The Rich, The Adventurous, and the UglyI was in the passenger’s seat of my mother’s car. A boy, whom I’ve never met before was driving us to a well-known pizza place in the city. He made an agreement to my mother that he would drive safely, and besides he was also studying for his drivers test. He took a route that we’ve never taken before. Somehow, I trusted him too but that was before I knew.
I didn’t know we were about to stumble into the rabbit hole.
In the distance I see a hill that was shaped into an elephant head. It was lying down and the trunk had disappeared into the sand. The sand was colored, and it appeared to be a giant mold up close. I started thinking how many hours it took for the artists to finish such a humongous feat.
As we drove by the elephant, I stare up at it. It must’ve been at least fifty feet tall. It was beautiful. The boy driving simply smiled and said nothing.
We drove by more elephant hills, and then the last one look somewhat peculiar to me. It was a red and gold painted road, and it took me awhile to realize that we were driving on the trunk of an elephant sculpture. I looked to the back seat of the car and saw two huge ears on the side of the road shaped like a trunk. The road seemed to get wider and wider.
The car began to speed up, as we got lower and lower. The downward motion had left butterflies in my tummy, and I said, “This is so fun!”
Before any response the road had disappeared and we were falling in mid-air. I didn’t see it coming, and then I felt something catch the car. We were inside a lifting device that looked like a ski lift.
My heart was beating faster and faster each minute because I had no idea what was going to happen next. Then the car had dropped from the ski lift. My mother was in utter shock, and I knew somewhere deep down that we were going to be fine. I suppose the boy knew too.
As the car dropped it was captured inside a hole on the ground. I was finally at ease that we were on the ground again. The hold began to consume the car and the passengers, which were my mother, my sister, my grandmother Elise, myself, and the boy had been released into a room that was supposed to be the place we were going to eat at.
Tiny screens have lighted up around us, and it asked a series of questions. I noticed words that I didn’t fully understand. There were words like, Nebe, Nebulae, or Nueb. I pressed on a word on the touch screen. It showed me a question that was related to the word I had sel

ected. I heard in the background, the boy asked my sister, “Does she take an interest in science?” She said, “No, not really.”
Before I could defend myself in their false beliefs about the, I read the question, “How many Nebs does a Nebue eat?”
I finally realized that this wasn’t a serious test of scientific facts; it was merely a child’s game inside the restaurant.
The boy smiled after I realized this, and I asked him, “How do I give it my answer?” He points at a ticket system beside a slot that I didn’t notice before. I pushed a button and about ten tickets had spewed paper out of it.
I took three and put them back in the machine. Then twenty more tickets came out. Frustrated, I put two more inside it, and I pressed the final answer button on the screen. Then about five hundred black tickets have come out of the machine. It seems as if I have hit the jackpot. The boy smiled at me, and I noticed that my family has left the room to eat. We sat side by side, and I concentrated on the machine.
I didn’t know the value of these tickets but I assumed it was good to have so many. After complete silence, the boy had asked, “I see you have a boyfriend but you don’t feel much for him do you---and in your history you don’t have any real memories of a past love holding you back?”
I looked down at the screen, and before I could answer the question, someone popped in and told me that they were serving spaghetti in the café area. I wanted to tell this guy that he was right, but I was also wondering how he knew that about me. Perhaps it was a wild guess, but it was right on. I mean, from a distance, you could mistake that some of my guy friends were my boyfriends but come on.
I left the question hanging over our head, and I said, “We should get something to eat.” He agreed, and I escorted him out of the room.
I got a tiny plate of spaghetti and noticed a family that was there also. They were the kind of family that had money to burn. I knew them. My mother had taken me to their house one time for a dinner party.
The wife was obviously drunk as she slurred around in the spaghetti. The husband of course was a spiritual twat when it came to reality. They recognized me immediately and some of the family members welcomed me to a table. The chairs were at a perfect height, and the tables had a golden sheer. The lights were dimmed to perfection and I noticed a guy sitting right beside me who didn’t look apart of the family at all. I ignored him until the husband had banged his spoon against a wine

glass to get everyone attention.
“It is time for the darting game.” He said it with much pride and respect that everyone’s eyes had glanced his way.
He picked up a wire on a glass table with a twisted hole at the end. “This game is a dangerous game. You flick the dart at a piece of apple-kneaded bread and it bounces in any direction it pleases. It depends on the archer’s hand. There was only one record of an actual hit on the bread, and that was in 1865 as of March 12th.”
I rolled my eyes, thinking, ‘rich people have so much time on their hands.’
The game started and a few people backed away from the flying needles. Some more entertainment had come in and this time it was a live movie. It started out with a pink haired girl who had joined a covenant. As the narrator had told the beginning, I looked down at my glass of tea. The words, “She had an unsettling sexuality,” had echoed throughout the room. I looked up and somehow my eyes locked with the stranger at the party. I immediately looked away and asked myself, ‘was he starring at me?’
The movie took off into another direction where the main character was dancing in a strip club, and a woman named Diana had interrupted, “I am the only Jaded Judith!” The movie had left my interests and I walked out of the party for a while, looking out the window to a moon so beautiful it sparkled like a diamond. I let out a sigh of exhaustion, and smiled a bit.