Chapter 5: A New Horizon

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Whitney woke up early Sunday morning. An alarm clock, the sound of a car horn, the morning cry of a rooster, or the pleasant sound of chirping birds outside her window could not bring her out of her sleep. None of these things were capable of reaching the neurons of her brain. What did bring her out of her sleep were the aching pains of her muscles. Nearly every muscle in her body felt the way a tree sounds as it is slowly falling over when someone cuts it down.

The pains she felt as she laid in bed were nothing compared to those she felt as she swung her legs over the side. Those pains were a thousand tiny firecrackers exploding throughout her body. The pains, as intense as they were, were worth it.

She felt like she was something. She now had a definition—as if the world was a dictionary and she finally found her page. She wasn’t sure what that was yet exactly, but she was something. Before that, she didn’t feel like she was anything but her thoughts and imagination. She wasn’t a student at any school. She wasn’t an athlete like Tommy, or a cook like Carol Anne, nor was she a real-estate agent like Blake. She was a blind and deaf couch potato or, to be more accurate, lawn chair potato. Other than that, she was nothing. That was before the Arena.

It didn’t mean that she wasn’t smart. She was and she knew that. They lived close enough to the school so that she could slip in with Tommy and she would spend most of her days during the school year in Tommy’s head. She would listen in on the lectures, study his books, and would often give him the answers to the test questions that he didn’t know. Her memory was immaculate.

Whitney forced herself to get out of bed, cringing against the aching pains in her muscles, walking very slowly through the house, no idea of what time it was, time not having much meaning to her anyway. She was making her way through the house, through the back patio door, and to her favorite lounging spot, the reclining lawn chair.

Whitney’s memory was so immaculate that she could navigate her way through the house without the use of any kind of aids (She never let that on to Tommy, though). She didn’t use a seeing cane, didn’t wave her hands through the air searching for walls, and she didn’t scoot her feet like a robot. She could imagine the layout of the house so clearly that she could visualize every nuance of it as if she was seeing it. Of course, it helped that she had seen it so many times through Tommy’s eyes. Without that original visualization from which to draw upon, she would just be guessing.

As she walked through the house, her mind traveling like an astronaut to a different planet altogether, combing through space, searching through time, not only of the past, but of a future that she had previously not realized, could exist. The day before, she mocked Tommy for being a dork, tossing a playful insult at him for pretending he was a Jedi, for thinking of himself as something that he wasn’t, but wished to be.There was part of her that wanted the same thing. She too desired to wield a primitive weapon—not a gun, or a laser, but a sword. In the arena, carrying a sword was the same thing to her as having a finger, connected to a hand as an extension of her wrists and arms. Those swords felt like they were a part of her. They felt like a piece of who she was, and who she needed to be. Swinging them felt as natural as breathing.

Whitney sat on the lawn chair and leaned it back. It must still be early in the morning, because she barely had any sense of the sun. It was definitely coming over the horizon, but it was still early enough that there was no heat. Tommy probably wouldn’t be up for a while. That was fine—just fine with her, because she was in no shape to do much anyway.

I feel like I’m gonna die. She made fun of Tommy a million times for complaining about the pains he felt after a hard workout. She was smart enough to separate herself from feeling those pains of his, but she didn’t have that option with her own pains.