Alice

1. Rabbit in a Waistcoat

1. A Rabbit in a Waistcoat

It all started the night before I was supposed to leave for Syrim University. I pushed around the food in my plate, only vaguely aware that my parents were talking to me. I noticed that I had unconsciously made my dinner into the shape of a cat. I imagined that my food-cat came alive and became my real cat.

I'd never had a pet before, so I was thinking up all the things that we would do together: she'd sit on my lap as I read, we'd play together all the time, and I'd tell her everything. Too bad she wouldn't be able to talk back to me-

"Alice? Alice, did you hear what I just said?" I heard my mom say.

"Hm? Oh, no, sorry Mom. I was thinking," I replied.

"You mean you were daydreaming," my dad corrected.

Mom sighed. "I asked you if you were all packed."

"Almost," I said. In truth, I hadn't really packed at all.

"Alice!" Mom cried, exasperated. "You're leaving tomorrow! I was all packed days before I was supposed to leave for college. Aren't you excited?"

"Yeah," I said, half-heartedly. I was excited. Kind of. I just felt that college would be yet another place where people thought I was weird.

"Well, you'd better get some sleep. You want to be well-rested for tomorrow," Dad told me.

"Yeah," I repeated.

After dinner, I went up to my room, intending to pack. And I started to. I honestly did. I went to my closet and slowly took my clothes off of the hangers and put them into a box. As I did this, I looked around my room, and thought about how tomorrow I would be leaving my room and not see it again for a long time. My room, the one place where I'd felt safe and secure ever since I was little.

Absentmindedly, I had been pacing back and forth while folding my clothes in my hands. Suddenly, I caught a glimpse of myself in my dresser mirror. I stopped in front of it and stared at my reflection. The thin girl staring back at me with big chocolate brown eyes had a small pale face. Her bright pink lips were parted in an uncertain frown. Her wavy blonde hair hung in a tangled mess on her shoulders. She was no movie star; in fact, I didn't think of myself as particularly pretty. But, I guess I should count my blessings: I had no pimples, no hair in weird places, and my nose wasn't the size of Mount Everest. And besides, I'd gotten used to this face. It was my face, the face of Alice Rose Lennette. It was also the same face that a ton of people were going to see for the first time the next day. From just one look, they'll think that they can sum up my whole personality. Just because I'm not gorgeous, guys will never say one word to me, and girls will laugh at me behind my back. And it'll be like that for the next four years. Oh sure, my looks won't matter if I become a successful author, but when I got to Syrim the next day, they would. So, the least I could do was make some effort. I ran my fingers through my tangled hair, which made absolutely no difference. I sighed. Yep, I was definitely a lost cause.

I tried to go back to packing, but now I was caught up in thinking about what people would think of a girl with a bird's nest for hair. Maybe I could run out now and buy some special shampoo to fix my dilemma. Then I could straighten it in the morning, or pull it back in a ponytail. If all else fails, I could just wear a hat, or maybe a head scarf. Now my head was spinning. I needed some air.

I snuck downstairs, not wanting my parents to hear me, and out into the dark backyard. I plunked myself onto my swing and gently rocked back and forth. We had an awesome backyard. It was very big; instead of a fence and another house behind us, our property melted into the wilderness. Most of it was open fields of grass dotted with patches of flowers. There were tons of trees just like the huge oak that my swing hung from. At night, the yard was dimly lit by streams of light from the porch and the windows of the house. I loved it out there; it was always so peaceful. I thought a lot on that swing, and that night I was thinking about how I was going to have to leave my home tomorrow, and travel to a completely strange new world: college.

I could just do my classes at home. By myself, at home, with no distractions. Sadly, when I tried to sell this idea to my parents, it was shot down instantly. "What?! No!" they'd exclaimed. "You won't get the full experience that way! Besides, we tried so hard to make sure we could get you into the best school possible. It'll be fun! You'll see."

So, I was going. I sighed, dreading the morning. I had good reasons why I didn't want to go to college. It's not that I didn't want to do the extra work; on the contrary, I couldn't wait to start my classes. I was majoring in creative writing, since my dream was to become a novelist. My problems didn't lie in my courses; they were in my classmates.

I'd never had any real friends. Ever since I was in elementary school, kids have teased me for being smart, for asking too many questions, for not being pretty, and for being clumsy. By the time I was a junior in high school, I'd found a solution: don't talk to anyone unless I have to, and throw myself entirely into my work. The result of this? Straight A's, a scholarship to Syrim, and not one signature in my yearbook.

I didn't want to go to college because I didn't want the whispers, the smirks, and the cold and unfriendly stares to continue for the next four years. I didn't think I'd be able to handle it.

I'd considered the fact that no one would know me at Syrim. I could become a whole new person. But I didn't have enough confidence or enough talent as an actress to do that. I didn't know how I was going to survive the next four years.

I took a deep breath, and tried to forget about it all. I focused on my surroundings: the tall oak trees, the full moon, the silvery grass, the white rabbit wearing a waistcoat.... Wait, what?

Rabbits don't wear waistcoats. Humans don't even wear waistcoats anymore. Mom had always scolded me for being too curious, but if you saw a pure white rabbit hopping across your yard wearing a waistcoat and carrying a pocket watch, what would you do? You would follow it. So, that's what I did.

Maybe it's my imagination, I thought as I was running after the rabbit. But I soon realized that it wasn't, because I kept seeing him.

We raced through the darkness, off of our property and into the wilderness. I kept chasing him until he ducked into a rabbit hole. I should have given up there. I should have said, "Well, that's that." and gone back inside to pack for college. But I didn't. I was not letting that rabbit get away. I had to find out why on Earth he was wearing a waistcoat.

The rabbit hole was huge, so big that I could easily fit into it. I leaned over it, trying to see if I could see anything. I kept leaning and leaning, and before I knew it, I was falling.