“Suns? Where’s this place? Who are you two?”
“Easy Lola, we took you out of the water. You shouldn’t have shown up today, Nefarious isn’t at the kingdom now.” The boy tried to calm me down.
“How do you know my name? And why are you dressed like that? Okay, okay, someone help me please, I’m not feeling good.” They looked to each other and the girl started laughing.
“You see, Zyba! I told you this green vest was outdated.”
I shut my eyes hard, I had to wake up from this crazy dream, but it didn’t seem to work. Just a few minutes ago I was in my room, how was this even possible? I never hallucinated before, not even when I was in the hospital.
“Please, calm down, we’re not jackals. By the way, you’re very famous here… well, I’m Zybagron Frey, but everybody calls me by Zyba. She is Dakota. You are in the Lumen’s Kingdom, at the fourth dimension, you know?”
“No, I don’t know! I want to go home. Wake up, Wake up, Wake up,” I repeated whispering, giving some slaps to my own head.
“Well Zyba, we can’t help her if Nefarious is not here. Listen Lola, it is better if you go back home, come back when Nefarious is around, he will explain all this to you. Now, come on, jump in the water…”
“What? No, you go!”
I barely obey my mom telling me what to do, you can imagine anything coming from a weird girl that I just met. Now that I had stopped shivering, this crazy one tells me to jump in the water again.
“Don’t you want to go home? People say you only get wet on the first trip, after some time you get the hang of it. I think it is better you get going.”
I must be out of my mind I thought. I was at an unknown place, talking to two strangers and one of them is telling me to jump in the water because it was the way home, and I wasn’t going to get wet, Oh Lord! This had to be my aunt’s doing, this necklace’s stone must be radioactive. Or, thinking it over, they could have drugged me at dinner, maybe they put something in my drink. It could have been Mats. He was the one who made the punch, baptized with vodka. I always thought he was a stoner.
If this really was a dream, this smug girl must be my subconscious telling me to wake up. Well! I decided to obey her. Before I could get my distance and jump, I gave a last look around. In spite of the fact that I felt crazy, I could feel a warmth in my heart, as if it wasn’t my first time there. Maybe this was a familiar landscape. Maybe I had seen it in a book? Or in some painting in a museum? Maybe it was better to think about this at home, my quota of craziness was over for today. I put myself in place, held my breath and jumped into the creek.
I dove in standing upright, the cold water felt like needles on my skin. I sank like an anchor, and got pushed by the strong water flow in the direction of the up cascade. I felt like I was going out of my senses, everything went dark. I shut down again.
I couldn’t move, and I didn’t feel the water sticking to my body anymore, I didn’t hear water sounds either, all went away from nothing. When I opened my eyes, I was back in my room.
I woke up as if I was coming back from a faint, lying on my bed, my room was lit by the night light and the rain (now coming down gently) was wetting my window edge. Again a horrible buzz hammered into my brain for two seconds. I looked over to the clock, it was still 11:35 p.m. My mirror wasn’t broken, everything was put into place as before the lightening. My body felt like I had just run a marathon, my right leg started to ache again and a lot worse. I couldn’t think, or keep my eyes open from sleep, tiredness. On the next day I would have a very serious conversation, first with Auntie Eva. This necklace must be some hallucinogenic, how could she have done this to me? She knows I’m old-fashioned, I don’t do this type of thing. She told me so many times she was going to help me to understand what was happening to my family, (the weird behavior of my parents, my birthday, and why my father had blue eyes), instead she gave me a “good night Cinderella” in the shape of a pendant. Crap of a help.
I was going to get my answers, leaving school and going directly to Kaleidoscope to clear this all up. But not that night, it was late, and I was exhausted. I couldn’t go this early either, it was the review for the geography test. But if it wasn’t her, it could have been Mats. If so, I was going to talk to my father. This boy will regret making this trick. My father wasn’t normally lovable at all, no one wants to imagine him angry.
I ripped off the necklace which still had some sparkle of light from my neck and threw it to the wall. It ended up falling close to my wardrobe, finally off from me. That purple light must have been my imagination. It was too much emotion for one night. I didn’t have strength left to change clothes. I slept as I was, falling into a deep sleep.
I woke up the next morning with the light of a cloudy day. I was in my bed, with no new nightmares during the night, I felt better. The hallucinations must happen only when I have the necklace on. When I tried to see the hours on the clock, I almost fell off the bed. It was past 7:00 am, and I was supposed to be at school around 7:30 for the test review. I took my pill for the thrombosis without any water while I put on my uniform, wrinkled as it was. I didn’t even brush my teeth and went running downstairs while I tried, with no success, to fix my bangs. I needed some coffee at least, maybe I could still get there for the first part of the review. When I entered the kitchen, I saw that my father had already left for work, Rodrigo was there being watched by Koda and my mom’s back was to me, making breakfast. I poured coffee from the hot pot into a mug to be able to take it with me, gave Rodrigo a kiss and got closer to my mom at the sink for some sugar…
“Ahhh!!!” she screamed. And there it goes, one more mug shattered on the floor. Any other time she would have charged me for a new set of mugs, especially as it was my fault that the second had broken. But, instead, she looked at me like I was haunted. Something had happened.
“What?! Good Morning to you, too,” I reacted, frowning my forehead.
That day’s menu was sips of adrenaline, not coffee. Great first meal! I brought my hands to my face. By her scream, I figured I must be deformed, or maybe I suffered a stroke in the night. I ran to the mirror, standing in the hallway with shaking legs, I needed to see the damage myself. I closed my eyes to get courage and then opened one after the other. My mouth was in place, freckles too, parted bangs, but my eyes. Yes, they were in the same place. No, I didn’t go cockeyed, but I could barely believe what I was seeing. My right eye had this purple iris, a vivid and frightening color. Even a myopic person could tell the difference from one color to the other from a block away. Right there, I remembered the possibility of it being a drug effect from that cursed necklace. I tried to go around my mom.
“Mom, you know what? I must have eaten something that didn’t do me well, it was rotten food, that’s all…it could be. Or thinking it over, it must be allergies, of course! I’m taking a pill every day. I’ve been noticing my eye itching since I started. See, it just started itching again,” I rubbed my eye, shaking like some little thief caught in the act for the first time.
It could be true, or how could I say, ‘Mom, last night I fainted and woke up somewhere else where the water ran to the wrong side, with two strangers saying I was famous at the fourth dimension!’ She would hospitalize me that same day, besides beating me up before that, trying to bring me back to reality.