Finding Jade

by Mary Jennifer Payne

“I know,” she says with a smile. “Now, what feast are you preparing for our dinner?”

  “How about some veggie empanadas?”

  “Deliciosa,” Mom replies as she lies back down on the pillow. There are dark, bruise-like circles under her eyes, and her cheeks are red and rashy. I feel terrible for telling her about the mix-up at school. It’s clear she’s having one of her bad days.

  Back in the kitchen, I take out eggs and flour for the empanada dough and put the carrots and potatoes in a bowl to be washed and peeled. Dinner is going to take some prep time, but I needed something that was pretty cheap to make with ingredients we could keep using until Mom’s disability cheque arrives at the end of the week.

  I walk over to get the chopping board at the other end of the counter and twist my ankle as I step on something hard.

  “Damn!” I cry out, my arms pinwheeling in an attempt to keep my balance.

  A little wooden statue skitters out from under my foot and across the floor. Its features are oversized: big eyes, huge head, prominent lips and nose. The only other details are some type of headdress and what may be a beaded necklace around the doll’s thick neck. It looks a lot like the African art and carvings I’ve seen in Lola’s apartment.

  I squat down and pick it up.

  A cracking thunderclap fills my ears. My heart nearly stops as a surge of energy flashes into my hand, up my arm, and back down my spine. It feels like white lightning. Nausea rolls over me. My body shakes uncontrollably as a series of images flood my mind like a tsunami; it’s as if a movie is being downloaded into my brain. I drop the statue and fall backward, smashing my back against the kitchen cupboards as I land.

  I stare wide-eyed at the statue, which is now lying on the chipped linoleum just to my right. My body is still shaking, so I take a few deep breaths to try and calm myself.

  “Jasmine?” Mom is standing in the doorway, leaning heavily on her cane. “Are you okay?”

  “I tripped over that,” I say, pointing at the statue. “But, yeah, I’m okay.”

  Mom slowly makes her way over to me. “Are you sure you’re all right? That sounded like a hard fall. The way you screamed nearly gave me a heart attack.”

  I screamed? My mind is a blank.

  Mom walks to the statue. It’s clear the effort of moving just a few metres fatigues her.

  “Oh, that’s Lola’s,” she says. “She must’ve dropped it when she was here today.” She stoops to pick it up.

  “Don’t!” I say, reaching out for her arm.

  Mom wraps her hand around the wooden doll’s enormous head, slowly straightens, and looks at me, her brows drawing together in a frown.

  “Sure you’re okay?” she asks as she places the statue on the counter.

  I get up and self-consciously brush my hands along the front of my jeans. “I just didn’t want you to pick it up, that’s all. You should be resting.” It’s true. I feel badly that Mom has exerted all this energy because I’m dumb enough to scream over a piece of wood. It probably just gave me a static electric shock or something. Usually, I’d never let her pick something up off the floor, let alone be up and walking around after a treatment.

  Admittedly, I am happy I didn’t have to touch that thing again.

  After dinner I finish the dishes and then slip away to my room. As I’m lying on the bed, reading from my tablet, I suddenly remember what I saw during the seconds I had touched Lola’s doll.

  There’s no way it was anything but a hallucination of some sort, yet it was so vivid, so real….

  I get up, cross the room, open the closet door, and rummage around until my fingers hit the treasure box. It might sound stupid to have a treasure box at my age, but it was something that Jade and I started the year before she disappeared. We created it just after Mom told us how our dad died and about their life together in Chile.

  The box initially started as a little dedication to him. Eventually, it turned into a place for us to store all our shared treasures: favourite shells collected at the beach, First Communion necklaces, dried flowers we picked from neighbourhood gardens when no one was looking, and a photo of our parents taken in Valparaíso when they were just teenagers. Then, after Jade disappeared, I began to add things to it that reminded me of her. In the deepest place of my heart, I hoped one day she’d come back, so I could share the box with her.

  Jade was the only other person who knew about the box. In the last year or so I finally accepted that she was gone, and I’ve kept it hidden at the back of my closet ever since, buried under piles of old clothes I grew out of long ago.

  Hands shaking, I pull it out. It’s just an old shoebox covered with silver and pink glitter-glue flowers and pictures of cats and dogs that Jade and I cut out from magazines. We always wanted a pet of our own, but Mom’s allergic.

  I lift the lid. Nothing’s been touched in so long. I pull out a photo of Jade smiling widely at the camera, singing into a banana she was using as a substitute microphone at school. It was taken just a few months before her disappearance. She loved singing and dancing, and was always talking about how one day she’d star in musicals in the biggest theatres from here to New York and London. It used to drive me nuts, but now I’d do anything to hear her sing again. Underneath that photo is the cloth napkin we stole from a dinner at a fancy restaurant when our abuela came to visit from Chile. The edges of the fabric are yellowing slightly. Picking up the photo of Jade again, I think about the vision I had when I touched Lola’s wooden doll.

  Included in the jumble of horrific images that I saw when I touched the doll was one vision that struck me to the core. For a few fleeting seconds, I saw Jade. She was running and seemed terrified. Not only that, she was no longer ten years old, but looked a lot like I do now at fourteen.

  I stare at my sister’s huge smile a few moments longer, put the photo back at the very bottom of the box, and lean back against the door frame of my closet.

  What’s happening to me?

  And, though I don’t want to go near the doll again, something tells me not to leave it unguarded.

  I wait until Mom is asleep before heading back to the kitchen. Using a pair of tongs, I carefully pick up Lola’s doll from the counter, walk back to my room and place it in the box.

  Chapter 4

  Mom wouldn’t let me stay home from school today, which means I’m back at Beaconsfield until she can sort out this whole stupid mess.

  “Jasmine, can you please read to the class the first paragraph of your persuasive letter to the editor?” Mr. Khan asks. We’re nearly through second period. I look up at him, wishing his handsome head would spontaneously combust.

  “No, thanks,” I say, keeping my voice low.

  The only response I get is a snicker from Mina, who’s sitting directly across from me — even though Mr. Khan posted a seating plan this morning that had her sitting nowhere near me. Why doesn’t he ask her to move to her assigned seat? Is he afraid of her as well?

  “Jasmine? Please begin to read,” he says. “You did such an excellent job in your writing yesterday addressing both sides of the debate as to whether or not the execution of climate change terrorists from Los Angeles should be live-streamed.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t want to.”

  A tiny muscle in Mr. Khan’s jaw begins to twitch. Clearly, my reluctance to read is beginning to irritate him.

  “Hurry up and read, Ugly,” Mina hisses. “You’re wasting our time.”

  I can feel her eyes on me, but I’m not going to even look over because I know that’s what she wants. I won’t give her the satisfaction of a reaction, even though what I really want to do is put my fist through her face.

  “Mina, please,” Mr. Khan says, his voice calm. “Go ahead, Jasmine.”

  He’s not going to give up. I glare at him and turn my tablet on.

  “Dear Editor: I’m writing you to expr
ess my dismay at the decision of the majority of the world’s governments, including Canada’s, to …”

  A loud, dramatic sneeze interrupts my reading. A few people burst out laughing. I want to die.

  “Sorry,” Mina says coyly. “I must be allergic to something in the room.”

  “If you’re so smart, why don’t you read your work to the class, Mina?”

  Shocked, I look up at Mr. Khan. His lips aren’t moving. So who’s daring to stand up to Mina?

  “Could you even understand the topic? Or did you get your friends to explain it to you?”

  Like something straight out of an old-fashioned Bollywood movie, every head — including Mina’s — turns in unison to look at the source of the voice. It’s a boy at the back of the class.

  “You’re dead,” Mina says to him, her eyes narrowing.

  “That’s enough, you two,” Mr. Khan warns.

  “I’m dead?” the boy chuckles, linking his hands behind his head and leaning back in his seat. A confident smirk plays across his face. I can’t take my eyes off him, and I don’t know if it’s because he’s so incredibly ballsy or so stunningly gorgeous. Either way, I’m loving every minute of this showdown.

  “You’re funny, Mina. A natural comedienne.”

  “I said that’s enough, Raphael,” Mr. Khan says. “Everyone in our class has their unique strengths and needs. You know that.” He picks up the remote off his desk. “We’re almost out of time, so I’ll conclude with another news podcast for you to respond to tonight for homework.” There’s a collective groan as he projects the link onto one of the classroom’s monitors.

  It turns out Raphael is in my next class, too. Instead of paying attention (which I should since it’s math and I’m crap at it), I can’t help stealing furtive glances at him. He’s got thick, black hair, skin the colour of milky coffee, and eyes that seem to change from the most vivid green to deep brown, depending on how the light from the window is hitting his face.

  What I can’t understand is why no one else seems to think it’s strange that he was suddenly sitting back there during Mr. Khan’s lesson last period. We all came into class together, and I was one of the first to sit down. Believe me, there’s no way a guy this beautiful could have walked by without me noticing.

  Yet no one, including Mr. Khan, appeared to be surprised by his presence. And the freakiest thing is, despite not being in class yesterday, Raphael knows everything we’re doing. Either he’s a genius or this is yet another crazy thing I can’t explain — like this school’s creepy identical-twin situation. Today I counted four more pairs of twins during transitions between classes. All girls.

  To tell the truth, all this weirdness is beginning to scare me. I wonder if I’m having seizures or something. Could I be blanking out for a few minutes and not realizing it? That might explain me missing things like Raphael entering the classroom. Except that wouldn’t explain what happened with Lola’s doll.

  I decide not to think about it, and try to force my mind to focus on algebraic equations instead. But soon I’m doodling on my page, and my gaze is drifting back to Raphael.

  Toward the end of class, he looks up and catches me practically staring at him. My face burns. Before I can look away, he smiles knowingly, like we’re sharing some kind of secret. For the second time today, I nearly die of embarrassment.

  The rest of my day is pretty good, though, and Mina leaves me alone. I wonder if Raphael calling her out will be enough to stop her from bullying me. Not that it really matters; after today I won’t have to worry about seeing any of them again. Although a part of me wishes I could take Raphael to Riverdale with me. I hope there are some hot guys over there. I’ll have to ask Desiree.

  I clear out my locker at the end of the day and put my lock into my knapsack. Good riddance, I think as I slam the door shut. My heart jumps. Mr. Khan is standing on the other side.

  “I hear you’re hoping to leave us, Jasmine,” he says. His voice is full of disappointment.

  “Well, yeah. I’m not really supposed to be here,” I say, throwing my knapsack over my shoulder and onto my back. “Big mistake over at Riverdale. My mom went to sort it out today. She’s asking them to start me on Monday.”

  “What makes you think this isn’t the place you’re meant to be?” Mr. Khan leans his shoulder against the locker, as if he’s getting ready to have a long conversation.

  Newsflash, I think. I’m outta here.

  “I was accepted at Riverdale,” I say with a shrug. “All my friends are there. And it’s close to my apartment. Besides, no offence, I like your class, but some of the people in it are bitches.”

  I smile. I’ve sworn in front of a teacher. What’s he going to do? Suspend me?

  “I expect you’re talking about Mina,” Mr. Khan says wryly. “She’s got her fair share of challenges outside of school, Jasmine. I’m sure you can empathize.”

  What’s he talking about? This guy knows nothing about my challenges.

  “You don’t know anything about me,” I say, my eyes narrowing. I turn to leave.

  “I’m sorry if I offended you,” Mr. Khan says hastily. “I just remember when your sister disappeared. That’s all. It was such a huge media story.”

  I stop. His words cause my heart to shatter into what feels like a thousand tiny shards of glass inside my chest. Such a huge media story. It’s true. That’s the sad legacy of my sister’s life: another young girl abducted and killed by a sick person. Whenever people hear her name, that’s all they think of and that’s all they know about her.

  “All I’m saying is that sometimes things happen because they’re meant to happen. Perhaps you’re meant to be at Beaconsfield.”

  I slowly turn back around and stare at him. Tears threaten to cascade down my cheeks. Is he implying that what happened to Jade was meant to happen? I shake my head in disbelief. I want to scream at Mr. Khan, to tell him he has no right to speak about my sister. But, once again, I’m unable to find my voice, and so I turn and I run. And the entire time I’m running, I’m vibrating with rage. I never want to step foot in that stupid school again. Not only do I hate Mina, now I also hate Mr. Khan. I don’t stop running until I’m home.

  I open the door to our apartment and nearly fall, doubled over, into the front hall. My breath comes in jagged gulps; my lungs are on fire.

  “Jasmine?” Mom calls from the kitchen.

  The smell of roasting chicken, mingled with onions and garlic, wafts over me. I’m instantly happier, though I’m not sure if it’s because of the thought of a delicious dinner or the fact that Mom feels well enough today to even cook.

  I straighten up, run my fingers through my hair and vow never to think about that screwed-up school again. Smile. Breathe. I’ll just consider tomorrow the official start of my school year.

  I walk into the kitchen. Mom is washing rice in a pot, carefully swirling the water and rinsing it out again. She’ll do this until the water is crystal clear. Lola is cutting up tomatoes and onion for a salad.

  “Something smells good,” I say, putting my arms around Mom and giving her a sideways hug.

  “Where’s mine?” Lola asks, putting down the knife she’s using and wiping at the tears trickling down her cheeks from the onions. She walks over, wraps her tree-trunk-like arms around my shoulders, and hugs me deeply. The smell of shea butter and onion juice engulfs me.

  “Thank you for finding my Ibeji doll,” she says, giving me a wide smile. “She’s very important to me.”

  “It kind of found me,” I mutter as she lets me go. “I’ll have to get it for you later. I put it in my room for safekeeping.” There’s no way I’m going to touch that thing with bare hands, but I also don’t want Lola or Mom coming into my room to get it because of the box. I decide not to tell Lola how her doll nearly caused me to end up hospitalized with a broken neck. Some things are better left unsaid. Instead, I
bound over to the oven, open the door, and inhale deeply. My mouth fills with saliva. “Smells amazing.”

  “Lola’s treat,” Mom says. She puts the pot on the counter and turns off the water. “Was today any better at school?” she asks, drying her hands on the front of her black pants.

  “Nope,” I reply. “But it doesn’t matter now, anyway.” I turn to Lola. “Did you provide this delicious dinner in celebration of the fact that I will finally be going to a school where the students and teachers are sane? You should see the people at Beaconsfield. What a bunch of freaks.”

  Lola ignores my comment about the school. Instead, she grabs me by the arm and leads me over to the French press Mom uses for her morning cup of chicory.

  “Smell this,” she says, her eyes dancing with mischief as she lifts the press toward my nose. Deep-brown liquid sloshes inside it. A curl of water vapour escapes from the spout, which means it’s a freshly made pot.

  I raise an eyebrow at Lola. Has she lost it?

  “I know what chicory smells like,” I say with a laugh. “You know I hate the stuff. Too bitter.”

  “This is liquid gold, not chicory,” Lola says with a wide smile. “Coffee. The finest Costa Rican beans. A hundred dollars a kilogram.”

  “What? Where did you manage to get coffee?” I put my nose up to the spout of the press and breathe in deeply. “Mmmm … it smells good. Better than chicory, for sure. I can see why there were so many coffee shops back in the day.”

  Lola laughs. “Back in the day? Less than fifteen years ago you couldn’t go more than a city block without tripping over a Starbucks café. Multi-billion-dollar business.”

  “I bet schools were better back then as well,” I say. “So glad I’m finally starting at Riverdale soon.”

  Mom frowns. “Jasmine, they still won’t let me register you at Riverdale. I spoke to the principal this afternoon. He says your acceptance letter was a mistake.”

  I stare at her in disbelief. “A m-mistake?” I stutter. Every part of my body suddenly feels cold. This can’t be happening.