Vada Transports Uncontrollably
The raindrops were racing each other. Down the windowpane. I would watch them, secretly rooting for one on the left. Sometimes they would come together and form a heart. I thought it was poetic.
“Vada.” It was so faint, that voice. I didn’t catch it, almost like a breeze on my neck. I was too busy putting my money on the left raindrop.
“Vada.” I heard it much more clearly now, turning my attention to the door, and pushing my headphones off my ears over my large hair. It was frizzy and untamable. “Vada, I’m ready for you.”
My therapist stood by the door of her office, and I grabbed my soggy red backpack. I liked that she didn’t mind that I’d perch my feet up on the seat and hug my knees. Guess that’s the good thing about therapists. They have a “do whatever makes you feel comfortable” policy. They are paid to not judge you. I stared at the ringlet of water at the bottom of my jeans and soaked black Converse where my Sharpie doodles on the rubber toe were being washed away. I picked the fray and self-made holes at the end of my long-sleeved t-shirt.
She sat there, Dr. Sandoval, in her big cushiony therapist chair with her big therapist notebook and her big therapist glasses. She was waiting for me to speak first. I never did. I listened to the rain get progressively more intense out the window. Pit-pit-pit. Patter-patter-patter. Pit-patter pit-patter. Pit-pit-patter-patter. I tried to see if I could drum the beat on the top of my knees with my fingertips. And there was the clicking of her big therapist pen. Click-click. And the big therapist clock. Tick-tick. Click-click. Tick-tick. Pitter-patter-pit-pit-patter.
“So you mentioned you’ve been transporting to this world a lot more frequently.” Dr. Sandoval’s words brought me out of my trance.
“Yeah.” Pit-pit-patter.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Sometimes it would happen… hmm… maybe once a month? But now it seems like it’s every day.” Tick-tick pitter-patter. The rain was slowing again.
“What about when you were a child? How often was it then?” She asked me, looking at me while I looked around the room. I looked at her modern art-esque painting behind her head. The one with red and yellow, and green blobs and shapes. I looked at the potted plant on the table in front of me. I leaned forward to fix it. It wasn’t in the center.
“All the time.”
“But then at some point it stopped, and now it’s happening again?”
“Yes.” The rain was coming to a lull, and the raindrops were racing again. Dr. Sandoval took a deep breath in before readjusting herself in her big, cushiony therapist chair. “When you transport to this world, where are you before you transport?” “Hmm, home. Or in class. Mostly in class, or home when my parents are home.” “What happens when you transport? Can you walk me through the experience?” “It’s like… It’s like the other world starts to blend with this one, until I am fully there.” “What do you mean by blend?”
“It’s like if I were to look out this window and see,” I looked toward the racing raindrops. They weren’t there. Outside, the wet pavement of the parking lot was gone too. I was looking at the weeping forest. I turned my attention back to Dr. Sandoval, who was also gone, along with her cushiony chair, and her clock, and modern art-esque painting. “The weeping forest,” I said to myself.
I sighed and sat on the ground, opening my red, soggy backpack that had all the pins on it. I never knew why I’d transport with my stuff too. I pulled out my notebook and started drawing the trees. They looked like black melting candles, and they wept. Every tree sobbed or sniffled. I could only really hear it if I got close, but altogether, the forest presents this chorus of weeping. I had never been in this part of the forest before, so I wanted to sketch my surroundings, in case I got lost. I pulled out my map. It was a bunch of notebook paper taped or glued together; it didn’t quite make a perfect square or rectangle. The edges were jagged from every time I added a new piece to the map. Uptop was my world, and Cold Town, on the bottom, was Other World. Last month I discovered the world’s layer. If I could get around Cold Town, I could get around Other World. I had never transported in a therapy session before, so I knew I’d end up in a new spot. I didn’t know that the weeping forest went this far back, though.
I looked at my map as I wandered. The time was different here. There wasn’t morning, noon, or night. There was purple hour and blue hour. And blue hour was fading into purple hour, so I started walking because purple hour is when the fog gets thick. The inky indigo leaves crunch under my feet with the occasional twig. Crunch-crunch-crack. Crunch-crunch-crack.
I was walking toward the black iron gates at the end of the forest that opened into the statue garden. The statues were moss-covered and had faces of anguish, of turmoil. Some clung onto others. Sometimes, I’d stand beside them and look toward their line of vision to see if I could see the impending doom that was coing for them. No, just the fog and the weeping forest in the distance.
“Hi, Lucky,” I said to my favorite statue. I named him Lucky. “I got something new for you.” I dropped my backpack on the ground and shuffled through it. I put a CD in my player and pulled my headphones up over his shoulders. I put them on Lucky and stared into his mouth, agape, and his hollow eyes. “I take you for a Smashing Pumpkins fan. This is Annie-Dog.” I think he likes it.
The statue garden was where the record store is in the real world. That must be poetic. Maybe they looked this way because they miss music.
I sat right up against Lucky, with my back to his, and opened my notebook that was soggy. I carefully pulled the pages apart so as not to rip them, until I came to a blank page. I could roughly hear the music from the headphones, like a light buzz. I was far away enough from the forest that I couldn’t hear the weeping, just the faintness of Annie-Dog. I tapped my pen on my notebook to the rhythm before I got to sketching.
“Vada.” There was that whisper. I looked up. Just the fog. Just the weeping forest in the distance.
“Vada.”
I looked back at my notebook, but it was gone, just my wet scribbled-on Converse touching the carpet flooring. Tick-tick.
I looked up where the weeping forest was, but all I saw was the modern art-esque painting and clock.
“Vada, where did you just go?” Dr. Sandoval asked me.
My eyebrows scrunched.
“That question is odd to you?” Click-click. Dr. Sandoval began taking notes.
“Most people don’t notice.”