Chapter One: Callie

So, I finally decided to continue the story. This is written from a different point of view than the prologue.

A door slammed downstairs and I jumped, shoving the journal under my pillow. "I'm home." someone called. I heard feet make their way up the stairs and the door to my room opened. Dad stuck his head inside and I let out an inaudible sigh of relief.

 

"Hey Callie." He said, grinning. "What are you doing?"

 

"Homework." I lied, not offering any more details.

 

My dad, used to short, one-word answers, only shrugged. "I'm making dinner in about half an hour, any requests?"

 

"No." I shifted, trying to cover the lump in my pillow made by the journal. If my dad noticed, he didn't say anything. I watched him leave, waiting for the door to close with a decisive click before I stuck a hand under my pillow. I let out a sigh of relief; thank goodness he hadn't seen it. Slowly, cautiously, I pulled the little book out of its hiding place. My thumb stroked the bold, thick lettering on the cover. I could picture her carefully printing the word, her brow creased in concentration, naming the journal with one simple word, Why.

 

"She left no note." they had told me.

 

That was wrong, she had left a note of sorts. She had left one. The note, siting on top of her journal, had contained her last wish. I could hear her voice in my mind as I read her last words, printed in bold, black ink. "Don't tell anyone." In my head, it was a whispered plea.

 

Slowly, carefully, not wanting to damage the precious object, I opened it to the first page. There, in her elegant, perfect handwriting was a quote. I read it silently to myself, absorbing every word. "Not pretty enough. Not skinny enough. Not good enough. Not smart enough. Not talented enough. Not enough." I ran a finger over those words; I could feel the pain and anguish that went in to writing each one. What killed me most was that she truly believed it.

 

"That's not true." I whispered to the silent air. "That's not true at all."

 

I turned the page again, breathing in the soft melon scent that clung to the pages, the same scent that she always put in her hair. This one was covered in small, cramped writing, as if the words were fighting each other for enough space on the page.

 

"Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be a different person, wake up in a different bed in a different room with a different family. Where would I live? Would I like different things? Would my personality be different? Would my experiences be different? But then, I already am a different person, well...sort of. My two personalities almost contradict each other. I have the side I show everyone, calm, studious, compassionate, always there. Then I have my true self, cynical, sad, withdrawn, pessimistic, depressed, afraid. It is almost as if I am a different person around others. Not totally different, just the girl I used to be before I left Wonderland and stepped out into the real world. A world where there are tough problems. A world where there are sometimes no solutions. A world where there can be two wrongs and no right. Sometimes I wish I were still back in Wonderland. "

 

I let out a sigh as memories flooded over me. She had always liked Alice in Wonderland. In fact, she had a borderline obsession with it. Her walls were decorated with posters of Alice and the White Rabbit. The Cheshire cat’s grinning face smiled down from a hanging that dangled over her bed.  She had quotes painted in curly elegant script across her walls. She owned almost every edition of the book ever released. I smiled just thinking of it. It was in moments like these that I would almost forget that she was dead, that she was gone, that she was never coming back. But I could only forget for a second, all too soon a tide of grief would rush to fill me again, just like the waves in the ocean rushed over her. I could never escape for too long. But, all the same, I still tried. I ran my fingers through my hair and turned my attention back to the page in front of me.

 

“One of my favorite saying is “Begin at the beginning, and go on ‘til you come to the end; then stop,” so I suppose I will.” She had written.

 

I couldn’t help but smile, in less than half a page she had already put in two Alice in Wonderland references. Yep, she was that obsessed.

 

“It was my nature, and still is, to try to take everyone else’s pain, to try to carry a part of it for them. I can’t carry the world on my shoulders. I tried, I tried so hard, but it crushed me.  It crushed the sweet innocent girl that was there and left behind me. I have been exposed to life to an extent that even my parents don’t know about. The racy and dirty comments, the swearing, the fighting. They don’t know. They don’t know what I’ve read, the dark, hopeless material. My mother would be appalled if she knew that I had read Go Ask Alice or books like it. My parents don’t know about the depression tests I’ve taken, the long ones. The ones that take hours to complete, that have hundreds of questions. They don’t know how, on every one I take, I am diagnosed with moderate to severe depression. I hope that they never need to. For now (and hopefully forever), this part of me is hidden from almost everyone. The only people who know the true me are those I’ve met online. They read my writing, the fear, the cutting, the sadness. They know that I don’t live in Wonderland any more. I almost like it that way, with the not knowing. It means that people don’t treat me differently. I don’t want everyone asking me if I’m doing okay all the time. I don’t want fake friends who only want to talk to me because they feel sorry for me. I don’t want that.

 

But…honestly, I’m confused. I want to be that happy, carefree girl again. I want to, but I don’t know if I can change back. I don’t want to lie awake in bed at night, haunted by memories of what I’ve done wrong. Of how, if I had done this or that, the situation wouldn’t have happened. Every misstep I’ve ever taken, I kick myself over, again and again and again. I’m always doing something stupid, in my mind, humiliating myself. I’m confused and conflicted about how I feel about anything, my two sides warring with each other.  One day, one will swallow the other. I can only hope it isn’t the person I really am now.

As Alice would say, “I can’t go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.” I’m afraid that the same is true of myself.”

Author's Note

What do you think? Is there anything I should change/improve? Should I continue this?

Reviews

[Anna]

I really enjoyed reading this!

[Isabelle Faye]

Thank you.

[Ama May Cooper]

Another fabolous addition. It reads a little empty at first but your poetic language returns with a magnificant revenge. I hope there is a depection of this wonderland somewhere else in your story. I do hope you havent given up with this, i am eagerly waiting teh next bit