The Lab
No one's really been reviewing, so I don't really have much to say other than that I would like for to at least let me know that you've read it. And bear with me; it'll get better.
Katie
It'd been about a week since Emily somehow managed to coax me into running away from home to go step through a portal in order to let some dorky-ass scientists study how we interacted with the cartoonified natives on Earth's parallel, and I would swear on my life that I would trade anything to go back on that. No, not because I'm scared or anything like that; I'm actually looking forward to seeing if this Ruritania place is really the atomic bomb that Em's making it out to be.
It's just because that Emily will not stop calling me. It's almost like, every half hour, my creepy-ass ring tone starts creeping itself at me, and I'm forced to answer that stupid Barbie phone. I'll open the phone, and right off, she'll start yammering about how excited she is or how she wants to make sure that I remember to pack something obvious like underwear or she's just calling to "chat" which pretty much means that I'm going to have to sit there and listen to a two hour monologue about the crush she's currently nursing on the one character with the creepy-ass scar; I forget his name.
Don't get me wrong, here, I love Em, it's just that she can be so freaking preppy sometimes, especially when she gets super hyped up about something. And since it's clear that she's developed some sort of high school age midlife crisis, and has gotten her wish to do something so intensely out-of-normality that I never would have suspected that Emily had it in her to think of something so totally WEIRD, she is currently at the place on the PrepMeter where the needle is practically off the charts.
Personally, I could care less about the whole experimenting shit and the apparently incredible fact that we're going to be interacting with people that some guy made a hit cartoon series out of. It's kind of the fact that I'm exploring something that pretty much nobody on my planet save for some science majors have ever dared to delve into before now. The idea of doing something that fun and utterly stupid sounds awesome to my dumb adventurous brain, which is probably why I even gave in to the idea of the whole portal thing in the first place.
Which, like I said before, was a pretty stupid decision now that I look back on it. I guess this is why my mother is always saying that I need to get a "fence around my self control until it goes trampling around causing mass destruction." I guess that I should've gotten a fence sooner, because my self control is on a godamned rampage right now.
To begin the long list of reasons of why I'm regretting agreeing to this whole scheme is the fact that we're supposed to pack our life necessities into quote "one purse sized bag" unquote. Emily faxed me this enormous two list page of all the stuff that is "recommended to be attainable in the duration of this experiment." What's really funny is that most of this stuff wouldn't fit into a purse if the purse was as big as a suitcase, like a tent, portable stoves, a cooler, et cetera. Who would even pack that on a regular trip? I'm just going to pack some clothes and a toothbrush and hope for the best.
For another thing, just the other day, Emily suddenly kindly decided to tell me that along with the apparent requirement to pack stoves in purse-sized bags, the scientists think it best that we "temporarily assume alternate names", one that apparently clicks with what parents name their kids on that one planet. She's started faxing me everything lately, so of course, the very next day my dad comes up to my room while I'm reading and flashes this enormous four-paged list of "Appropriate Ruritanian Names" at me. He was mostly mad because it used up like half of our ink supply, but he also wanted to know what the hell it was in the first place. See, my dad and I never keep stuff from each other, but he's read so many books about the struggles of teenage life and all that bullshit that he's always thinking that I'm going to totally stab him in the back and get pregnant with some gang member's baby or something. Which isn't going to happen, but that's not the point; he thought that I might be keeping something from him, and he was right. He usually is. But what was I going to do, seriously? Tell him? That'd be funny:
"All right, Pop. I admit it. A week ago Emily called me and invited me to run away to a science lab where we'll step through a portal and spend like seven days being a part of a super-expensive science experiment in which we communicate with the native people on the planet Ruritania, which is actually Earth's parallel in case you were wondering, and the scientist we're with studies how we communicate with the peeps, who are also all inspirations of characters in a hit cartoon television show. Sorry I didn't tell you."
Yeah. Real funny. I mean, my family's not all obsessed on being "down-to-earth", like Emily's parents are, but they're not going to settle for anything they think is a lie, and my dad would definitely think I was lying, or being a sass-mouth, or he would just call the funny farm.
So, I lied. I said that Emily and I were writing a story together, and those were the names that we were considering using for the two main characters. I said that I was sorry I used up all the ink, and that I would tell Em to just email it to me next time. Now, I don't lie a whole lot, and I don't think I was very convincing, but my dad believed me anyway because he's just a naturally trusting person. It also turns out that he'd read the list of names, and he wasted no time in trying to help me pick out one.
He asked what the story was about, and I said it was a fantasy story that took place in another world, modern day (sound familiar?), and that the character I was naming had a personality that was almost identical to mine. He thought about that for a minute, then told me that the best name for the character would be Cybele Pearl.
Holy God! Cybele Pearl? Really? Who on earth would name their kid that? But the deal was that I was getting a really terrible taste in my mouth because that was one of the only times that I've lied to my own Pop, and I felt like I kind of owe it to the guy to make his opinion count. That and, like I said, the list was four freaking pages. It's amazing he even took the time to read it at all.
And so, my undercover name is now Cybele Pearl Sullivan. Joy.
And lastly, Em's probably been going on about my Irish temper, and I won't say that I don't have it because I most definitely do. But I also care a lot about my family, seeing as that runs pretty deep in the Irish heritage too, and obviously I was lucky enough to be pretty much all Irish. I have the ghosts of sunburns past to prove it; my skin is as white as a fat guy's ass because neither of them are made for the sun. Em, being a optimist, calls it "ivory." Blech. It's the color of a fat man's ass. And I'm sticking to that.
Anyway, so it's going to be really hard to say goodbye to my family, mostly because I connect the most with them out of any people that I've ever met before, including Emily. Out of everybody, they're the most like me, thus they understand and tolerate me more than the outside world. Even my two little brothers treat me pretty good; considering that they are little brothers and they only live at all to annoy the living hell out of you. Living without them is not going to be fun, but at least it'll only be for like a week. (That's another thing Em's been gabbing about: the max time we get to stay is a week, which I guess is what the scientists think to be enough time for me to develop lasting relationships with the people.)
That's yet another thing: I'm not really sure about how the people are going to act and look and shit like that. I've never seen the show or even really heard about it, but since Emily would appear to be fatally attracted to this Scarface guy, I would assume that they resemble humans a little. I couldn't see Emily falling for some guy with a goat head; maybe a sexy burn but not a goat head. But I know at least that the customs will be totally wacked, and the people might be kind of old English-like, I have no idea. Maybe everything will be totally cool and they'll be just like regular people are on Earth, but I'm thinking not because Em's hinting that they're really into tradition, and that there are really strict boundaries between people. It's all black and white there; no gray: either you're this or you aren't.
She won't tell me exactly what these traditions are, because she says that she doesn't really know. She claims that the only info that she's been able to get is from the TV show, and the guy might have totally dramatified it to increase the show's popularity. And to that I say, "Bah, humbug!" I mean, seriously, this experiment is supposed to be all focused on personal safety, but how safe can it be if I don't even know if I'm saying something that's considered, like, the ultimate insult to some mega-violent character and end up being fed to her pets or something? That does not sound like fun.
So, no: I'm not really looking forward to this whole portal-experiment thing, but all I've been doing this entire week has been listening to Em gab and complain mentally about the whole thing instead of trying to weasel my way out of it. So I guess there's really no reason to start backing out now. After all, it's not like there's one of those contracts that are like, "If this person dies or is brutally murdered in any way, shape, or form, this company will not be held accountable", aka a waiver form, because, really, if they did, I would back out quicker than you could say, "Holy shaboodle."
And I'm going to hold to that, no matter how much Emily whines about it.
Emily
I sign the waiver form in my elegant curving signature, in knowing that if Katie only knew that I hold the safety of her life in my hands, she would probably attack me with a butcher knife. Luckily for me, she doesn't. I fold up the waiver and place it in the front pocket of my travel bag. Truth; I feel reasonably bad that I am concealing events from a person such as Katie, from whom I have never suppressed anything from before in the way of secrets or problems, and now I am keeping something from her that concerns her own well-being, but not as badly as I was anticipating it would feel.
For one thing, I know that Katie is looking forward to going, no matter how sullen she sounds when she answers that funny little plastic-looking phone of hers. Her disposition consists so much of her infamous adventurous spirit for her to turn down any chance to do something potentially life-threatening, and she doesn't need to know about the waiver to know that there's a chance of severe injury. This is a science experiment, after all, and Katie is always saying that there's a definite chance of death even when you're doing something totally harmless like talking on the phone. (She says that every once an a while, the electric current traveling to the phone during the conversing process can electrocute the phone it's going into and kill the person holding it. Apparently she saw it on a CSI episode.) If she really believes that, I'm sure she'll forgive me for this.
I've also been faxing Katie every bit of knowledge she needs, sort of as my way of assuring her that I have everything under control and that I know exactly what I'm doing. Of course, I don't believe that she'll buy this; partially because it's a lie: I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, and Katie claims that she can sense a lie from twenty miles off in a hurricane. Also, Katie doesn't fully believe anything. There is always doubt in her mind about even most completely proven facts, and so then of course there would be doubt in her mind that I am all-knowing about this topic, and any other topic for that matter. However, I'm sure that she believes that I am sending her all the information that I can in order for her to remain safe in her time, which must cause at least some sort of consolation to her, despite the fact that it must lower her ego by quite a few counts.
It seems that, as an addition, she is prepared enough, for it would appear that she has packed her travel bag and actually done as I suggested for once and picked out a replacement name. She claims that her father actually found the fax in the first place and she was only informed about it after he gave her grief about how much ink the printing process, but it turned out that when she gave him an excuse as to why I'd sent it at all, he offered her his two names on the list: Cybele Pearl. She'd hated both names, but she had felt terrible about lying to her father, whom she loves dearly, and had said she loved it, thus making her new name Cybele Pearl Sullivan.
I chose my name to be Astrid Belle; Astrid, for it is a traditional Levandowskian name, continuing all the way from the medieval ages, my mother tells me, and Belle simply because it is very lovely, and it feels nice on my tongue when I say it altogether: Astrid Belle Levandowski. It has a flow to it that Katie's does not, and that is most likely the reason that she despises it so.
But that is very far from what I should be thinking of now; tomorrow is the day that I will be taking my birthday gift car- my newfound Rolls Royce- and pick up Katie, who hasn't had time to get her permit quite yet, to go to the science lab downtown and start out adventure.
I will take my rest now, and in the morning, my own personal escapade, one that I have pined for and fantasized about for years, will finally begin.
Katie
I'd set my alarm clock for six, because that's the time that Em planned on waking me up, seeing as everyone in my family would still be asleep. See, my whole family sleeps until like eleven in the afternoon in the summer. Unfortunately, this includes me, so that I'm subject to the thing where I cannot physically force myself to wake up before the time that I'm used to, since my schedule is that I stay up until twelve and wake up at ten. I also always have to set my alarm at full volume in order for it to wake me up at all, because I sleep like a dead person.
What happened was that I was having a really great dream-can't remember it now, of course, I can never remember any dreams because I've got a pretty severe case of a Swiss cheese memory- but I do remember that it was really cool. And just when I was getting to the really cool part of the dream where everything makes sense and the dream ends- my alarm clock radio starts blaring itself louder that a freaking foghorn at me, right in my ear.
"Today's weather is looking sunny and cheerful, isn't it, Bob?" says the radio bitch, the huge strip-whitened smile all apparent.
"Go to hell." I reply, and smack the sleep button so hard that I bet something cracked inside the clock. Serves the stupid thing right for being so obnoxious. If you're thinking about calling me lazy right now, than I suggest you try and get into the habit of sleeping until like ten every day and then having your clock blare some garble that sounds loud enough to be an atomic explosion right in your godforsaken ear. Not fun.
My bed was really warm and the air in my room seemed to be below freezing, and I knew that I probably wouldn't be this comfortable again for a long time, and I seriously didn't want to have to get up. But I knew that my alarm had probably already woken up somebody in the house if it could wake me up in the first place, and that Em would probably arrive in like an hour and start laying on her horn like there was no tomorrow if I didn't come out right off. And it's not like I could back out now.
So, I just get out of my warm, cozy bed and throw on some old jeans and a T-shirt that I got last summer from some island I visited called Point Royal or something. The lettering on it is way too faded to read now, and, really, I don't really care what it says. My fashion sense hit the fan a long time ago and splattered into a bunch of weird little pieces that cause my brain to think of baggy sweatshirts as a some sort of designer brand. It could be worse. I take a minute to search for my bag before realizing that it had been hanging right in front of my eyes on a hat rack I have near my door. Let's all face it: I'm just not a morning person. I think people who are have something wrong with them.
I trumble down the stairs in a total sleep-haze. It's a god-freaking miracle I didn't fall. I'm pretty sure the sound of one hundred and twenty pounds of pure muscle crashing down the stairs would wake up at least one person. I reach my tiny 7-by-7 foot kitchen and pour myself a cup of coffee-thick, gooey coffee, seeing as I was the one who set everything up to make it last night.
I'm about to traipse out of the house to make sure that Emily doesn't start pounding at that siren of a car horn and wake up the whole neighborhood when I suddenly realize that I don't want my parents to immediately call Amber Alert when they find out that I'm not within a two foot radius of the house. The police might burst in on the portal-thingy while we're just about to go in. Who knows? I'm practically a weapon of mass destruction. If something is going to go wrong in a situation, it'll go wrong while I'm around.
And so, I scrawl a little note in my god-awful handwriting; something stupid like:
Mom and Pop-
I'm going on a walk and won't be back for a little while, so if I'm not here when you get up, don't totally lose your minds thinking I've been raped and kidnapped by one of those psychopaths that you're always watching on America's Most Wanted. Okay?
Love ya,
Katie
And then, cup of goo in hand, I lollop out of the front door, trying not to slam it (which is, by the way, really difficult because it's a screen door and screen doors are only made so that a person can see how hard it can be slammed before something cracks), and sit down on my front stoop to wait for Em's uber-expensive Rolls Royce to come shining it's snotty little way up my drive. To pass the time, I take a sip of my black goo.
The good news? It tastes so bad that it wakes me up almost instantly and I start to dance around like a drunken person and spitting out little solidified chunks of the goo to try and get the taste off my tongue.
The bad news? Holy shit! The thing tastes like godamn animal refuse...and people drink stuff like this every morning? What is wrong with this picture?
I pour the stuff into the nearest plant to get rid of it; the plant doesn't seem to like it either, it just wobbles there on the dirt around the stalk like that goop from that old movie The Blob. Maybe Hollywood should hire me next time they need to make some fake napalm or something. It'd save them having to use the CGI.
I was just considering going back in the house and trying to recreate the coffee so that when my parents drink it in the morning they aren't having seizures over how horribly bad it is when the big shiny Rolls Royce turns onto my street. Em's delicate little face peeks out from behind the partially tinted glass, and she grins, waving one hand in the style of Miss USA. It's probably the only way that she knows how to wave. I flash up my hand for a minute just to let her know that I see her (like I wouldn't notice something as freaking big as that Rolls Royce), hoist my mini duffel onto my shoulder and mosey down to the end of my drive as the car sleeks it's way up next to me.
Her pretty, doll-like face smiles out at me from the opposite seat, and I give her my signature half-grin. "You're ready?" She asks me, as if there was any possible way that I could not be ready after she'd called me so many times that my phone's minutes almost exhausted itself. I told her this, and she smiled in a kind of weak way. I should seriously try to go easier on poor Em- she's been living in Beverly Hills mansions over south in California before her father's work forced her to move to this country bumpkin of a state. She was probably all used to etiquette and civility, both words that I just am not familiar with. It might do lil' Emily some good mentally if I'm not as sarcastic with her as I am with my other friends.
And so, I give her a broad reassuring grin and when I slide into the slick leather seat next to my friend, I tell her that I like her shirt. Truthfully, I don't: she's wearing these tight black things on her legs and this super low-cut white blouse. Emily seriously doesn't know the male population like I do: when men see that blouse, they're going to get so excited that after a few seconds of goggling, they need a towel. 'Cause, really, Em's really pretty. She just needs to find a way not to reveal it to the world.
Also, I get the feeling that we're going to be traipsing through woods and dirt and stuff. I think that Em might have wanted to dress in something a little more bumpkin-like if she doesn't want to soil those tall black boots she was wearing.
She blushes a little at my compliment, because I don't give them a lot and she knows it. She thanks me in her shy, kind of annoyingly sweet way and I slide onto the leather seat, sliding around on it at first because the thing is so freaking slippery that it's like someone iced up the seats. Even when I buckled myself in, my butt was sliding around so much that I felt like I was sitting on pure oil instead of some vintage car seat. "Can this seat get any more oily?" I asked.
"I got it in California." She responded, as if that was supposed to answer my question.
"Okay...so is that why there's such a high crash rate over there, huh? People are sliding around like ducks on ice?" So much for saying things kindly. That lasted about as far as I could throw a wrestling champion.
She doesn't respond.
Emily
We don't get there as quickly as I had been anticipating we would, seeing as Katie was insisting on stopping at the gas station; not for gas but for a slush. For you see, Katie has gotten into the habit of jogging around her little town, and made the discovery that a necessity of this hobby was something cold after all had been finished. And so, she turned to Mountain Dew flavored slushies. I believe she's been getting one from this convenience stop known as Super America every other day for about two years now, and as outlandish as it is to say, I almost believe that she has become a regular there. It seems like every employee knows her face, for all of them have seen her there at least once or twice.
Personally, I think that Katie is rather addicted to them, but she's always saying that she'd rather be addicted to freezes that to an illegal drug, and she's right there, at least. She wanted to have one before leaving, and was so persistent about it that I eventually gave in. I waited about thirty seconds while she was inside getting her slush, then watched as she came out with this absolutely massive plastic cup-seventy-two ounces at the very least, I would say-and it was filled to the brim with crushed yellow-colored ice. And Katie was sipping almost daintily on the thing like it was a glass of water. Sometimes, I feel like no matter how well I know Katie, there's still some things about her that I will simply never be able to fathom. This is one of them.
So, we set off again, and Katie seems reasonably content chugging away at her breakfast of what she told me was called the Mongo Gulp, and she didn't speak much the rest of the ride over. I believe she might have also been getting brain freezes; judging by the way that she would sometimes rub her forehead as if trying to warm it. I suppose I can't really point fingers: if anyone was about to get a brain freeze, however, it would probably be from this dinosaur of a slush she was drinking.
It didn't take an exceptionally long time to get there: Katie lives near enough to the Twin Cities so that it took an approximate twenty minutes to arrive at out destination. From the way Katie was staring out the window with her eyes taking everything in, and I could tell that she was on the lookout for the lab. Every time we would pass a tall, majestic looking building, she would fixate on it and then shrug when we passed right by it.
It was pretty clear that Katie was anticipating the lab to be large and bright, so I think she was more appalled than surprised when we pulled up to this shabby little wooden structure near the seedy downtown area, but there was really no reason to doubt what it was because of the small, cheap-looking plastic sign that someone had hung on the building just to the left of the door: "Study of Otherworldly Life". There were sparsely few old-looking cars parked in the faded parking areas; one newly parked, I could see, as there was a large older lady with a rather nasty face, decked out in a blindingly white lab coat getting out of one of the cars. She gave us a malicious look.
"Why is she looking at us like that?" I asked Katie, who knew this woman's type well, though to be completely honest I was extremely frightened of this woman.
"She's glaring because the Rolls Royce car is so sleek and cool-looking, and because we're such hot babes." Katie replies, smirking at me. "If I were you, I'd consider that a compliment." I suppose that I must have continued to look concerned, and the woman to look malevolent, because about thirty minutes after she said this, she pressed her finger on the button that lowered the tinted glass on my window, and stuck her head out of the opening. "Hey! You!"
The woman looked affronted. "What?"
"What's with the glaring, bitch? Can't handle a pretty car?" I was shocked by this, but the woman only stuck up her middle finger to Katie and marched her way into the building. Katie laughed a little and drew her head back in. "Easy as pie, Em; all you got to do is face the person and they won't bug you."
I considered telling Katie that such bluntness was, from where I had formerly resided, anything but easy as pie, but thought better of it. I proceeded to attempt a parallel parking job. Unfortunately, that had been the part of attaining my license that I haven't an idea how I even passed, and I almost crashed into the car next to the spot next to the one that I was trying for. Katie shook her head at me, not in an unkind way.
Eventually, I managed to get the car parked in a reasonably correct positioning, and both of us got out of the car, bags in hand, preparing to enter into the sordid little lab. "Umm... Em?"
I turn my head to see my friend standing a ways away from me, her face not entirely as confident as it would be were this a normal situation. I suppose that I can sympathize. "Yes?"
"Are you really sure that you want to...umm...put our lives in the hands of some seedy little scientists and that bitch who just gave me the bird?" I would guess that the translation of this from Katie's language to English would be: I'm frightened. Are you sure that we can't think this over a little more before jumping into it like this? But of course, Katie would never utter anything of that likeness.
"Positive. We'll be fine. They know what they're doing, I'm sure of it." And as doubting as my friend is, I have no qualms about whether or not we'll be safe. The scientists tell me that every possible outcome has been thought out and planned; what on earth could happen?
Nothing.
