Learn to Howl {Alex Vreeke | Jumanji}

17; three & four & five & six

The game spat her out three days after her fifteenth birthday, and she spent the rest of the night in tears. Her mother holds her close, asks her what's wrong, but how can she explain what she'd been through. The very next day she throws the game in the garbage, and when she tries to explain what had happened, her mother thinks she's had a psychotic break from overworking. She doesn't know it at the time, but her mother keeps the game, sells in a garage sale three years later.

She's fifteen again, and she's got school to go to, and classes to attend. She doesn't recognise herself in the mirror. She doesn't respond when people call her name. She's gone from an outcast to a freak. She's the girl who has panic attacks when she hears the marching band drum, she's the girl who wears shorts even in the middle of winter because the feeling of fabric on her lower legs makes her itch, she's the girl who wears a fur jacket to school in Summer because it makes her feel secure. Thirty years of experience are crammed into her fifteen year old mind, and she finds herself drawing her single life marker on her arm in class because it looks wrong without it; looks bare.

"Can I get a dog?" She asks her mother three months after she comes back. She looks like a feral and her mother doesn't know why, doesn't know that she's hunting squirrels in the forest at the edge of town, doesn't know that she's trying to keep her skills sharp. She's still a good student, sort of. She'd dropped from her B+ average to Ds in the month following her return, but she's been getting back to normal, averaging around a C+ by now.

"You want a dog?" Her mother is sceptical. Connie came home with a chipped tooth last week and she doesn't know why. Doesn't know that Connie overcooked a squirrel at the camp she's building for herself on the outskirts of town in the forest, bit into it a little too hard. Doesn't know a lot of things about her. Connie's different, of this her mother is certain, something happened to her very suddenly, making her bookish daughter much more adventurous, but no less quiet. She keeps bringing home shiny, green stones, smooth pieces of green glass she finds, has a box full of them. Her mother doesn't ask.

"Yeah, I'd love a dog," Connie's hair is up in braids, the way she wears it now, she's got it tied with with something furry. It's a squirrel pelt, but her mother doesn't know enough about skinning animals to know that it's real. "A great, big husky." Connie says, like she's set her mind to it.

"No, Con, you can't get a big, husky dog. We don't have the room." Her mother sighs, and Connie goes back to her homework, dejected.

When Connie's sixteen, a man comes to speak to her school, he's the owner of the biggest factory in town, and his name is Alan Parrish.

"If anyone would like to speak to me about internship opportunities at the factory," he smiles like nothing bad has ever happened to him, but Connie knows his name better than she knows her own at this point, "come speak to me after the assembly." He told the school. The students clapped politely, but when they were all dismissed, she was the first to scramble from her seat, bounding from the building to where Alan Parrish was waiting.

"You're him." She tells him, and he frowns at her.

"What do you mean?" He asks, smiling brightly at her after a moment, and she motions for him to lean in close, conspiratorially.

"Jumanji." And there's this look of horror that washes over his face. "Your camp saved my life." She told him, and he looked horrified.

"I-" He looks ill, a little discoloured, blood draining from his face. "You're welcome." He doesn't sound like he means it. He sounds like he wishes this conversation wasn't happening. "I thought-" he shook his head. "We should have destroyed that game properly." He mused. "I'm sorry." He tells her very sincerely.

"It's not your fault." She returns, before smiling a little strangely, he recognises that smile all too well. "You're proof I'm not crazy." She tells him. It is not comforting to either of them. He takes a moment to look at her, to really look at her, sees the haunted look in her eyes and her strange choice of attire and the dirt beneath her nails.

"Don't dwell in that world, please," she looks so young, he's almost pleading with her now, "it's hard to be normal, I know, but please." Connie doesn't visit her camp in the woods after that, she doesn't collect stones, she tries to be normal, as normal as she can be. She wants to be a vet.​​​

The worst part is Alex. She ditches French for a full month after returning. She loves him so much, but it's too much for right now. So she steps back, has to remove herself. When she returns, it turns out she's missed out on enough assessments that she has to take it again over Summer.

She watches him fall in and out of love with the world around him, with bands and girls and band members alike. He comes to school in their senior year wearing an Iron Maiden singlet and Connie almost bursts into tears. He asks her what's wrong, it looks like she's in pain from where he's sitting, the two of them in AP Music Theory. She smiles weakly, tells him she's a fan of Steve Harris, and his face lights up.

They're friends by junior year, she's content, knowing what's coming up, probably within the year if what he said in the game is to be believed. She's watched girlfriends come and go, none of them really sticking, while she and Alex grew closer. She just wants to tell him everything, but she can't.

He turns eighteen in the Summer before their Senior year and she goes with him to see Iron Maiden on tour.

"Hey," her eyes are glued to the highway, they've been in the car for almost an hour, Alex is humming along to the radio in her passenger seat, "I love you, ya doofus." She tells him with a smile. His responding grin is goofy and affectionate.

"I love you too, Con." She's his best friend, but he doesn't understand, not yet. He doesn't mean it like he did in the game. She's quiet for a very long time.

"Hey," she begins again, the DJ on the radio has just introduced something pop-esque and garbage. She turns it down, Alex looks at her, waiting, "I've been having these weird dreams, like premonitions or some shit," she lied. Even the lie sounds crazy. Alex snorts. "Just listen, some time in the near future, and if you can, tell me as soon as it does," she took in a deep breath, "the name Tetra will mean something to you." She paused, adding. "Because I promise you're not crazy, and neither am I."