I Wish

Chapter 2. The Adventurers

        "Snowflake Land!"
        My mom looked at me, smiling as I continued to tell her about my fantasy from the night before.
       "And I was the princess of Snowflake Land," My seven-year-old self said to the middle-aged woman. "And I was running to Lava Land, but I wasn't supposed to. And I was also the princess of Lava Land, and it was really bad because the Snowflake Land and Lava Land hated each-other! And I was the princess of both."
        "That's a really interesting dream," My mother said, kissing my forehead and brushing hair out of my face with one hand as she did so. "Now get dressed. It's time to go to school."
        I nodded and started to take off my pajamas. "Moooom," I whined. "Heeelllp meeee..."
        "Janet, aren't you a little old for this? You've got to get dressed by yourself," My mom replied from where she now stood in the doorway.
        "I don't want to," I moaned, face planting into the soft blankets on my bed. "It's cooollld...."
        "Hurry up," My mom said, leaving my room.
        I frowned and then got dressed without further delay.

When I arrived at school, the day went by as it normally did. My teacher would teach us about... I think we were learning about Africa? Or was it giraffes? I didn't care. I was busy looking out the window, fantasizing about Crystalina and how she was the princess of Snowflake Land. I thought about how she and I were the same person, and then when I went to sleep, I teleported to that world... the world that was at war, and I was in the middle of it because I was the princess of both sides...
        "Janet! Pay attention!" My teacher snapped.
        She was an old lady--one with white hair and wrinkles. I didn't like her--she wasn't super nice like my kindergarten teacher had been. I remember my first grade teacher wasn't super nice, either. I didn't like school. I would rather be outside playing or drawing, or, at this moment, thinking about Crystalina.
        Maybe I would make it into a story one day! I had already written a book--that I had! And I was super proud of myself because I had worked really hard on the drawings and there was a drawing on every page!
        My first story ever was, "The Adventurers." It was about Alice and Sara, who were two best friends. They found a map once by digging in their back-yard, and they decided to follow it, looking for the X where the treasure would be. They went on a big quest (and by "big quest," I look back and see one or two sentences on a few pages, but it was the story behind the few sentences, really...) and tried to find the treasure--but there was a bad guy. His name was Derek. Derek was a bully who secretly liked Sara, but he didn't want to ever admit to it, so he was a bully to her and was the bad guy of the story.
        My mom told me that mean people usually were hurt before and they act badly, or, for boys, they would be mean to a girl because they couldn't accept their feelings of attraction toward her. So, to make themselves feel better, they would be mean to girls--but this was also so that the girl would never guessed the boy liked her.
        To me, that information was gold. So I put it in my first book.
        Derek was the bad guy, and he tried to stop Sara and Alice when they were in the cave. When Sara was trying to escape from the cave from the ladder, Derek grabbed her ankle and pulled her back, and Sara said to Alice, who was already outside the cave at the top of the ladder, "Go without me!" She didn't want her best friend to face the evil of Derek, and so I liked Sara for her bravery. But Sara was also smart. She took a shovel and chucked it at Derek's head, and he passed out. Sara escaped with Alice and made their way onward to find the treasure.
        Alice was a girly-girl, and she had curly hair and wore pink. Alice hated the cave they had been in--she wanted to barf because of all the dead bodies and skeletons and skulls everywhere. Sara had straight dark-brown hair (like me :D ) and she wore blue and was brave. She was determined to find the treasure so she didn't mind the cave, but she didn't like Derek grabbing her ankle.
        Eventually, the two girls met an angel, who gave them a new map, saying, "The map you have is a trap. There's a fake treasure and this one shows you the real treasure." Sara and Alice nodded and then continued on their way.
        Sara and Alice found a huge pile of gold! It was almost as tall as they were, and the gold was super sparkly, but they knew that this treasure was fake and a trap--they recognized a bad symbol hidden on the gold. I had drawn the weird X/Z looking symbol that I knew the Nazis had on the gold. I knew the Nazis were really bad, and that was their symbol! So, the gold had the Nazi symbol on it. But my mom said people might get offended if I used that symbol, so I erased it and left the bad symbol out completely.
        Finally, the two girls fell down a hole and wings suddenly appeared on Sara and Alice (the wings appeared on Alice's butt and she wasn't happy about it, while Sara's were on her back). When they landed, they found themselves in another cave--one that was filled to the top with real gold! Then they lived happily ever after. The end.
        "Janet," My teacher said, snapping me back into reality. Again, my teacher told me to pay attention and embarrassed me by asking a question in front of the whole class that I didn't know because she never taught me it!
        How was I supposed to know the question if she didn't teach us?? I mean, it's her job to teach us, right? I sure didn't learn anything, so it must've been her fault. She was a bad teacher. But, of course, she would say it was because I wasn't paying attention. Psht.

As I'm sure you could tell, my life was quite simple. And, to a reader who probably wants drama and life-threatening situations as read in the description of the book, my life was probably very boring as a child.
        But this is all important.
        It's very important.
       In most stories, there's this thing called "foreshadowing". Perhaps you're familiar with the phrase. It's when an author gives hints to future events by displaying sequences in the present part of the book being read that give hints and warnings of those events to come. As unrealistic as it sounds, this story of mine is all true, and even my own life had foreshadowing.
        I was not in control of my own foreshadowing, but it was foreshadowing nonetheless. Maybe it was God's way of preparing my soul for what would happen to me. Maybe it was his way of letting me know what the future holds so I could get used to the themes and embrace reality when it hit me. Maybe it was me. Maybe it was me paving my own future, in a way so that when written on paper, it would turn into foreshadowing when I continued to walk down that path.
        Who knows?
        I could never have known about the adventure I was going to face--never. The thoughts never came to mind. They never crossed my mind, ever. If I looked into my future at that moment, what I would have seen could only been taken as a nightmare.
        Something that I never would want to happen.
        Something that never could happen.
        Something that I secretly wanted to happen.
        But never a reality.
        What happened to me was something that you would hear about. It's what your neighbor would say was happening to their old, sick friend in the hospital. It's what you'd hear groups of people at school murmuring about, about why that one girl was missing. It would be those people you see passing by, who you could look down upon and smile at yourself in joy that you're not them. But it wasn't me. That could never happen to me. It never would happen to me. I wanted an adventure, but at this time, I did not want to get hurt. I wanted to face a bad guy, or a dragon, but I did not actually want to in fear of what they truly were. Because, in reality, I was afraid. I could never have known what would happen to me, or how, ironically, I had given my own life foreshadowing. I could never have guessed.
        Even though I badly wanted an adventure--to go on a quest and save the land from a bad guy or find the hidden treasure--I did not want the adventure I got.
        Or, rather and more accurately, I never thought I'd be stripped from my happy place and thrown into an adventure in a very real world with very real circumstances.