Chapter 1 - Abigail

Thrown out of one nightmare, and dragged into another, Abigail is greeted by an all consuming mystery on her first day of middle school.

1. - Abigail

            Any hope of reaching her destination fell to earth like a commercial airliner that overshot its runway. Prepare for water landing. Brace for impact. Just like all the times before. She’d drown out the screams and prayers of fellow passengers. She’d stretch seconds out to hours, to days, to delay that sudden and imminent drop into an ever-turbulent ocean of dreams. Her plight had become routine now. Every single attempt, she was no closer to setting foot upon the land she could only imagine neither doubt nor question of her true citizenship would ever be raised. Despite her irritation towards her impending fate, there was always the consolation that after this particular crash she’d simply fall asleep and try again. Regardless, her current situation had become habitually annoying. Her true home: perpetually unattainable.

It wasn’t entirely her fault. She was never the one flying the metaphorical plane. Of course that made her situation evermore unfair. It was her mind after all. What sense did it make that she was always being taken on a ride rather than the one at the wheel? The joystick? Whatever steers an airplane; she’d never even actually even flown before.

Ten seconds to impact. Sound shifted frequencies from a cacophony of screaming passengers into a singular voice. A woman’s voice; half panicked and half motherly in the annunciation of the name spoken, “Abigail?”

Three distinct syllables echoed throughout the cabin. Then the gravity dropped out. Her body shot up out of her seat slamming into the overhead compartment. She’d ignored the fasten seatbelt sign. She ignored the pain. Why listen to a pilot who could never land a plane? F**k you and your little orange seatbelt light. A moment of weightlessness was the door prize for never arriving at her destination.

Three.

Chances are she would’ve probably lost her luggage.

Two.

Had she even checked any baggage this time?

One.

She could never remember packing.

Impact!

---

            Abigail chewed her toasted-breakfast-pastry with distain. Her left hand nursed the bruised shoulder that broke her fall from the bed to the floor. Her right hand absentmindedly held the pastry aloft within biting range of her mouth.

            Her mother, a woman of some importance at a local software company dashed from kitchen to living room and back again, “Is there anything else you need for school today, Abby?” The distance to traverse their condo wasn’t great, and its perpetual state of disrepair made it less so. Still, her mother made a show of just how busy a person could appear.

            Abigail let her long dark hair fall like a shroud over her face, “Maybe a haircut?” That particular ‘maybe’ suffered months of procrastination. Sure, she could cut it to a length that didn’t require her to shift it out of her face every four seconds. She could even dye it, or crimp it, or curl it, or even shave it all off. More likely, she’d pull back the thin strands of dead protein into the same ponytail she’d worn since second-grade. Junior High wasn’t the image-defining era of one’s life anyway; why bother with the extra effort?

            Her mother had gathered the last of her papers into the cracked leather satchel that had once belonged to her grandmother. One day it would belong to Abby. Until then, her black Eastpak Backpack would suffice. In fact, that bag had more than held its weight in utility on many an adventure; comfortable enough for the mile walk from school to home, plenty of hidden pockets, and straps secure enough to survive the climb and decent out of her bedroom window on nights that required moonlit exploration.

            Standing impatiently by the door her mother breathless encouraged, “We’ll swing by the salon after school, okay?” Abby nodded taking the last leisurely bite of her pastry. Her mother commanded with irritated urgency, “Abigail Rose Moorcroft, car, now!”

---

            Abby’s reflection frowned back at her from the passenger window. In just a few short minutes her tolerance for extroverted interaction would be tested and ultimately exhausted. Junior High was nothing new. It was a public learning environment that cultivated little if any knowledge that Abby couldn’t farm herself from the local library. In response to Abby’s contempt toward public school, her mother’s opening counter argument typically consisted of, “Learning how to manage relationships is just as important as memorizing facts and figures.”

            The relationship argument mostly, if not always, rang hollow with Abby. Initial empathy towards her mother was obligatory, sure. However, Abby knew her brokenness wasn’t the same her mother experienced. She couldn’t quantify the depth and damage between a father shaped hole and a husband shaped hole. It did however stand to reason that if her mom attended a public school, and her dad also, then what are the odds that public school had anything beneficial to teach about relationships given the outcome?

            Abby and her mom waited in their red Toyota Camry at the last of the traffic lights before pulling into the student drop off lane. To distract herself from past memories and pain knocking on her conscious mind, Abby mindlessly checked the contents of her backpack. Panic came in waves. Where did she leave her binder: at home, her locker? If it was the former, Abby could fake her way through the reading assignment. She’d read ‘The Martian Chronicles’ over summer. She memorized it. She had fallen in love with it. If there were an open seat on a shuttle to mars taking off right now, she would be on that ride. Instead, her mom turned right at the corner and into the school parking lot.

            Leaping out of the car, Abby half heard her mother yell something out the window. In response, Abby half turned and waved feigning acknowledgement. She plodded through the thick, neglected grass of the baseball field towards her classroom. Head down. Fists clenched. Arms folded across her chest. Abby’s defenses were up screaming a clear warning she wasn’t in the mood for saying anything at all to anyone. She needed to concentrate. As children swarmed the field like bees from a broken hive, Abby constructed an improvised book report. Afterwards, she’d mentally construct a way to escape from planet Earth.

            Books had always been her great escape, and book reports weren’t considered a terrible chore for Abby. Unfortunately, hope of recovering the report she’d already written waned as she vaguely recalled the binder’s placement on her desk at home. Still, a slim hope was always worth investigating. In the corner of a wing of identical cobalt lockers directly across from her homeroom, Abby turned the padlock left, right, and left again to trigger a satisfying click. No sign of the book report. Instead, there was something infinitely more interesting inside Abby’s locker.

            It was a mystery.

           

Printed upon a piece of photocopy paper were symbols both recognizable and temporarily incomprehensible. When Abby’s grandfather was still alive he loved puzzles; they’d line the walls of his den like diplomas. ‘No matter the size of the puzzle, or number of pieces, the rules are always the same:’ Grandpa Moorcroft’s credo. ‘First, breathe in the big picture: abstract or not, familiarize yourself with the whole scene: the end game. Second, start with the edges and work your way in.’

            Even after the first bell screamed, Abby was unmoved. Her eyes were transfixed on the mystery at hand. Like all the other puzzles she had helped her grandfather solve, this paper’s secrets would not elude Abby for long.

She breathed in the big picture: a mess of seemingly random shapes and foreign languages. Next, Abby started spiraling inward starting with six penny-sized spheres orbiting a larger circle. Within the large disc was something that looked like a teeter-totter, or perhaps a scale? On the left side were silhouettes of a naked man and woman holding hands. On the right side of the scale balancing out the left, were another six small spheres piled evenly on top of one another like a pyramid.

At the bottom of the scale was a picture of what appeared to be a key. Below the key was what Abby could only guess may have been planets. They weren’t her planets. There was a crude drawing of a sun at the center of only four elliptical orbits; the first belonged to a spec, and the last belonged to something nearly as large as the sun. The third track had an average dime sized circle, but it was the second one that was crowned with an arrow above which a smaller naked man and woman stood waving.

There was a gentle tap on Abby’s shoulder. She almost ripped the paper in half in alarm. She spun on her heels and breathlessly confronted the only classmate that lent any saving grace to humanity. Collette was a rail thin exchange student whose command of our language was better than most English speakers without compromising her own native accent. With a snap of her fingers Collette sang, “We’re going to be late for class, my Abigail. Let’s hurry, please.”

Abby nodded and allowed herself to be towed along to homeroom by the boney fingers clasping her wrist. As they dashed towards their class, Collette inquired in her singsong cadence, “Day dreaming of space again?”

Shoving the mystery paper into her back pocket, Abby replied wearily, “That was Wednesday. Last night was the one with the plane crash, again.”

Collette sighed, “Dear sister, if only an escape were so easy. You know the boys of this world would gladly send those like you and me on the first ship off to the heavens, no? But, we’re needed here. If those like you and I were to leave, this world would collapse under the weight of their stupidity.”

Abby smirked, “What would you care if you had a chance to leave?”

Collette lifted her nose in the air and with an exaggerated huff, “Of course I’d care.” Looking down the slope of her nose, Collette’s emerald eyes met Abby’s dirty blue iris as she added, “This is our world. We just let the boys think they own it.”

---

            Abby’s teachers were static between channels of a broken radio. No transmission received. It was the Mystery Paper that held Abby’s singular focus. Apart from the basic symbols, there were markings all across the page like the aftermath of a class-five-hurricane bowling through every possible eastern language. Abby’s pride wasn’t as lofty as to think she could decipher Japanese or Korean over Labor Day weekend. Most likely the language on the page was neither. Still, she had to be sure.

            With Professor Richardson’s attention on the white board, Abby summoned the courage to tap on the desk beside her. Kaito, like forty percent of the population in Irvine was Asian. Abby would gamble on Japanese. Regardless of his specific ethnicity, she needed help with the foreign cipher.

            Abby tapped again and whispered, “Kaito?”

            The boy glanced at Abby. He said nothing.

            With another gentle tap, Abby squeaked out, “Can you read this?” She timidly passed the paper to Kaito. The boy shifted in his seat as if withdrawing from an offer to examine his own death certificate. Abby tried again, a little more forceful, “Please, tell me if you can read this.”

            Shaking his head, and with no regard for volume control, Kaito rebuked, “Stop, that’s not my language!”

            Mr. Richardson spun around, eyes locked on Abby, “Ms. Moorcroft, are we actually passing paper love notes in class? Don’t you kids usually text?”

            Abby sank in her seat as the whole class’s attention descended upon the now bright red glowing girl, “I wasn’t passing notes. I just needed help… w-with an assignment.”

            Mr. Richardson had already traversed the room before Abby could sufficiently hide the paper. He motioned for the girl to relinquish her prized mystery. Begrudgingly, Abby complied and slid the paper forward. Mr. Richardson snatched up the document and scanned its contents. He sighed, “Oh, another one of these,” addressing the class as if reading from a teleprompter, “Alright students, if any more of you come across these lewd drawings, please give it to either a teacher or the principal, okay? We know about what happened to your lockers, and we’re doing everything we can to find the responsible party.” Mr. Richardson’s attention came back to Abby; “There’s no need to start pointing fingers at your fellow students over who put trash in your locker, understood?”

            Abby nodded despite her complete lack of understanding. There were now more clues to decrypt in an ever expanding picture. Exactly how many people received the Mystery Paper? How is everyone not talking about this?

Maybe because Abby never talked to anyone, and they never spoke to her?

Hang everyone else. Why didn’t Collette say anything?

Of course, Collette was not a girl who longed for an escape. It was Abby who felt the fault lines of her small world shift and split. The writing was on the wall. There was no use buying into the idea that everything would be fine staying with her mom. One could only pretend their child wasn’t a burden until payday rolled around. It was only a matter of time before Abby and her mother’s gradual drift apart turned into a catastrophic geological event.

Fortunately for Abby, in the space of only a few hours, she’d acquired a mystery. Not only a mystery, an exit from her present reality. An exit that had grown larger than a single page of photocopy paper, a mere crawlspace, to a gateway one could almost walk through. Not that she’d walk. Abby would run toward a mystery that offered if not a physical retreat from her home, at the absolute least a mental escape. That would be enough. Part of her would be better off elsewhere. Someday, perhaps she could fully disappear if the mystery were large enough. Over the remaining three periods, Abby wondered what sized mystery she’d be drawn into if she could survive until the end of the day?