Chapter Text
⏔⏔⏔ ꒰ ᧔ෆ᧓ ꒱ ⏔⏔⏔Chapter 1 ꒰ ᧔ෆ᧓ ꒱ snowy Tuesdays ⏔⏔⏔ ꒰ ᧔ෆ᧓ ꒱ ⏔⏔⏔
⏔⏔⏔ ꒰ ᧔ෆ᧓ ꒱ ⏔⏔⏔ song for the chapter: a thousand miles by Vanessa Carlton ⏔⏔⏔ ꒰ ᧔ෆ᧓ ꒱ ⏔⏔⏔
Let’s set the scene. It’s a Tuesday. Manchester is doing its favourite party trick: impersonating Narnia. Snow’s coming down like it’s personally offended by pavement, and I, Angelica Grace—fifteen, possessor of hair the colour of a dodgy bleach job (silver-blond, if you’re being posh) and eyes like a cat that’s just found the answers to a math test online—am trudging home. My aesthetic is ‘a year ten who gave up on revising’, currently dressed in a knee length skirt that makes me look like a nun, a polo shirt from primary school that still fits, ( don't ask me how) a bland grey and blue blazer thats as fashionable as a tea towel and Mary janes my mum got from the British heart foundation for a fiver. bargain.
“Absolute dog shit,” I mutter to myself, a phrase my mum uses frequently that I’ve ironically adopted. My breath puffs out in a cloud of pure teenage irritation. School was its usual symphony of pointless drama and lukewarm chips. All I want is a asda banana smoothie, the electric blanket on full, and to scroll through instagram in complete silence.
I get to our terraced house, fumble with keys, my fingers numb as fish fingers, and stumble into the hall. The warmth hits me like a welcome slap. I dump my bag, kick off my soaking Mary janes, and sprint faster than year sevens going to a lunch hall, up to my room. As soon as I get into my room I strip out of my soaking uniform and practically stuff myself in grey joggers, a old shirt, a grey hoodie and my prize possession: purple fluffy socks from Primark. I rub my eyes as I trudge downstairs. Man. I hate Tuesdays. Mondays are like the start of the week that everyone complains about. Wednesdays give people hope they might actually get to the end of the week and Thursdays is a pre celebration for Friday. Of course Friday is such a relief. But Tuesdays. Tuesday’s are just…well Tuesdays. Just a reminder you have the whole week left and are nowhere near the weekend.
I walk down the hallway and into the living room, intending to couch rot, but instead I stop dead in the doorway. In the middle of the faded Persian rug, right where my cat Barry usually vomits, is a… shimmer. A sort of wobble in the air, like heat haze off a road, but glittery. It’s about the size of a pizza box. Probably a trick of the light, or some weird reflection from the streetlamp through the snow-blobbed window.
“Great,” I sigh and walk up to it. “Now the house is hallucinating.” I poke at it with a toe.
Big mistake. Enormous.
The shimmer doesn’t pop. It gulps. With a sound like a giant ripping velcro, the pizza-box hole tears wide open into a gaping, swirling vortex of amethyst, topaz, sapphire and silvers.
A gust of air smelling of burnt sugar and cinnamon—a confusing combination—whooshes out, sucking in loose paper, a Pringle’s crisp packet, and my will to live. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I say, with the exasperation of a seventy-two-year-old woman who’s just seen someone queue jump. I take a step back, but the rug bunches under my socks. My arms windmill in a tragic, uncoordinated ballet. I don’t so much fall as I am inelegantly vacuumed.
There’s a sensation of being spun through a kaleidoscope filled with angry glitter that’s having a seizure. My stomach attempts to relocate to my lungs. I have just enough time to think, *Hey, this is kinda like that one cartoon I used to watch as a kid*, before I am unceremoniously spat out. Whump. I land on something soft, cold, and profoundly damp. Moss. I’m lying face-up, staring at a sky where two small, baby pink coloured moons are doing a hesitant waltz amidst unfamiliar constellations.
I sit up.
” Where the fuck am I?..”
The air is warm and thick, smelling of damp earth and over-ripe fruit. I stand up, brushing moss off my hoodie. I am in a clearing in a forest where the trees look like they’ve been drawn by a particularly enthusiastic fantasy artist on crack. They’re purple-barked, with leaves that shimmer and glow teal and silver. It’s beautiful. It’s also deeply, profoundly inconvenient. I look down. Grey sweatpants. Hoodie. One sock. The other sock, along with my dignity and any chance of a normal Tuesday, is gone. “Right,” I say to the neon-coloured beetle scuttling past my bare foot. “This is not how I planned my evening .”
I spent the next 10 minutes inspecting my surroundings. The..animals, If I can even call them that, look fairly similar to earth animals. A few purple and powder blue squirrels seemed to laugh at my confusion. At least somebody can get a laugh out of this.
“Great”
The last thing I needed was rodents laughing at me. I already had year eights snickering like rats whenever I walk past the extremely large cheetos at school. I walk forward to inspect a luminous pink daisy, but stand on something sharp with my foot that’s missing a sock.
“ SOCKS,” * I whisper shout “ IM IN A PANDORA DUPE IN ONE SOCK.” I hop on one foot as my foot stings. After the feeling in my poor foot finally went away. I went back to my investigation with the pink daisy. I crouch down and poke it. POOF. Neon pink dust shot out the daisy, and right onto my hoodie.
” MATE! THIS HOODIE IS BRAND NEW!” I say, fed up of this nonsense.
It’s going to be a long day.