone else giggle. So while I am going to be studying him for this report, I will have to be careful not to let him know. Well, it’s too late for that. He just told the teacher that about six out of seventeen stalkers begin their careers in classrooms. She’s now looking at him with the expression of ‘one more odd comment from you Jason Nissan and I am going to boil you alive’. The way he says his comments must be pretty infuriating as well, as he says them casually without even bothering to put his hand up. And even though he’s not looking in my direction or paying any attention to me what so ever I still feel as though the comment was directed at me. Six out of seventeen stalkers begin in a classroom, I wish I could admit that I wasn’t planning on stalking him in my study, but that would be a lie. But then, maybe studying Jason Nissan isn’t the best idea. It would probably be easier to do a stupid butterfly or something. But then he turns in his seat and says to me, interrupting the teacher, “You know over twenty percent of the girls in this class are planning to do their discovery report on butterflies? The other sixty percent are doing it on flowers. Could you please have some originality?”
I hide back a grin as the teacher looks ready to throttle Jason, and he turns to her, pointing out the fact that at least he was almost on the topic this time. The teacher shakes her head in despair, “Whatever are we going to do with you, Jason Nissan?” She says mostly to herself, but Jason hears and answers, “You could send me to the nurses office, there’s a dinosaur outside the classroom.” Now how these two events correlate is beyond me, but the teacher nods absently, “If you must.” She says then launches back into the lesson, hardly noticing when the small figure of Jason slips outside. I thrust my hand up in the air seeing the perfect opportunity for surveillance, and the teacher looks exasperated, “Yes, Nixie?”
“Oh, um… can I get a drink?”
She glances at the clock, and then seeming to not want any more interruptions, she waves me out. I walk into the empty corridor and start searching for my prey. I find him easily, standing just outside the nurses office talking on a mobile phone, that I was sure I had seen confiscated yesterday. His voice is low, but I hear words like:

Time to go
Maybe
Should we leave
I think
They’re not yet

It’s a rather disjointed conversation for me as I’m hiding behind the only available cover- a pot plant in a ceramic pot. As he hangs up, I go to move further back before he walks past my hiding spot and sees me. Instead of my plan being executed perfectly, I get snagged on the plan, bang my knee on the pot and almost fall over. Jason stops and comes over.
“You okay?” He asks. I nod grimly, wincing at the slight pain in my knee as I stand, and realizing dimly that this is the first time outside random class talk that I’ve ever heard Jason speak. He doesn’t do much chatting.
“Maybe you should see the nurse?” He says quite seriously. I laugh, knowing its not that bad, but finding the idea of seeing the nurse after getting hurt right outside her office amusing. He frowns at my laughter, obviously not understanding it. Remember, he’s a strange kid. I try and explain, “It’s just kind of funny that I’m right next to her office and I get hurt.” There’s what feels like an hour of silence as he mulls this over, before smiling and nodding his agreement. I sit down on the ground in front of the pot plant, deciding that I will give my knee some time to recover, besides the teacher can’t get too worried in ten minutes. To my surprise Jason joins me. He does so unobtrusively and watches in alarm as a bruise begins to form on my knee. I grimace then grin, it’s not the worse I’ve seen.
“Are you sure you don’t need that amputated?” Jason asks. I look at him, making sure he’s joking. His face is completely serious. I almost expect some random comment like, ‘five out of ten bruises end up causing heart disease later on in life’, but nothing comes. I realise that he is being utterly serious about this, and that he really thinks I should get my leg amputated. Once again I wonder who this guy really is, being as abnormal as he is, but then I shake my head.
“Amputation won’t be necessary, but I am thinking that maybe I’ll need a knee transplant.” I say this in good humor, hoping he’ll get the joke. But I should have realised after he’s previous two statements, that when he’s not in the classroom making random commentaries, he is a serious little fellow. He looks surprised then whispers, “Isn’t that dangerous?”
I struggle to prevent the laugh that wants to burst out of me, keeping my face straight, “I was kidding, Jason, kidding.”
He looks at me blankly.
“You know, making a joke.”
He finally smiles, “So you don’t need a knee transplant?”
This time I treat his question with caution, “No. I’m sure the bruise will heal itself.”
He sighs with relief, “Good.”
I glance at the clock above the nurse’s office, hoping the bell will go soon for the end of school. Two more minutes. I am quite content not to go back to class, so I offer Jason a distraction that will keep us talking for a little longer.
“Why’s it so dangerous to get a knee transplant?”
He gives me a small smile before saying in his causal classroom voice, “Didn’t you know? Eleven out of twenty-six knee transplant patients have ended up being visited by aliens in the middle of the night after the operation, also those that have been visited are rumored to be the only ones who make a full recovery.”
“Aren’t we lucky that there’s kind aliens out there willing to help knee transplant patients?” I say hoping to win another smile. I do and he replies with humor licking his voice, “Very lucky, especially since the same aliens are the ones responsible for buses.”
I groan, thinking of the crowded, hot, stinking buses that travel the town. “Oh, we’re the luckiest kids in the universe- how could we live without buses?”
Jason grins, “We could always fly.”

Discovery Report: Jason Nissan
Point one: the person sitting in the classroom two seats in front of you, annoying the teacher and entertaining the class is a completely different person outside the classroom, especially when it comes to medical emergencies and humor. The person is very serious about this issue and so, when talking to him, do not attempt to make unexplained jokes about the current medical situation. In fact only make jokes when you are sure that the person is going to understand them. This is very important, because otherwise you could be left in a very awkward situation. And lastly, just because the person is apparently serious, do not be completely surprised when he makes a comment that isn’t so serious, this may earn you a stab at your own oddities. In other words, point one is: people can be many things.

The next day, I jumped in the river, swam to school, and then walked around in squelching shoes for the whole day. Actually I did none of those things, I just watched as Jason Nissan did those things. When I quizzed him about it later, when we were sitting next to each other in class, since I had decided to move up in the world, muttering so the teacher wouldn’t hear us, he said that he was ‘training’.
“Training for what?”
In reply I got a garbled message in which I clearly made out one word, ‘away’. Jason was beginning to creep me out a little. There were two reasons I had moved up seats, well three- the seat was empty, I was studying Jason for my repot and after yesterday I decided that I owed the boy some kind of friendship. After our conversation about buses made by aliens, I really didn’t feel like catching the bus so I decided to walk home, and Jason walked with me. We sang Mary Poppin’s songs with the wrong lyrics and had another rather serious yet humorous conversation about the realities of being a patient with a broken toe on the top floor of a hospital that doesn’t have elevators or wheel chairs so that you had to walk everywhere. Jason pointed out that the patient could always pay someone to carry him around and after conceding his point with a nod, the conversation ended and we went gratefully back to Mary Poppin’s songs. And now I was sitting next to him to repay his interestingness that was the principal reason for him being the um… victim in my discovery report. But he wasn’t really answering my questions and he wasn’t at all being himself. He grins suddenly and hands me a piece of paper, I look at the cleverly crafted cartoon on the white sheet and realise that it is a rather inaccurate drawing of us talking yesterday. By inaccurate I mean the clock above the nurse’s office is showing seven o’clock and there is a giant snake in the middle of the corridor. I fold the paper carefully, and whisper my thanks. He smiles then as the teacher makes a perfectly plausible absolute he interrupts, “Miss, what would you say if I said that my aunt had a pet elephant and that she lived in Antarctica and that the elephant was still alive?”
She flounders for a moment, obviously not expecting a challenge to her statement of, ‘elephants are one of the rarest creatures on earth and therefore no one is allowed to hurt them or own them’. “I would say, “ she said eventually, “I would say that she was breaking the law.” The teacher was getting rather fed up with Jason, you could tell by the fact that she was finally answering his obscure comments and questions.
“Not in Antarctica it isn’t. There’s no law down there, and that’s why she lives there. She says that ten out of ten people will break the law in their life time, so before she had, she moved to Antarctica so that she could never break a law, as there wasn’t one.”
The teacher snaps then, she says, “Jason Nissan, you are interrupting my class and I won’t have any more of it. Now stop making useless comments and pointless questions and let me get on with my lesson.”
Jason simply shrugs at this torrent of yelling. The fact that he was in trouble ran off him like water flowing off a whale. “I didn’t think it was pointless, Miss, you were, after all, talking about elephants.”
Miss takes a trembling breath, “I don’t suppose you actually want to get into trouble-”
Jason agrees, “Well, it never was my intention to…”
“But now you have interrupted me one last time. I want absolute silence from now on, understood?”
Jason nods, but I can tell he’s not completely committed. First chance he gets, he’ll say something is my bet. He’s a pretty bright boy, if he is sometimes stupid, sometimes serious and sometimes funny. He’s a mixed bag. Which is why I am sort of glad that chose him as my topic for discovery, I really don’t think I’ll ever discover what makes him tick, but I might come close to understanding him. Probably not, I amend, as he opens his mouths and addresses the teacher one last time before he’s sent out of the classroom, “Miss, did you know that six out of twenty elephants don’t actually like mushrooms?”

When I am sent to fetch Jason from the hallway sixteen minuets later I can’t see him anywhere. Personally that doesn’t bother me, and I didn’t really expect to see him. Once he’s out f the classroom, he’s gone. I am quite unconcerned, but begin traversing the corridor in a half-hearted attempt to find him. I am passing by the fateful old pot plant outside the nurse’s room, when a hand is suddenly clapped over my mouth and I am dragged into the feeble shelter of the plant and its massive pot. I try to scream but realised that would be muffled so I wait quietly until the hand is removed and I am turned around. Then I look at the person who about gave me a heart attack from fright.
“Are you out of your mind?” I ask, stunned when I see Jason standing there, perfectly clam. “What’d you do that for? I almost had a heart attack.” As soon as the words are out of my mouth I want to kick myself. He’s in a serious mood and looks genuinely concerned.
“Do you need to see a doctor?” He asks.
“No I don’t need to see a stupid doctor.” I tell him, angry now that shock has past- what one earth was he thinking hiding here and then making me feel as though I was being kidnapped or something. “What are you doing?”
“Shhh.” He peers around the corner, looking for something, and then breathes a sigh of relief. “Finally, I thought he’d never leave.”
“Who?” I begin, realizing that he wasn’t going to tell me why he had gagged me or apologize for what he had done. I decide to try and get to the bottom of this mess, whatever it was. “Who was there?”
“Big burly man. Seen him following me this morning, that’s why I swam, to try and lose him.”
“He was stalking you?” I ask incredulously, unsure to whether or not this is just some elaborate rouse that Jason’s cooked up for some equally elaborate reason.
“Following me, yes.” He looks serious, and after yesterday, I know to take his seriousness seriously, so to speak. “He was sitting there for ages, I noticed him when I first came out of the classroom. I decided to wander a bit. See what was going on around here, and I saw him and hid.”
I feel like rolling my eyes at the little boy in front of me, “You know the whole idea of being in trouble and being sent out of the classroom you to stay right outside the classroom so the teacher can send someone to get you easily?”
“Yes, I know. I’ve been in trouble before. But I had to check he wasn’t here. I thought I lost him this morning, but I hadn’t.”
“Why’s it so bad? Stalking is just a nuisance, isn’t it?” I ask, anger fading now. It feels like another one of his weird statements is about to come out, so I’m vaguely surprised when he answers, “It may be a nuisance now, but it could get worse.” He’s completely serious now, and I know a light joke as we head back to class is impossible. My thoughts are confirmed when the little boy with grey hair and green eyes slumps in front of me and whispers, “Much worse.”

Discovery Report: Jason Nissan
Point two: the person is afraid and so you do not think their first reaction is going to be to skip school and go to an ice-cream parlor with another person that they have only just gotten to know two days ago. The person then orders chick-pee flavored ice-cream, walks two blocks before sitting at the back of a public park, then suddenly starts rambling about how two years ago he fed an ice-cream to a shark on a school excursion. This is not your typical reaction to fear. A typical reaction would be to cry, or go back to a safer area per say the classroom, or maybe even just go home. However, after being very confused at the person’s abnormal reaction to fear you realise something very important, and this is point two- people can and usually will be highly irrational.