Excerpt: Alice's Wonderland

Alice did not know why it was always an attic -- a dusty, dry, unfinished attic, not just a room with a slanted roof. He did not know why there were always masks -- plastic, porcelain, wood or paper plate. He did not know why there was nothing else.

He was holding the sad-faced mask at arm’s length. This time it was porcelain and chalky white. The mouth was gruesome, garish red and detailed far beyond realism. The nose was just another bump on the porcelain’s rough surface and the eyes were gaping holes, except that Alice could not see the attic wall behind them. All he saw was black emptiness.

“Good evening, Mr. Orlean,” the mask said, drawing out every syllable to the point of nonsensicality. Miss. Ter. Or. Lee. Ahn.

“Hello,” answered Alice. Over time, he had learned that short and simple answers were the best way to keep the masks from departing a linear reality entirely.

“Why?” asked the mask and, even knowing its ways as well as Alice did, it took some time for him to figure out that it meant why was Alice holding it, instead of any one of the hundred others strewn across the floor or stacked as high as the ceiling. If he had not been dreaming, and therfore, like as not, talking to himself, he did not think he would ever have figured it out on his own.

“I don’t know.”

The mask laughed a scratchy, bone-grinding laugh to match its arid voice, both so dry Alice found himself swallowing twice. For several seconds afterwards it coughed and creaked, writhing in the boy’s pale hands.

“You shouldn’t be,” it finally managed. “I’m not the one you’re looking for.”

“Who am I looking for?” The words leaped from Alice’s mouth before he could stop and remind himself that this was just the sort of question guaranteed to lose him any chance he might conceivably have had of a straight answer from the masks, but even if he had, the question came from such a deep and desperate place in his heart that he wasn’t certain he could have held it back anyway. Surprisingly, the mask just smiled.

“The next one,” it said. “Or the next one. Maybe the next one. Or the next one after that. Or the next one. Or the next one. Or the next one. You’re getting warmer.” Alice heard a crackle and a snap. The mask exploded and the burning shards landed on the piles of masks surrounding him. Within moments the room was a blazing furnace as even the masks made of nonflammable substances caught wild fire and dissolved into ash. Alice was surrounded by four walls of flame, all rapidly encroaching.

All four reached him simultaneously.

Alice screamed.

But Alice did not wake screaming. He did not even wake up warm. He woke up cold and quite peaceful to the sound of a well-running bus engine on a well-paved road. The side of his face was plastered to the window and he could see a dense forest passing in the first few rays of the morning sun. He sat up and glanced to the other side’s window. Nothing but dense forest there either, and the girl with spiked dark hair reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix upside down and sitting on the bench across from him.

Alice rubbed the stiff side of his face and glanced behind him. He was sitting in the very last row, so he had a very clear view out the back window of about twenty yards or so of road before it disappeared in a wide curve into more dense forest.

Directly in front of him sat a girl with dark auburn hair in curls halfway down her back, hunched down in her seat and furtively whispering into a cell phone. Across from her sat a boy with green tattoos all up and down his sleeveless arms, snoring loudly and sprawled halfway into the aisle. More boys and girls were sprinkled throughout the other half dozen benches and at the very front was the driver, though the only thing visible was the back of his baseball cap. In front of him was merely more road and more forest.

Alice felt beneath his seat. The touch of his battered, olive green backpack comforted him, despite the fact that he no longer remembered why. The brand-new almost shiny black duffel bag beside it held all of his expensive new clothes and new school textbooks but the backpack held all of the really important things, although again, he wasn’t sure why they were important:

A dog-eared and much-thumbed copy of Wuthering Heights. A double fist sized wooden chest, stuffed to the brim with coins, though none of them rare or expensive, or even foreign. A chewed green gel pen with no more gel. A digital watch according to which it was always just before midnight -- it counted from eleven fifty nine until eleven fifty nine and fifty nine seconds, but then it just started over. His favorite shirt -- pale blue with the darker silhouette of a raven on the left side of the stomach area -- too small for him now, and a ripped, ink-stained five dollar bill.

Alice sat back up and curled up in his seat. He felt like the only one breathing on the entire bus. He was certainly the only one moving, if you didn’t count the harsh, frantic, barely even there whispers of the girl in front of him. He was sure he was the only one who could hear her at all. No one else spoke. No one even looked up or met his glance. He felt conspicuous as though no matter how he tried, he would never be able to sit as still as he was meant to. Drowsiness overcame him and he fell back into sleep.

A dagger thrust towards him and he leapt to the side.

“Why not?” The mask smiled as it plunged, along with its dagger, to the floor. “Then you’ll sit still.” It hit the ground and shattered into a floating cloud of dust, but somehow Alice knew it wasn’t gone.

Alice crouched and grabbed for the dagger. He launched into a sprint, though he couldn’t see where he was running to, or even where he was running from. This was not the attic. He concentrated on his feet. Were those the vibrations of rock or a paved road, he wondered. More like rock, he decided. There was no give at all.

“Where is this?” he whispered.

“Oh, very good,” the mask cackled from somewhere in the darkness. “Not where are you, but where is this. Quite an advanced revelation there. Not many people would have gone with that one. You have an interesting mind, Mr. Orlean.”

“Where is this?” Alice screamed. His voice did not echo. The silence drowned it.

“This,” the mask said coldly, almost indignantly, “is Trowbridge. Better get used to it, sweetheart.

“You’re going to be here for a while.”

Alice woke to a soft hand patting his cheek. He opened his eyes and found himself staring into a pair of shrewd green eyes.

“Almost there,” the girl who had been talking into a cell phone informed him. “Time for everyone to wake up.”

Alice looked around and discovered that she was absolutely correct. The other students around him were beginning to stir. He rubbed his bleary eyes and bent down, grabbed his bags and hauled them up to sit on the bench beside him. The girl did not seem surprised that there were only two, but she did give their wildly discrepant quality a second look. Alice checked to make sure everything was zipped up securely and looked back to find her still staring at him, now with a very small smile on her face.

“You know, you are kind of cute,” she said. “You look kind of young for a ninth grader though. You are new, aren’t you?” Alice felt his face flush at her first statement but he managed to nod yes to her question. Her smile widened. “Well.

“I am Daphne Ranfield.” She tossed her hair, but clumsily. She had a pretty enough face, but even Alice could see that she wore too much make up and she didn’t seem very practiced at applying it either.

Her clothing was expensive and despite his severe lack of knowledge in that area, Alice assumed that it was fashionable.

“Alice,” he told her, suddenly rediscovering his voice. “My name is Alice Orlean.” His voice lilted over that name as no one else’s ever could. Orrrrrleeahn. Daphne laughed.

“Alice? Seriously? You are a guy, right?” She lifted an eyebrow in what was obviously an attempt to appear sophisticated and ironic. To Alice it was sad and not a little comic.

Alice nodded and kept his expression blank. “Yes. I am.” She forced another laugh, but it died away almost immediately. For a long moment they simply watched each other.

“You remind me of someone,” she finally said in a much quieter voice. That slippery smile found its way back onto her face. “I think you might know him. Where did you meet Draven?” Alice blinked.

“Who?” Her smile wavered.

“Draven. I overheard you saying his name in your sleep.”

Alice shook his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know.” Daphne struggled to keep her smile in place.

“Really.” Alice kept gazing straight into her eyes until she bit her lip and looked away. The pale light from the window lit up a halo around her hair. When she turned back, her smile had completely disappeared.

“Because you see,” she said slowly, “I heard you speaking very clearly. I’m certain that you were talking to a person named Draven. And I know a Draven, see. Not exactly a common name. And he once had a girlfriend called Alice. At least, that’s what he said.” Alice kept his face and eyes completely blank until she looked away for good. Then he looked away as well, turning to stare out the window instead.

Draven. No. He really didn’t remember. He didn’t remember anything.

The girl with spiked hair dropped something small and metallic. She cursed under her breath and dove for it. She found it and retreated to her seat, eyeing the just awakening tattooed boy with obvious suspicion. The bus pulled up outside a set of wrought iron gates and the children quietly stood and filed out. Only the tattooed boy spluttered a sleepy, “Goodbye, Tim,” to the driver, an anonymous looking twenty something man with blue jeans, a plain blue T-shirt, plain blue baseball cap and sunglasses. Tim gave no response, his face impassive.

He sped away much more quickly than he had pulled up leaving fifteen children alone on the broken pavement.