"Do you live near a forest? I couldn't imagine what you do in your spare time if you have no forest or friends." April wondered aloud. "I've never ridden a bike so I can't say I prefer it, but it certainly does look fun. Is that what you do with your spare time?"
April really couldn't think of what else Jasper could get up to, though she supposed her existence was a very simple one, sticking to the small world around her. Something was mystical and almost paranormal about the place, from when she was a very small child she'd swear to seeing creepy, horrifying beings and mutated animals, like something in the forest was radiating outwards. And if you got to close?
Well, April was sure that frogs weren't supposed to have eight legs, clouds weren't supposed to be green and pinecones weren't supposed to have caramel inside.
She'd always kept the forests secrets to herself, mostly because she was worried that she had imagined most of it and people would think her more insane if she couldn't provide proof. But also because, she felt normal in the weird place, like she was another abnormal resident of the forest.
Maybe she could take Jasper one day.
Jasper bristled a bit at her words, even though he figured she didn’t mean them in a hurtful way. “I have friends,” he replied defensively. His sudden rush of anger faded quickly, though. “Though admittedly not many. I mostly ride my bike and read. I like doing things that don’t require technology….Because, uh, my uncle hates it, and I live with him. What about you? Do you just spend your time in the forest? How far have you gotten?” He decided it was a good time to stop asking questions now, before he showed his hand far too soon. Not only that, but the last question sounded almost accusatory and scaring her off or having to make up more lies was the last thing Jasper wanted right now.
April squinted her eyes, partly at the sun that peaked brilliantly through the fluffed clouds that truly weren't doing their job properly that day and partly from the realisation that she'd hurt Jaspers feelings. She'd never been good at catching her own hurtful tendencies and she had been told she lacked a filter. She couldn't imagine what having a filter would be like.
There were too many things bouncing off inside April's head every second of the day for her to be able to control them, she blurted out her first constructed thought and built the next response before the person had replied.
Basically, she wasn't used to company. But, surely, that had to be obvious by now.
"You live alone with your uncle then? It must be marvellous to have a distant relative." She turned her head to focus in, a difficult task for her. "I live with my father, he likes to be in his own company so even when we're together I find myself alone."
She tapped her lips thoughtfully trying her best to process an understandable answer for Jaspers questions, one that wouldn't completely have him running to the nearest train
"Most of the time, I sit in my forest to read, or have a picnic or talk to the-" She paused, clearing her throat. "My father doesn't like me going too far, on the account of the missing people, he makes me keep a walkie talkie in my skirt and as soon as it looses signal i have to head back."
She had caught herself just in time, almost revealing that she was sure she talked to flowers and heard whispers from the mutated animals. April hadn't been lying about the walkie talkie though, her father had never liked the forest to begin with and it was the only way to convince him to let her run free.
She slipped a hand into the pocket and produced the two walkie talkies she always kept on her.
"The second one is just in case I loose the first. I often loose things, nearly every time I enter the forest. Isn't that strange?"
Jasper nodded, curious as to what she was going to say before she stopped talking. “Yes, very strange,” he agreed, knowing that it wasn’t strange at all to him. This girl was seeming more and more like a possible candidate, and Jasper felt a bit sorry for her. While Wonderland could be beautiful in parts, no one in their right mind would ever actually want to go there, and Jasper didn’t want to have to take some poor, unsuspecting person.
“Living with my uncle is a like living with a parent…sort of,” Jasper added, trying to think of a way to get to reveal the things she hadn’t said. “My parents are dead, so he’s the closest relative I have.” That statement was only partially true; as far as he knew both of Jasper’s parents were actually dead, but Horatio was not really related to him at all. It was much easier to tell partial truths than lie completely. Anyway, he had to focus on his objective. Maybe he wasn’t meant to be the next White Rabbit at all and could stop people from trying to take April to Wonderland. Maybe he was the next Alice, even. But that wasn’t possible, as he had already been to Wonderland the Alices never had until they were taken there by the rabbit.
Ugh, the complications were making his head spin. He hoped he hadn’t zoned out of anything important to theorize on something he knew deep down was wrong anyway. He adjusted his glasses again, trying to reorient himself in the real world. At this girl seemed as spacey as him, more spacey, in fact, if he was being honest.
"I'm sorry to hear about your parents, but I do get the feeling, my father is all the family I have." She admitted, bitterly. "I wished for a cat like the one from Alice, but he's terribly allergic to them."
She trailed off, listening to the breeze and recollecting her intentions to the sentence she had laid out for him. Whenever she started to think about Wonderland, or wonderful places like her forest she lost her trail of thought. In an effort to prevent her dissociation she threw her now empty coffee cup into a nearby bin, grinning slightly when it bounced off the rim and landed neatly inside. April glanced down to flatten out her skirt once more, and noticed the time on her watch.
The watch had been her Mothers, or at least she assumed so as it was left in the box of things her father his away and it read that the time was well past noon.
She stood up. "Oh bother, I'm going to be late! I have to go, like, ten minutes ago. Though I suppose I have to go just as much now as then."
April pursed her lips and turned to apologise to Jasper, but stopped herself just as quickly. A creeping thought that had occurred to her pushed its way to the front of her mind. What if she'd dreamt this up? Like everything she loved from the forest, this could quite literally be too goo to be true. A friend? Someone genuinely interested in April? It was likely a fabrication of a powerful imagination.
And so, desperate to cling to the idea that it could be real, she passed over the spare walkie talkie to jasper, closing his hands over it. Hoping he was real.
"I don't have a phone. They're more insane than I am and I consider that a dangerous amount."
With that, she darted off into the ongoing traffic and busy streets of the town, only later would she consider how weird her last statement had been to Jasper. And how she had left without a goodbye.
Jasper blinked, staring after her as she left. April was weird, and coming from him, that was saying something. He glanced down at the walkie talkie. Well, he supposed it was something. Maybe he and April could truly become friends.
(time skip?)
(Sure? How long are you thinking?)
(to the next day at school?)
(Sure, that works. Should we have something weird happen with April that makes Jasper sure of her role?)
(yeah, that sounds good!)
Jasper stood looking out at the sea of faces in the cafeteria with his tray in hand like always, eyes alighting on his usual table. He should just go there, but he wondered where April was. He already felt like he was more similar to her than anyone else in the school.
April kept her head down. That could be her defining sentence, one to describe her entire personality and existence. Today though, specifically, she was keeping her head down at lunch, weaving wordlessly through the jungle of limbs that could be mistaken as well-organised, cheery students. That was, if you didn't know the cohort.
April knew what they spoke about during lunch, that most of them were so eager to get to their tables so no one could speak about them while they were gone, or perhaps so they didn't miss the latest gossip.
Either option bored her so incredibly she'd rather put herself through a day of Mrs Dellaway's math class than listen to any of them. And Mrs D was like ninety something with a strong passion to talk of her knitting.
April sat with her back to the food benches, listening to the sounds of kids shoving and screeching to get to the still-hot cafeteria food of which there never is much. The food was only ever good on Fridays when the school ordered a bunch of pizzas from the local pizzeria, then even April would dare to get the food from the evil hands of the crusty lunch ladies.
It was just a normal lunch, her fork poking mindlessly at leftovers from last nights pasta, translating a book from a different language with her textbook and half-listening to a pop song playing through her earphones.
Then she sensed it.
April had never been able to explain it, but when trouble rose. She knew it was coming.
Only from people around her, if you meant her harm, April could practically smell it. And it was hard not to smell Brian Wells. The schools biggest bully, generally popular just because of this and really bad B.O.
He was standing behind her, probably to pour something over her head, but whatever he was planning she could feel his wicked smile like she had eyes on the back of her head.
She grabbed her lunch tray and whipped it around, hitting his head in one clear whack. The sound resonated through the cafeteria, people looked over.
"Get away from me!"
Jasper’s eyes shot over to April, eyebrows rising. Even he had to admit that she looked a little crazy, wielding a lunch tray against Brian Wells. He was definitely intimidated, and Jasper would be lying if he said that he and Brian hadn’t had a few run-ins. But how did she react so fast? Brian looked more surprised than Jasper had ever seen him.
"Witch!" Brian screeched at her, stepping back. "How the hell did you see me coming. You saw it! She's a bloody witch!"
Except he didn't say bloody. Brian Wells addressed the people around him, his friends were getting out of their seats, all of them walking slowly towards her like she was a bomb ticking away.
April tucked her arms tightly at her side, feeling the glares of every set of eyes in the room and the rising nauseous. She had done it again, predicted the danger ahead of time. And now she was even more screwed.
Jasper set down his lunch tray next to his friends and hurried over to assess the situation. Brian was probably overreacting, but the interaction still unnerved Jasper. He glanced back at his friends, all of whom were either watching the scene play out or giving him weird looks. He wasn’t usually one to get involved in fights, particularly ones that he wasn’t anywhere in the vicinity of, but he was not only curious, he also felt that he had to protect April. It wasn’t even a conscious decision; the way he was drawn to April was almost magnetic.
“Hey, what’s going on here?” he asked, his voice holding steady. Thankfully. Though while Jasper’s voice didn’t waver, the scared undertones of fear in his face were a giveaway. His anger was already cooling off now that he was in the midst of so many bigger, stronger bullies.
Curious and curiouser. April watched Jasper approach the school's most feared troublemaker with obvious fear, and yet something about him screamed an out-of-world confidence. Like he'd seen much worse than Brian.
She'd manage to control her angry shaking, and was promptly staring down the bully's minions that were creeping towards her with vicious intent. They all wanted to make her pay for such a simple hit.
The cafeteria was silent and staring, everyone was horrified and likely angry and there was a mess that the janitors would hate her for.
So, the usual Monday then.
April was thankful for her new friend, because as he stood and approached with a simple question teachers appeared out of nowhere like he'd summoned them, others shrank away fearing punishments. Only Brian stood tall like a statue, glaring her down and waving Jasper off.
"It's none of your business. Stay out of it." He grabbed April's arm fiercely and grinned. "Let's take a walk, huh witch?"
He whispered the last part to her, threatening April without saying outright, knowing that they were well in sight of the teachers around them. Except he didn't say 'witch'.
Jasper took another step towards Brian, eyes narrowed. He was still afraid, but gaining confidence. Most of the other bullies appeared to have given up when teachers started arriving, but Jasper held his ground as long as Brian stayed by April’s side. When the other boy had grabbed her arm, it made Jasper even angrier. He knew he would have felt violated, and the fear on April’s underneath her glare was evident to him. Then again, he’d always been strangely good at knowing how people truly felt.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Brian,” Jasper said with a dark gleam in his eyes. For a moment, it was almost as if shy, nervous Jasper had become someone else entirely, and he was sure that Brian noticed it. Jasper kept walking until he was only a foot or two shy of being nose to nose with Brian. “Leave her alone.”
April pulled at her sweater, readjusting it in amazement as she realised Brian had released her from his grip. Jasper seemed taller then she remembered in that moment and far more intimidating. His energy had snapped, doubling in intensity within seconds.
She wasn't sure how she felt about being protected, she'd never considered she'd have someone to do that kind of thing for her in the first place, but April was sure glad for a friend like Jasper.
There was something unhinged in the murderous glare of Brian Wells as he stalked off, ringing one finger under his neck as a threatening sign that he wasn't done with her yet.
April gulped.
She fidgeted on the spot, her eyes bouncing over the quiet cafeteria, uncomfortable with the new attention and her practical saviour. Jaspers face was still friendly and soft like she remembered, his menacing gaze had vanished completely when the danger faded. April couldn't decide between thanking him profusely or scattering and vanishing herself right there.
(idk if you’re still active but i’m willing to continue this if you are,, sorry it’s been a rly busy couple of months for me)
(thats fine, just get something up when you can)
Jasper released his angry glare, his soft, delicate features going from stone to worried in a number of seconds. Worried was more or less his resting face at this point, since it was his default emotion. He scanned April for any injuries but didn’t find any. Would things just get worse for her until he had no choice but to bring her into Wonderland with him? Or was this just some sort of fluke?
Either way, Jasper was convinced that it was really her. April was the real Alice, which meant that their fates were interwoven. He had no choice but to stick by her now, though he was glad it was at least someone he could get along with. He blinked, his big hazel eyes looking even bigger with his round glasses. His nose twitched, a tic he had picked up at some point when he was younger. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans.
“Are you okay? What was he trying to do to you?” Jasper asked, his curiosity and worry getting the better of him. It wasn’t impolite to just ask her if she was all right, was it?
The way Jasper was looking at her way new, a subtle change that was somehow plain as day. Her head was spinning but she felt like it wasn't just because of the meaty boy that had shaken her violently, screaming insults. She was used to that sort of thing, wasn't she?
No.
Something else was causing the mindless, dizzy sensation resounding from her pores to the base of her heel, like something had finally ended. Or, much more likely, begun. Jasper's face was soft and kind, searching her own with worried lips pressed tightly together. April was a storm, always, but in that moment the flickering of her own expression had to resemble the most horrendous tornado. He was the thing grounding her.
"I'm fine." The words leave her mouth with a bitter reluctance, a sort of lie that she had to give. "Thank you for that."
Electricity, that's what the feeling is, the urge to run or fight, bouncing, twisting, growing in the pit of her stomach and stretching wide. Dangerous, explosive, so very April.
She wanted to diffuse the feeling, to meet it with it's demands, to go to the forest behind her house and feel at home, away from the school and the people in it who, she had decided, were stranger then her by a mile.
Jasper nodded, though somehow he doubted she was being entirely honest. Her usually turbulent—at least from what he had observed so far—expression was more stormy than ever, and she looked as if she would bolt away any second. It was a similar way to the nervous, pent-up energy Jasper was beginning to feel as well. And it made him more sure than ever he was right.
Being right didn’t feel good. It felt like the end of an era, or the beginning of one, perhaps. Either way, it made his stomach turn. The way he felt was getting more and more electric, reminding him of the only time he’d used his Wonderlandian magic, though he’d almost forgotten how at this point with how rarely he’d tried. It was for the best, though, as his sanity would be a ticking clock once he started using it more. And sanity was something of precious rarity in Wonderland, so different from this strange world, practically gray in comparison.
From what Jasper had heard, he and April would begin to feel more and more out of place here until they left now, since meeting her was always the catalyst to this story. Why hadn’t he just stayed at home, being homeschooled and away from the possibility of meeting her? Then this whole mess wouldn’t have to happen at all.
But Horatio had warned him of the inevitability of it all. Even if Jasper rarely left the house, April would accidentally stumble upon him getting groceries or knock on their door to sell Girl Scout cookies—whatever Fate thought was best. Jasper blinked, trying to rein in his thoughts. He often daydreamed and lost track of the conversation, but never had he gotten so panicked in his own head at school before. He tried to shake it off.
“Are you certain that you’re all right?” he ended up asking, knowing it had probably been several seconds since April’s last reply.
She is not sure. Nothing feels sure. April feels light and breakable like icy fingertips. She shifted from foot to foot and tried to reel in on Jasper's stable eyes, eyes that were meeting her own in a gentle but strong hold.
April managed a nod. "I'll be alright. Thanks to you."
She wasn't sure why, but a smile came to her lips, as minuscule as it was, she really did mean it with sincerity towards her knew friend. She felt ashamed, casting her glance away from him suddenly, that she had involved him in this, caused him trouble. Knowing that Brian Wells would have his revenge, sooner rather then later.
April had known Jasper for hardly any time at all and he was already reaping the consequences, she was waiting for him to leave.
"Maybe I should just go home." She murmured, pulling at the sleeves around her fingers.
The static feeling was as strong as ever, somehow more so when Jasper was next to her, like if they touched something would turn on, or explode. The electric air made her jumper fuzzy and rippled.
Jasper's stance and face was contorted with a controlled anxiety, she couldn't decide whether he was scared of her or determined. Either was he didn't look nearly so helpless and shy as he had the day they first met. Something had shifted when he came to her air. She felt sick thinking about it, leaving was always the best option.
She scooped up her satchel that was trapped beneath one fo the overturned chairs at her abandoned table. Somewhere in the distance teachers were shouting.
"I think I'm going to go."
Jasper watched her, eyes furrowed his confusion. She could definitely feel this strange new anxiety, he was sure of it. She looked guilty somehow, like she felt bad about what had just happened. Trust me, I’m going to drag you into far worse trouble than you’ve ever brought me, he thought, biting his lip.
“Wait!” the word was out of his mouth before he could stop it. “Wait.” He repeated, quieter. Calmer. “I have to tell you something. If I’m being honest, you probably won’t like it, or maybe you won’t even believe it, but I think I owe it to you. It’s not your fault at all, everything that’s happened recently and that will continue to happen is all my fault. I wish I hadn’t dragged you into this but it’s too late, I have to tell you why. I think it’s only fair that I tell you. I’m so sorry about everything. I hope you don’t hate me after this. I just have to let you know the truth.” Jasper had begun rambling again, his anxiety spiking. He had to tell April about Wonderland and about the curse.
Would she even believe him? Jasper had no clue. But he owed it to her to try. It would worse to leave her in the dark until they inevitably ended ip in Wonderland than to tell her now and risk sounding like an idiot, or worse, a crazy person. But whether she believed him or not, he knew the end result would be the same, so he had to try. He searched her expression for any sign that she would believe him, hoping against hope that she would at least attempt to understand.
