Upstream

Chapter 1
Troublemaker

Chapter Description: Vanessa's senior year gets off to a rocky start

It was the first day of senior year, and Vanessa was busy staring at herself in her bedroom mirror, struggling not to feel a certain sense of awe. 

The girl had nothing to compensate for - she was a fine student and a gifted athlete from a relatively stable home. Had it not been for her looks, she would have had no trouble pursuing an honest path. But that wasn’t something she had to worry about. 

Instead, she spent her free time gossiping, plotting, and taking selfies, intoxicated by the rush that popularity gave her. There was just something about seeing boys lose themselves at the sight of her, about girls bending over backwards for the privilege of being called her friend. And this year, now that she was eighteen and on top of the high school hierarchy, she would settle for no less than the title of queen. But of course, she knew she wouldn’t reach such heights from the comfort of her bed, so she fixed her hair and went on her way. 

Minutes later, she was at the grand double doors of her school’s entrance, arriving perfectly in sync with her two closest partners in crime. On her right came tall, red-headed Cassie, who always had the best gossip to tell. On her left came buxom Amber, the obligatory blonde of their clique, who prided herself as Vanessa’s enforcer. Marching in lock-step, they made their way in, and started down the hallway towards their lockers. 

“Senior year,” Amber said, half-celebrating, “we gonna run this place, V?”

“You know it,” Vanessa replied, without turning her head, “who’s gonna try and stop us?”

“Well, you know Heather,” Cassie chimed in, “who tried to spread those rumors about you last year?” 

“That bitch?” Vanessa was unamused. “Yeah, what’s she up to now?” 

“Well, word is she got together with Jack Kilmer over the summer.”

“What? How’d that happen?” Amber asked, shocked, while casually shoving a wayward freshman out of their path and onto the floor. 

“Who knows?” Cassie shrugged, “probably knew each other through family. But… I thought it might be a good opportunity to send a message.”

Vanessa was already laughing. “Oooh, love it. Jack’s been drooling over me since middle school. He’s on the swim team, too, so I know where to find him - thinking I’ll go pay him a visit Tuesday. Heather’s in band, right?” 

“Yep,” Cassie confirmed, “I think she plays- “

“Excuse me!?” Vanessa’s smile vanished instantly as the clique stopped at once in the hallway. Seated in front of them, in front of their lockers, was a small, slender girl they had never seen before, with a black dress, black headphones, and black hair tied in a long ponytail, reading a thick-looking hardcover book to herself. 

“Well, it looks like someone doesn’t know the rules around here,” Amber began, forcing the girl up by her collar into a standing position. 

“Do we have… do we have a new face I see?” Vanessa asked with her head tilted and brow furrowed, licking her teeth as she scanned the girl up and down. 

“Oh yes we do,” Cassie chimed in glibly, “a transfer, I believe, from… Salem High? Senior, but looks like not a very smart one, huh?”

“Oh, a new troublemaker here.” Vanessa crept closer to the new girl’s, holding a piercing stare until their faces almost touched. “What, did you get kicked out or something?”

The girl in black said nothing, turning away from Vanessa’s gaze and beginning to pack her book away into her backpack. 

“Hey!” Amber shoved the girl to the ground away from the clique’s lockers, causing her to spill her book and the contents of her open bag. “You show some respect to the queen!”

“Tsk tsk tsk,” Cassie remarked, “I think there might be something wrong with this one. What do you think, V?”  

“Ooooh, I think I might know what the problem is,” Vanessa answered quickly, a cruel grin building on her face, “I think this one might not know how ta talk. ‘Cause I think this one might be a widdle baby.

“Is dat twoo, widdle baby?” Vanessa moved again towards the girl as she raised the volume on her impression, while a crowd of students began to gather and laugh. “Is you too dumb-dumb to know how to make talkies? Well, I’m sowwee, widdle baby, but we don’t wike widdle babies awound heah.

“So get the fuck out.” Vanessa’s tone shifted abruptly, and she kicked the girl’s book down the hallway. 

With that, Vanessa, Cassie, and Amber turned and moved in perfect harmony back towards their lockers, leaving the girl in black scrambling to collect her things, muttering what the clique could only assume were curses under her breath. 

That day, Vanessa felt no remorse, no regret, and no repercussions. She and her friends had delivered a loud and clear message to their school, and their fellow students made sure to cast them wide berths in the halls. It was an auspicious start to an ambitious year, and it placed the girls firmly atop the food chain, where they belonged. 

Meanwhile, a new batch of classes brought little in the way of surprise. Vanessa made her way comfortably through dull lectures and simple quizzes, settling quickly into a steady rhythm of doing just enough work to get the grades that colleges would want to see. The first weekend of the year passed by quickly and uneventfully, and soon enough Tuesday arrived, allowing Vanessa to focus on the things she actually cared about. 

Her plan proved to be perfect. Like clockwork, Jack finished his swim practice at 4:30, while his summer fling was off in her own club. Vanessa, who had been waiting near the gym entrance, met him with a flirty wink and a soft ‘hey’, and the boy did nothing to shy away. 

“Hey,” he said back with an overeager smile, “‘sup?”

 “Oh, I don’t know,” the girl murmured, holding a finger on her bottom lip as she fluttered her eyelids. “Whatcha up to?”

“Oh, I was just, uh, at swim practice, y’know. But I’m pretty free now.”

“Oh. Well then,” Vanessa said softly, walking slowly closer to her target, “I was thinking we could maybe hang out, then?”

Jack let out a dopey laugh as he struggled to maintain his composure. “Uhhh… what would you wanna do?”

“Well,” Vanessa placed a finger on the boy’s chest, “maybe… I WANNA PLAY WIF YOU!”

Vanessa’s hand shot up to cover her mouth as her face turned bright red. Where did that come from?

Jack, in turn, took several steps back, his dumb-jock eagerness turning to confusion and fear. “Uhhhhh... what?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” the girl corrected herself quickly, “I was ummm… just, uh, making a joke. Yeah, sorry. Ummm, where were we?”

“Oh, ummm, you were just, you were just, uh-”

“HEE DA WAWA” 

Again, shock came over Vanessa as she blurted noises without any conscious thought. She stepped back away and tried to collect herself, but instead the noise simply came again.

“HEE DA WAWA”

Grasping her hands firmly over her mouth, the blushing girl saw no option other than to abort the mission and run. And run she did, all the way onto a bus and home. 

When she finally did arrive back, Vanessa scoured Instagram to make sense of any potential fallout from the day. No one, it seemed, had gossiped about what happened, and no one seemed to have overheard. Jack, fortunately, was too awkward when it came to such things to be blabbering about it, and Vanessa saw his shock and confusion as a sign that he wouldn’t want to be bringing it up. So the girl breathed a sigh of relief and went about her evening, trying her best to shake off the day’s events. 

Still, the girl lost sleep thinking about it. Why had she suddenly blurted out? What did she even say? 

There were no answers to be found, of course, and Vanessa came to school tired on Wednesday, struggling to maintain focus through her classes. Thursday was no better, and it was at her desk in homeroom that the girl finally gave in to the strain and dozed off. 

Without warning, the girl found herself on a boat - a small rowboat, it seemed, moving in the middle of what looked to be a wide river, with bright blue skies all around. 

Vanessa, with a paddle in her hand and nothing else to do, began to row, but the boat moved very slowly forward. And then, though she kept rowing, the boat ceased to move altogether. Finally, though at this point the girl was swinging her oar madly, the boat began to move unnaturally backwards, against the current, while an ethereal voice filled the air:

“Heed the waters
Trickle and flow
The tide is turning
Upstream you go.”  

Try as she might, the girl could not keep the boat from being pushed back by what felt like nothing more than a soft breeze. The small, wooden thing crashed violently against the river’s flow, and water began splashing in. Vanessa stood up in a feeble attempt to avoid it, but could only do so for so long. Soon, a gush found her, making its way to the girl’s shorts, striking her with a sensation that was wet, warm, and very real. 

Vanessa woke up with a soft gasp. The feeling she had in her dream had followed her into reality, and she realized quickly that she was wet. Quite wet, in fact - the puddle that had formed on her chair covered the whole back of her skirt, and was dripping from every corner onto the carpet beneath.  

The girl quickly looked around. She saw that there was still time in the homeroom period, and that a number of other students had taken the opportunity to nap through it. There was still a chance, she thought, to avoid humiliation, and she went for it. 

Vanessa tossed a magazine from her bag over the stain on her seat and bolted out the door, doing her best to keep her backside covered. Frantically, she ran to her locker and grabbed a spare set of clothes - a precaution against inadvertent matching with her friends - and scrambled over to the bathroom to change. With moments remaining before the period’s end, she finished putting on her dry clothes and breathed an exhausted sigh of relief. Disaster had been averted.

As she tried to collect herself in front of the bathroom mirror, Vanessa finally took a moment to try and process what had happened. Never in her life had she had an accident quite like that - why now? Was it somehow connected to her bizarre slip outside the gym? Was there someone slipping her drugs? Was she sick? Was she simply stressed?

Yet again, the girl came up short of making any sense of her situation, concluding only that she needed to remain vigilant, and, more importantly, she needed to remain awake. With that in mind, she rinsed her face in cold water and went about her day as best she could. 

That night, Vanessa found herself once again on the river, struggling to stay with the current. This time, she found herself in a storm, facing down dark clouds and lightning as far as she could see, while the same ethereal voice rang out through the gale:

“Heed the waters
Trickle and flow
The tide is turning
Upstream you go.”  

Winds and waves crashed down upon the girl, wrecking her boat and soaking her lower body. Yet again, she awoke with a start, and yet again she woke up wet.

It was 4:00 a.m. The girl was weary, but she managed to get her sheets into the wash without creating too much of a stir. When she was done, she went back to bed, able, mercifully, to sleep without interruption. 

But the dream repeated itself the next night, and again the next. Ever alert, Vanessa managed her way through the daytime - though a few late-week quizzes proved a struggle for the tired girl - but her repeated bedtime troubles wearied her. When the weekend came, Vanessa went to bed hoping that she might be able to finally sleep through the night. And she did. 

Unfortunately, she still woke up wet. This time, the feeling was cold and clammy. This time, it seemed that Vanessa had slept through her Saturday alarm, well into the late morning. And this time, worst of all, the girl knew she wouldn’t be able to keep the accident a secret, as she woke to the sight of her mother standing cross-armed in front of her. 

“Sweetie, have you been having some troubles lately?”

The tone was saccharine and condescending, completely unlike the way Vanessa was used to hearing her mother talk. But so many things were baffling the girl at this moment that she simply couldn’t process it. 

“I think maybe someone needs to be wearing a little protection, hmmm?”

“Ew, ew, gross, mom, no.” Vanessa was shocked at the question, but too groggy to express her emotion. 

“Are we sure? Because it looks like -”

“No, no, mom, please, I don’t know what’s been happening, but really, I don’t need anything.” Vanessa waved her mother away. The girl wasn’t sure if she believed her own words, but she was absolutely certain that she wanted to be done with the conversation. 

Thankfully, her mother dropped the subject, and Vanessa slowly changed and loaded laundry before heading to the family dining table for a wordless breakfast. 

“Excited about your college visit, honey?” Her mother asked, finally breaking the silence. 

“Oh, right.” Vanessa had completely forgotten about the planned visit. Somehow, she had been too preoccupied to think much about it. “Uh, I guess?”

It was Vanessa’s dream school, with a lush campus and a robust Greek life, and she was reminded of that as she started touring the grounds. Still, the girl found it difficult to muster enthusiasm, her mind drawn constantly to the bizarre events that colored her first few weeks of the semester. 

And then, a familiar, eerie voice began to play in Vanessa’s mind. 

Heed the waters… 

A chill ran down the girl’s spine and her eyes bulged wide. Without a second thought, she bolted from the tour group and towards the main buildings, while a pressure inside her built at an unnatural rate. 

Vanessa was scrambling, but she could already feel a trickle come out as she made her first few strides. Desperately, she tried to hold her muscles together as she honed in on her destination, but it seemed crushingly far away, and time seemed to be running out fast.

By the time she reached the center of the campus green, she could hold back no longer. The flow was unstoppable, pouring through the girl’s powder-blue jeans and onto the grass below. 

Defeated, Vanesssa stopped in her tracks and clasped her knees, panting, while tears began to mix with the sweat running down her cheeks. Around her, she could see college students pointing and whispering, though she recoiled to hide her face when a group of drunken frat boys started laughing and hollering. 

“I don’t wanna talk about it” would be Vanessa’s refrain on the car ride home, as she sat sulking in her sopping wet jeans, staring cross-armed out the passenger window. Her mother carried on with her uncharacteristic, patronizing sweet-talk, but it was the least of the girl’s worries now. 

When she arrived home, Vanessa made her way upstairs to survey the damage. The girl sighed. As much as she hated to acknowledge it, as much as she hated to admit it, the thought crept in that her mother might be right: if Vanessa was going to make it through the semester, she might need a little protection.