Webkinz Insider

030789 · 08-14-2009, 12:22 AM

Note from the author: Hey! My name's Amanda *edit*. I just wanted to let you know that this is a story about a story. Confusing, right? Wrong! You see, I've worked out this nifty system so you can tell who's who. So, when you see me writing in this green, it's me who's talking. When you see me writing in this purple, it's Merissa. FYI, I'm a writer. Merissa's a fictional character of my imagination. Or, at least she was...
UPDATE: When it's in italics, it's my story. When it's not, it's real life.
UPDATE: I've decided to post a quick summary of my story about Merissa, so you can know what i'm talking about.

Merissa is special: she is gifted with powers that can change the world. If only she could remember what they were! She joined up with three others of her kind, and they have made it their mission to find the fourth one, whom they only know as Amber. Merissa must remember her past lives in order to reach this elusive power, before it is used for evil. But remembering has a price, one she might not be able to pay.

Chapter 1: Road trip

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"Ugh." I groaned. I turned my head to the right: Straight up. i turned my head to the left: straight down. And the mountain road just kept winding down, and down, and down, and down, and... well, you get the picture. And it's not a pretty one. I opened the window, letting the sticky hot air blast my face.
"What's wrong, Amy-kinz? Aren't you having fun?" Dad asked. He turned his head to look at me.
"Look at the road!" I said.
"Sure thing, kiddo."
"We have fun when the road is smooth enough to write." I muttered. Dad pretended not to notice. Under normal circumstances, I would've preferred a laptop to a notebook any day (seeing as my handwriting is no better than chicken-scratch). But, as dad insisted, no electronics (I would like to point out, however, that Dad brought his BlackBerry).
"Amy, you gotta lay off the writing. Merissa's nothing but pencil and paper. you talk about her like she's real."
"But she is real." I said for the zillionth time.
"Not on this trip." Dad said. The only reason we were going on a six-day tent-camping trip was because (as I'd discovered is whispered conversations to my mom) "She's addicted to that thing! She needs a real camping experience." Oh, as if going to some oversized pond in the middle of nowhere is an 'authentic camping experience'?

I sat in that stiff pickup truck for what seemed like days, even though the clock said it was only a half-hour. The first thing I did was grab the ugly orange notebook I had gotten at the drugstore. I pulled out a pen, and my words filled the page. They didn't even relate to the story I was currently writing (Four Lives, Book 3: Water). They just described the trees surrounding the campsite, the sunlight glistening off the lake in the background. I sat at the heavily graffitied picnic table and let my words flow across the page. I was nearly finished when I sensed Dad looking over my shoulder.
"I take it you like it, then?" Dad asked without looking up. His eyes were about halfway down the second page.
"Yeah, dad. It's beautiful." I said unconvincingly. I quickly flipped the page and began writing about the 110 degree weather and the hot, stuffy pickup. Dad grunted his goodbyes and began setting up the 2-person tent. While he was gone, I flipped to a page about halfway through, with two words written on the top: Four Lives.
Below those words was another world.

Chapter 2: The first days

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How did I get here? I wondered. I was in the middle of a lake, treading water. How did I get here? I thought again, as if I would get any answer.
I racked my brains, but the only word I could remember about myself was Merissa. I didn't know where I lived, any of my family, nothing. In fact, the only thing I could remember doing was treading water.
Then a strange feeling swept over me. I suddenly knew that if I stopped, I would still float. The trouble was, I didn't want to stop. I wanted to cling to whatever I remembered.
I swam for what seemed like hours. I told myself I would remember, practically forced my brain to cough up answers. But there was nothing.
I was getting tired. Exhaustion hit me in waves, telling me to stop treading. I didn't listen to it; I kept forcing myself to remember. Then, finally, I couldn't take it anymore. My arms and legs were made of jello, and it was about time until the water melted them away.
I let myself sink. Just as my head was going under, I fell. It was as if all the water below me just disapeared, and I hit the solid ground with a thud. I looked around. A whirlpool of water surrounded me, and I was obviously in the eye. I did the only thing I could think of: I screamed. I screamed until my throat was raw. I screamed until I saw a fisherman's boat.
I was never exactly sure how I got on his boat. The next few minutes were nothing but a blur. I found myself sitting on a seat in the boat.
The fisherman didn't say anything for a while. When they were far enough away from the whirlpool, he stopped the boat and came to sit down next to me.
"Do you need to...call somebody?" He asked.
I shook my head.
"Where are your parents?" He tried again.
I shrugged, hoping the expression on my face told him that I wish I knew.
"Oh. Well...um, you can come to the campsite with me, and, uh, I'll take you into town tomorrow. How does that sound?"
I nodded, still not trusting my voice.
"By the way, what's your name?" He asked, walking over to the drivers seat.
"Merissa." I said, my voice trembling. Honestly, I wasn't sure whether that was my name, or someone else's, but it was all I had.
"What a pretty name." He said, and the boat started.
When we got back to shore, the fisherman started unloading his things. I walked onto the dock, my legs shaking. I was wearing a wet T-shirt and shorts. He put his boxes and things in the back of a white pickup. Then he looked over at me.
I got the message. I walked over to the truck, and sat down in the front seat, his towel wrapped around me.
After a few more minutes, he got in the truck and began to drive. I wished I could disappear; the silence was unnerving.

A few hours later, the fisherman, Marc, he'd said, had cleaned up from dinner. He had given me clean clothes (they fit me perfectly, but I didn't ask how he'd gotten them) and a sleeping bag. He said there was extra room in the tent. But just before I climbed into the two-person tent, he leaned over and whispered something in my ear.

Chapter 3: Eat At Amanda's

Spoiler: show

Chapter Four: Past lives

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"Merissa... Merissa... Missy! Missy Wake up!" The fisherman's rough voice turned into a voice i knew very well.
"Terri! Terri what is it?" I sat up to find Teresa standing in my doorway, holding... an old-style candle.
Terri said something in German.
"Terri, speak English please. It's the twenty-first century."
"Really? Darn, I liked that little German village. Early fifteen-hundreds, I would think."
"Terri, you and your reincarnation business--"
"Hey, I'm the only normal one here!" Terri's golden eyes found mine, and I knew what she said was true. I had thousands of past lives. I just couldn't remember any one of them, not even the one I was living now.
"What about Wendy?"
"Wendy's been famous one too many times. Her brains are made of mud." Terri came and sat down at the foot of the bed. I sat up.
"So what was your dream about?" Terri asked.
"Dream? What--"
"You were yelling throughout the entire house."
"Oh. Just... the first day I can remember. You stopped me right as he was whispering--"
"Not this again! I'm telling you, you need to forget him! You need to concentrate, if we're ver going to find Amber--"
"I know it's important! I just know it is! I just need to remember--"
"No. No you don't."
"Ok, fine. Tell me about your visit to Germany then. Maybe it'll jog my memory."
"Ok. Astrid, uh, Wendy, just had her first daughter! We were all so excited for her. The entire village came to her house to give them congratulations. That was when you said--"
"I was expecting. I remember that bit."
"Mmm-Hmm! That's when you started screaming 'Who is she? Who is she?'"
"Sorry."
"Oh, no problem. I liked Egypt better anyway. Good night!"
Terri left me to think of my past lives. I could only remember bits and pieces of.
I would need to remember them if I ever hoped to find the missing piece of our circle, whom Terri only knew by Amber (I think that was in Quebec). I also had to discover my powers: one was my ability over water, one was the ability to communicate silently with Terri and Wendy, and the last I had no idea about. Maybe it was extreme forgetfulness.
I also couldn't help thinking that there was something there... at that lake... something tells me that the clue to finding Amber was hidden there.
I muttered something in another language, most likely French, and drifted to sleep, hoping that I could get a glimpse of some Roman Amber reincarnation, maybe.

Chapter 5: Just one word: whoa.

Spoiler: show

Chapter 6: My life began yesterday. Might as well make the most of it.

Spoiler: show

When I woke up, there were noises outside. Hushed whispering and burning stoves were some of them. What was I doing in a tent, all alone, right next to a lake? Wait, I'm by a lake? I could only remember bits and pieces of yesterday... or the rest of my life for that matter.
I sat up. My muscles screamed in protest, wanting me to lay back down again. I ignored them and stepped outside.
An unfamiliar cotton dress fell down to my ankles. How did I get this...? Part of me began to worry, but most of my brain told me not to care.
The first sight that caught me was the lake. The water poured energy into me, until I no longer felt like I had run a marathon. What the...
A girl I could vaugly remember came up to me, dressed in a cotton T-shirt that said "Bears love People. They taste like chicken" and a pair of loose-fitting jeans.
"Merissa." She said in greeting.
"Am... Amber?" I tried to remember her name.
"Close. Amanda. Or Amy if you'd like." She said. "Anyways, want some breakfast? Pancakes and eggs?"
That sounded better than anything right now. "Sure." I said as I followed Amy to the picnic table. A tall man ( Marc, a part of me remembered) was standing by a portable stove, flipping pancakes in a small egg pan.
"Hey, Merissa." He said, passing me a plate loaded with scrambled eggs and almost-burnt pancakes. I smiled at Marc, then tore into my food.
Amy and Marc were kind to me. Amy even loaned me some of her clothes. They said they would drive me into town to see if I could find my parents. If I couldn't, they would take me to a police station instead. Honestly, I wasn't sure what to think, so I didn't.
After cleaning up from breakfast and changing into some very loose clothes (I am smaller than Amanda, even in her smallest clothes), I left to go look at the lake one last time.

The waves lapped up against my feet. They were small waves, caused my water skiers and such. But the water, as it did before, gave me energy.
Before I knew what I was doing, I was moving my arms in a way that resembled the waves; going forward, and backward, and forward, and backward again. I wondered what would happen if I moved my hands upward.
And when I did, I had more questions than answers.

Chapter 7: This doesn't happen to ~~normal~~ sane people.

Spoiler: show

Mini-Chapter!
By, Amanda

Three months pass. It's amazing how much stuff authors can pack into three simple words. "Three months pass". That doesn't tell you how I got back to my house, how I got back in school, even how I never laid hands on my laptop since that day at the lake. How I've lost my passion to write. It's not that I didn't want to write, I did. But I didn't have those random bursts of creativity, where I would write now and think later. Those just didn't come to me anymore. I tried to live life as animated as I could; I joined band and the soccer team. I play the saxophone now. I found a talent as a chef. But my writing's gone. Maybe forever.

Chapter 8: Dead to the world

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Chapter 9: Amanda

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“I need to go see him.”
“No you don’t.”
“But what if it’s important?”
“But what if it’s not?”
Terri and I had argued about this several times today. I had this feeling that I needed to see that fisherman again, that he would jog my memory. But Terri wouldn’t let me, and after all, she did have several lifetimes of experience on me. Wendy was off being a dumb blonde somewhere. I’m positive that she invented the expression.
“Terri, you’re being ridiculous.” I blurted.
“No, Missy. You’re being ridiculous. We have a superpowered teenager to find, past lives to remember, powers to discover, and a world to change. We do not need to talk to some mangy old fisherman.”
“Seriously, Ter-”
“End of story.” Terri slammed the door in my face. I stood in the room Wendy and I shared. I thought for a split-second, then decided I was going whether Terri wanted me to or not. I climbed up and out my window, landing on the soft ground with a thud. Just as I walked over to the garage to grab my bike, another girl rode into the driveway.
“Can I… help you?” I asked.
“Missy!” The girl held me in a tight hug. She was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, and so was I to battle the foggy weather.
“Do I know you?” I asked. Maybe she’s from before I can remember…
“Yeah! Don’t tell me you don’t remember me!” The girl said. I could tell she was getting impatient. “It’s me. Amanda. Amy.” I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“Who?”
“You…don’t remember?” She asked. She didn’t sound as hurt as confused.
“No. You said you’re name was Amanda, right? When did we meet?”
And she described in perfect detail the first day I remembered. But I didn’t remember anything to do with her.
I asked questions. She asked questions. Not once did she mention my powers, although I had a feeling she knew something about them.
As soon as I was about to ask her if she wanted to meet Terri and Wendy, I heard a high-pitched squeal and arms clasped around me.

Chapter 10: My name is not Amber

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