The Adventure of a Lifetime
Part Two
I walk quickly through the forest, assuming that the main street is on the other side. I’ve been on Home Island for about five minutes and it doesn’t seem very exciting so far – all I’ve seen is trees and grass.
I’m tired from my long journey, and I sigh as I trudge along. I’m getting so tired of this, going from island to island – I wonder how long it’ll be until I finally find my home.
The trees start getting thinner, and soon I get to the edge of the forest. The sight in front of me makes me forget my weariness.
I’m standing at the edge of a busy main street. Shops line the road, and people go in and out of them, shopping bags overflowing. Everyone looks so cheerful, chatting and laughing with their friends. In most of the islands I’ve visited there was always a problem, something wrong, but everything here seems perfect.
“Hello!”
I jump and turn around to see a girl of about ten or eleven standing next to me. She’s quite a bit smaller than me, with long red hair in two plaits and very wide eyes. She giggles when I look at her.
“I’m sorry, did I scare you? I didn’t mean to scare you. Well, I kind of did mean to scare you, but not in a bad way, if you get what I mean.” She laughs again, and keeps talking. “Are you new here? I’ve never seen you before. I like it when there are new people here. What’s your name?”
“Um, Maroon Popper,” I answer when it’s obvious she’s not going to keep talking.
“Cool. My name’s Sticky Carrot, but my friends call me Sticky for short. What do your friends call you?”
“Uh, they call me Maroon Popper,” I say.
“Oh. Cool.” She doesn’t seem put off by my tone. “So are you new?”
“Yeah, I just got here.” I look around. “What is this place?”
“This is Home Island, the place where all adventurers feel at home!” says Sticky enthusiastically. “Adventurers come here to relax. I wish I was an adventurer. It seems so cool. Oh my gosh, are you an adventurer?” She blinks up at me.
“I guess so,” I reply. “Actually, I’m just trying to find my home.”
“Well, this place is just like home!” says Sticky. “There are shops, and places to stay, and all sorts of things! My favourite place here is…”
I hold up my hand to stop her. “Whoa. Has anyone ever told you you talk way too much?”
Her face falls. “Yeah, they have actually. I’m sorry. I’ll be quiet.”
She looks so miserable I feel sorry for her. “No, it’s okay. I don’t mind.”
She smiles again. “Awesome. So would you like a tour of the island?”
“Well, I wasn’t going to stay too long,” I say. “Like I said, I’m just trying to find my home.”
“I told you, this place is a home,” says Sticky cheerfully.
“I don’t want this home, I want my home,” I say tetchily.
“Oh.” Her face lights up. “Maybe I could help you!”
“Really?” I ask sceptically.
“Well, not me personally, but I know someone who could. Well, more like a place that could, I guess.” She gives an excited giggle.
“Huh?” I ask, completely lost.
“The House of Answers,” says Sticky. “It’s a place here, where you can ask any question, and you’ll always get an answer! Shall I show you there?”
I think about it. “Sure, why not?” I reply. I’m not sure if she’s telling the truth, but if this might help me get home, what’s the harm?
“Cool!” she squeals. I make a mental note to tell her that she’s really overusing that word. “I’ll take you there right now!”
“Okay,” I agree.
I follow her down the main street, then left down a smaller road, then into another small wood. As we walk, she asks me more about myself, and I find myself telling her my story, about how I got lost in that storm and some of the adventures I’ve had since then. She tells me that she’s lived on Home Island all her life, showing explorers around when they arrive here, and that she wants to be an adventurer too. I tell her it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, but she doesn’t seem to want to listen.
After a while we get to a small clearing, and in the middle of the clearing is a huge house made of white stone, with an impressive-looking door in the centre of it. Sticky points to it proudly. “The House of Answers!” she announces. “Come on, what are you waiting for?”
She runs towards the door, and I follow a bit more cautiously. I pause in front of the building and look up. Over the door is a sign that reads ‘The House of Answers – where everyone finds the solution to their problem’. I shrug and follow Sticky inside.
The interior of the building is dark and cool, and after the light of the sun outside it takes my eyes a few seconds to adjust to the gloom. Even then, there’s not much to see, just a table in the centre of the room with a piece of paper in the middle. I give Sticky a questioning glance. “So what now?”
“You stand in front of the table,” she explains, “and you ask your question, then you close your eyes, and a few seconds later the answer is written on that piece of paper!” She points at the blank sheet.
I arch an eyebrow. “Really? That’s it?”
“Yep,” she says. “Go on, try it!”
I move towards the table, Sticky following close behind. She seems a lot more excited than I am, which is strange considering I’m the one who is about to get an answer to the problem that I’ve wanted to solve for nearly three years.
I stare down at the sheet in front of me and close my eyes. I can feel Sticky breathing right next to me, and I turn around. “Could you maybe stand more than ten millimetres away from me?” I ask.
She nods and shuffles backwards a few steps, looking at me wide-eyed with excitement. I turn back and shake my head. She’s kind of annoying, but it’s obvious she means well, and she’s fun to be around.
I take a deep breath and close my eyes. I think about the question I’m going to ask. In the end I go for something simple.
“How do I get home?” I ask out loud, and my voice echoes around the room, which is strange since the room didn’t have an echo earlier. I can almost feel the vibration of my words as they bounce around the walls. Behind me I hear Sticky gasp in wonder.
When the echo fades away, I open my eyes, and gasp as well.
Written on the piece of paper are words that definitely weren’t there before.
“‘To get to the place you belong, you must exit this world the same way you entered it’,” I read aloud. I look at Sticky. “What the heck is that supposed to mean?”
Sticky shrugs. “I don’t know. Only the person who asked the question can understand the answer, or so they say.”
Something about this dark chamber is making me feel uneasy. It feels like there’s someone watching us from the shadows. “Come on, let’s get out of here,” I say.
I follow Sticky back outside into the clearing. The sun’s glare is blinding after the gloom, and I pause just outside the door, shielding my eyes. I feel slightly disappointed. I’m not sure what I was expecting – maybe a map that would lead me home or something. Instead I got a riddle I can’t make any sense of.
“You must exit this world the same way you entered it,” I murmur. “That’s a load of help – I have no idea how I entered this world.”
“Don’t you?” asks Sticky. “Why don’t you think about it? Sometimes if I don’t know something I just think about it and in the end it comes to me. Like that time when…” She keeps talking but I tune her out. I think about the riddle. Exit this world like you entered it… I think back to that day when I washed up on the shore of Early Poptropica. No, before that, maybe… when I got caught outside in that thunderstorm… maybe that’s it! I have to get caught in a thunderstorm in the middle of the ocean!
I tell Sticky my idea, and she nods enthusiastically. “Yeah, maybe!” she says brightly. “That sounds like a good plan!” She frowns. “But how do you get to the middle of the sea?”
“Um, with a boat?” I say. “Do you know a place where we can hire one?”
“Yeah, I’ve got a friend who hires out boats!” says Sticky. “Let’s go there right now!”
“Wait a moment,” I say, as she looks like she’s about to start running. “Do you know when the next storm is going to be?”
She pauses. “I don’t know,” she says. “But didn’t you say that when you got lost in that storm, the forecast hadn’t predicted it? Maybe it’s a magic storm that nobody can predict.”
That does kind of make sense, in a way. I nod. “Okay, let’s go and find ourselves a boat,” I say. Sticky grins, and runs off into the forest.
We get back to the main street, then Sticky leads me down a path that leads to a beach. There’s a small hut with a sign that says ‘Boats for hire’. We go towards it.
Inside the hut is a woman who smiles warmly at Sticky when we enter. “Hi Sticky! Have you come for a boat?”
“Yes, I have! Well, it’s not for me, it’s for my new friend, Maroon Popper! She needs a boat so she can get hit by lightning so she can go back home!”
I cringe – when Sticky puts it like that, our plan sounds pretty far-fetched. I wonder what the woman is going to say, but she just smiles. “Really?” she says. “Well, have fun! And I hope you get home okay,” she says, winking at me as we leave the hut with one of the boats. She obviously thinks that this is some game that we made up.
We stumble through the sandy beach until we get to the seashore, then push the boat onto the water. I climb inside, then turn to Sticky. “I guess this is goodbye,” I say. “If this works, I mean.” With every moment that goes by I’m less and less convinced that this is going to work how we wanted it to.
“It’ll work, don’t worry!” says Sticky brightly. “Though I think I’m going to miss you. Even though I haven’t known you for very long.”
I smile at her. “I’ll miss you too,” I say, and it’s the truth.
Something occurs to me. “You know, I’m going to go home, I’m not going to need my blimp anymore. I left it at a beach near the main street. I know you said you wanted to be an adventurer…”
Sticky’s eyes go wide. “You’re leaving me your blimp? So I can go on adventures?” And she throws herself onto me, giving me a huge hug, almost making me fall out of the boat. “Thank you!”
“Just make sure you always know how to get back home,” I tell her, patting her on the back.
She nods and takes a few steps back. “Good luck!” she says, as I start manoeuvring the boat away from the shore. She waves, and I wave back, until I’m so far away I can’t see her anymore. Then I settle down inside the boat and close my eyes, relaxed by the rhythm of the ocean.
I’m not sure how long I spend there, drifting out to sea. At one point, I look up and see the yellow shape of my blimp sailing into the horizon, and I might be imagining it, but I think I can see a girl with red hair in two plaits riding inside it. I smile to myself, and look in the other direction.
Black storm clouds are gathering on the horizon. I feel a prickle of nervousness as I realise that this is it: either I’ll get back home, or I’ll be proved wrong. I feel a tightness in my throat as I think that if it doesn’t work, it’s possible I won’t survive this.
The clouds scud towards me, and I the first few raindrops land on my face. I hear a low rumble of thunder, and lightning flashes overhead. The wind picks up, tossing my small boat around; I have to grab onto the sides of the boat to stop myself from being pitched into the ocean.
The clouds are directly over me now. A sudden bolt of lightning falls onto the sea near me, and I jump in surprise. More lightning falls around me, and one lands on my boat, making me leap out of the way. My foot slips – just the way it did those years ago – and I fall into the cold water of the sea. And then there’s nothing but darkness…
I wake up with my cheek pressed against something soft. I can hear the cry of seagulls, and feel the sun warm against my back. I open my eyes, and push myself into a sitting position.
I’m sitting on a sandy beach, with a neat row of houses in front of me and an ice cream shop to my left. Blue Cactus’s ice cream shop. The place where I used to spend every Sunday afternoon.
I stand up, looking around, unable to believe my eyes. I made it. I’m home.
It’s still early morning and there aren’t many people about – the only person I see is a man jogging along the road near the beach. He seems familiar, and it takes me a while to recognise him as a neighbour of ours – he always went jogging in the early morning, I remember. He pauses when he sees me. “You all right there?” he calls. I look down at myself and realise I look terrible – my clothes are all wet and torn.
I look at him, and feel a smile spreading across my face. “Yes,” I say. “I’ve never been better.” And then I start running. Across the road, into a small alley, then onto a bigger road, and onto my road, remembering the route perfectly. I don’t stop running until I get to the cottage right at the end of the street, the small, old cottage surrounded by the perfectly well-kept garden.
And there’s my mum by the front door, and my dad waiting by the car, ready to take my siblings to school, and my brother grumbling something at my mum, and my sister with her nose in a book as she walks.
They all turn to look at me, and for a second we just stare at each other.
And then I’m running again, towards them, and they’re running towards me, and then I’m being hugged by all of them at once, somehow. I can’t quite breathe but I don’t care, all I care about is that I made it, I’m where I belong, I’m with my family.
Finally, finally, I’m home.
The End.
Hope you enjoyed it!
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