We all have secret dreams.
Buried deep.
Our whole lives we've been told that to share a wish was to kill it dead.
So ...
Blow out your candles.
Toss a coin into the fountain.
Catch a falling star.
But never tell.
Evidently, I, Rowan Keckilpenny Brown, a crazy-haired redhead, yoga-hating, bringer of bad luck, was Prom Queen.
I sat upon a stage on a throne woven from the clawed branches of a rowan tree, speckled with clusters of blood-red rowanberries. The sharp twigs dug into my arms, back, and behind, but I enjoyed sitting on a throne. It suited me, I thought. I wore an enormous shimmery black Cinderella gown and had long curls, the color of moonlight, that spilled over my shoulders. My head felt heavy. I reached up, and my fingers delved into the metal fillagree of what must've been a crown. Beneath me, on the floor, hundreds of people dressed in all their finery bowed. They waited for my signal to rise. But I relished seeing them bent over like that, unsteady, holding the pose for too long.
Someone behind me moved my hair aside, his fingers grazing my neck. His lips touched the shell of my ear, and goosebumps erupted down my arms. Warmth coiled inside my belly.
This was the most perfect moment of my life, and I wished I could stop time.
Maybe I could.
But with three words, he broke the spell. "Who are you?"
It was like a douse of cold water on a winter's day. I knew what he meant. Only a monster would enjoy the pain of others.
Who was I, indeed?
From far off in my consciousness, I heard a bang, bang, bang.
"I'm up, Dad!" I grumbled. There was no alarm clock worse than incessant pounding at your door. I squeezed my eyes shut against the morning light, grumbling to myself about forgetting to close my curtains last night before I went to bed. "I'm getting dressed," I lied. The dream faded to wherever dreams go when you're awake.
But wait.
Something was different.
I wasn't in my bed at all. Instead, my arms were squished tightly around my chest, and I could barely move, as if someone had cocooned me inside a sheet. The image of a fly trapped in a spiderweb flashed across my brain.
And, yes, I was the fly in this scenario.
I hyperventilated (but only a little, okay?) and tried to escape before the giant spider came to claim me as supper. As I pressed against the fabric, my muscles felt taut and ready. But why? It was like I'd drunk a million smoothies and was turbo-vitaminized! As my escape plan became more urgent and forceful, I began to sway. A lot. Oh my god! There was nothing beneath me. Not a couch, or a futon, or a floor. Only air.
Where was I? Who was I? Why was I?
Slow down, Rowen.
Think.
But thinking made my brain throb like I'd ridden the carnival Tilt-A-Whirl a hundred times, and then a sadistic clown had stuffed my head full of cotton candy while shrieking with laughter.
(I had clown issues, okay? There was an incident when I was a kid that we shall not mention further.)
Now would've been a good time for some yoga since I couldn't think, anyway. (And don't tell me all this stuff in my brain was thinking. I'd call it more panic than thought.) I did some yoga breaths, but don't judge me!
Breathe in. Breathe out. In. Out.
I needed data to figure out who, where, and what I was. And gathering information about my situation probably meant opening my eyes. But if I did, I might barf.
I filled my lungs to bursting and exhaled slowly. Repeatedly.
Gradually, the pain and nausea subsided; I peeled back my eyelids and gasped. Everything was purple. Huh? Coffin Ridge-purple. Go, Vampires purple. Someone had evidently rolled me up inside one of the gym banners. Specifically, the "EAT ME!" banner. I could see the black letters ME in front of my eyes. I wiggled my behind, I rocked back and forth in my bundle of fabric.
Huh?
With great effort, I managed to unfurl my arms and swiped at the layers of fabric, looking for a seam. Finally, I opened up a small gap.
A chill autumn breeze swept across my face as my brain tried to make sense of my location. It simply did not compute.
It was impossible.
The ceiling of the school gym was only a few feet above me.
Which meant I was dangling twenty-five feet above the gym floor, wrapped in the BITE ME banner that had somehow twisted around the steel joists that held up the roof. Every transom window had been shattered, which explained the breeze. Panic gripped me and squeezed my throat closed. Yoga breathing wasn't even a possibility. Okay, new plan. Stop breathing. As my lungs drained of oxygen, my body thrashed, really not agreeing with my 'no breathing' plan.
And the more I thrashed, the more the bundle of Rowen swung perilously close to one of the broken windows. I slipped a couple of inches as the fabric attached to the joist stretched from my squirming. My stomach disengaged from the rest of my body and dropped to the floor.
Okay, okay, body. You win! I gulped in a breath, the air burning my tight throat, and forced myself to stay still. The swinging eased.
I opened a larger gap in the fabric to get a better look. Carefully. Slowly, I peered over the side, keeping the swaying to a minimum.
What? This was crazy!
The structure, formally known as the bleachers, was now an art installation of twisted metal encircling the space. The middle of the floor was covered in broken glass from the windows, balls, yoga stuff, other equipment, and bits of metal that were probably once Ms. Piltz's boom box.
The room was a total disaster area. Like a cyclone hit, my dad would say when I didn't clean my room.
Cyclone?!
Oh, no.
All the memories of Emergency Yoga came crashing down so hard, my head would've spun around three hundred and sixty degrees if it wasn't so dangerous and Exorcist-esque. Whatever was happening inside me, I didn't think a guy in a dress with a weird hat and a cross could help.
Even so, had I somehow caused this to happen?
Again, impossible. Does not compute. What was I missing here? One minute I was dealing with Emergency Yoga, my teacher's very weird and extremely inappropriate ringtone, and Tyra's mean girl comments.
Wait!
Tyra.
Not just a mean girl, but a mean girl who was impossibly fast and strong. Her skin was creamy white, and her eyes were stupidly gorgeous. She dried uncommonly quickly. And sometimes she spoke like she didn't know how high school worked. Bathtubs in a school? Come on!
OMG!
Maybe she was an actual vampire!
It would explain so much.
She probably used mind control powers to seduce Miles. (Shut up! Don't tell me it was her golden hair and creamy skin!)
And that's why I was so powerful now. She bit me, and I had undergone the change, and now I would be suddenly gorgeous and no longer awkward, and, sure, I'd have an unnatural thirst for blood and would have to pre-soak my bloody clothes in hydrogen peroxide after "meals," but there were always trade-offs!
The only problem with this hypothesis: vampires don't exist.
Rinnngggggg, rinnngggggg, rinnngggggg! The three long bells that meant the end of the school day rang out so close, my ears throbbed.
I didn't have time to figure all this out. I HAD to get to the pet cemetery to save Cal and possibly be abducted by aliens/foreign agents/crazy cat-hating criminals.
But I was twenty-five feet in the air!
Calm down, Rowen, I mantra-d, not bothering with the 'no catastrophes' part because we were well past the catastrophe zone and fully into apocalypse territory.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Someone was trying to get inside the gym.
What was my best course of action?
Thoughts spun inside my head, tumbling into each other like laundry in the drier. Stop! I plucked the important facts from my head:
I was dangling from the ceiling, twisted inside the BITE ME banner.
Someone was banging on the doors and trying to get into the gym.
Perhaps someone with a tall ladder or cherry picker or even wings. (I admit the wing idea was a stretch.)
Which meant I ought to scream out for help.
But whoever was outside those doors would have questions. Most likely, I'd be blamed for the state of the gym, even though it might have been Tyra the vampire. (I held out hope.)
Wait, Tyra!
Where was she?
How did she get out?
This is when I noticed a torn pink princess sleeve on the broken transom window closest to me.
But even if she had climbed out through the window, how did she get down?
Wait!
Maybe Tyra fell off the roof and was now in the hospital with multiple contusions, various broken bones, and only a few teeth! I allowed myself a moment to savor the image. But truly, Tyra wouldn't have been that dumb. There must've been a safe way down from the roof.
Well, if Tyra could do it, so could I, especially in my turbo-vitaminized state!
The gym was two stories high, but I knew there was a flat roof one story up. I could chance a fall from that height and then take the storm pipe down the rest of the way. Most likely, I would survive. But all that broken glass probably meant there would be some bleeding involved. But what was truly accomplished in the world without a little blood? For the first time, I blessed my horse costume. If any garment could protect me, that would be it. Way better than a flimsy princess dress.
The nearest window was six feet away.
I could swing myself in that direction, and when I got close enough, I could grip the window frame and wriggle from my banner. And then what?
Bang. Bang. Bang.
"Rowen! You in there?"
It. Was. My. DAD!
No!
No!
No!
"Don't worry, hon. We've called the fire department," Dad yelled.
"They had a little mess up trying to get here because apparently some idiot hacked into the city's website and messed up all the addresses." It was Papa!
Uh, oh. Not good!
Both of them!
I had no time for further thought. I rocked the banner hammock so hard that I hit the wall. Ouch! Pain splintered through my body.
I clung to the sides of my hammock, trying to calm my breathing, and started again, less frantically this time. More control. I heard scraping and chanced a quick look behind me. The tornado must've damaged the doorframes because the doors were scraping along the floor. My dads had only pushed them open about an inch, but they were tenacious when it came to my safety.
I swung. And hit the wall again. But this time, I gripped the ledge and held on. Glass tore through the skin on my palms, but I had to keep going.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Without thinking, I yanked myself over the ledge, rolled over the top, fell twelve feet, and landed with a thud on the first-story roof ...
... and discovered for the first time what "getting the wind knocked out of you" really meant. My stomach and lungs collided, and it felt like they switched places. I couldn't breathe. I bit my tongue and tasted the coppery tang of blood. My brain rolled around inside my skull. But honestly, this kind of made me more of a hero! The more bloodshed, the more likely someone might erect a statue in my name or give me a gift certificate for unlimited breadsticks at Olive Garden.
Shards of glass from the broken windows and a mass of yellow and red leaves from a nearby maple littered the roof. A crow in the tree watched, cocking its head and cawing loudly.
"What, you've never seen a flying human before?" I huffed out.
After I determined I had no broken bones, I gathered my druthers, whatever those were, wiped my mouth with my horse sleeve, and listened.
The school was quiet. The only sounds were the rustling of leaves and sirens off in the distance.
I was pretty sure no one other than the judgmental crow had seen me fall because if they had, there would've been screaming or at least loud gasping. I extracted myself from the rest of the banner, crawled over to the drainpipe, and took a deep breath. On the ground below was a bed of rose bushes. Great!
I imagined myself gracefully shimmying down the pipe like they do in spy thrillers. But reality almost always differs from fantasy.
I fell. Landed on my horse's butt in the bushes.
Sustained several thorn punctures through the costume but was otherwise unscathed.
Now, to the pet cemetery!
The safest route was through the back of the school, in the opposite direction of my dads and the sirens, which were getting closer. This meant I'd have to scale a chain-link fence with my already injured hands. I limp/ran toward it. Luckily, the fence was lined with Cyprus trees, which would give me cover if anyone chanced by. I threw myself at the fence and climbed. When I reached the top, I leaped and stuck the landing like a gymnast. I could totally get used to being turbo-vitaminized!!!
And I had made it out without being caught.
Now to the rescue.
Cal had to be okay. I did everything exactly as the note instructed. I told no one. I came alone. My scraped-up hands clenched into fists. Whoever did this was going to be sorry. I would make them suffer.
I passed the pharmacy, the grocery store, and Dad's shop on the way to the cemetery. The Closed sign hung askew on the door, and Dad had already posed Mr. Mandible with a straw hat waving from the window next to the iron cauldron. I swallowed the guilty lump in my throat. Dad had abandoned the store so close to Halloween to rescue me. And now he'd be worried. But I had no time to stop and text. Cal first!
Soon, the stone wall surrounding the cemetery shimmered into view. I slowed my pace. Best to enter as unobtrusively as possible. Maybe the element of surprise would prove useful.
Crisp brown leaves crunched with each step, making me cringe.
The gnarled branches of barren trees stretched over graves like a canopy of skeletons. The wind whipped past, carrying the scent of manure and ozone. Weirdly, huge black clouds gathered over the cemetery and swallowed the sun. I shivered. It honestly felt like I stepped into a horror movie. And here I was, alone, just like the stupid girl in the movie who would be the first to die.
I pushed aside these dark thoughts because what good would they do? I had to find Cal. But where? The note hadn't specified.
Given the ransom note had come in a Candygram, the author obviously had a warped sense of humor. Which meant I bet Cal would be in the cat section.
I crossed the leaf-strewn street at the corner of Armadillo Avenue and Lynx Lane, crossed over the low stone wall, and prowled from one moss-blanketed headstone to the next, crouching behind each one and checking for obvious catnappers before moving on. I wasn't sure what a catnapper looked like, but so far, the cemetery was empty except for that judgy crow who seemed to follow me. But who knows? They all look alike, really.
As I rounded a headstone that read—"Arnold D. Cat - I'll be back!" out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed black smoke rising from a headstone inscribed "Sparkles—A Good Cat," right next to poor egg-allergic Pumpkin Sorenson's grave.
Using my advanced computer training, I surmised that black smoke in a graveyard was not normal. It had to be a clue.
I approached the smoke, holding my arms in front of me like a sleepwalker in case ... what? In case I needed to battle smoke? Anyway, I whirled around the back of the headstone, and there sat Cal, unharmed, staring straight at me. He arched his back, hair standing on end, and hissed.
Clearly, a warning!
Oh, no! What is going to happen next?
Wait, why am I asking you? I already know what happens! You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll have a sudden urge to drink smoothies.
Only kidding, but it is dramatic. Can't wait for you to read the next chapter. But thank you for reading this one! You are the best! The comments have been amazing. Love them.
This chapter is dedicated to Geegervy because I love her comments, and she obviously has good taste because she's a fellow Jane Austen fan!!! Thank you so much for reading my story!!!! Go check out her profile.