Dearest Readers,

I decided to suddenly undertake the daunting task of re-writing my 2008 story, Strange Things Happen in Libraries with Dr. Pepper. I've posted a much longer-winded explanation below.

This is my chance to redeem my immature writing. Give a germ of a good idea a chance to actually be a good idea. Reach a new audience with a new story more befitting the character, the times, and who I am as an author today. Reach old readers, older fans, with a better story than I had before. I hope you'll all take this chance with me.

- Pip

Chapter One - It Started with Soda

...

2008

...

I pedaled my bike beneath an oppressive gray sky, rain dripping without much conviction at uneven intervals. I always imagined this is what it felt like to live in England - but Walden, Oregon, population next to nothing, was as close as I could get. Even the air smelled green; which meant I desired nothing but to sit quietly and read books.

I was seventeen and therefore didn't own a car, so I had to bike everywhere. It was means to an end; arriving with a skid through a puddle at the Walden Public Library, my favorite place in all the world. There's not much I wouldn't do for books.

I browsed through the original section of the building, still held together by framework of the darkest wood, pillared and antique. Tall, skinny gothic windows let in little light, which made this wing of the building feel ancient, and maybe a little haunted.

Silence lay steadily, I thought to myself, stepping into the aisle along the furthermost wall. Nothing but a polite cough of a patron echoed seamlessly between the shelves of the Fantasy and Mystery section.

I reached up and grabbed a worn Harper & Collins edition of Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis.

The table of contents stated this version was published in the sixties, and the Pauline Baynes illustrations were in riveting color. I slipped it in my bookbag, just for kicks and giggles. I already had a copy at home, but it was from 1997. I had received a boxed set for my seventh birthday.

But then I remembered - I had snuck a can of Dr. Pepper in my bookbag. I didn't want the can and the book inside the bag at the same time; not with the older edition, while not exactly rare, still needed a bit more care.

I quickly pulled the can out of the bag, grateful that I had remembered it was there. The can was sweating still; I had pulled it straight from the fridge not ten minutes ago at home.

I weighed the can in my hand. Well, now I'm in a conundrum.

I couldn't just carry a can of soda around the library. There were NO DRINKS signs posted everywhere. And I couldn't just throw it away.

I'm seventeen. Energy from sugary drinks is my LIFE. This costs more than the tips I make at work. Oh wait - I'm a teacher's helper. I don't GET tips.

The other side of my super smart logical brain chimed in with a new suggestion; well, you should just hide back here and drink it and then throw it in the trash bin by the back door and no one would know. Then you have a sugar rush for the bike ride home.

I glanced around. I was the only one there. No one could see me.

I snapped the tab and took a swig -

"WHUACK!"

I immediately started choking. It went down the wrong way in my throat.

I was hacking so loudly that it echoed. I set my soda on the ground, tried to cover my mouth with one hand, and placed the other hand on the wall to properly brace myself for a solid coughing fit.

I'm going to DIE! DIE, alone, in a library!

How anticlimactic yet somehow entirely perfect for me.

Here lies Pippin Strange, sugar overload - choked to death amongst her books. We always knew this is how she would go.

My hand against the wall slipped and slid into the space between the tops of the C.S. Lewis books, and the bottom of the shelf above it. Just shy of paper cut status, my hand plunged to the back of the bookshelf.

Rather than busting my fingers painfully against the wall behind the shelf, I felt it go through it as if it were made of sand.

I coughed for the last time and finally swallowed, my throat burning painfully and my nose tingling with soda going every which way except for the right one.

I could almost feel the tingle of outdoor air against my fingertips. This particular shelf was on an outer wall, but there's no way I wouldn't feel my knuckles crack against the plaster and wood.

I tried to withdraw, my hand caught something - the edge of the bookshelf, I thought - but made the sound of a lever shifting, a groan of wood on wood.

The bookshelf swung away from me, opening like a door, my wrist still caught inside and therefore dragging me right along with it.

The view from the windows on either side of the fantasy section looked over pavement two stories below.

If this swings me out into the open air, I'll plummet to my death!

Now, THIS is climatic. If you're Lemony Snicket.

But instead of being jerked into the impending death I expected, I was pulled, feet dragging, into sandy ground, covered with dappled sunlight from the spotty opening of a cave.

Huh… that's weird.

I struggled and popped my wrist free of the shelf, looking at the books with a type of hostile, accusing expression. The shelf was open just like a secret door in an old mansion, except instead of leading to another dark hall, an extra attic, or a stairwell… I was standing in a sandy inlet between two rocky walls that met in an arch overhead, barnacles crammed between the crevasses.

I glanced confusedly over my shoulder. "What the actual heck?" I exclaimed, blinking rapidly. "This is… this is…"

My Dr. Pepper was left behind, sitting on the floor all too innocently.

"Magic soda," I blurted, "If I hadn't choked, I wouldn't have gotten my arm stuck in the wall…" I suddenly clamped down, afraid of talking too loud. I didn't know where I had ended up. A magical beach somewhere - who knows what else, or who else was out here?

What if I had ended up on the shore of Isla Nublar? I would be dead in seconds. I love dinosaurs for academic reasons. Dinosaurs would love me too - for an appetizer.

I crept towards the edge of the cave opening, peering out as carefully as I could.

Outside of the arch, a wide, sandy beach stretched into a bright white light. The sound of the ocean was like the call of an instant friend, pounding at rocks and rhythmically roaring and breathing like the living monster that it is. Man, I really have a love-hate relationship with the ocean… I'm fine just here on a beach, in a cave, in the shade.

I would never want to willingly go on a boat.

I heard a distinct wooden groan again.

The door was starting to swing close behind me.

"Wait, wait, wait, hold on…! NO!" I panicked, whirled around, and grabbed at it.

But it was too late. It closed, and on this side of it, it was disguised as a rocky cliff face. Well, maybe not disguised, maybe just perfectly - magically - sealed.

I dug my fingers into the rocks, grasping and digging at any openings there seemed to be, but they were just natural cracks and indents of sandstone. There wasn't even a seam to indicate where the edge of the bookshelf would be, and no opening - no trippable lever to crank at, forcing the portal to the library back open.

I was stuck here.

...in Middle Earth. Isla Nublar. Neverland?

Heck, it could be the most random magic ever. Maybe nowhere fictional, even if getting sucked through a magic portal in a library would beg to differ.

Maybe I ended up on the coast of Australia for no reason at all.

Er, wait. Let's think about this logically.

It had to be Narnia. I had found a copy of Prince Caspian before all this nonsense started. Didn't something happen on a beach?

Like, something other than a bad sunburn?

I pulled the copy of Prince Caspian out of my bookbag, which thankfully, I still had on me.

I opened it and the pages were blank. Every single one. The beautiful illustrations…and the map, too. This was even more puzzling - more so than the plot disappearing out of the pages. But the plot should still be in my head. I've read it a gazillion and a half times.

But I remembered nothing. I had no idea what it was about. I'd forgotten everything - no, no, that can't be right. I still remember the plot of the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

I clenched my hands into fists. "Yeah, okay, God, this is HILARIOUS," I said sarcastically at the sky. "Is this so that I don't mess with C.S. Lewis's divinely inspired plot? Do you have so little faith in me that I won't screw up everything that's supposed to happen? Well, how about I MARCH over there and plant a kiss on Peter? HUH? HUH? Did ya ever think about THAT one? Did I mentioned I find him insanely attractive? You made me this way!"

I crossed my arms over my chest. Blackmailing God was probably just another thing I should add to my long list of things that I've done that I should probably not do nor attempt.

"HELLO? Any answers that would be helpful? Come ON!"

Nothing.

I ventured out of the cave, blinking in the sunlight and wishing I had brought sunglasses. I didn't need them in Oregon, and certainly not on the day that I left.

I ached for the gloom, the rain, and chill. This weather was summer, burning and warm. The sand was sifting and yellow around my plain white keds, so I slipped them off and hooked the laces around my fingers.

Just to be sure, I double checked my cellphone, flipping it open and checking the bars at the top of the tiny, one-inch screen. Zero bars, of course. No service.

Of course I didn't own a Razr v3 like everyone else, who could sometimes check the internet with their phones, a feat I was still completely unfamiliar with. Even if I could access the internet and email someone for help, what exactly could I do? I had deleted my MySpace account. I wouldn't have a Facebook account till I started college next year. Maybe I could email my parents? Oh… but my mom only checked her AOL account in the mornings. It was long past that.

Calling for help was probably as unlikely as it was unnecessary at this point. What could mortal man do for me in a world of magical bookshelves and poorly consumed soda spitting me out on a random beach?

"I REFUSE TO DO THIS!" I shouted into the oblivion, the wind whisking my voice away and sending it off into the sandy, grass covered embankments behind me, high enough to hide what lay behind the beach. Nothing but the rocky cliffside from which I emerged, and the green grasses wavering in the breeze, were here to bear witness to my tantrum.

"YOU CAN'T MAKE ME! IT'S EVERY FANGIRLS DREAM, I KNOW… BUT THE BOOK IS BLANK AND MY MEMORY IS ERASED!"

Still no answer.

"That's just WRONG!" I added for good measure. "I shall go on STRIKE!"

Can a Mary Sue go on strike? Or does that even count? Wouldn't I just be a self-insert by accident? I don't think I'm a Mary Sue unless I speak elvish and, like, become Mrs. Pevensie and save the world. I mean, maybe I could save the world. I've never been given the opportunity.

"Peter, did you hear THAT?" said a voice down the slope. I followed the sound, and I could see four shapes splashing about where the white waters broke, the silhouettes of four young people having a grand time, swimming and laughing in the shallows.

"It sounds like a girl!"

"What does?"

"Didn't you hear that screaming?"

"What did you say, Ed?"

"He said, he heard a girl screaming!"

"It's coming from the cave."

"The cave we left not ten minutes ago?"

"Suppose she followed us from the train station?"

"No, it was just us four in there at first. We checked."

"Let's have a look, already! Come ON!"

"I think someone is watching us!"

"Look! She's up on the bluff!"

I lifted my hand awkwardly in a half-wave, suddenly getting a song stuck in my head. "I've got a pickle, I've got a pickle," I began to hum, slipping and sliding through the sand down the slope, aiming for the darkened, damp sand where the tide was rolling in with the late afternoon heat. "I've got a pickle, hey, hey, hey hey…."

No, I don't have a pickle… I am in a pickle. The absolute worst pickle ever.

I just wanted a quiet afternoon with my books, is that too much to ask?

"Hello there!" said Lucy, far too cheerfully, giving me a small wave as they approached.

Okay, so I definitely retained my memories of the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, otherwise, I'd likely have no idea who she was.

"Hiii," I replied gloomily. And this is why my sister says I'm Ross from Friends.

How embarrassing.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"I'm… uh… Pippin? Pippin Strange..." I shrugged and grinned awkwardly through my pseudonym. No one likes to blast their real name all over fan fiction, do they? There's way too much judgment out there. And Google is really a miraculous little snoop now.

"And, um, who are you?" I asked.

Susan and Peter shared a concerned look that only older, protective siblings understand.

"I'm Lucy," Lucy replied brightly and without delay, held out a hand.

I shook it. "Pleased to meet you." Without waiting, I thrust my hand at Susan.

"I'm Susan," she replied, somewhat astonished, shaking my hand.

Peter offered his hand next. "I'm Peter," I shook it and melted a little inside.

Okay, shut UP, hormones. No melting allowed for you.

I offered my hand to Edmund next.

"Edmund," he said, sort of shortly. Not unkindly, but too surprised to be anything but curt.

"Nice to meet you all," I said unsurely. "Uh… what a… lovely day… to traverse a seashore."

"We're on holiday," Lucy replied happily. "Or… we were. Term is supposed to be starting soon. Oh dear," she turned to her siblings. "What happens if we miss school?"

"It's springtime where I'm from," I offered helpfully. "School's nearly out."

"So, how did YOU get here? You're not a…native?" Peter asked. "You are dressed like… like… well, dressed terribly strangely..."

I glanced down self-consciously as what I was wearing. A pair of ragged jeans with holes in the knees, and a men's black T-shirt with an old white logo half-scratched off and totally unreadable. My plaid overshirt was tied around my waist. I was about ten pounds overweight, and quite suddenly feeling it in all the wrong places. And insult to injury; barefoot, too.

Lucy pinched his arm, and Susan hissed, "Honestly, Peter, you don't talk to girls about what they're wearing."

"I'm, I'm sorry, I didn't mean..." Peter exclaimed quickly.

"He meant you didn't come from the train station," Edmund said, one eyebrow up.

"There is a train track next to the library," I answered. "I came through a… magic bookshelf, I guess. It opened like a door. And then it sucked me in."

"Then you were pulled in like us!" Lucy exclaimed, way too happily.

"So you're not from here either," I pushed.

"Well, not exactly," Lucy tried again. "We were pulled here, a long time ago. Became Queens and Kings, and then, we went home…"

"Home where?" I asked.

"England," Susan said shortly.

I suppressed a giggle. "Then I'm from the same place you are. The planet Earth." I give Edmund a look, only because he seems to be uncharacteristically quiet. "So you became Kings and Queens of… the beach."

"Narnia," Edmund finally offered. "This place is called Narnia."

"Now, well, that's still up for debate," Susan said. "We don't exactly know for sure if we are in Narnia."

"Can't you feel that it's Narnia?" Peter exclaimed, aghast.

"No, I can't," she said, a strange look on her face. "You all seem to feel some sort of magical buzz in the air telling you this was once our country where we reigned - but I don't feel that at all. And where is our castle? Wouldn't it be just around the bend?"

"Why don't we look?" Lucy took her sister's hand and tugged it forward.

"I guess I'll just stay here and burn alive in the sun, your majesties," I added forlornly.

"Nonsense, you must come with us," Lucy called over her shoulder. "It wouldn't do to leave a guest of Narnia standing on the beach in this hot sun."

Susan reluctantly let Lucy pull her along the sand to their sweaters and shoes lying in little heaps under a short embankment of stiff sand. They began to collect their things.

"We ought to try heading south," Peter mumbled, more to himself than to Edmund and I.

"I can just go south with you, then?" I ask. "I don't know what's going on. And I don't know where else to go."

"I don't think so," Peter said quickly. "It

would be better if you waited here. It may not be safe. When we've found our people, we will send our knights to come for you. You'd be welcome to stay the night in the castle until we can find out how to open the…"

"Oh, come off it," said Edmund, "We're Kings of nothing right now. How are we to know we'll even find Cair Paravel? It's much safer to let her tag along. We're not going to just leave her behind."

Peter shrugged helplessly. "I just don't understand why Aslan would send a fifth person."

"There are no rules about how many Daughters of Eve can be of use to Narnia," Lucy said loudly, returning with an armload of possessions. Lucy and Susan each handed jumpers and messenger bags across to their brothers.

"Remember how WE first felt when we FIRST came here?" reminded Susan gently. "We were very lucky we had Lucy to tell us what little she knew about the country… otherwise…" she stopped, and glanced at Edmund. "Our first trip might have gone very differently. And we had Mr. and Mrs. Beaver taking us in."

I agreed wholeheartedly with a nod. "You can't just…leave me here. All alone. I'm afraid of the ocean. What if the Beaver just abandoned YOU when you first arrived?" I looked at Susan with a stage-whisper. "You said Beavers, right?"

"Well, yes, I did," Susan answered, "But…"

"Naturally," I replied. "Dolphins were out of the question."

Edmund and Lucy both snorted. Peter and Susan gave each other another elder-sibling mind-reading expression over their heads, which Edmund noticed and did not appreciate.

"Remember how WE first felt when we FIRST came here?" Susan repeated.

"That's very…" I began.

"We were very lucky we had Lucy to tell us what little she knew about the country," Susan went on, "Otherwise…" she stopped, and glanced at Edmund.

What the heck is happening right now? She already said that.

"Our first trip might have gone very differently," Susan finished. "And we had Mr. and Mrs. Beaver taking us in."

"So… not dolphins," I interjected.

Lucy and Edmund laughed again, and Susan shook her head.

"Didn't I already make that joke?" I asked confusedly.

"No," they all nearly said in perfect unison.

"I'm getting a major case of deja vu," I said eerily. "Did anyone else, uh, see that? Hear that?"

"Hear what?" Edmund asked immediately, glancing around the empty beach around us.

There was nothing. A silence, but a natural silence, which meant the wind pushed and rattled the grass and the lands beyond, and waves continued to pound loudly at the shore.

Part of me wanted to jump in the water face-first, but a rational fear of sharks usually kept me from doing such things.

"Things are weird," I said helplessly, not knowing how else to explain Susan repeating herself, as if I were playing a skipping CD with too many scratches.

"That's Narnia," Lucy replied kindly. "Narnia sort of makes you feel as if you're coming into a dream that you've already had."

"I've always felt like it was waking up," Susan disagreed, with a smile.

"Well, um, okay," I said. "So if you don't want me around, can you just kill me now? I'd rather not starve to death."

"KILL you?" Peter exclaimed. "What an awful thing to say!"

"I was joking," I said quickly. "Sorry. Bad taste. I just don't want to be left behind, left wallowing in the sand to do nothing but wait and pray to Aslan that a seagull flies close enough for me to catch for dinner?"

"You know of Aslan?" Lucy exclaimed.

"How?" demanded Peter.

I held out my hands defensively. "We have Aslan where I'm from, don't you?"

They glanced at each other. "No, not really," Susan said. "He is here, he's Narnian."

"I think he came to this world before Narnia," Lucy corrected.

"Anyhow," Peter added, "He's lord of Narnia, but you said you're from America."

"Oh," I said awkwardly. It would really be a good idea to not tell them they're fictional and from my favorite book series. I don't want to throw them into the existential crises suffered by Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story. "I mean, I can't say that Aslan is any kind of deity in America, but he's in books. I have books at home - Aslan, the great Lion, the lord of worlds that there were and have yet to be?"

"It certainly sounds as if it could be the same Aslan," Peter said.

"The Son of the Emperor Across the Sea," I continued, "King over all High Kings. Lord of the Wood. He…um…"

I was going to say he delivers Narnia from this second catastrophe, but that bit of information slipped from my head before I could fathom it. I don't know the ending of this story any more. Maybe he doesn't appear in this adventure at all. I wouldn't know anymore.

"That's definitely Aslan," Susan said, with some frustration. "I don't see how there's any debate on it. If she knows who Aslan is, then, I'm sure she is who she says she is."

"Well, thank you, Susan," I said, touched. I was fully prepared for her to not like me. Well, maybe she didn't, but at least she was not unkind or unfair.

"But are you loyal to him?" Peter asked.

"Yes!" I said, with every ounce of devotion I could muster. "There are stories of his death, and how he came back to life. I owe him what little belief my faith can produce in that, anyway."

"Well, I can tell you those stories are true, I witnessed them myself," Lucy said soberly.

"I don't suppose you have some idea of your purpose here?" Peter pushed.

"Enough debating, Peter," Susan said sternly. "As Queen of this country, I can't just condemn a stranger to wandering in the wilderness." She turned to me. "We owe you hospitality, especially if you are loyal to Aslan."

"Hospitality?" asked Edmund with a laugh. "In what? That crumbling ruin?"

His siblings stared at him. "What?"

"Look," he pointed past their heads. "Just beyond the bluffs."

We'd come close enough to the waters now, that looking back up the beach - to the inland - allowed us a view of what lay beyond the embankments, and the grasses rippling in the wind like another green ocean. Beyond them were scrubby, element damaged trees, stunted and leaning. Past them still further, woods of cypresses and other warm-blooded trees, hiding the crumbling ruins of some sort of structure.

From what we could see, only a stone turret remained small and upright past the trees.

"Ooh, et's a cestle," I exclaimed in a thick Scottish accent.

They glanced at me.

"I mean, it looks like a castle," I said sheepishly, in my usual accent.

"Well, there's nothing to it," Peter began walking up the shoreline. "We'll have to go see for ourselves. Come on, you lot. Keep up."

His siblings followed like obedient ducklings. I stumbled after them.

When we crested the top of the sandy hill, we stopped for a moment to put our shoes back on. It took them significantly less time to put their shoes back on, but I was struggling with my laces.

Before I knew it, they had stepped into the shadows of the trees without me, and I could see their figures disappearing through the dappled green sunlight.

"Go on and receive almost certain death?" I mused to myself, tugging on my last ked with an obnoxious heave. "To die would be an awfully big adventure, right?" I shook my head. "Oh, heck no. None of that for me. Into the woods I go, but, not to certain death."

"Hush," hissed Peter from ahead. "We don't know if we are without enemies."

They had stopped, and were waiting for me, just out of sight.

Still within earshot, unfortunately.

To go or not to go… Stay and die on the sand. Go on and die by something else that I cannot remember because the book is blank and my memory is gone. Is this how NORMAL adventurers feel?

"Do come on," Lucy trotted back and offered her hand. "You can walk with me."

"Are you always this sweet to perfect strangers?" I asked, looking down at her. She wasn't much shorter than me, to be honest. I have always been horrifically short for my age, and she was clearly on the verge of a growth spurt.

"I'm afraid so," Lucy responded. "I've been told I am too trusting."

We followed the shapes of her siblings passing beneath of the roving lights of the sun spots, and the cool shadows cast by the branches overhead. The trees drew too close together to see what lay beyond more than a few feet.

"What I wouldn't give for a bracing cup of tea," I sighed.

"Oh, rather," Lucy agreed wholeheartedly. "That's very English of you."

I snorted, putting on a bad Cockney accent for her benefit. "And I ain't got no pocket handkerchief, either!"

Lucy laughed, and we received another SHHHHHH from Peter ahead.

"There are rules about going on adventures without a hankies," I whispered.

"Really?" Lucy asked.

"Terrible bad luck to go on a quest without the means to blow your nose."

"I've never heard of that!"

"Maybe it's a States thing."

Bilbo had an easy enough start when he jetted off to join the dwarves in their mission to reclaim Erebor, but that moment of panic when he realized he had no hanky… that's how I felt now. Like I should turn back, and forget the whole thing. This was my last chance to disappear, wait in the cave for starvation or an opening cliff-face. But I had a feeling that portal was long sealed, and I would have to find a different way home - and whatever route that was, it meant following the Pevensies… to infinity, and beyond, I suppose.

Forget worrying about putting them in an existential crises. I was already there! I had been magically sucked into a fantasy, a fictional world!

I could play these tiny violins all by myself.

…

Thank you for reading! Please leave a review if you enjoyed!

Why a rewrite?

People identified with my fictional counterpart Pippin - a nerdy weirdo with undiagnosed ADD, incredibly geeky and unlucky in social situations. That being said, the story itself is old. I was just starting to figure out fan fiction. There is quite a lot of troubled writing in my old story; immaturities, ignorance of the wider world around me, embarrassing asides, notes, and very non politically correct jokes that should probably have never been posted!

I was also suffering from the popular sense of humor circa 2005, where the more "random" you were, the funnier you were, and if you could make someone say, "OMG, you are SO random," you were really doing yourself no favors, but that was the Thing To Do. That shows badly in my story. I was too distracted and random to make much sense.

I was also going through a severe depression at the time and I didn't know it, and it began to leak badly into my stories, disengaging the sense of storytelling and instead using pure escapism at the expense of you, the reader.

So here we are, and I consider this an experiment. Is the world ready for a bad retelling of a self-insert nearly Mary-Sue Narnia story? Leave a review and tell me.