A PURPLE ROCK AND BRAIN DAMAGE
In the beginning, there was just Vanessa. Age fifteen, black hair, kinda short; she was nothing special. At least, that’s what everyone told her. Vanessa didn’t believe them, but so far, there was nothing about her that could prove them wrong. Not that she even really cared about what they thought, but as you all know – and as Vanessa knew – it makes life a whole lot easier when there’s something about you that make people go, “Whoa, she’s unique!” (In a good way, of course!)
So Vanessa went on with her life, getting good grades in school, attending dance class three nights a week, and pretty much loving life. She made it a point to dress in bright, neon colours that no one could miss and she loved saying things that were utterly random, such as “MY BANANA IS ON FIRE!” and other such things, which always made her friends Skandar, Twila, and Celest laugh. She was known for being an oddball, which made Vanessa proud; she loved being the goofy, random one.
But one thing Vanessa really, really hated was being bored. Having nothing to do was her nightmare, and, to her horror, one night while her parents were away at an open house at her school and she was all alone and had rummaged throughout the entire house, looking for something to do, Vanessa realised that her old nemesis Boredom had come back to haunt her. Surely there must be something she could do! She rifled through the movies, but cast them all aside – she had seen them all so many times…Vanessa surfed the Internet and got on Facebook, but no one was online and she had already exhausted her personal library. So she stood barefoot in the middle of the kitchen, pondering.
“I could make a paper-maché elephant,” she mused, but the idea of lugging out all of her materials made her tired, and it would be a very messy process. Her parents would probably be home by then, anyway. Vanessa considered calling Skandar, but decided she wouldn’t know what to talk about. Skandar wasn’t one much for talking, besides; it would just be silence on both ends after a few minutes, and that was no fun.
Vanessa eyed the woods in her backyard without seeing them, engrossed as she was in trying to think of something to kick Boredom in the behind. She stroked her chin thoughtfully, imagining she was a magical wizard with a long, flowing beard. Vanessa laughed out loud at the thought, finding it very amusing.
She decided to go outside; Vanessa always thought better when she wasn’t enclosed by plaster and cement. So she darted to her room, threw on her jacket, and flung open the back door, stepping out into her backyard and shivering a little at the nippy November air. It was a clear, cloudless afternoon and Vanessa took a huge sniff of the crisp air, inhaling the scents of leaves, grass, and a certain scent of adventure that lingered like the promise of the day. Smiling, Vanessa strolled to the edge of her backyard, walking along the line of the forest and listening to the birds chirping high up in the oak trees. She had always liked birds, especially the fast little ones, like finches, that sang their hearts out all day. She felt like she could identify with them somehow.
Vanessa paused then, seeing the forest with new eyes. She was bored and the green trees had never looked so inviting before, especially plagued as she was by Boredom. She could set her watch so that she could be back by the time her parents got home, and they had never said she couldn’t go in the woods while they weren’t there…they had never said she could either, but that’s beside the point.
After only a split second of hesitation and a moment to set her watch, Vanessa plunged into the leafy recesses of the forest, eager to get away from her dreary house. The woods opened up before her invitingly as she walked, following a dirt path that she sometimes used to ride her bike on Saturdays. Humming happily, Vanessa strolled along, no longer bored as she looked up at the clear sky and examined all of the various flowers growing along the side of the path. Once, she even saw a fox not too far away, his bushy tail dragging the leafy ground as he trotted. Vanessa grinned; now this was cool!
She came to a fork in the path and hesitated. She knew that the right led to another small path that wound around for a few miles in no particular direction and she always used that one when she rode her bike. Vanessa had never been down the left path before…She eyed it carefully and curiously, wondering what was down there. It was as good a time as any to explore, she decided, and she took off down the left path resolutely, bursting with curiosity.
There were a few more forks along the way and she kept right, not really sure where she would come out, but still extremely inquisitive about the new trail. Bright purple flowers, almost unnaturally bright, it seemed to Vanessa, grew along the path and waved gently in the breeze as if encouraging her on her way. She smiled, bubbling with excitement.
After about thirty minutes, Vanessa came to a clearing that opened up on a cliff; she could see green treetops for miles! Coming closer to the edge and looking out over it, she saw that the land dropped down sharply before her, but there was definitely a way down. A fallen tree lay across part of the path, providing the perfect handholds. “Ooooh!” Vanessa exclaimed, considering climbing down. But how hard would it be to get back up? The cliff was pretty steep…But hey, she was a good climber, right? She could do this!
So, resolute, Vanessa started down the cliff, holding onto the nearby tree trunks and the roots to keep her in place. It was a pretty easy climb at first, and Vanessa was starting to feel pretty good. Wait until Skandar and Twila heard about this! “I rock!” Vanessa crowed proudly, shouting for the whole world to hear.
But then she realised she was stuck.
Sighing, Vanessa looked around for a way down and after looking a few times, found one nearby. She scooted over carefully, holding tight to her root, and then continued scaling the rock skilfully. She worked her way down for about ten minutes, though she was nowhere near the bottom and by then it was getting a little bit more difficult to manoeuvre about and find little paths that weren’t totally impossible to use. But Vanessa was feeling good and she was pumped up with excitement, so she kept going, determined to see what was at the bottom.
It was then that she saw the rock.
It was bright purple and lying a little ways away, lying enticingly on a ledge of the plain white rock, and it sparkled in the warm sunlight, catching Vanessa’s attention. She paused, enraptured by the sight of something so shiny and pretty. Vanessa cocked her head to the side, trying to figure out a way to get to it. It was pretty close, so that if she stretched, she could probably reach it. So she shuffled carefully closer and reached out, but found she was too far away to reach the shiny rock. Miffed, she kept stretching, determined to get it. Reach! she thought to herself. Just a little…farther!
The root snapped just as her fingers seized the shiny purple rock.
Vanessa barely had time to register that she was falling before she hit against the side of the cliff, bumping along most painfully as she tumbled down the rocks. Her hand was closed tight around the purple rock and it seemed unusually warm in her hand, but currently, she was more concerned with staying alive. Vanessa smacked against one rock and then another, causing rocks to come loose as she tumbled along and fall over her like a hot spray of ice needling against her skin.
After about a minute of falling and smacking and tumbling, Vanessa hit the bottom of the gulch, smack on her bum. A fine rain of pebbles and rocks showered down on her, and she threw her arms around her head, feeling the sting of the rocks on her skin. She still clutched the purple rock in her hand tightly, like it was her lifeline. When she uncurled her stiff fingers, she found that the rock had cut her palm, slashing her skin with purple marks that glittered slightly when the sun shone on them. Forgetting the pain of her bruised body for a moment as she tilted her hand this way and that, Vanessa felt a peculiar tingling sensation that started in her hand and then began to travel slowly up her arm. It tickled, but on the inside, so she couldn’t scratch it.
When the tingle reached her heart, the rock began to glow. Startled, Vanessa almost dropped it, but it seemed stuck to her palm, to her alarm. “What the…?” she muttered, trying to shake it off, but it wouldn’t come loose. The glow grew brighter, making Vanessa have to squint to see anything. Her insides began to tingle again, like she was full of pop-rocks, and she felt giddy with the sensation.
The purple glow filled the entire forest, covering everything in violet light so bright it was like Vanessa had stumbled upon a purple sun. She closed her eyes tight, but the light still scorched her eyes. Wincing in pain, she dropped to her knees, bashing her already-bruised knee in the process.
Then, just like that, everything was back to normal. The rock fell from Vanessa’s hand and bounced harmlessly to the ground, once more just a shiny, purple rock. She opened her eyes slowly, afraid the rock would get all glowy again if she did. But when it didn’t, she heaved a sigh of relief, convinced that she must have hit her head pretty hard on the way down and that this was all a dream. She shook her head several times, but she felt no different afterwards.
Vanessa looked at her watch, suddenly remembering that she needed to be home by seven. She froze. Her watch read 10:00 A.M. in bright green letters. How had that happened? Then she realised that it must have gotten hit on the way down and had gone squirrely in the process. She pressed a few buttons, but the only thing that changed was that the numbers turned to 10:01 A.M. “Stupid watch; work! It’s not ten o’clock, it’s almost seven!” she said irritably, poking the watch’s face savagely. When it did not change, she stuck her tongue out at it, but that accomplished nothing, of course.
Vanessa sighed and picked herself up, wondering how on earth she was going to get back up the cliff when she had fallen almost all the way down it. From where she stood, it looked pretty impossible, and she saw no paths that would give her a start. “Magnificent!” she yelled, flinging her arms out into the air. “You stupid cliff! You throw me down here and then won’t even help me get back up! Grr!”
She looked around for a ground path she could take and found a small trail-like way that looked more promising than trying to scale the cliff again, so Vanessa decided to try it; it wasn’t like she had anywhere else to go.
Vanessa picked her way through the tangled forest for about twenty minutes, bruised, cranky, and sore, not to mention the stinging purply cuts on her palm. The way through the forest was long and winding – as it wasn’t really a trail – but she had no other way to go, and despite that she wanted to sit down and go to sleep, Vanessa knew she had to keep going if she wanted to reach home within the week.
By the time she got into a less tangled part of the forest, her watch read 11:43 A.M. It still wasn’t working right, to her major annoyance. She really needed to know what time it was! Her parents were probably home by now, Vanessa knew, and that thought made her crankier. “Ok, think happy thoughts, Vanessa,” she told herself, and presently, one of her favourite songs came to mind. Delighted by her brain’s song choice, she began to hum happily to the bouncy lyrics and after a while, she was thoroughly enjoying herself. Vanessa even started to snap.
But she only got to snap once, for when she did, the world was suddenly cast in orange and pink, like a sunset had just sneaked up on her and pounced. Startled, Vanessa halted immediately and stood frozen in her footsteps, alarmed and more than a little confused. “What just happened?” she asked herself.
“I don’t know,” she whispered back.
“I hit my head pretty hard, didn’t I?” she asked.
“Yeah, I think so,” she agreed.
Vanessa blinked several times fast, but nothing changed. She looked down at her watch and to her dismay, now it read 6:48 A.M. “What?!” she exclaimed. “Qué es esto?!” She resisted the urge to take her watch off and stomp on it; that wouldn’t solve anything. She looked up at the sky and saw that it was indeed blue, orange, pink, and purple, but instead of the sun being positioned in the west, it was in the east. Not a sunset, but a sunrise. Vanessa frowned at the sky, wondering if she was going crazy. It certainly wouldn’t surprise her if she had.
Finally, she said, “I wish Skandar was here…She’d confirm if I was crazy or not!” But right now, more than anything, Vanessa longed for her bed – she was so tired and sore after her tumble that her bed sounded like heaven just then.
Suddenly, Vanessa remembered that her parents were going to pick her up to go eat with them when they got home, which, Vanessa knew, had been long ago; she was at least an hour overdue by now. They were going out for spaghetti, too! “I wish I was home!” she cried in frustration, and snapped her fingers in a ‘darn’ expression.
And with the speed it takes to blink, Vanessa was suddenly sitting on her bed, in her house, staring out at the wall.
Taken by surprise, she screamed and in her alarm, fell off the bed. Her bruised knee shrieked internally with pain and Vanessa gasped. “Whoa!” she squeaked. “What…just happened?” She pinched herself several times to see if she was dreaming, but she wasn’t. “Ummmm….” she said softly, unsure of what to think.
Vanessa flung her door open and ran into the kitchen and was shocked to see her mum flipping pancakes. In her pajamas. When Vanessa looked down, she realised that she was also, somehow, in her pajamas too. That is…not normal, Vanessa thought.
Her mum looked up in surprise and said, “Vanessa! You’re up early. You know it’s only just now seven o’clock, right?”
Vanessa, glancing at the clock on the wall, saw that in the clock did indeed read 7:00 A.M. Nervous, she asked her mom, “Um, what’s the date, Mum?”
“The fifteenth,” her mum answered, and Vanessa blanched. The fifteenth was yesterday, though! It should be almost eight o’clock on the sixteenth!
Without further ado, Vanessa scrambled for her room, shutting the door behind her and sagging against it in disbelief. What kind of crazy dream was she having here? How hard had she hit her head? Must’ve been pretty hard, if by snapping, she imagined herself teleporting to her room.
A thought struck her. When she had snapped while singing the first time, the evening had suddenly turned into morning and the sky had turned orange and pink. When she had snapped the second time after saying she wished she was home…
Vanessa frowned, looking down at her hands. The glittery cuts from the purple rock were still there. She put her hands into a snapping position, but hesitated, wondering what would happen with this snap, in this crazy, crazy dream of hers. Who knew hitting one’s head could do this!
“Um…I want to go to Skandar’s house,” she whispered.
Vanessa snapped.
Her room transformed into Skandar’s almost instantaneously and Vanessa had to clap her hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. Panting with partial hyperventilation, she pinched herself as hard as she could and slapped her face a few times, but nothing changed. Nothing at all – she was still in her best friend’s room at seven o’clock on the previous day.
Looking down at the cuts on her palm again, Vanessa ogled at them anew, knowing she was crazy – how else could she explain what was happening?
The door opened and Skandar’s sister came in, her eyes connecting with Vanessa’s at once. Samantha screamed and jerked back in alarm. Vanessa screamed in reaction, panicking. She heard questioning voices from downstairs and knew she needed to get out of there. I wanna go home! she thought, and Vanessa snapped again…
…And she was sitting on her bed.
Vanessa shook her head hard, wanting to wake up, to go back to the real world, but it seemed nothing – pinching, slapping, screaming – could wake her up. What was happening to her? What if her brain kept her trapped here forever and the brain damage was permanent?
Shaking, Vanessa picked up a book from her shelf, briefly noting its title: GONE. It was a good book, one that she really liked. Maybe it would help calm her down. She skimmed through a few pages, but found she couldn’t focus; this was all too bizarre.
But then a thought occurred to her, strange as it was: “I wonder…” she said. “If I can snap myself into this book…” It seemed a lot of other things were possible in this dream, so why not snapping herself into one of her favourite books? And hey, the main characters were pretty cool; it’d be fun to hang out with then for a while. She could always snap herself back if something went wrong.
Vanessa shrugged. “Worth a try.”
She made her wish and snapped.
Nothing happened.
At all.
“What?” she complained. “Not fair! Ugh.” She slammed the book shut, annoyed, and flopped back on her bed.
Little did she know that something had happened with her latest snap, but it was not something in her world, but in the world of Sam and Caine, the main characters of GONE. Something that would change their lives, and Vanessa’s, forever.
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