Sleeping

Chapter One

 I'm waking up, I feel it in my bones

Enough to make my systems blow

Welcome to the new age, to the new age

Welcome to the new age, to the new age

~Imagine Dragons, Radioactive

In the beginning…

        It was so dark. It had been so dark for so, so long. I dreamed, sometimes, about family and friends. My boyfriend, Owen, kissing me. Watching myself smiling with my friends, specifically my best friend May. Hearing my friends calling my name, “Snow! Snow! Come on Snow! It’s almost 2014! It’s almost midnight!” on New Year’s Eve, when I had my first real kiss. My real name isn’t actually Snow—it’s June. May and I had always thought if only we could meet an April…I had always been as white as snow, all pale blonde hair and fair skin and white eyes. Not gray, white. Or so I think. I don’t know. I think I’m human.

        For all I know, I am everything that has ever existed, is existing, and will ever exist. For all I know, I am everything. Or nothing. That thought has touched upon my mind before. I could be a fleck of dust, or a grain of sand. All of the memories I have could be fake, fabricated out of my own imagination. I could have spent billions of years creating this world, these people, and then one day told myself they were real and I had been lying to myself for just so long, I believed it. Simple as that.

        I can never feel my limbs. I try to move, but I never can. I never get itchy or hungry or thirsty. I never get hot or cold. I’m never scared or sad or happy. All I feel is just this blank nothingness where my feelings once were. 

        I don’t remember why or how I got to this dark place. I could be dreaming. Or not.

       I miss physical contact so much. I miss wearing fuzzy sweaters. I miss wearing shorts. I miss May’s bare tank top clothed shoulders rubbing against mine as we sat on my bed in south Cali, gossiping. I miss running my fingers through my hair and brushing and styling it. I miss it, I miss it, I miss it. Isn’t that the phrase of my life?

       Sometimes I think maybe, just maybe, I’ll wake up. I’ll wake up, and go downstairs and have breakfast with my mom. I’ll tell her all about my weird dream where everything is black and I didn’t know whether I was human or not. I’ll go to school and stop and get Starbucks iced coffee with May afterwards in a futile attempt to stave off the mid-May heat. 

        We’ll worry about boys and drama and final exams and our final report card coming up in less than a month. We’ll talk about our summer plans and May will pressure me to tell her what I want for my birthday again, as I did to her not too long ago.

         Or not. Or I could stay here for a billion more years or eternity or however long I’m in this terrible hibernation…

     Light. I hadn’t seen light in so long I had forgotten what it truly looked like. The beautiful, pureness of it. Beautiful, beautiful, light. So when I see light cutting through thick darkness that has encased me for so long, I could scream. Whether with happiness or fear or excitement, I don’t know. All I know is that I was feeling so many emotions on all ends of the spectrum: amazement, joy, fear, surprise. I don’t even care why there was light, only that there was.

        “Hello? Hello? Miss? Miss, can you hear me?” People. Actual honest-to-God people. I just…laid there in shock. I could now see that I was in a metal box that was rectangular in shape lying down. My clothes were the same ratty pajamas that I had slept in the night I didn’t wake up.

         I tried to say, “I can hear you! I can hear you!” but all that came out was a choking sound. At least they now knew I was alive. I was able to nod a little bit but I was so stiff pain shot through my whole body. I tried to sit up, but that too, hurt too much to really accomplish. I felt a small prick in my right arm and looked over to see a needle sticking out of my arm and a man pressing down on the plunger. Then I was back to being hidden in the darkness…

         When I woke, I immediately opened my eyes. Wait. I opened my eyes. I had eyes to open. I blinked. Once, twice, three times. Yes, I could open my eyes. I looked around, tilting and moving my head, which was somehow no longer stiff. I was in a—white?—hospital room wearing a thin paper gown. There was a beeping, and I looked and my left wrist was connected to a heart monitor. The room had a round camera in the center of the ceiling but other than that and my bed, the room was bare. There were rectangular lights embedded into the ceiling. No windows.

         I felt a knot in my stomach, but I had trouble placing it. After a minute or two of thought, the word hunger popped into my head. Yes, I was hungry.

          “Food.” I tried to say. Crap. My vocal chords must still not be working right. I tried again. I could make out the ‘ood’. Just need the ‘foo’ sound. “Food.” I choked. My throat was sore and dry and scratched. At least I had finally said something. Ok, maybe it sounded like I was gargling nails while I said it, but still, I said something.

         Just then, part of the wall slid open and through it came an older woman with…red hair? Yes, her hair was the color red. She wore a white lab coat and business-type clothes. Her shirt was blue. I think that’s what blue looks like. She started walking over to me.

        “Hello.” She had a warm smile on her face. The kind that made you feel like you can trust her with your deepest darkest secrets. “My name is Dr. Viola Summers, but you can call me Viola or even Vi.” She paused, probably to let me soak everything in. Yeah good luck with that. “How are you feeling?” she continued and sat at the end of my bed. Wait. Am I getting a sense of humor again?

       I tried to say something, but all that came out was a rasping wheeze. In the end, I just shrugged.

         “I was told you might not be able to talk,” she pulled out a pad of paper and a pen. “so I brought you these.” She handed the stationery to me. With a shaking hand, I reached out and grabbed them. I wrote ‘I’ve felt better.’

       She nodded solemnly and wrote something down on some kind of clear tablet that was on a pedestal I hadn’t noticed before. Probably my answer. “How old are you?” the smile returned. '13 I scrawled. Again, nod, write, smile, ask. We continued in this vein for a while. 

        Viola: What’s your name?

        Me: June Blanc but everyone calls me Snow.

        Viola: Very pretty. Where were you born?

        Me: LA.

        Viola: Where do you live now?

        Me: L.A.

        Viola: When is your birthday?

        Me: June twenty-third

        Finally, she hit a sore spot and she knew it.

       “How did you get where we found you?” she asked cautiously. ‘I don’t know.’ I wrote. She nodded, wrote. 

        “Enough questions for now. I imagine you’re rather hungry, no?” I nodded quickly and pursed my lips. “I’ll see what I can do.” She smiled at me again. I tugged at the sleeve of her lab coat as she stood to leave. “Yes?” she asked. ‘fruit’ I penned and below that I wrote 'where am I?' then ‘what’s the date?’  She smiled at me and started walking away. “Again, I’ll see what I can do. Youu\ are in an underground government facility." That explained the no windows. "And the date is March seventeenth, 2383.”

          Then the darkness took me again…