My name is Alice Jane Hudson. I am your average seventeen year old teenager, living in New Jersey. People usually say that when you’re young, you don’t know what you want in life. That wasn’t the case with me. I knew what I wanted in life, and that was to find true love. My Mother says that you cannot live on love alone, having a dream to be a doctor or a lawyer was much more realistic. Making it happen was supposed to be my job if I wanted a future.
My dream was much simpler than those of other girls. I just wanted a loving husband, a white house with a big front porch and a family I can call my own. I keep telling myself that seventeen is way too young to be thinking about marriage but I can’t help it. Almost each night I would dream what I wanted in my life. What with college coming in the fall, my deadline of choosing a university to go to was coming to a close. My parents wouldn’t stop pestering me about it, giving me endless lectures on which university was the best for me to apply to. There’s only one more month to go and stacks of pamphlets and letters still sat on my desk untouched since July.
Today, my parents were out to go watch Jake, my little brother, competes in his school football game. I was too lazy to watch high school freshmen knock each other out until their nose bleeds. I was at home alone, listening to the music that was blasting through my i-Phone. Bored out of my mind, I’ve decided to make myself a bowl of cereal and take it to Dad’s study where he kept his book collection.
My dad was a passionate historian. My love for books must’ve come from him since Mom rarely picked up a magazine, let alone a book. Dad’s book collection was massive. The walls of his study were lined with high bookcases, filled with variety of books. I set my cereal bowl down on the table, set across the fire place and drifted off to find a fascinating book to bury my nose in. Tracing my fingers, I bit my lip trying to pick a book I’ve never read before and in the mood to read now. My eyes came across an intriguing title. Mind Tricks.
After settling down comfortably on a chair behind the desk, I look at the cover closely. The book was beautifully wrapped in its old red leather binding, with gold letter engraved on its title. Stroking the leather cover, I eagerly opened the book, the bowl of cereal in one hand. The smell of musk drifted up my nose as I opened page after page, giving the book a sense of worn mystery to it. I flip through the pages until I finally stopped in the middle where an old crumpled parchment was folded neatly. My eyebrows knotted in confusion. Setting my bowl of cereal aside, I take the parchment out from its place and then turned off my i-Phone from my jeans pocket.
With the tips of my fingers, I carefully unfold the parchment and lay it out on the table. I take a closer look. The old parchment was blank with no writings on them whatsoever. Was this supposed to be some kind of bookmark? Didn’t Dad have a bookmark rather than having to use this old piece of paper? I crunched on my cereal and thought some more then decided to bring the paper near the fire place.
“God, when are they going to get home?” I talked aloud. I threw the paper into blazing flames and stood there for a couple of minutes to watch it burn. I must’ve stood there for five minutes before realizing the paper wasn’t getting burnt at all.
I grabbed an iron stick that was supposed to be used to poke the fire and stabbed the paper with it. As the iron about to make a hole on the paper, a blue ray of light beamed throughout the whole room with so much force it practically threw me halfway across the room. The bookcase behind me rattled as I bumped my head on it, books started to fall.
“Shit,” I cursed.
Rubbing my palm against my forehead, I groaned. Lifting my eyes, I look at the burning flames still alight much bigger than it was before. Licking the walls inside the fireplace. The old parchment lay in the middle of the floor, unscathed. I crawled towards it. The parchment was not blank anymore as I saw a couple of minutes earlier. Black inks were scrawled all over it. My hands shook as I lifted the parchment, figuring out the lines that drew across horizontal and vertical made some kind of map.
I got up to my knees slowly, taking the parchment with me as I go along. I switch on the desk lamp after two spoonful of Cheerio cereal. I studied the map closely. The letters that were written in different parts of the map were alphabets that I never knew. Some kind of code language I’ve never seen before. I traced my fingers on the old, rough paper. Tracing each lines carefully.
I backed up carefully as the map levitates in mid-air, radiating a glow of soft blue. Soon, the soft blue turned into a blinding light which I had to shield my eyes from. The next thing I knew, I wasn’t standing on the carpeted floor of my Dad’s study. I was standing on solid, dirt ground. Patches of grass grew here and there, the smell of fresh manure stinging my nose. Alone, I stood in the woods, in the middle of nowhere. It was unbelievable and not realistic at all. Those were the words I kept repeating inside my head as I stood in awe, speechless.
