An Awfully Big Adventure

Hour One: It Started with a Mouse

1. Write a chapter inspired by this quote:

"I only hope that we don't lose sight of one thing - that it was all started by a mouse."

-Walt Disney

Wendy can't help but think that if she was just a little bit taller she wouldn't  be taken advantage of as much.  If she was taller, maybe her anger wouldn't fill her body up so easily. But the steam always manages to spill out through her ears and more noticeably her mouth because she just can't seem to control the darned thing.

The music pulses just a bit too loudly and her mother steps into the room. Wendy's finger hovers over the skip button on her phone and asks herself why on earth she ever added the song to her Spotify playlist. But because the music is just one volume too loud and because Wendy has the worst luck in the world, her mother takes this time to enter the room.

"Taking a break again?" her mom inquires, looking at her with a gaze too strong to just be asking for friendly conversation. Something small ignites the reaction. It is always this way.

"I was just changing the song!" Wendy responds through semi-gritted teeth, agitated from the assumption. Even worse is the total invasion of privacy. The least she could do is knock, but her mother decides to barge into the study, which okay, technically isn’t her room, but Wendy was there first, so it shouldn’t really matter.

"Right, because it takes so long for you to do that.”

Wendy throws her pencil on the table with so much force that it bounces off and drops to the floor. "Literally just stopped doing homework to change the song." She laughs humorlessly,"So if you could stop the accusations, that would be fantastic." Already, the rage inside her is compacted in too small a volume, and she can feel it sloshing over.

Wendy thinks that it would be even more fantastic if her mom would just leave the premises all together, but she's always been better at holding her ground. And her mother has the nerve to call her stubborn?

"You think that just because it's Spring Break you can slack off?  We should be off looking at colleges but you were too lazy to come up with a list! Besides you are always saying that you want to get out of this town and how are you going to do that if your academics aren't up to par?" Wendy doesn’t want to look at colleges. This is one of the last spring breaks she’s going to have at home, and her mom expects her to sit at home and study as if it is any other week in her life? It’s called a break for a reason, and maybe there’s a lull in the prescribed academic torture, but Wendy prefers to have a break from her suffocating mother, who happens to appear at the worst moments in her studious concentration.

In that moment, Wendy isn't sure she wants to get away from, her town, Santa Cruz, but she knows that she has to get away from her mother. She's already taken the ACT and SAT and her scores are good. Or at least good enough to get her away from there. And really, that’s all she really wants anyways. But since it seems sub-par by her parents standards, she’s forced to undergo the grueling suffering for a second go around.

Wendy slams her hands on the table, refusing to cringe even though the wood is harder than she anticipated. "I've already told you so many times that I have no idea how to look for colleges. I don't know how to find good programs nor do I know what I want to do. So, how about you don't blame me for your unwillingness to help?"

Hands are quickly drawn to hips and her mother's small frame seems to immediately grow in size, "I'm the unwilling one? You're almost 18 years old and you completely refuse to think about the future. Do you think that everything is just going to magically fall into place?"

Wendy doesn’t think that everything will just suddenly come together, but she doesn’t think that she is powerful enough to summon the puzzle pieces of her life together. She thinks that not all of the pieces have been provided for her, because nothing seems to be connecting at all. And with the constant friction, the constant mashing of two pieces that just can't interlock, she feels like she might as well just flip the table over because it's not like things can get messier.

"What am I supposed to do? Some instruction, since you've already gone through this whole college process, would be much appreciated." She can feel pressure building up behind her forehead and a knot forming between her eyes.

"Well, you could find a job, for starters."

"This again? I don't need a job. I've managed to survive seventeen years between Christmas money and birthday money. Besides, it's pretty obvious that I don't fare well with people." But, she knows that this means more than just monetary value. She is supposed to get a job to prove to her mother that she is a capable adult and not a complete bum. Of course, that would be denying her entire personality, and Wendy is a fairly comfortable in her slothful persona.

Her mother sighs, but Wendy isn't sure if it can be classified as a sigh. It's somewhere between that and a screech but either way it really pisses Wendy off.

"I don't understand why you think it's so difficult. If you would just listen..."

"Why would I listen to you if you won't listen to me?" It's a cliche argument between any teen and her mother but there hasn't been an argument out of the thousands that they've had that didn't contain some variation of that line. "I've told you so many times that I don’t know what I'm doing or how to do something and all you ever respond with is some vague answer or you telling me off for being stupid. Or you'll compare me to Mark because he's your little angel child. And God, how I hate being in my younger brother's shadow. When are you going to realize that you're the stupid one because if you know so much explain how you don't know me at all."

Silence. "Don't you dare call me stupid. Mark would ne-"

Wendy heaves the test prep book sitting in front of her into the air, not caring when the spine thuds against the table with a satisfying smack. "I am so done. So so so done." She shoves herself away from the table. The chair she was sitting in has wheels so when Wendy launches herself upright the wheels spin the seat angrily towards the wall behind. Her exit is briefly interrupted because she has to storm past her mother in order to leave the room, but at this moment both are too blinded by anger to even perceive the situation as awkward at all.

"I'm not done talking to you. Get back here!"

Wendy makes no move to turn around or acknowledge the fact that her mother has bellowed at her at all until she reaches the front door. She puts her hand on the knob and jerks it quickly to the right, pulling it open.

"No," she says with finality, inwardly delighted to have the last word. She slams the door behind her, effectively ending the conversation as is.

She doesn’t care how immature she appears or how childish she might seem. Because maybe, she would work harder if she desired to appear professional. However, with every passing day and the looming possibility of growing old (eww!) she doesn’t have the patience to sit around doing old people stuff when her time for fun is coming to a close. Wendy believes she only has so long before the doors to Neverland are closed, and she is not yet ready to shake off the feeling of youth. She can only hope that it’s not too late.

Standing on the front porch, in the relatively warm March night, she looks up to the stars and counts over two.

‘No’ might be a little word. And Wendy might be a kind-of little girl (depending on which definition you use, but mice are little. And it all started with a mouse. So, Wendy gladly fills the position.

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So you guys should check out this hella rad writing challenge by @northandsouth?!

And just fyi, this probably won't be updated regularly, but I really wanted to hop on this bandwagon.

Also, I have a realtively weak form of disneyitus from lack of recent exposure, but the feeling still persists? So I might not be completely rah-rah disney wooo quote every disney movie under the sun accurate, but it shouldn't matter too much. Right? Right?

-Angela