Adventure of an American Girl in Ancient China
Prologue
The day broke fine and clear. The sun showed his ruddy face above the horizon and clambered out by degrees. His face then turned radiant and dazzling. It was the Valentine Day in 2004—the day for lovers to meet. Linda was a blonde with sky-blue eyes and a model's figure, exactly the type akin to a goddess in Greek mythology. She was a senior in a local high school in Bergen County, New Jersey, a girl full of fanciful whim. But she could still use her reason to deal with everything in reality and could restrain herself against impulses. She was also a cheerleader and a member of astronomy society in the school.
She had a telescope set up in her room at the Of a clear night, she would watch the starry sky, imagining herself flitting among the sparkling stars like an angel. She always thought that the sky was really her home. Her great ambition since a little girl was to be a woman astronaut so that she could travel in a genuine spaceship to explore the mystic outer space. She wanted to see everything in the universe in person, not just on science movies. Once she dreamt that she was hovering in the nocturnal sky and approaching a sparkling star. She knew that stars should be fiery balls like the sun. But when she got close enough, she found that it was an enormous ruby reflecting the light of other stars. She was about to take it into her hands when she was awakened by the alarm clock. It was time to go to school.
A certain astrologist told her parents that a girl endowed with such a spirit and temperament might magnetize some mysterious force in the universe, but Linda did not care. As a matter of fact, she longed for it so that she could have some unpredictable change in her boring routine life. She often manifested that a day passed in an exciting adventure was more worth living than a hundred tedious years.
Frank lived next door and was her playmate since childhood, and now in the same classroom of the same school. They went to school together every morning and came home together every evening. Their fellow students jested that Frank was the shadow of Linda as shadows cannot be separated from objects. Frank joined the school football team and every time he played in a contest Linda would cheer for him at the side of the court.
That day, they exchanged gifts, a box of chocolate for her and a new tie for him to wear on the prom night a couple of months away. They would soon graduate from high school. They might go to separate colleges as their interest in the life's goal was different, but they could still get together during the vacations and after graduation since the love between them was a strong rope to tie them together. The eternal separation for them seemed impossible in their opinion.
One day Frank took Linda out for a spin in his new convertible that his father had given him as a gift for his seventeenth birthday. They went to the highway and Frank drove at a high speed.
“Don’t drive so fast. You’re way over the speed limit.” Linda warned.
“Watch out for the cops for me.” Frank suggested, “It’s all right. Only eighty. Most people drive at eighty on this highway.”
Linda knew that she could not dissuade him. Frank was sometimes very stubborn. The late afternoon wind blew Linda’s long golden hair flying behind her like the tail of a comet. Frank seemed to accelerate in his high spirits. Linda had a last resort that she could take to make Frank listen to her.
“If you don’t decelerate, I won’t go with you any farther.”
“What do you mean?” Frank glanced at her face in doubt. He was at a loss to understand Linda.
“I’ll jump out.” Linda said calmly.
“You kidding?” Frank was surprised to hear it. He knew that Linda often did something out of his expectation. But this time it was too drastic. Before he could say anything else, Linda began to unbuckle her seat belt. Frank hastily lessened the speed, but when he turned to check on Linda to see if she had really jumped out, Linda was nowhere to be seen. She was not in the convertible. She was not on the surface of the road if she had jumped out. At that time there was not much traffic. She could not jump into the passing cars of other people. She just vanished into the thin air like the steam having evaporated.
He had to hurry back and inform her parents of the serious situation. They reported the accident to the police, who sent out the message throughout the nation, but Linda could not be found anywhere in the country.
