CHAPTER ONE
Prologue
A diary entry many years later:
“Long ago, a magical king was born in a kingdom where
animals talked and intellect sparred with spirituality. It was a time when truth transcended culture, forgiveness won battles,
and love conquered a young girl’s heart.”
But lest I get ahead of myself, let me start from the beginning—which happened
a long, long, long time ago. So long ago, I barely remember the beginning of my journey to the Seventh Dimension.
Chapter One
Dark Secret of Shale Snyder
I hid in a closet
underneath the stairs—my safe house. Nobody would find me in here. It wasn’t used because the ceiling was too
low. After the accident, the closet became my friend. I wanted to avoid Judd, who came over to visit Chumana. She was not
my sister but we lived together.
Guilt overwhelmed me. The door creaked as I turned the handle. I held my breath and peered through
the tiny slit. Moving shadows darkened the room. Judd, Rachel, and Chumana stared into a small brown shoebox.
Chumana burst out
crying. “I hate Shale.”
I cringed. She already hated me anyway, ever since we moved in with them a few months earlier.
Rachel stood and
recited a Jewish prayer. “Barukh shem k'vod malkhuto l'olam va'ed. Blessed is the name of
his glorious kingdom forever and ever.” With her unkempt hair, puffy red eyes, and flushed face, I barely recognized
my best friend.
“Why are you praying?” Judd snapped. “We aren’t here to pray.”
“Accidents
happen,” Rachel said.
“She should be cursed,” Judd exploded.
“Don’t say that,” Rachel said.
“How
do you know it was an accident?” Chumana asked.
I looked away. I couldn’t listen. My whole body quivered—what kind of curse?
Judd’s voice
cracked. “I demand she tell us what happened.”
The three twelve-year-olds sat silently for a moment before Rachel responded. “She
fell down the stairs with Fifi and she’s afraid.”
I swallowed hard.
Judd pulled his uncle’s Atlanta Braves cap over his eyes and clinched his hand
into a fist. “I hope Shale never has any friends—for the rest of her life.” He covered his face and sobbed.
I bit my fingernail
holding back tears. I’d never heard a boy cry. Could his curse come true?
Chumana’s red hair matched her fiery temper.
“That’s not enough of a curse. She already doesn’t have any friends.”
“I’m her friend,”
Rachel said. “Accidents happen.”
Rachel lived two buildings down from us in the Hope Garden Apartments. Would she still
be my friend if I told her the truth? I didn’t just fall—it was what I was doing when I fell. I was too afraid.
I rubbed my swollen ankle, a reminder of my foolishness. The doctor hoped it would heal, but Fifi lay in the box.
Probably God hated
me, too. If I told the truth, everyone would hate me. I couldn’t even tell my mother. My father—he left me long
ago.
***
Two Years Later
I felt a hand reach
underneath my blue skirt. I spun around on my toes. Students in the crowded hallway blended into a blur of anonymity. Hurried
bodies shoved past. Am I going crazy? Did I imagine it? I scanned faces and froze each one, like a snapshot with a camera.
“Shale,
why are you standing there? Come on or you’ll be late to class.” Rachel was waiting at the hall lockers.
I walked towards
her as the bell rang.
“Are you okay?” She furrowed her brow.
“I’m fine.” I smiled, pretending nothing
had happened. I’d think about it later. “Did you finish your analysis of As You Like It?”
Rachel’s brown
eyes bulged. “Is it due today?”
“Here’s mine. You can take a quick look if you need to.”
“Oh, thanks,
Shale. I hate Shakespeare anyway. No copying, promise. Just a peek.”
“It’s no different from reading Spark
Notes on the web,” I quipped.
When we walked into English class at Garden High School, I sat in the seat closest to the door
and stared out into the darkened hallway. Who did it? What would I do if I caught him? Mrs. Wilkes’s voice brought me
back to reality as she recited from a Shakespearean play.
“All the world’s a stage.
And all the men and women merely players
They have their
exits and their entrances
And one man in his time plays many parts
His acts being seven ages.”
What was my part?
At fourteen, did I have one yet?
***
Later in the afternoon, I tripped while stepping off the school bus. My books scattered over the
ground. My bum ankle from the accident two years earlier would catch at the worst possible moments—what I considered
my eternal punishment.
Scrambling to pick them up, I wiped the red Georgia clay off my math book. The bus waited long enough to make
sure it wouldn’t run me over before pulling away.
“Hey, wait up, ya’ll.” I walked faster to catch up as Rachel stopped,
but Chumana and Judd kept going. We still lived in the same apartment complex on the south side of Atlanta—had for years.
“If
you used a backpack, you wouldn’t have dropped your books,” Rachel chided me.
“Mine broke.” I scanned
Rachel’s back. “Where’s yours?”
“I did my homework at school. This is all I needed.” Rachel waved a thick
book with strange-looking letters in the air.
“Can you read that stuff?”
“Sure,” Rachel laughed, “but I
don’t know what it means. You could too if I taught you.” Rachel flipped to the first page. “You start on
this side.” Her finger pointed to a line of Hebrew and she ran her finger across the page from right to left.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
Rachel giggled. “So who reads backwards, the English or the Jews?”
“I’d say the Jews. I can say that
since I’m not Jewish, right?”
“Why not?”
“Writing would sure be easier if English was right to left. I wouldn’t
smear my words.”
Rachel nodded. “I forget you’re left-handed. It’s crazy, isn’t it—like
the Brits drive on the left side and we drive on the right.”
We walked for a while not saying anything. I glanced at my
friend with her striking olive skin, almond brown eyes, and brown hair. “Do you like being Jewish?”
“Yeah, I guess.
I don’t know any different.”
“I wish I was Jewish.”
“Why?” Rachel asked.
“It would be
neat to be able to say I was something.”
“You could go to church,” Rachel suggested.
“Mom and Remi would never
go. Every time they talk about God or anything religious, they end up fighting.”
Rachel flinched. “That’s too
bad. By the way, thanks for your help with English.”
“You’re welcome.” I switched my books to the left, thinking how much
I hated the long walk home, especially since we now lived farther away. The new unit we moved into when Remi and mother married
was at the very back by the woods.
Rachel frowned, noticing my musings. “What’s it like having a father now?”
I bit my lip hesitating.
“At least I have my own bedroom and don’t have to share with Chumana.”
“That’s good,”
Rachel agreed. “How did you ever end up living with her anyway?”
“Mother didn’t have any money when we
moved to Atlanta. She found an ad that Chumana’s mother placed in the Atlanta Constitution looking for a roommate.
It was a cheap place to live.”
I eyed Judd and Chumana ahead of us. “What are they talking about? They have been spending
a lot of time together.”
Rachel lowered her voice. “I know.”
“Maybe they deserve each other.”
Rachel edged up even
closer to me and spoke in a whisper, “You never knew your father, right?”
“No.” I clutched my books that
now seemed heavier. “Mother couldn’t wait to marry Remi after being divorced for so many years. Then she cried
all night when they returned from their honeymoon in the mountains. I couldn’t sleep. I wondered why, but was too afraid
to ask.”
“Maybe it was a bad honeymoon,” Rachel chortled.
“Silly you. How can you have a bad honeymoon?”
“I
don’t know,” Rachel replied. “I’m sure it’s happened.”
“I hardly knew Remi the day
they married.”
“It’s hard to imagine what it would be like to be at your own parent’s wedding. I mean,
it might be funny if it could happen,” Rachel said.
“Like Back to the Future?” Then my thoughts darkened. “How
would you like having a stepfather you don’t know?”
Rachel shook her head. “I wouldn’t.”
I’d never confided
in anyone about my past but now I couldn’t stop. “Presents arrive twice a year from North York. I don’t
remember anything about my father. One day he left and never returned.”
“I can’t imagine what that would be like,”
Rachel said.
“Sometimes I get angry.”
Rachel’s eyes widened. “About what?”
“Mother didn’t ask
how I felt about her remarrying.”
We walked in silence as my words hung in the air. I kicked a rock on the sidewalk and
it skipped into the gutter. Rachel’s warm nature was comforting. She came from such a perfect family, or it seemed.
I’d tell her things I wouldn’t tell anyone else.
Voices from the past mocked me. “Do I walk like a chicken?”
Rachel laughed. “No,
you don’t walk like a chicken.”
“Do I have big lips?”
“Big lips?” Rachel stopped and stared at me surprised.
“No.”
“You don’t think so? Every time I wet them with my tongue, I worry I’m making them fat—so
I was told.”
Rachel examined my fair face. I pretended not to notice. “You’re beautiful. Who would say such
mean things?”
I didn’t want to tell her. What was the point in making him look bad?
“I love your green eyes and
long brown hair.” Rachel reached out and grabbed a couple of strands, flipping them over my shoulder. “I wish
mine wasn’t wavy with all the humidity. I use an iron to straighten it but it doesn’t stay that way for long.”
Rachel giggled. “Guys love long, straight hair.”
“Remi wants me to call him dad, but that seems weird.”
A few feet in front
of us, Chumana knelt on the sidewalk.
Rachel squinted. “What are they looking at?”
An earthworm wiggled on the sidewalk, barely
warm from the late afternoon sun. A few weeks after Christmas, it was the wrong time of year for creepy crawlers.
“It’s
probably cold,” I said.
Judd lifted his foot to squash it.
“Wait,” I demanded.
Judd glared at me.
“Why kill it?” I asked.
He leaned down and
picked it up, dangling the worm a few inches above the sidewalk. “Have you ever dissected one of these?”
I shook my head.
He
stiffened. “I should make you squish it between your delicate fingers.”
I stared at the worm. Judd dropped it on
the sidewalk. As he started to smash it again, I leaned over and shoved him. “Just leave it alone.”
Judd’s face
turned beet red. “Don’t ever push me again. You hear me?”
I nodded. My knees spasmed like a jack-in-the-box.
“You don’t
like squishing worms but you killed my puppy.” His icy eyes ripped at my soul.
Rachel said, “Get over it. You sound
so hateful.”
Chumana glared through her thick, black-rimmed glasses. “Judd is right, though, Rachel. Don’t
you remember?”
“I remember,” Rachel whispered.
My heart raced as I picked up the worm—its slimy body was cold to the touch—and
stuck it in my pocket.
Judd shook his head and stomped off.
Ruefully, I urged Rachel and Chumana, “You two go on. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Rachel
nodded. They continued walking, leaving me alone.
After wrapping the worm up in some brown leaves, I placed it on a warmer corner of
the concrete. When I lifted my eyes, I saw the white dog for the first time. She sat nearby wagging her fluffy tail.
As I approached her,
she stood and limped backwards. The scruffy creature was dirty and mangy, with floppy short ears and almond brown eyes. If
she belonged to someone or was lost, the owner wasn’t taking very good care of her. A fuzzy feeling warmed my heart.
Did she like me? Before I could get too close, the dog turned and ran away.
March 1 through March 16
