December 18
Brittany woke up with a feeling of regret. A feeling that she was leaving someplace. Someplace good. A place where she had been happy. She reached for it with her mind. She couldn’t find it. Couldn’t find the dream of the happy place where she had been so comfortable. It might have smelled like baking cinnamon rolls, she thought. It might have been a street. A street with a book shop, and an ice-cream parlor. An old-fashioned sort of street. It might have been, but she wasn’t sure. It was gone now.
She would have to accept the here and now. She stretched her right leg as far as she could towards the foot of her bed, and her right arm as far as she could behind her head, except that she had to stretch her arm at an angle so that it didn’t hit the wall. Then she breathed deeply. She relaxed her right side while she stretched her left side. Then she blinked, and blinked again, and threw back her quilt to jump out of bed and meet Wednesday.
* * *
I jumped into his pathetic, messed up life, as if it was the adventure I had been looking for. There were walks on the beach, and in the forest. Pizza by candlelight. And his friends. They seemed so funny. Always laughing. Always outrageous. Ready for anything. They didn’t sit around being deep and serious. They drove on winding mountain roads in old pick-up trucks. They could laugh. I didn’t know they were serious when they talked about how they got their money, or what they did with it. And his kids were cute, and sweet, and they needed so much. Cute little girls, with cute little dresses. I didn’t know what I had left behind.
* * *
Pete was being followed. He darted into a glass door, and found himself inside a tunnel made of glass and chrome. Behind the glass he saw shops – a magazine shop, a computer shop.
What was he doing here?
Was that man following him? That man with the cell phone?
He hurried through the crowd. Way too many people were wearing neon pink, and green, and orange. He saw his old teacher – his eighth grade social studies teacher. She could help.
But she was gone.
He continued against the crowd. Why was everyone else going the other way? He boarded an escalator, and turned to see a dark-haired man behind him, wearing a suit, and talking to a cell phone. The man was watching him. When the escalator dumped him out onto the next level, he was looking into the window of a jewelry store. There was another man, this one in a white shirt – watching.
Pete made a u-turn and jumped onto the next escalator. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw that this man had a cell phone too.
Pete broke into a run, up the escalator, but not through passive, stationary pedestrians. No one stands still on an escalator in Hong Kong, passively waiting for the mechanical stairs to deliver them to their destination. They walk on the escalators, and on the moving walkways. Steadily. Purposefully. In charge of their destinies. Everyone here was driven, and most of the men wore neckties. Pete ran through steady, purposeful currents of business suits and neon.
He was a water skimmer, from the kingdom Animalia, the phylum Arthropoda, class Insecta, family of true bugs, from the order of – he didn’t know what order. He should know the order! Would it be on the test? His long needle-like legs barely touched the steps as he jumped – two stairs – four stairs – six stairs. Flowing with the current, but faster. And he was off. Down the corridor of marble and glass.
But he wasn’t skimming on the surface of the water. The points of his feet were not lightly tapping the heads of the crowd. He wasn’t above the current. He was in the current. Part of the current. Drowning amongst the current of people – his thorax becoming waterlogged. He kept moving. The current dragged at him.
Pete was on a glass-walled bridge, looking down at the street below.
More men looked up. Men with cell phones. Looking at him. He ran.
He was in a shop.
The salesgirl was looking at him. He was sweating, out of breath. He must look a wreck. Of course she was looking at him.
She picked up her cell phone.
He ran.
He ran past a store of televisions. His running picture was displayed on every screen. Not Pete as he was running right now, down the mall by the television store. Pete running up the escalator, Pete on the glass bridge. Running. Running.
He woke up with a start. He was covered with sweat, but he wasn’t running. He was lying in bed. He had to get up. It was morning. French and biology exams today.
* * *
And then, when I woke up and got myself out of that mess, I was too tired for adventure. I found an old man who needed taking care of, and I moved in. Because my parents didn’t want me back. Or maybe I didn’t want them. I had spent my life trying to get out of the suburbs. I couldn’t fit myself back there, into that narrow space with my mother telling me what to do, and how my hair isn’t scrumptious enough, and why can’t I act my age and wear high heals and drink instant coffee.
* * *
Jennifer pulled on her jeans, and her favorite purple t-shirt – the one with the v-neck, and the ruching in a straight line down the front. She hated it that she had to go to school. Her father still wasn’t home, and if he didn’t get here soon she would have to wait until finals were over before they went in to argue about her grades. She had wanted to have the conference before finals, so that he could convince them that she couldn’t possibly take them. That she was too distraught over what the school was doing to her friends. First Luci had been kicked out, and now Dillon had gone back to the States, and who knows where Lars was. She shouldn’t be expected to concentrate on finals when she was in this state.
In the bathroom, she drew fashionably dark lines around her eyes, pulling down on the lower eyelid, so that she could get the liner above the lower lashes.
She didn’t know what she was doing in school. Her religion final yesterday had been a joke. She didn’t know the difference between Zen and Tao and Shinto. Why should she? Why should anybody?
Leaning very close to the mirror, she applied a layer of mascara, making sure to coat every eyelash, even the little ones at the corner of her eye. Then she ran the brush sideways, over the tips of the lashes so that not a hair was left naked. She hated the way it didn’t “lift and separate” like the ads said it would. Instead it clumped and glued. But at least it made her eyes look bigger. It transformed her – like a mask. It kept people from seeing her real face.
And the spreadsheet final? She had hated that too. One question. One scenario. One set of data to enter. And she didn’t know how to set up the spreadsheet to solve the problem. She had just sat there, like a retard, and the teacher hadn’t let her go to the bathroom. Who would have thought it would be that boring to sit in a classroom for an hour and a half doing nothing. Not doodling. Not writing notes to her friends. Just sitting. Staring at a screen that did nothing. Because she knew nothing.
She needed her friends back. Ilo was worthless. Luci was gone; Dillon was gone. Abby and Sam were always together, and they were seniors anyway. They didn’t have time for her. She knew lots of people, but she didn’t have any real friends – not now that Luci and Dillon were gone. No one she could comfortably invite to her empty apartment. No one to help fill the space. She didn’t know why she was bothering to go to school today. She didn’t know any more about biology than she knew about spreadsheets. Not the kind of biology she was going to find on a test. She wasn’t smart enough for a foreign language, so she took a study skills class instead. They wouldn’t have a final in study skills. At least she didn’t think so. They would just talk about how to study for the English final the next day, and then they would probably give them time to study. But they wouldn’t let them leave the room, because they didn’t trust the kids in the study skills class. She didn’t need that. She didn’t need any of that. She put on her earrings – the big gold dangly ones, and she left the apartment. If she had turned to the right at the bottom of the stairs, she would have been at the bus stop where the school bus expected to pick her up. Jennifer didn’t turn right. She turned left, and hailed a taxi.
* * *
Pete and Brittany met on the bench on their way to school, where they read.
December 18
Fred, Malchisedech, Akelmeyer and Martin half-dragged, half-carried the slumbering animals down a not-too-large hole (Blitzen was a tight fit!) into a spacious, well-apportioned and tastefully furnished underground chamber. If it were not for the lack of windows, it might have been an upscale tract home in an affluent suburb. Where windows might have been, however, were plasma screen television monitors, each displaying a scene from elsewhere in the general vicinity. The screen above the sofa showed the front yard of Santa's Workshop (the monitor was labeled, and the school-like building was indeed called the Workshop). There was a monitor showing the Blindmice's log, one that showed the reindeer practice field, one for the elves' village -- it appeared these rabbits would know exactly what was going on, everywhere about the north pole.
"Fascinating," said Fred.
"Ja, these are some digs," said Martin, "for rabbits."
Just then a young rabbit popped into the hole.
"Foofoo, you were supposed to be home two hours ago. Have you been in the forest again?" asked Mrs. Rabbit.
"Aw, gee mom, like you wouldn't know -- there are monitors everywhere. Yeah, I guess I just lost track of time. I can't help it. Those field mice."
"Have you been scooping up field mice again?"
"Well, I let them go, after I bop them on the head. I don't bop them very hard."
"Foofoo, you go to your room, and don't come out until I tell you."
"Aww. Gee. Who are these dogs? What's with the sleeping reindeer?"
"Never mind. You go to your room."
"Yes, sir," said Foofoo sadly, and he hopped into another room.
"Excuse us," said Mr. Rabbit to the wiener dogs and pig. "He's quite young, you know. Er, yes, well. I suppose an introduction, and perhaps an explanation, is in order."
"You could say that," said Martin.
"Like you, we are not quite . . . from here," began Mrs. Rabbit. "We are here, unobserved, to keep things, and Christmas, running smoothly."
"As you have seen, we have run into a bit of trouble, with this Raven, this year. We cannot be seen or known by those who are . . . of this place. But, as you are outsiders as well, we can safely reveal ourselves to you. And, we have the resources you need to accomplish your, and our, mission. Christmas must go on, and time is short. Ah, yes, and we have you at a bit of a disadvantage. Fred, Malchisedech, Akelmeyer and Martin, I am Sir Edward Rabbit. This is my lovely wife, and partner, the good Lady Hollyberry Rabbit. You have met our son Foofoo.
"These woodland creatures must be out of our warren before they awaken. We are familiar with this spell of the Raven, and they will sleep for forty-eight hours. I believe that will give you enough time. Santa must overcome his grief and melancholy. He is a good man. I think you should begin with Manchester the Elf, however. You will need his help."
TO BE CONTINUED…
“I knew I liked the rabbits!” Brittany announced with satisfaction.
Pete wasn’t so sure. “It’s just like my dream.”
“You dreamed about rabbits?”
“I dreamed about being watched. About television monitors that showed pictures of me everywhere I went.”
“What was it like?” Brittany asked.
“Really scary.”
“Maybe Santa’s scared of the rabbits.” Brittany suggested.
“But the rabbits do seem OK.”
“Maybe something can be scary in one universe, and good in another?”
“Or maybe the rabbits aren’t what they seem.”
Brittany didn’t like that idea. She liked the rabbits. She liked British accents. She liked Harry Potter, and C.S. Lewis, and Jane Austin, and E. Nesbit. She wanted them to be good bunnies.
“And what’s up with little bunny Foofoo?” Pete asked.
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