A WALK TO THE STARS

he had been on a carnival ride for too long. Colors flipped passed him-blue, green, and, a flash of violet

e out his own words, his voice drowned by the vortex, and a sick flip in his stomach made him wish that he hadn't eaten that peanut butte

ounced awkwardly on his landing like the surface beneath had been designed for it. He grunted, "Oof," as his body rolled and came to stop. His glasses had slipped to the side. He blinked a few times, adjusted his glasses, and pus

the edge of a glass; only a hundred times louder, and it hummed in his ears. Jasper stood up slightly wobbly and moved. Whoa-he felt weightless, like he had lost half of his weight. "No way," he said, moved again-and of course, he floated a little, sneakers leaving the surfa

r with a big dorky grin on his face. "This is a maze," he commented, pleased to hear his voice ricochet across the crystals, sounding very small in the silence of the enormous space. The light was unreal, bright and rainbowy, but no sign of a sky overhead, just more crystals, and definitely no stained pine trees and th

replicate how bright and sparkly they were. "These are insane," he muttered to himself as he sketched a spire with sharp points-- splitting colors into a rainbow. "Got to be a mineral, but... not like anything on Earth. Quartz? Nah, too shiny." After scratching a note in the corner: "Weightlessness-- Small planet or moon?" he referenced reading about places like that in his

He stopped to sketch again, drawing the path he was on, a skinny little walk-way between two huge spires. "Crystal labyrinth," he wrote, underlining it with a wiggly line. "Maybe it messes with light? Optical illusions?" He remembered reading about maz

rms flapping like a bird. For a moment, he completely forgot about everything-Tommy Grayson, the puddle, that he was supposed to be home by now. It was just him and this crazy, sparkly place, and he kind of loved it. He spun in c

d strange and wrong, echoing back at him off the crystals, "Jasper... Jasper...," all echoing in unison from all different directions at the same time. He turned around, and he could see his reflections moving wit

d to his chest. The paths twisted like they would double back on themselves, then dead-end, then opened back up again, and he felt like he was just going around in circles like he was lost. "This is bad, this is bad," he gasped, the reflections running with h

at him, but hey, whatever-he was just trying to get out. He launched himself toward the wormhole, his reflections running too, a million Jaspers flying for their lives. "I'm coming, Mom!" he yelled, and he dove in headfirst. The wormhole sucked him up, the whispers leaving in the s