Maria Sioux opened her eyes. This was a lot harder than usual. Like trying to pry molten taffy off a hot sidewalk. Greenish light assaulted her retinas. She squinted and sat up, which sent sharp pains from the back of her skull all the way down to her tailbone. "Ow," said Maria. She rubbed the back of her head and tried to stand up. She failed, tripping over the cuffs of her jeans and whacking a low-hanging branch with her forehead. "Ow," Maria repeated. She rubbed both the back and the front of her head. "Where the hell am I?" She straightened her cropped Abercrombie and Fitch t-shirt and tossed hair out of her eyes.
She seemed to be in a deep scrubby thicket. The trees were huge, some almost as big across as a car, and none of them smaller around than she was. The leaves overhead were so thick that everything had a dim greenish cast. Beneath the trees were the occasional patch of high tangled bushes, and the rest was thin grass and weeds. It was cold, and she shivered in her t-shirt and drew her arms around her.
"Whoa. What happened?" she asked to no one in particular. The last thing she remembered, she was in study hall. It was hot and quiet in the classroom, and she was reading this book her friend Kylie had got her. It was by a guy called Token or something. Evidently it was based on a movie. Maria hadn't seen the movie, but Kylie said it was really good and there were all these hot guys in it, so she was reading the book. It was kind of boring, and there weren't any hot guys yet—only this really long thing about short people and birthday parties—so she started to doze off. The heat and the droning of the fluorescent lights overhead drew her eyelids down, drew her shoulders forward onto the desk. She half remembered a feeling of falling, or whooshing, like the drop of a roller coaster. And then she had opened her eyes in this place, and her head really hurt.
"I must be dreaming or something," Maria said. But she had never had a headache in a dream before. And she could see and hear and feel every detail perfectly: the rough texture of the bark and the clods of dirt on the ground; the sound of the twigs and branches, scraping and creaking in a thin breeze; a scent in the air, earthy and somehow a little bit stale. It wasn't like a dream at all. Dreams were vague and shifting and without detail, and this was very clear. Had someone slipped her drugs or something, wiping out her memory? Maybe she hit her head and got amnesia, and then wandered into the woods.
She decided that if she walked long enough, she'd probably hit a road or something. Anyway, it was chilly, and there was no point just sitting there and waiting until it got dark. She picked a random direction and started walking. This sucked. What day was it, even? What if she was out of it so long that it was Saturday already, and she had missed her date with Tyler? Tyler was a junior. He could be kind of an asshole sometimes, but he was really cute and popular, and she had been looking forward to the date for like almost two weeks. Forget about it, she told herself. The first thing to do is figure out where the hell you are and get back home. Mom is going to be so pissed at me, she thought. And worried, too. I wonder how long I've been gone. Maybe they sent the police out looking for me.
She kept tramping through the woods. It wasn't all that hard, because the trees were so big and old, and if she avoided the bushes there was enough room to walk between them. She didn't see the edge of the woods yet. This was really weird. There weren't any big parks in her town, were there? The only parks were like, grassy areas with a few picnic tables and a jungle gym. She must have been walking for like twenty minutes now. She looked at her watch. The hands didn't move. "Shit." It was sterling silver—it had been a birthday present from her Dad. She shook her wrist, but still nothing. Maybe she broke it when she fell, or whatever.
Maria decided to take a break, and sat down on a fallen log. What if the park went on forever? What if she had ended up in the wilderness somehow? What if she kept walking and walking and starved to death or something? Or froze, more like it. (She rubbed her arms briskly, but it didn't make her much warmer.) What if some crazy person came along and raped her and killed her, and no one ever found the body? That would suck so bad!
A small movement to her left made her startle and hold her breath. Oh, it was a rabbit! A little brown rabbit! She had never seen one before in the wild, just in pet stores and on TV and stuff. It was really cute. It sat up and twitched its ears, sniffing curiously at the brisk forest air, then hopped forward into a small patch of sunshine and began to nibble on a pink flower. She stayed as still and quiet as she could, not wanting to scare it. Every now and then it would sit up and look around, but then decide that everything was safe and go back to nibbling again. The rabbit finished eating the flower, hopped forward, and an arrow was suddenly through its head, in its eye, sticking out its HEAD Oh my God and the rabbit quivered and slumped forward and she screamed and fell backwards off the log.