Chapter 1
Reality sucks.
There are no magic schools in a faraway land. No magic carpets. No portals between worlds. Just you and school and college and work and bills and taxes and disappointment and stress and pollution and other endless numbers of things designed to make living painful.
“NOVA!!!!” My best friend says as she bursts into my room.
“Geez, you almost made me crap my pants, Adeline. Nice way to say hi.”
“God, you get scared too easily. Anyway, I was gonna say that we got new news on our little project! I think it is important.”
Maybe I will take back what I said. Reality does not fully suck. For the past year, Adeline and I have been working on this project. Last year, we saw this flash in the sky. Like a really big one. The whole sky turned white. But lucky us, we caught it on recording. We were actually filming a Tik Tok– well attempting to– and it just happened out of nowhere.
*Flashback*
“Novaaaa, this is not working. You just had to pick the hardest dance!”
I listen to Adeline whine about the dance.
“Ok look. Let’s try this one more time and if we still fail, then we will just move on to something else that is on our level.”
“Yea and what exactly is our level?”
“We are so bad that I do not even think we have a level.”
We both start laughing. After regaining some sobriety, we pressed the record button for the 100th time. With our luck, we fail. But this time it is because I tripped.”
“Ohh…. my….goddd….. Nova, you look like an idiot….” Adeline says as she gasps for breath from laughing.
“Oh shut up… it is not like you can do any bett-”
I am interrupted by a blinding light. No, literally. All my eyes can see is white.
“Adeline?!”
“NOVA?”
Then, as if nothing happened, my eyes see Adeline.
“What on earth just happened?” Adeline says, shocked.
“Do you think a star exploded?”
“I do not know, maybe? But wouldn’t we be dead? “
“Honestly I do not even know.”
“Heyyy, look, I think we got it on recording! Let’s just save the video and then we can see what happened!”
“WOW, Adeline, you are being smart. Maybe the flash gave you some brain cells for actual common sense instead of just smart stuff!”
“Oh haha, so funny. Now come on, let’s go.”
We walk back to my house, finally taking off our masks.
“Gosh these dumb masks! My face is breaking out! This has been going on for so long, yet they still cannot find something for it. The only solution they found for pollution is something that makes us wear masks.” Adeline lets out an exasperated sigh.
“I knowww. It is really annoying.”
We go upstairs to my room. Adeline gets the video ready for us to observe like we are scientists studying space while I put my long, curly, black hair up in a bun. Obviously Adeline doesn’t have to worry about that: she has short, silky, blue, box-dyed hair. I look over at her reflection from the mirror. She looks so beautiful while she is focusing.
“Ok! I am done.” Adeline’s voice brings me back to reality. I head over to her and sit on my bed. The video starts playing, and I see something I never thought I would see.
“Oh my god, oh my god! Nova….. was that a..”
“Portal that opened…. or at least something that looks like that.”
We turn to each other in disbelief. Our mouths are wide open.
“We definitely have to research that. There has got to be something that has happened like that before, right?”
“Yea!”
Joy fills us. We are so excited that something that gets our adrenaline rushing has finally come around… We give each other the longest hug. And although I pretended it did nothing to me, I actually got butterflies in my stomach.
I look back at Adeline, who now has multicolored short hair. My hair still looks the same. But she looks gorgeous with that smile on her face. She searches for something up on my computer. I go and lean down next to her so we are on the same level. That’s what I usually do anyway since she is a bit shorter than me. I’m 5’10 and she is 5’7, so there is a difference. But now she is sitting so I have to kneel. Even after these months, my feelings for her remain.
“Look! I found it. Finally… that took a while. Like two hundred years back– meaning two centuries ago– someone took a video of a flash. Somehow, the flash was only visible to him and nobody believed him, even when he showed the video. They thought it was edited to look like that.”
“If I didn’t see what I saw last year, I probably would think that too.”
“Yea, same. But this is where it gets interesting. This guy’s name was Emerett Evergreen. After that incident, apparently his neighbors saw him coming out only twice a day. They noticed that Evergreen would leave his house to go somewhere every morning and come home at night. They said they saw lights turned on all night and then closed in the morning. It was like a cycle. However, since he was a scientist, people thought he was just doing one of his projects. But one day, everyone saw this light fill his room, and then mere minutes later, it was gone. The neighbors called the police, but when the police got to Emerett’s house, he was nowhere to be seen and his room was untouched. They searched for days for him, but it’s like he disappeared from the face of Earth. Then, one day, when the police officers went to close up the scene, also known as his room, one of the officers found a handwritten note laying on his bed. They were like, that wasn’t there before, but after reading what was on it, they just dropped the matter and ruled Evergreen’s disappearance as a delusional, but harmless man who fled. And this was what was written on the note that was on his bed: 'I am finally in Frosluire, the Mist Empire.’ Now tell me that it isn’t where that portal we saw leads to.”
I was too shocked to get words to form.
“I am still waiting.”
“That definitely is where the portal leads to. Now, the real question is how did you find all of this?” I say, once I regained my senses and recovered from the shock. She literally did wonders. I have been looking for something like this that could explain the big white flash we saw every single day, but I could not find it.
“Well, if you forgot, let me remind you. I have a masters in computer science. So I literally dug up all of the online dirt I could find to get to the beautiful treasure. You know what else? I have an idea…”
Oh right…. Adeline had an above average IQ so she skipped like 4 grades. So me and her are the same age but I just finished college (which I only had to do for 2 years since I took so many AP classes) while she already finished her masters. And along with that, she is creative. That’s how we get along so well. I am smart and really creative, and she is really smart and creative. We complete each other. Hence, we are best friends.
“Maybe you could share this idea of yours? You know, just a suggestion.”
“Oh right, sorry. The officers only searched his main house. But I wonder where he went in the mornings. Right? He had to go somewhere. So maybe, I can use my brilliant computer skills to find this secondary location of his.”
“And how would we go there?”
“Dude, we are adults in our twenties with like tons of money from all four of our dead parents, so I don’t think reaching there would be a problem.”
“Yea I know, but we two can’t just go by ourselves. We should try to find others too.”
“Nah that’ll take way too long. We got each other and we can probably do it. What is the worst that can happen?”
“Well, we could die, or lose everything or make fools of ourselves, but yea you’re right, what is the worst that could happen.”
Then she comes over and holds my hands. Why is she so perfect? She always knows what to do.
“Trust me… we’ll be fine. If it gets too dangerous then we’ll leave the area we are going to. But hopefully, that won’t happen.”
“Ok fine. Now I know you need to go and do your thing, but could you stay? Just for the night. I mean, your house is literally next door, so please?”
I try to do my best doe eyes. She stares into my hazel eyes with her piercing blue ones for a long second and then smiles her breathtaking smile.
“Fine, now scoot over and lie down. Let’s watch a movie!”
“Wait, let me make some popcorn! Give me a sec. Also I got to change, and if you want, you can change into my clothes too.”
“Yea thanks!”
