Chapter 3 - Abigail

Having been relieved of her Mystery Paper, Abigail ponders the possibilities of escaping suburbia when an extraordinary solution presents itself.

3. " Abigail

            Behind her, someone had dragged a knife across the heavens: cotton candy bleed out from the continent spanning wound all over the virgin blue sky. Bright neon pink puffs seeped out of a glowing orange scar while the sun gently sank into the horizon. Fresh cut grass and pine filled Abigail’s lungs. In only ten short minutes, the deafening cries and yelps of Venado Middle School students would subside. Abby was one of only a handful of students left on campus. Out of those few who remained, she was the only with a mystery to solve.

            After class had led out, Mr. Richardson had kept the Mystery Paper. Her paper. Pornographic is what he’d called it. Is that why they don’t teach sex education anymore? Were our own naked bodies to pornographic to discuss, and discover, and understand? When it came to sports though, no expense spared. That was Abby’s real problem; it was never just one mystery to solve, but an entire atlas of hypocrisy that never ceased to unfold it self. Even grandpa Moorcroft’s credo was useless against the enormity of bullshit she encountered.

            With as much effort as she could spare, Abby focused on the task at hand. If Mr. Richardson was telling the truth there was more than one copy of the Mystery Paper. Every unused locker, including those whose owners had forgot to lock them, had to be thoroughly searched. Sadly, only one bank of cobalt lockers remained.

            A pleasant singsong voice spoke up from behind Abby, “What are you so busy foraging for, Dear Sister?”

            Abby didn’t look up from her search, but addressed Collette with measured frustration, “Richardson never gave me back my paper.”

            Collette sounded reasonably confused, “So he hid it from you and told you to go fetch?”

            Taking a breath, Abby responded with mix of irritation and excitement, “This morning, that paper, it was some kind of… code. Or riddle. Or puzzle. It was something more important than what the teachers wanted was to believe it was!”

            Leaning her back up against the lockers, Collette mused, “What exactly do they want us to believe this mystery paper of yours actually was?”

            Abby huffed, and returned to her frantic search, “Porn.”

            Collette exploded into laughter, “Did you really get caught with porn in class? That’s fantastic! But my sister, you need not be this desperate. I have, well my parents own, the most beautiful collection of pornography this side of the Atlantic. You’re coming to my house this evening. Come, let’s be off.”

            Collette gently tugged on Abigail’s wrist. Abby pulled away, “No! It wasn’t porn, Collette. They want us to think its porn. It’s not. It’s… bigger.”

            Confused, Collette walked along side Abby who continued to open and close locker after locker. After a moment’s pause, the young French Girl asked, “Bigger how, exactly?”

            Abby had reached the final locker on the bottom row. She paused, embraced a sliver of hope, and pulled. Empty. There must have been a janitor or a whole team of janitors ordered to purge the school of any trace of anything greater than mediocrity. She looked once more to the neon sherbet sky. Abby pondered exactly what she was searching for; “It was an invitation.”

            Collette was many things for thirteen years of age; objectively more emotionally in tune than her obsessive raven-haired friend was decidedly a particularly strong attribute. Treading carefully on her words, she probed, “And where would this invitation permit you to go?”

            Abby continued to gaze longingly skyward. She pointed up into the school of bright, altocumulus clouds swimming above her. In the final moments of the sun’s retreat, that miles wide tangerine was a doorway. It didn’t matter where the invitation lead. What mattered was the possibility of being elsewhere.

Collette sat beside her friend as they watched the sky fade from an atomic orange sea, to a dull grey bog. Taking Abby’s hand in her own, Collette gently played with her friend’s fingers; each one individually massaged and inspected as she spoke, “Belonging is not a matter of where, my sister. Look at me. Clearly I do not belong in this place. However, I know who I am. Who I am is my conscious, experience, and perspective of those experiences. All shape who I choose to be.” Collette looked into Abby’s eyes with sororal love; “To belong is to be you, and content.”

            Rolling her eyes, Abby deflected, “What book did you copy and paste that speech from?”

            Collette jumped to her feet and playfully poked Abigail’s nose, “Plagiarized, verse by verse from mother. Doesn’t make it any less true. Now, if you could remove your mind from the clouds, all this talk of porn has… there’s proper English for S’envoyer en l’air. Come, its past time we left.”

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            Despite Collette’s exhaustive insistence, Abby declined to investigate the magazines her friend had smuggled overseas into her host home. Like most things, Abigail’s sexual awakening had taken its sweet time to fully engross her attention. The same could be said for her growth spurt. Abby had rocketed to the meager height of five feet, three inches. It was frustrating to have so many things physically, emotionally, and mentally just out of reach. Nothing was more infuriating however than the absence of the Mystery Paper.

            Unzipping the secret compartment in her backpack, Abby withdrew her house keys. She felt the ridges of the horse head keychain she’d received from her dad: a painfully transparent forgotten birthday gift. If only Abby hadn’t pretended to like the impulse purchase, she probably wouldn’t be up to her eyes in Dallas Maverick’s memorabilia.

            With the key pinched between her left thumb and pointer finger, Abby practiced turning the key. Even with a block left to go, she practiced sliding the metal into the lock and twisting. It was a practice that distracted from the emptiness of her neighborhood. It was a practice that prepared her for the unlikely event another pedestrian followed her home on the bike trail that ran behind her house. It was a practice that never offered any justification for Abby’s compulsive dedication to her nervous habit.

Despite the population density of Irvine, a perpetual and heavy stillness pressed down up on the county at large. Lawns and parks always perfectly manicured. Houses meticulously held to association standards. Even the power lines suspended from tower to tower parallel to the bike path seemed obligated to hum no louder than a whisper. It was a community build upon the principals of perfection and safety. For Abby, it produced unrelenting boredom.

Of course, the moment Abby began to grow accustom to the carefully crafted silence, a commuter train would inevitably stampede across the tracks that also ran parallel to her home: 16-B Black Oak Drive.

            Maybe it wasn’t the stillness that unnerved her? Her living room looked out in envy at the train tracks that carried people past the pristine dullards of Irvine; north towards smog shrouded Los Angles, or south towards the precariously functional nuclear power plant in San Clemente. Nearly as far west as humanly possible, and with no desire to visit the east coast, Abby’s claustrophobia began to weigh down upon her again. It seemed as if the gravity of her discomfort abruptly increased, forcing her to fumble and drop the keys. There was a muffled clang as the keychain landed on the welcome mat.

Abby spun around quickly: back against the door. Looking out into the stillness she waited till her heart and breath slowed to an even pace. No people. No trains. No threat. She was as she always had been: alone. In that moment of hesitation before picking up the keys, Abby drew a breath of clarity. She didn’t necessarily want to go home to a place that only felt like a house. Abby stood upon the worn straw mat starring down in contempt at the keys. What was the true value of those keys? They unlocked a door to a house that faced tracks that ran in neither a direction Abby wished to travel nor any destination that would satisfy her wanderlust.

Gathering her keys, Abby let her angst settle like bile in the back of her throat. She shoved the key into the lock: slide and twist. The front door opened into silence. Jumbled words from earlier that morning reassembled themselves until her mother’s voice became clear, “I’ll be working late again today. Dinner’s in the fridge.”

Dinner would remain in the fridge. Abby turned about face and marched herself from the entryway and into the ally way. She headed toward the last points of light from the fallen sun.

After everything that happened today, an empty house would not satisfy. She’d run toward her one truly peaceful spot. Like most of Irvine, it wasn’t a naturally occurring geographical destination. However, on North Lake, Abby had claimed the manufactured oasis as her own. It was a regularly shared, but sufficiently private sanctuary. In the middle of the bridge that spanned the picturesque manmade lake, Abigail had spent many weekends alone on the tiny manmade island. Tonight, more than any other, she needed to descend the paint chipped spiral staircase into a space of artificial tranquility.

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            It was never truly night-time in Irvine. Sure, the sun had set half an hour ago, but the amount of light pollution in the community proved a formidable obstacle for finding an adequate amount of natural darkness. For Abby, her little island provided both ample obscurity and sufficient quiet to calm her mind. She could live with the sporadic honking of geese, or quacking ducks; those were at least naturally occurring irritants. It was the pounding sneakers and whisperings of foreign tongues passing over the bridge above that were unwelcome distractions. Tonight, an unfocused mind was not an option. All hope of recovering the Mystery Paper lie solely upon the capabilities of Abigail to forage through her own memories.

            Tapping her pencil furiously upon the blank page of her spiral bound notebook, Abby tried to forcibly recall the big picture. It didn’t have to be perfect; it just had to be on paper. She poured all of her will into conjuring the tangible proof of the puzzle back into existence from the depths of her mind. Think: big picture. Start from the edges, spiral inward. Remember the circle? No, the six spheres were first. Then there was the circle. Inside the circle were the scale, the naked couple, and another six dots stacked up like a pyramid.

            Abby examined her creation carefully; circles, naked people, three planets, and a sun. It was by all measures of art and cryptography a horrible recreation. Even if the big picture was more or less accounted for, the devil was always in the details. What about all the foreign markings? There was something else that was missing. Abigail knew a vital symbol had slipped her mind, until she looked up and across the lake.

            It stood like an oracle in the center of the still water. This wasn’t an over looked detail of Abby’s favorite local refuge. Details rarely escaped Abigail; she took pride in her careful collection and catalog of the minutia in every aspect of her simple city. This was different. A door had simply appeared upon the water.

There were no ripples out from either direction. The door that sat atop the water had not arisen up from the depths, nor could persons unseen have erected it upon the water. A six-foot, maple colored wooden door had simply come into existence.

            Without a moment’s hesitation, Abigail had stripped off her Converse sneakers and socks. She waded out into the biting cold, halcyon lake. She pushed passed the discomfort as she pushed herself further out into the lake. Her bare feet no longer touched the bottom by the time she reached the monolith. Moonlight reflected the now choppy waters upon the sheen of the door. Never had she seen wood glisten with such brilliance, like the first door ever milled.

            Abby’s feet churned the dark waters beneath her to stay afloat, to remain in awe of such a peculiar eidolon of a doorway. Then again, it wasn’t exactly a doorway. It was precisely a freestanding, perfectly manufactured door. It was without frame, hinge, or handle. That’s when her memory snapped into place. Within the center of the door, was a keyhole.

            Abigail knew where she’d seen a key: possibly, the key.

            A sudden sharp wind stirred the lake and renewed the uncomfortable cold eating away at the lower half of Abby. Struggling to stay afloat, Abigail reluctantly began to back stroke towards her island all while keeping her eyes on the door lest it disappear. Only two strokes out however, and she stopped. Unobstructed moonlight reflected an engraved inscription above the keyhole; language that was both unknown an immediately recognizable.

            Abigail continued to tread water, soaked to the soul in increasingly chilling water and an ever-expanding mystery. This was her turning point. She’d found a direction not pinned to any terrestrial compass. No train tracks or empty suburban streets lead to Abby’s desired destination. Her North Star was no longer pinned to an empty house. Abigail now had a singular unrelenting focus: nothing would stand between her and whatever lay on the other side of the door floating above the surface of the lake.