Welcome to the first chapter! I hope you enjoy! :)

Prologue - The Ghost of Brantford High

It all happened so fast - one moment she was there, and the next she was here. Brantford. It took some investigating to find out exactly where she was, and as soon as she did it didn't take long for her to realize she was in fact out of the game. It was frightening, to say the least, having only ever lived within the parameters of the game before and now, suddenly, her world was much bigger and much more vast.

She had been confused when suddenly, she had arrived in the bedroom of a boy, a green flicker still coming from the game console, the controls on the ground where the boy had dropped them, before being sucked away into the game. It took a while for her to realize this was what had happened, but as soon as she saw the word JUMANJI on the game in big, bright letters, she knew something had gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Pretty soon there came a knock at the bedroom door and it had opened - she had frozen, searching desperately for somewhere to hide. But when a middle-aged man peeked his head in the room and looked right at her, she realized he had looked right through her. In other words, he hadn't seen her, she was invisible to him.

"Alex," he said. "Time to get up, Buddy." He came inside the room, looking puzzled when he found the bed was empty, and even more so when he saw the console. "Alex?" He stepped back out of the room and called down the hall, "Alex?"

She followed cautiously while he checked the hall and bathroom, but that was empty too. He went downstairs to the kitchen where his wife, she guessed, and Alex's mother, was sitting at the table reading the newspaper. "Honey, have you seen Alex?"

"He's not up yet."

"Well he's not in his room."

"What?"

She had taken her time exploring the Vreeke house, a warm, welcoming family home. There were family photographs everywhere, many of a young boy, who she guessed was Alex, the photos stopping at his teenage years. So teenage Alex had been sucked into the game. Seeing all these pictures of this happy, loving family only rekindled her want to have a family like this of her own someday.

She was there for it all, as confusion quickly grew into panic, and phone calls were made asking if anyone had seen their son. Finally, after many unsuccessful searches of their own, they called the police and Alex Vreeke was officially reported missing.

She was there for their heartbreak and fear, clinging onto that little bit of hope that their son would return to them, that he was safe, wherever he was. But she knew that if he really had been sucked into the game, as was becoming more and more apparent to her as time passed, he would be far from safe.

But if he really had been sucked into the game, how then, had she come to be here? Sure, the game was complex and complicated, she knew from living in it, often like it had a mind of its own and never kept anything consistent. But how? She eventually settled on it being a major glitch of some sort.

She stayed with Mr. and Mrs. Vreeke for a while, wishing she could be a source of some comfort and support to them in this difficult time. All of their heartbreak and pain only added to her own - she was far from home, in an unfamiliar place where she did not fit. She was away from everything and everyone she loved and everything familiar to her, and she had no way of contacting anyone or no way to go back. At night, when she would curl up alone and close her eyes, thinking back to her old life, she would always settle on an image of those dark yet warm eyes that she could easily get lost in, his eyes, and she would instantly feel better, at least for a little while.

Each time she thought of him it brought a smile to her face and filled her with warmth, followed quickly by a painful ache of longing to return to him and their life within the game. She was homesick, desperately so.

Did he feel this same way when he thought of her? She hoped so. But then she would recall their last conversation, before she had been sent here, all they had said, and she wished that they had been on better terms before she vanished.

She would replay that conversation over and over again in her head, feeling worse and worse about it the more she thought of it. She had basically accused him of favouring his work over them and she wholeheartedly regretted it. She knew that wasn't true - yes he had been busy and engrossed in his work lately, borderline obsessed - no, he had crossed that line, he was obsessed with it. And despite being as fed up and angry with it as she was, she hadn't meant what she said. Now she would give anything to see him again and tell him how she had not meant it.

She tried wandering around town, exploring it like she had the Vreeke house, and could around the neighbourhood, until she would become faint. After a few times of this she came to the conclusion that as she was a part of the game, she could not stray too far from it. So when the Vreekes packed up to move away and donated a bunch of their belongings to the school, the console included, she was brought to her next place, and where she would remain.

She felt like a ghost, present but not really seen. She would occasionally slam locker doors, brush papers from a desk onto the floor, and flicker the lights, just for fun, for her own amusement. And soon enough, rumours of the school being haunted and various stories of how the 'ghost of Brantford High' came to be.

But pretty soon, even spooking and pranking the students grew tedious and boring. Still, every year there were new students pouring through the doors, so she tried to learn their names and get to know them the best she could. What more could she do?

In the school she spent most of her time in the basement where the game console had been carelessly placed, someone unsure of what to do with it so they had just set it amongst a pile of other mixed items: old clothes, a bowling ball, a football helmet, and many others. It was a messy storage space for lost and unwanted things. She was lost, but she hoped she was not unwanted. Maybe here she was, but not back home.

If she wasn't in the basement she was usually in the biology classroom, pouring through the high-school level textbooks on different animal species, the closest to her familiar zoology. She clung onto hope.

That was until the memories began fading, and she started to grow desperate. Someone just play the game already! Someone send me home - please... She needed to go back, to feel the warmth and welcome of their cozy London flat, to stand again in the bright classroom she taught in at the university, steeped in knowledge, to feel his comforting arms around her...

She tried to scout out potential players, brave and curious souls daring enough to try out the game. But time passed, and so did her memories. She clung to those memories - they were all she had.

Time passed, slowly, and it seemed to take her old self with it. She had been here for so long that she was now becoming a part of this world, this reality, different from her own, her old life rapidly slipping away from her. She was becoming real. And with no way to return, she was stuck, trapped. And she couldn't play the game herself, she had tried, many times. She always thought maybe this time, maybe this time. But it never worked, no matter how much she hoped.

It was becoming harder to hide, the more real she became, less a game character and more a real person. But people didn't ask too many questions, for she was becoming embedded in this world. So, she started working at the school. This was her world now. She became Ms. Ross, teaching assistant, Professor Ross was gone. By then, all of her memories were gone too.

For twenty years she watched and waited, hoping someone would find the game and venture far enough to play it - after all, they knew no better, they would think they were just playing another video game. But no one did, and so she remained.

That is, until five students in detention finally unearthed the game.

Hello and welcome to 'My Jewel'! :) This story will be pretty different from my other 'Jumanji' story and I'm really excited about it! Hope you enjoyed the prologue - I was originally going to start it with the chapter coming next, but then had this idea and decided to roll with it, kind of starts it off on a more ominous note :) Thanks so much for reading, more coming soon!