Ava and Leo

My stomach’s churning. I’m spiraling into “infinity” and my thoughts are whirling into the void with me. There’s probably a terrified look on my face. And cue the record scratch and freeze frame. Yeah, that’s me, if you’re wondering. You might ask me how I got into this situation. Well, it all started the summer of ‘15. My friend Leo and I were walking out of goodwill with our latest haul when it happened. He was chiding me for buying too much stuff, like always, and I was defending it. “Why in the world would you need a discman?” “You and I both know the reason.” I had inherited a large collection of CDs from my late grandmother, and I had a goal. That goal was to listen to all of them, and I was well on my way. Contrary to the sweet old lady stereotype, my grandmother loved rock, and lots of it. My current favorite of her collection was mother’s milk, by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and I listened to it multiple times on my dad’s old stereo. I was really hoping that I wouldn’t have to keep listening only in my room. Why not try it out on this? I was really excited at the prospect of being able to take the cd’s everywhere. It would be so nice to have a bus ride filled with music instead of the complaints of my classmates.  I pop in an unlabeled cd, hoping it’s not some sort of confession of love or something. The gentle whirring starts up, and I whoop with joy. “HA! I TOLD YOU IT WOULD WORK!” He flips me off and then grudgingly admits that I was right in saying it would work. I offer him an earbud as a kind of peace treaty, and he sticks it in his ear.  “This better not break any of my ear bones,” he remarks as the opening notes for Spirit In the Sky” fill the empty space. “It sounds great, you gotta admit.” “I ref-” And a different kind of whirring, not unlike that of a vacuum cleaner, fills my ears. I hear Leo’s (very manly) high-pitched scream replace the music, and it seems like space implodes. You know that scene in jumanji where the kid is sucked into the game? That’s what I saw when I looked down at my hands. I began to scream in response, and then, well, space imploded. There were a lot of colors that I couldn’t see, and they whirled around me in a circle of blues and yellows interspersed with grays. Whirlings, looking for something, anything to grab. I finally latched on to something, and it screamed...again. Of course it was Leo, so I just held on tighter. He punched me in the nose, but I refused to let go. I strained my eyes, but still couldn’t see. Then the world seemed a lot more green. No, it wasn’t the world, it was a wall of green. A bush? Turns out it was the ground, and whatever happened left me so disoriented that I couldn’t figure out what it was.  All of the air wooshed out of my lungs as I hit the ground. Hard. I struggled to catch my breath and heard Leo doing the same a few feet behind me. A few moments later, we were both sitting up, and looking around in amazement. What even is this place? Are we even still in the not-so-great-us-of-a? I didn’t think we had fields like this anywhere. Maybe we’re in Canada? No…it’s not cold enough. Well, only one way to find out...explore!  I’ve always been an explorer of sorts, wandering around my schools, venturing “deep into the forest” when I was younger (my mother could see me the whole time), but I’ve never really been given an opportunity to do something like this. I walk over to Leo and hoist him up. “C’mon buddy, we might have a lot of walking to do.” “We might?” “Well, considering that I don’t really know where we are, I don’t know how far away we are from anything.” “Oh, that’s just great!” “Why are you so worked up?” “BECAUSE YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE THE HELL WE ARE.” “It’s fine, we can explain this mess to our parents.” “Ava, you have to face the facts, we might not see our parents ever again.” “I think you’re overreacting a little too much. We’ve been here for 5 minutes, at the most. I’ll just find my phone and look at google maps.” Rummaging around in my giant tote bag, I finally grasp my phone, and turn it on, expecting to see the gorgeous face of Danny Devito, but just seeing black.  “Oh, wait, forgot to power to power it back on.” I press and hold, and the screen finally lights up. I am greeted by Danny, but when I look at the top of my screen, there’s no time showing, although I still have data. I guess my parents really did mean that it would work everywhere. That brings me back to the question of where we really are, and at this point, I’m actually kinda freaking out. What if I never see my cat, or my sister, or anyone else I love ever again? What if I die over here? But it could be better here. I mean, I can probably still text my parents and stuff. We can facetime and whatever else. I’ll be fine. Then an idea hits me. If we just listened to the song again, we could probably go back. “Leo, come here. We need to try and go back.” He rushes over a gladly sticks the earbud in his ear.  “I really hope no time has passed.” “Me too.” The opening notes serenade us (again), and we close our eyes in anticipation, waiting to be sucked back. But it doesn’t happen. I keep on waiting, and then the song is over.” Leo is even more worried now. “Ava, you know this means we can’t go back. This is your fault. THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT.” “Technically, it’s not my fault, it’s nan’s fault for giving me the CDs.” “Don’t try to cast the blame on someone other than yourself, Ava.” “That’s pretty hypocritical of you.” “Shut. UP.” He storms off in the direction of the forest. I can’t lose him here though, he’s the only thing I have left. I gotta catch up. Sprinting towards Leo, bag banging against my hip, I turn him around. “Listen, we may be the only thing left to each other. And friends stick together, right?” He gives a small nod, and the realization hits me that I’m being way too intense. I take my hands off his shoulders and step back a little. “Sorry dude, it kinda hit me a little too hard.” “It’s ok. I was acting like an asshole. We’re probably a Bear Grylls put together. We can survive.” “Alright, I’ll start calling people as we walk.” “Sounds like a plan to me.” I open up the contacts list on my phone and call my mother first. It rings and rings, but it eventually goes to voicemail. Leaving a semi-frantic message, I head onto the next person in my list. After reaching nothing but voicemails, I conclude that there must be something wrong with my phone and angrily stuff it back into my bag.  At least I have candy to give me something to do in this godforsaken unknown land. I pull out some bana laffy taffy, but rethink it, instead opting for some twix, because they don’t last forever but laffy taffy could survive the nuclear fallout.  I offer a twix to Leo, but he declines. Caramel has never really been his thing. He actually choked on a werther’s original in 7th grade, and that really solidified his hatred of caramel. Sometimes I buy him an entire bag for his birthday to make him mad… Leo and I have been really close friends since that day in 7th grade, because lo and ehold, I knew the heimlich, therefore saving his life. Funny thing to have on a gravestone: died from (delicious) caramel candy  I’m rambling, aren’t I? Well anyways, we’re in 10th grade now, so 3 years of friendship  is pretty solid. It’s super hard to hold on to friends, at least in our high school, because classes are always changing. Sure, we’re not as close as we used to be but I can still call him a good friend. If there was one person that I had to pick toi get lost in this place with it would definitely be him. I mean, he’s a complete and total weeb, but he’s a pretty good guy overall. He has entirely too much spare time, and read the entire game of thrones series LESS THAN A YEAR. He’s certainly dedicated… We slowly forge our way through the wilderness, swatting at the very same mosquitoes that inhabit PA. I swear those little bastards are everywhere… As the forest slowly clears up, I decide to climb a tree and see what I can see. “WOW, YOU LOOK EVEN SHORTER FROM UP HERE,” I yell down to Leo. He stiffens, and that’s when I realize that I’ve probably disclosed our location to whatever inhabits this place.  I make a lip-zipping gesture, and climb a little further up, hoping to see some sort of (possibly friendly) civilization. I nearly shout with joy when I see a thin line of smoke piercing the sky in the distance. Making a mental note of where it’s coming from, I climb down as fast as I possibly can and fill Leo in with whispers.  “There appears to be smoke from a fire over that way.” “Ok. That’s going to be our only hope, unless we can find a way to survive in this forest” “Once we get closer, maybe we can set up a home base here.” “That would probably be for the best.” “Luckily for you, you have a trained girl scout right here. I can use my wilderness skills (registered trademark) to get us out of this whole mess, or at least give us some sort of safe place to sleep.” “We still need to figure out where we are. That’ll be the best way to know what to protect ourselves from.” He prattles on extensively about ways of figuring out exactly how to camoflauge to fit our surroundings, but I shush him, holding a finger to my lips. I can hear something slowly getting closer, like it’s stalking us. Two helpless, walking buffets, trekking through unknown territory. I find the nearest tree, and I see Leo lying under a bush. Great choice… The underbrush rustles and out pops a...squirrel? Well, it has the body of a squirrel, but the head appears to have gone missing. Another unusual thing about said rodent is that it has a huge tail. The tail swivels around, and now I can see two eyes glinting in the mess of hair. Disgusting. A large mosquito skirts it’s way into the clearing, and the tail of the squirrel swivels and whacks it out of the air like a ping pong paddle. The mosquito is gone, and I’m suddenly glad that the squirrel isn’t a R.O.U.S.  After taking another look around, the squirrel scampers off. I do a flip out of the tree to show off, and Leo sarcastically claps. “Great to see you’ve retained at least one thing from gymnastics. Now, what in the fresh HECK was that?” “Well, it appeared to be a headless squirrel with a face in it’s tail.” “Ok, I gathered that, but where in the world can you find something that weird?” “Australia.” “Shut up. See if google works and search it up.” I’m amazed to find that google still does work but no search results come up. “We got nothin’.” “Damn.” “Shall we continue on?” I ask as I offer him my arm. “Sure, why not.” We saunter through the wilderness, and something suddenly dawns on me. “Don’t you play some sort of sport.” “I used to.” “Well, can you swing a heavy stick?” “Can’t everyone do that?”  “Yes, but it could be very useful in deterring little things like that.” “True enough.” We both arm ourselves and carry on. This is interesting, but after doing nothing but walking for half an hour it gets pretty boring. I absentmindedly start humming, and Leo gets pretty ticked off pretty quick. “Hey, could you not hum? It really gets on my nerves.” I hum even louder in response, switching the tune to “YMCA” and doing the arm motions too. My stick/club swings wildly and almost hits him a few times. Eventually he cedes to the power of the village people, and we both begin to scream it at the top of our combined lungs. “It’s fun to stay at the YMCA, IT’S FUN TO STAY AT THE YMCA!” Leo’s voice breaks off in the second verse though. He’s laughing too hard to keep on singing, and he starts coughing. I slap him on the back, and then he stops laughing.  “Alright, we can’t sing anymore. If there’s a bigger version of that squirrel wandering through this place, I don’t want to meet it.” “Fine...also, do you smell that?” We both sniff the air and the scent of smoke fills our nostrils.  “I think we’re close. Let’s find a place to set up camp, just so we have a place to stay.” “Sounds good.” I’m having a lot of fun doing this, weaving sticks into a platform balanced high in the boughs of a tree. Unfortunately, I don’t have any rope, but this entire world seems to have a pretty moderate climate. I’m comfortable in a t-shirt and shorts, but I’m really hoping the temperatures don’t drop too much at night. At least we’ll have a place where we can be safe. We start the final trek towards the smoke, and once we crest a small hill, there appears to be an entire town spread out in front of us. I can’t help but stare in amazement, and in my periphery I see Leo gawking too. “Wow,” is what he finally says, “this is the best thing possible that could happen to us.” The town appears to be relatively modern, we can see people in car, and on phones, but what I didn’t expect was a man in a suit of armor on a dirt bike headed down main street. Another unusual thing I take note of is the multiple non-human creatures walking among people like it’s no big deal. Have you ever seen a capybara in a suit? I highly doubt it. I collect my thoughts and turn to Leo, who appears to be in a trance. “Yo...Leo...LEO!” “Hmmm...oh, right. Yes?” “Methinks we need to do some exploring.” “Sounds good to me.” We basically sprint down the hill, so fast that I tumble, start rolling down the hill. I hear Leo laughing in the background, and he rolls past me on the fast track to the bottom of the hill. I speed up, and we make it to the bottom at the exact same time, screaming with glee. When I sit up, the world spins and I see the faces swirling around with it. I shake my head and reorient myself, and I see people (and animals) surrounding us. I stand up very shakily and greet them. “Hello there, I’m Ava and this is Leo. We’re new here.” A solemn looking opossum steps out of the crowds, and my the way every looks at him, he looks like he might be the leader. “What do you want from us?” “We simply want information. Where exactly are we?” “We don’t have an official name but we call this region the MAUTIFA, for the 6 biggest towns.” “Aren’t there 7 letters in that acronym?” Leo asks, confused. “Yes, but we’re all ALLIED against a bigger power. The second a stands for alliance. Anyways, welcome to Ispen. Is there anything you two need?” “Yeah. Do you guys have a currency exchange rate? We have lots of money but we need to exchange it,” says Leo, always the practical one. “Actually all currency here is the same. If it’s a piece of paper with a one on it it’s worth 1, but it needs to be officially issued, at least by your government.” “Ok.” I’m actually feeling good at this point. I was paid, and I don’t trust any of my family alone with my money, so I have almost a thousand dollars on me. The possum leaves, and the rest of the crowd slowly follows suit. We garner some strange looks, but other than that, there’s no hostility. “Hmmm, where to first, Leo?” “We need survival stuff, first and foremost. Look for some sort of sporting store.” I see something that resembles a d**k’s across the street, and start to cross, but I’m almost immediately run over by something zooming over my head. Of course it’s a hovercraft. I dreamed about having one of those as a kid. Of course, they’re gonna be too expensive, but whatever. Maybe I can get a job here, work something out.  When we walk into Harold’s, as it’s called, the large array of survival equipment is amazing, and to my surprise they also have the little hovercraft thingies. I look at the price tag and my jaw drops. This has to be some kind of joke. I frantically poke Leo. “What the hell?” “Look. At. The. Price. Tag.” “I already told you we can’t get those.” “For 100 dollars?” “Wait, what?” “I said, for 100 dollars?” “Stop joking.” “Look at the price tag.” “Why are they so cheap?” “I’m not sure, but I see some flying in our future.” I grab two boxes, then go off in search of a few more things we need after stocking up on the battery packs beside. Everything here is so incredibly cheap it’s almost unbelievable. I’ve spent 300 dollars on the hover thingies and the battery packs and adding the tarp and machete, the total is only $315 for my stuff. Small price to pay for a hovercraft. Leo and I meet up at the checkout and he has nothing but 10 packs of beef jerky. Combined, the cost is only $350, and we venture out of Harold’s in search of a grocery store. We come across a Piggly-Wiggly, which strikes me as odd, as I’ve never actually seen or been in one. Walking inside, I notice that this is one of the most well stocked stores I’ve ever been to. Leo and I divide and conquer. “Remember, non-perishables” he calls after me. I give him a thumbs up of my shoulder and continue on my merry way. Me being me, I have to stop at the candy aisle first and stock up. It’s amazingly cheap, like less than a dollar for a normal sized bag, so I really pile the stuff into my basket. Then, I head for the coffee aisle, because of course I can’t live without my coffee. I purchase a pot and a pan, and a 24 pack of ramen, and all sorts of canned goods. Swinging by the junk food aisle I grab everything in sight. Gushers, chips, cookies, crackers. I grab 4 backpacks to hold it all, some soda and water, and of course, toilet paper and paper plates. We’re going to lie like semi-civilized people, at the very least. Leo has all of his stuff, and we check out, with a grand total of $97.64. Not bad, not bad.  We’ve got everything we need, so we head to the hill we rolled down and start getting a little too pumped about the hover craft. “Ava, you realize these are probably going to be a scam.” “I do not care. They are amazing and I’m going to ride mine everywhere.” “Whatever you say…” It’s fairly simple to assemble them, so we’re both done in a matter of minutes. We zoom up the hill with the excitement of children on their birthdays, elated by how easy it really is to ride these things. I look down at the little handlebars and press a random button, then scream as I’m shot up into the air 20 feet. “hOLY CRAP THESE THINGS ARE AWESOME,” I screech, and Leo nods affirmation. But when we finally learn how to control them perfectly (it takes almost an hour), and we get back to our cool little temporary home, there’s something else there.