Chapter 1
Christian raised his eyebrows at me and studied his watch. “You’re late.”
“Oh, shut up.” I brushed my hair back and looked over at him. He was leaning on the bike rack, smiling. I snorted. “I do have an excuse, you know.”
“Yes, I know. Did you have to pull her hair? I mean, I can understand and enjoy catfights, but pulling hair? Ouch.”
“Shut up. And I do have a reason. She hid my bra and wouldn’t tell me where it was.” Christian laughed and raised his hands.
“Whoa! Too much information. Besides, I was just playing with you.” He tugged a lock of my much-too-curly hair and winked at me, holding out an arm in a strangely gentleman-like manner. “Your arm, my lady?” I snorted and gave him my backpack instead.
“Here. You can have this.”
“What do I look like? A pack mule?”
“Of course.” He smiled it and put it on his shoulders. I sighed and tried to straighten out my hair. My efforts only made it frizz. “I didn’t think you would wait this long,” I said. “It’s nearly four o’clock already.”
He shrugged. “Your mom would kill me if I left you alone. Remember? She thinks any time you walk down the street, you’ll get killed in some grand fashion. Besides, I figured you would have interesting stories today. I hear you tore off her shirt?”
“Not quite, but I did scratch her arm. Which would have been much more fun if I didn’t get into so much trouble. The principal called my mom.” I made a face. “I’m pretty sure she’ll kill me when I get home.”
He shrugged. “At least the campus police didn’t come.”
“True. It was still a mess though. It was her fault, you see?”
“Of course.” I looked to see if he was making fun of me, but he had a straight face. I sighed and brushed back my hair again.
“I don’t know why. I think Jessica hates me. I’ve been studying these psychology books and I think she’s suffering from some horrible mental disease. What do you think?”
“I think you’re a dork.”
I was about to say something to this, but when I looked at his face, he was smiling. I punched him in the arm and took my backpack off his shoulders. “You’re so mean.”
“I know.” He laughed. “I’m probably the only one who doesn’t take you seriously.”
I put on a fake out and punched his arm again. “And I’m the only one who takes you seriously.” I laughed at my words, but he only looked solemn.
“Too true.”
I sighed. “So what did your parents say when they saw your report card?” I asked. “Mine went crazy! You would think they’ve never seen a D before! But I don’t know. Math’s hard. I mean, I can do arithmetic good, but algebra eludes me. I mean, how is algebra even useful in the real world? It’s not! I mean, by the way the teacher talks, it sounds like every boss tells you, ‘Find the hypotenuse using lines a and b or die a horrible death.’ As if it actually matters to anyone!”
“That’s geometry.”
“Well, that’s what were dealing with now. And my parents just went spastic when they saw the grade.”
“So you’ve said.”
For a moment, it was quiet. I kicked a pinecone that had been gnawed by squirrels. “What about yours? Did they go crazy when they saw your grades? No wait,” I added, when I saw his face. “I’m sorry. I’m an idiot.”
He shrugged. “It’s okay. My grandma doesn’t care about my grades. She can’t read or anything, so she doesn’t even think to ask. She’s just happy that I’m off the streets.”
“Really? That’s interesting.” After an awkward silence, I added, “At least she doesn’t go crazy about grades.”
“She goes crazy about other things though.”
“Like what?”
“Like you.”
I smirked when I heard this. I had met his grandma before and she was the nicest lady I had ever met, albeit a little eccentric. For instance, she worshipped the microwave and gave it bits of food every day so it would continue to work for her. She also hunted squirrels in her backyard and put them into her famous stews. Christian never touched her cooking.
“So what does she say about me?”
He blushed. “She thinks we’re going to get together or something.”
I laughed. “You should tell her that I have a boyfriend. And he would kick your ass if you touched me.” I punched his shoulder again. He smiled and rubbed it lightly.
“I’ll try.” Then, in a more serious voice, he said, “How is your boyfriend, by the way?”
“The same as usual.”
“I heard you broke up with him?”
“Nah.” When he looked confused, I added, “I mean, I did for an hour, but we got back together again.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You know the reason.”
I groaned. “God! You can be so obvious at times. He’s not a bad guy. I mean, he’s kind of a bad kisser, but he’s still very nice. One of the nicest guys I’ve ever met.” When he said nothing to this, I winked at him. “Do you have a problem with that?”
He shrugged. “He’s not mature enough for you.”
I laughed. “And you are?” He flinched and looked down on the ground. “Or maybe we should change the subject?”
“Yes, we should.”
“All right.” I flipped my hair back and tried to comb my fingers through. “It’s impossible, isn’t it? My hair, that is. I’m thinking about straightening it. How do you think that’ll look? ”
“Pearl, do you believe in dreams?”
I looked back at him, expecting he was making fun of me, but his face was serious. I shrugged. “It depends what it’s about. Once I had this dream where my parents and I were moving, so we all went into the bathroom to say goodbye to it. Crazy, isn’t it?”
“Pearl…”
“You really can’t take a joke, can you?” I shrugged. “It depends on what the dream is about.”
“Ah, okay.”
“So what’s the dream about?”
“About a place.”
I waited for him to say more, but he kept quiet. I punched his shoulder again. “Hey, what’s up?”
“Nothing, nothing.” He rubbed his arm. “You’re much too strong for me, you know?”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
We stopped by my house, and he looked at it dully. “So I guess this means goodbye?”
“Only for a day. I’ll see you in school tomorrow, won’t I?”
“Maybe.” But his answer sounded so dull and resigned that I knew that he couldn’t be telling the truth. I squinted at him.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, sure.” He glanced at his watch. “I suppose you better go get killed by your parents.”
“Oh, shut up.”
#
I wish I could say that the rest of the day after Christian left me was fine and lovely, but it wasn’t. Mom went ballistic, and as soon as I walked through the room, the fireworks went off. I’ll spare you most of the drama that followed, but one thing she said which really irked me was:
“What were you thinking? How could you do this to me?”
First of all, I wasn’t thinking. Jessica was annoying me and I didn’t like her much, but if I was thinking, I probably wouldn’t have sprung on her like a cat on a Doberman. So obviously I couldn’t have been thinking.
Second of all, how could I do this to her? Her? Since when did I go around and do everything to spite her? As previously stated before, I wasn’t thinking. So how could I possibly have done it against her?
Both of these comments together were killers and unfortunately I stopped thinking and spewed out this random bit of nonsense:
“How can you say this? You never understand me!”
Then, to further prove the dramatic clichédness of it all, I ran in my room and slammed the door, crying.
Okay, I admit. I’m a brat. Not only am I a brat, but I’m an overdramatic brat, which makes me ten times worse. I fight with my mom a lot and frequently we both end up in tears by the time it’s over. Do I want to be an overdramatic brat? Not really. And sometimes I wish that hormones didn’t exist and that I knew what was stupid instantly before I did it. But, as we all know, this is impossible. Life is trial by error.
So I was trapped in my room, sulking. There were several things I could do, but I couldn’t decide what, so I just stared at my clock, watching the second hand endlessly circle around. Not very fun, but not very productive either, which was fine with me. Besides, the clock was interesting. The face had one of those spiral optical illusions that made your head hurt if you looked too hard at it, but if you were just staring mindlessly at it like I was, it looked pretty awesome.
At precisely seven twenty and sixteen seconds, Dad came home, and from my room I could hear quiet whispers of Mom complaining about me. Then, in my dad’s lower voice, I could hear yet another discussion of the possibility of therapy. I groaned and buried my head into my pillow.
After a couple of minutes of quiet talking, I heard a small tap on my door. “Pearl? Are you awake?” It was my dad.
I ignored it and buried my head even deeper in my head in the pillow, pretending to sleep. After a minute, the door creaked open and light flooded in.
Dad was there.
For a moment, I was afraid that he could see me and try to talk to me, but he didn’t make any move to do so. I guessed that my pillow covered my face and he couldn’t see that I was awake. But I could see him. His shadow covered me.
“What’s she doing?” my mom asked from behind him.
“She’s sleeping.”
My mom’s face poked up near his and she sighed, leaning on my dad’s shoulder. “She’s sleeping. Imagine that. She would be sleeping.”
Dad smiled. “Remember when she was little and we would spend hours watching her sleep?”
“Maybe you did. I was too busy sleeping to notice.” Dad laughed at this and turned to her, kissing her cheek gently.
“We better leave. She’s had a tough day and she needs to get some sleep. She’s probably very tired.”
“Tired!” Mom said, but she did move away. “It’s funny she can stay up at all hours at the night but when we –“
The door stopped her words.
#
I think I might have fallen asleep after that, though I can’t be sure. It didn’t seem like I was sleeping at all, though when my eyes opened next, it was nighttime and the house was silent. Well, as silent as a house could be. Actually, it was windy and every once in a while, I would hear a creak from the house and then a flutter of paper.
I hated that sound. The flutter of paper, that is. My room always had a variety of papers littering the floor, neatly thrown there after school. My mom couldn’t stand it, but I knew where everything was. The only problem was that when my window was open at night, something was always flapping. And then I couldn’t sleep.
I was comfortable where I was, but when the paper rustled again, I realized that if I wanted any sleep, I would have to find the paper and stop it. It was dark, but I was too lazy to turn on the light, so instead I groped around the room, tripping over scattered stuffed animals and schoolbooks.
It was by chance that I found the window and by luck that I didn’t break any bones in the process. The wind was starting to get worse and my curtains looked like a scene from a Hitchcock movie. I paused for a moment and then peeked out.
There was the orange streetlamp, as always, and Mrs. Denver’s perfectly manicured lawn where every blade of grass had been snipped to perfection. Literally. Every once in a while, I saw her crawling through the grass, armed with a pair of scissors and a huge floppy hat that covered her head completely. My mom and dad would always joke that she was getting ready for some famous professional golfing tournament, but I had a feeling that it wasn’t as much as a joke as they would have liked – I had seen Mrs. Denver armed with a nine-iron before on my way to school. Next to her house was Christian’s house, which was usually a landmine full of mousetraps. The house to the right of his, of course, had a group of hippies who were horrified with the sight of dead rodents covering Christian’s house.
What can I say? We lived in a very quiet neighborhood filled with many eccentric old people. It made things interesting.
I didn’t close the windows quickly, like I probably should have. Instead, I just leaned my forehead on the window and watched outside. Not for any particular reason – the only thing that was outside was a moth, fluttering around the orange light and a cat, looking for mice that hadn’t been killed yet. The cat didn’t find anything, so he lay down underneath an old truck that might have been popular in the 1950s, but had long since been sacrificed to the rust gods. But the moth was still at the light, batting its singed wings harder, just to get closer.
There was a noise.
It was so quiet that at first I thought I was imagining something. In fact, I was pretty sure that I was imagining something. Stuff doesn’t happen in our neighborhood. It just doesn’t. But, just when I was about to close my window and go to sleep, there was another rustle.
Christian walked out.
For a moment, I just stared at him. He had always been pale, but the moonlight made him more so, almost as if he was a ghost. He was wearing some jeans and a loose shirt. And he looked so tired. He glanced around the neighborhood once and then sat down on the curb, resting his head on his knees.
“Christian?”
I said it, quiet enough that I wouldn’t wake up the entire neighborhood but loud enough all the same that Christian jumped. His head turned around and he stood up, bringing his arms to his sides. He said something, but I didn’t hear it. I pressed my nose to the screen. “I’m up here.”
He looked up at my window and frowned. “Pearl?” he called, his voice a loud whisper.
“Yeah?”
“What are you doing up?”
“I don’t know. What about you?”
He shrugged and rubbed his shoulders. “I don’t know either.”
“Maybe we should go to bed?”
“I guess.” He looked around and frowned. “Goodnight.” He gave a little wave and then crept back inside. I watched his house for a moment before closing the window and crawling back into bed.
#
The alarm clock screamed and I woke up. Then the panic started.
Call me frantic, paranoid, unreasonable – I don’t care. All I know is that high school is bad enough without crazy Jessicas wandering around, trying to get back at you in some devious way. With the addition of the said Jessica, it was ten times worse. It wasn’t that I couldn’t beat her up or anything because I could. But she was a creative little bitch, and that was the problem. Most likely, she would come up with some artsy way of cozying up to me and then – when I least expected it – she would pull the knife and humiliate me in front of the whole school – without getting in trouble herself. Now that takes talent.
I considered pretending to be sick, but I decided that would be suicide if I did that – Mom would kill me. Then I changed my mind and decided that it would be suicide if I didn’t pretend to be sick. So I mussed up my hair and wandered downstairs, trying to look as frazzled as possible.
“Mom?”
She was there, cooking breakfast. More precisely, she was cooking eggs, bacon, country potatoes, and toast. No, not for me. I always ate cereal, if that, for breakfast because I was too lazy to cook and she didn’t want to cook for me.
She gave me a glare. “You’re not sick.”
Ouch.
I looked at her face to the skillet and sighed. “I guess I’ll go get dressed.” She grunted a reply and went back to cooking.
After a quick shower, I came back down. Mom was buttering toast savagely. “You’re a disgrace to the entire family,” she said to me when she realized I was staring at her. “Why, I remember when you were a freshman and you got grades that were decent! And now this?” She sliced the toast in half for emphasis.
“Where’s Christian?”
“Christian’s not here yet.”
Where was he then? I glanced out of the window at Christian’s house, but there was no motion. “I saw him last night,” I said. “It was late. He looked upset.” This made Mom’s lips twitch.
“Of course he’s upset. What did you expect? With the way you treat him…” Her words melted off into grumbling, but it was gentler grumbling, at least. I glanced at Mom and then the door.
“I’m going to see him.”
Mom glared at me. “Here, take this. And don’t forget your inhaler.” She handed me two pieces of toast. Then, when she saw me staring at her, she frowned. “Do you have your inhaler?”
“Yeah.”
She nodded. “Well? Go see him.”
“Okay.” I headed out.
“I love you.”
I hesitated for a moment and turned back to her, confused. She ignored me, instead putting jelly on the new toast that she had made. When she didn’t seem to care, I turned back and walked out. The last thing I heard from her was, “And try to pay attention to Mrs. Jones!”
My math teacher, of course.
#
Christian wasn’t at home. I rang the doorbell several times until a very frazzled woman came to the door. Christian’s grandma. “Cwad bwha lyat?” she snapped.
No, that’s not English. In fact, I wasn’t quite sure what language it was, but I knew that Christian’s grandma spoke it fluently and swore at the neighbors with it. Christian once tried to explain what the language was and how to speak it, but as most teachers, he failed with me. Still, I knew that what she said pretty much meant, “What the hell do you want?” and by the tone of it, she sounded pretty pissed off. I tried to smile.
“Madah,” I said politely. “Do you know where Christian is?”
She sniffed and looked down at me, which is kind of funny since she was a head shorter than me. “He went to school.” Except her accent was funny and instead of saying “school” it sounded like she said “skull.”
“But he didn’t come to my house.”
Her eyebrow rose. “No?”
“No.”
For a second, she looked worried. She grabbed the cane by the door and then peered outside. “Where is he?”
“I hoped you would know.”
She muttered something under her breath. Then, to me, she said, “Go to school. I know what he is doing.”
“What’s he doing?”
“What twollies do. He will kill himself.”
“What?”
And, I swear, my heart stopped there. It was like the whole scene paused and the only movement I could feel was my throat choking up. And all I could see were her teeth moving. Her teeth, for god sakes, her teeth.
She wasn’t smiling – her teeth were gritting against each other, as if she was trying to say something else, but wouldn’t dare. She shook her head, her thin hair bouncing off to the side. “But he is of age,” she finally said, her voice soft. “Let him.” She looked over me again. “Goodbye Pearl.”
“Wait, what? Wait! Stop.” Before she could close the door, I shoved my foot in between. “Where is he?”
“He is not here.” With that, she pushed my foot away and shut the door.
#
What could I do? What could I possibly do? For a moment, I just stood at the door, my breaths coming in short and fast, bizarre thoughts racing through my mind. Christian’s grandma was weird, but she was definitely not a liar. And Christian…
I tried to think where he could be, but all my thoughts went in spirals. Not circles, spirals. Because circles eventually lead back to the beginning, but the more I thought about it, the crazier the thoughts became until finally I was sure that if I continued thinking, I would faint. My fingers automatically gripped my inhaler.
Breathe.
“He said he was going somewhere,” I murmured. “He said he was going somewhere.” Maybe he was running away? He wouldn’t use the streets if that were the case – he hated anything that could drive. So he would go off to the wilderness.
And then it struck me. Near his house, there was a path that led to a field that was used for free-range cattle. Nobody knew about it except for him and me, and it was such a pretty place.
My legs felt weak and my lungs ached, but I scrambled over there anyway, hopping over Christian’s fence to get there more easily. Off in the distance, there was an oak tree, surrounded by wild grass that came up to my waist. If he wanted to hide, it would be easy. I took a couple of steps forward and glanced around.
Then I saw it.
It probably was only a deer trail, but it started at the very back of Christian’s house and I was desperate. At once, I galloped to the path and followed it. A couple of minutes later, I was closer to the tree, but still nowhere closer to anything recognizable. A couple of cows were looking at me curiously, but that was all. I considered calling out for Christian, but if he was actually going through with--well, you know, then why would he respond?
But then again, if I didn’t…
“Christian!” I screamed and walked a couple of more paces. My lungs ached. “Christian, where are you? Christian!”
And the more I continued walking, the more I wished – yes, wished – to be at school, harassed by Jessica and my math teacher – anything else. It was hot and burrs were sticking into my jeans and getting into my shoes, but the most pain was in my lungs. Every step I took felt like another rock was put in my chest and my breaths were getting shallower. The sun was getting higher and I knew one glance at my watch told me that we would be on detention for several days. I shivered, though I’m not quite sure why since my face was slicked with sweat. I don’t understand my body sometimes.
It was because I felt so sick that I first thought I was seeing things. There was – and I swear, I really saw it – a monolith. Yes, that thing in the movie with the monkeys and the bones, where the monkeys throw the bones over a big rectangle made of stone, otherwise known as a monolith. Except it wasn’t made of stone – if anything, it looked like one of those walls made by bubble sauce – shimmering, colorful sheets of soap.
Then I saw him.
He was right in front of the monolith, peering at it expressionlessly. Sometimes he would put his hand next to the shimmering wall before jumping back, almost as if the wall burned him. Then he would look over the wall again, walking around it before going back to the front.
But there was something wrong with the whole scene. Shimmering blocks of translucent light don’t just appear in the middle of a free-range cattle field, and besides it was vibrating too much, almost as if it was saying something.
“No Christian!” I rushed for him and tried to say something else, to yell at him to stop, but my lungs gave out and I crumpled to the ground at his feet, coughing. I reached for my inhaler in my pocket, but my eyes were filling up with tears and my lungs ached…
Christian jumped back, surprised, and then bent down to touch me, his hands reaching for my inhaler as well. “You idiot, you shouldn’t be here,” he said, taking the inhaler and shoving it in my face. “Breathe. Then get out. You shouldn’t be here.”
I might have argued with this, but I was coughing too much. I took a puff and gasped. “What is that?”
“It’s a portal. I think.” He stepped back, his shoulder bumping into the monolith only slightly. “I had a dream about it. That’s why I’m here. I didn’t think it was real though.” His voice trailed off.
“Really?” I took another puff and sat cross-legged in the tall grass. After a moment, I said, “It’s not real, is it?” When he didn’t say anything, I said, “It looks like we’re in one of those crazy shows. You know, the ones with the vampires in it…”
“There aren’t such things as vampires.”
“Then what’s this?”
“I don’t know.”
We didn’t say anything for awhile and instead all we heard was distant mooing and the buzz of insects. “Madah said you were going to kill yourself,” I finally said.
“Did she?” He glanced at my face and tried to smile. “Nah. I wouldn’t try to kill myself. I just have weird dreams, I guess.”
“Oh. That’s good.” When he said nothing, I added, "But I bet your dreams aren't as weird as mine." When Christian looked at me strangely, I smiled. "This is my weirdest my dream yet."
"This isn't a dream."
"I know. It was just a joke." And I knew he was right. It couldn't possibly be a dream -- otherwise, why would my lungs feel like they would collapse? But at the same time...
“Promise you won’t kill yourself?”
“Promise.”
I shook my head and rubbed my arms – the inhaler made me dizzy. “We should get out –“ I began to say when I stopped. A translucent arm from the monolith had grabbed his shirt and was now twisting itself in it. “Christian!”
“What?” He turned around and saw his shoulder, now wrapped in a bright translucent material and panicked. He tried to take a step forward, but the slime – if you can call it that – simply stretched with him and would not get off. “Get out!” he cried, waving his hand at me. “Get out!”
But I didn’t. Instead, I did perhaps the stupidest thing possible. The slime was starting to take a hold of him faster, so I took a stick and tried to scrape it away. From the outside, it looked like this would do the trick, but instead, it shot up the stick and onto my hands. And then the strangest sensation came into my fingers, everything becoming numb.
Christian was screaming – he had already collapsed to his knees, the slime spreading through his legs. But it didn’t hurt for me, really. It felt more like I was falling into a dream. My eyes felt heavy, my muscles were relaxed and then the most wonderful feeling rushed over my lungs and I could breathe. I could breathe better than I had ever been able to before and my lungs felt as if they were completely cleaned out. And yes, I knew that there was some strange translucent film covering my body, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that I was comfortable. And that was enough.
I smiled before the film took over my face.
It also felt slow because a.) it's a big huge paragraph and readers are often lazy and b.) because I know something has to go "bump," since you're obviously a better writer than to put in a scene in the middle of the night just to infodump. Umm, okay, I'll admit it, that's a nitpick, but I'm like that. 
I've been looking forward to it for a while now.
