Jadie in Five Dimensions

by Dianne K. Salerni

  With a sigh, he gets up to verify the number of pills his mother has left in her prescription and prepare himself for the battle of getting her to take them.

  3. JADIE

  My team massacres our opponents on Saturday morning, and Coach invites everyone to her house on Sunday for a make-your-own taco celebration. During the ride home, Mom and I verbally replay every high point of the game, and my good mood lasts until we pull into our neighborhood and I remember my promise to Alia.

  It’s not that I’m such a goody-two-shoes about breaking one small rule. And it’s not because I think I owe the Seers. Alia’s wrong about that. My life isn’t a debt that needs to be paid. It’s an obligation. The Seers didn’t just save me; they chose to have me raised by Agents and trained as one myself. They have a purpose for me, and I don’t want to let them down.

  Mom drops me off and turns the car around for a grocery run. I shower and change, and then, even though I’m starving, I head for Alia’s house because it’s almost one o’clock.

  The four houses in our cul-de-sac belong to the families who make up Miss Rose’s Agents—ours first, then the Riverses, the Li house, and the Maliks. Miss Rose arranged it this way so we can avoid nosy neighbors and support each other while executing our duties.

  Switching bracelets is probably not what she had in mind.

  Outside, my brother and Ty are playing basketball in our driveway. Well, Marius is playing while Ty, who’s about as athletic as belly button lint, stands to the side, hunched over his phone. “I’m telling you, it’ll work,” he says to Marius, tossing blond hair out of his eyes. “I’m positive.”

  Eyes on the net, Marius ignores his friend. Which, in my opinion, is a good thing because whatever Ty is planning will get Marius into trouble.

  When they were eleven, they tried to blow up a tree stump with fireworks. Marius got his eyebrows singed off. When they were twelve, they used Ty’s drone to strafe Melissa Pierce’s birthday party with VOTE MARIUS CLASS PREZ campaign flyers. He lost all the girls’ votes.

  “Marius,” Ty says loudly, trying to get his attention.

  “In a minute.” Marius nails a jump shot. “And the crowd goes wild!” He catches the ball on its bounce and struts in a circle, pumping his arm.

  “Hey, give it here!” I shout, holding out my hands.

  My brother grins and passes the ball to me. I catch it, dart around him, and execute a perfect lay-up. The ball drops through the hoop, and Marius intercepts it. “Niiice. But not as good as mine. One-on-one?” He waggles his eyebrows.

  Ty glares balefully at me from beneath his bangs. I’m tempted to say yes to thwart his latest caper, whatever it is. Plus, Marius and I have an ongoing friendly competition over sports, control of the television remote, and who finishes off the best leftovers in the refrigerator.

  We’re the same age, we think. He came to us when he was about three years old, speaking Spanish. Dad was assigned to rescue him from a burning building during a course correction and then, to the surprise and delight of my parents, was instructed to keep him and raise him in our family.

  “Maybe later,” I offer. “I promised to do something for Alia.”

  “Chicken.” He only pretends to say it under his breath.

  “You’ll pay for that!”

  When I knock on Alia’s front door, she greets me wearing a headset and talking into a mic. “RL, dudes,” she says. “AFK, BRB.”

  “LMNOP,” I joke.

  Alia doesn’t laugh. I was hoping she’d tell me she already had a course correction today and doesn’t need my help. Instead, she shoves the bracelet at me, mouths the word Thanks, and shuts the door in my face.

  So. Much. Gratitude.

  I head home, stuffing Alia’s bracelet into my back pocket so Marius and Ty don’t see it. I needn’t have bothered. They’re both gone from the cul-de-sac when I walk through, and from the silence in our house, I assume they’ve gone to Ty’s.

  Lunch pickings are slim, which is why Mom went to the store, so I heat a frozen burrito. When my back pocket starts beeping, I mistake it at first for the microwave before fumbling Alia’s bracelet out.

  The screen says:

  Laptop on desk beside glass of water. Spill water. Blame the cat.

  This seems pretty fail-proof. I wait for the burrito to finish heating and gobble it down because I’m not leaving for any mission, simple or not, on an empty stomach. With a belch, I jog upstairs to my bedroom to depart from my usual launch point.

  Since the Transporter always returns you to the precise point you came from, everyone in my family has a designated location for departure. Otherwise, you might land on an unsuspecting family member on your way back into 3-space!

  Inside my room, I unsnap my bracelet, lay it on my dresser, and slip Alia’s on. It’s loose around my wrist, but not enough to slide off. Standing on my fuzzy blue rug, I tighten the ponytail at the back of my head and then push the call button. When I feel the tug of the Transporter, I close my eyes and let it yank me out of my universe.

  Two seconds later, the bracelet hits a port-lock but doesn’t seem to catch. My eyes fly open as my chest hits the console hard, and I grab on with my free arm. Making sure both feet are square in the middle of the platform, I check the port-lock, but it’s securely latched after all. The landing felt different because Alia’s bracelet fits loosely.

  I exhale in relief. Falling into 4-space is not something any Agent wants to do. Miss Rose often refers to Earth as a membrane world—or sometimes braneworld—because 4-space is so immense the entirety of our universe fits inside it like a scrap of tissue. In spite of this, traveling by Transporter is supposed to be absolutely safe—otherwise my parents wouldn’t allow me and Marius to do it. I’m more likely to encounter something hazardous on Earth than here in the fourth dimension.

  At this moment, however—on an unauthorized mission—I don’t exactly feel protected.

  “Chill out,” I mutter. Releasing my death grip on the console, I punch in the coordinate numbers from the bracelet screen. The platform shifts through 4-space, the port-lock clicks open, and I’m dropped ana, back to Earth.

  I land in a bedroom—a small, cramped room where the bed and desk and dresser are so close together there’s barely room to walk between them. My arrival startles a black cat that was sleeping on the bed. It leaps to the floor and bolts from the room, the bell on its collar jingling.

  Judging by the decorations and the clothes sticking out of overstuffed drawers, this is a boy’s room. There are lots of books, especially textbooks. A crutch leans against one wall, and a laptop sits, as promised, on the desk next to a glass of water. Hanging on the wall above it is an M. C. Escher print that Miss Rose once used in a lesson on four dimensions.

  The instructions say I’m supposed to blame the cat. So I better catch the cat and shut it in this room before completing my mission.

  The Seers probably planned this mission for a time when the residence is empty, but it doesn’t hurt to be cautious. I tiptoe down the hall of what appears to be an apartment, approaching the entrance to a living room. When I hear nothing—no voices, no TV—I call softly, “Here, kitty, kitty.”

  The cat meows from the top of a waist-high set of bookshelves.

  “Good kitty.” I approach slowly, wondering how to pick it up without getting scratched or bitten. But when I reach out, the cat trills happily and climbs into my arms. “Well, you’re friendly, aren’t you?”

  He—no, she butts her head against my chin. Scratching her ears, I glance up at a framed family photograph hanging on the wall. It’s one of those formal portraits you can get taken at the mall, the mom and dad seated on chairs in front of a fake backdrop with their kids on their laps.

  The boy, dressed in a little blue suit with a tie, looks like he’s about three years old.

  The girl is only a baby, sitting on her mom’s lap in a sleeveless pink dress. The beige skin of her left arm is marked by a stark white birthmark that stretches across h
er elbow and halfway down her forearm.

  My heart flops over in my chest. I drop the cat.

  4. JADIE

  Wrenching my eyes away from the photograph, I look at the patch of whitish skin that stretches across my elbow and down my forearm. All my life I’ve had to tell people: No, I don’t have paint on my arm—no, it’s not a burn or a scar—and no, it’s not a contagious rash.

  I run my fingers over the birthmark even though there’s nothing to feel. Doctors say it’s just faulty skin pigmentation, but I need the touch of my fingertips running along its outline to verify what my eyes are telling me. The birthmark on the baby in the photo is the same shape and in the same place as mine.

  I search the picture for other similarities. Her eyes are light brown, like mine. Her hair is kinky-curly and a variegated golden brown that my dad calls caramel popcorn. And by dad, I mean Dad, not—

  My gaze shifts from the little girl to the father and the mother. Could these be the depraved people who abandoned a baby by the side of a highway in the dead of winter? Why’d they set up a picture shrine for her, then? There are four framed pictures of this baby girl on top of the bookshelves. “It can’t be me!” I whisper, grabbing the photos one by one to examine them.

  When the pain in my chest becomes unbearable, I realize I’ve been holding my breath. Slamming one of the pictures down on the shelf, I exhale and suck in air. C’mon, Jadie. What’s Coach always telling you? Breathe, think, and then act. Play smart.

  Taking deep, slow breaths, I look around and focus on details. There are pictures of the little boy too—all around the room. But the boy grows older. There are school pictures and Boy Scout pictures and one where he’s holding an award.

  There are only baby pictures of the little girl.

  And an album.

  Silently, I thank my coach for her advice; otherwise I might not have noticed the vinyl book lying on top of the bookshelves, in a place of honor right beneath that family photograph. I fumble open the cover.

  For my daughter, Jocelyn Dakota Lowell.

  The name is written in flowing script beneath a picture of a newborn in a hospital crib, along with a date that’s very near the one my parents picked to celebrate my birthday.

  My shaking hand turns the page. More photos: mother and baby in a hospital bed… father holding the baby… toddler brother standing on a chair to peer into a hospital crib…

  There are captions in that same script: Big brother Sam takes his first look at you.

  I’m about to turn another page, when—voices.

  I stare at the front door like it’s something out of a scary movie. Voices getting nearer. Footsteps. Me standing here, frozen in place.

  Alia’s course correction should have taken mere seconds. The Seers didn’t plan for an Agent to be here longer than that.

  The all-knowing Seers who said I’d been an abandoned baby.

  Saved by their mercy and wisdom.

  Alia’s bracelet has the location code at the bottom of the screen, though I have no idea where I am. The United States, probably, but where?

  Outside the apartment, keys jingle as if someone is searching for the right one.

  Just like when there’s thirty seconds left in a game and I have to score, Jadie 2.0 takes over. My every movement is purposeful and efficient. Tucking the baby album under one arm, I stride across the room and pick up a pen from the coffee table while the bolt on the front door turns. I hit the button on my bracelet at the exact moment the door opens.

  The apartment blurs as I soar kata, and I tighten my grip on the album. I’ve brought my skateboard on course corrections many times—and once a lacrosse stick—but never have I held on to anything as desperately as this book.

  When I reach the Transporter platform, I balance the album on the console, nudge the cover open, and use the pen to copy the numbers from the bracelet onto the first page. I check twice to make sure I have the sequence correct. 451. 622. 8407. 27.

  When I loosen my grip on the pen, it slips from my hand and whips away in an arc. Gravity is strange here. It doesn’t behave the way you expect.

  Shutting the album, I consider whether to mark my mission complete or incomplete. The pounding of my heart is making a whoosh, whoosh sound in my ears, but I follow Coach’s instructions. I breathe. I think.

  If I mark the assignment incomplete, Miss Rose might ask Alia why she was unable to perform such a simple task. I’ll have to tell Alia I couldn’t do it—which is going to make her ask questions—and ultimately, Alia will have to lie to Miss Rose.

  Too complicated.

  I push Complete and the assignment vanishes from Alia’s bracelet. I stare at the screen, horrified. I’ve taken another Agent’s assignment, marked it complete when it isn’t, and stolen something from the site of a course correction.

  I’ve broken almost every rule there is for an Agent. But if nothing in my life is what I thought it was—not my birth parents or my adoptive parents, not Miss Rose or the Seers—then what is the point of rules?

  5. JADIE

  Traveling through 4-space, I clutch the album tightly, but as soon as I land in my bedroom, I toss it onto the bed like it’s a grenade. It lands with a soft whomp on the comforter and lies there, mocking me.

  For several seconds, I stare at it with my arms drawn against my chest.

  I’m wrong. I’m crazy. I’m going to be in so much trouble. I discovered something really bad.

  Jadie 2.0 tells me to knock off the hysterics and get to work. Sinking onto the bed, I open the album cover again.

  For my daughter, Jocelyn Dakota Lowell.

  The newborn is swaddled in a hospital blanket on the first few pages, so I pass by those pictures. I pay more attention when the baby is uncovered and dressed in short sleeves, but none of the photos give me as good a view of the birthmark as that family portrait in the apartment. For the most part, I keep my eyes on Jocelyn, who grows bigger page by page. I’m curious about the parents and the boy but refuse to give them too much attention until—and unless—I prove they’re important to me.

  But the more I thumb through the album, the less connected to it I feel. There’s no evidence this baby is me. I’m sure I’ve made a silly mistake based on a coincidence, and somehow, I’ll have to put my theft right. Maybe confess to Miss Rose, and…

  I freeze, staring at a caption beneath one of the pictures.

  Sam can’t pronounce your name. I want to call you Josie for short, but your daddy suggested J.D. and since Sam is learning his letters, he thinks that’s a great name. I am outvoted.

  J.D.

  Jadie.

  When my parents rescued me from that snowbank twelve years ago, I was approximately one year old and knew three words: kitty, baba for bottle, and jadie, which Mom and Dad decided was my name.

  Every hair on my body stands on end. I flip directly to the back of the album, skipping everything else to find out what happened, and discover… nothing. No explanation. The photos stop two-thirds of the way through the book, with only blank pages following. The last picture shows the boy blowing out candles on a cake while the dad holds the girl up to see. In this picture, her birthmark is plain and clear, and I have no doubt it’s mine.

  Sam’s 3rd birthday, the caption reads. Next up is yours.

  Not Tomorrow we’re going to abandon you in a snowstorm.

  Maybe that isn’t what happened. It can’t be.

  I jump up and circle the room, needing to burn off the energy churning in my body. This album holds the story of the earliest days of my life. But it doesn’t hold the story—the one that explains how I got from these pictures to the arms of my adopted parents, Darrien and Becca Martin. The mother didn’t write that story down.

  The mother.

  That’s how I’m thinking about the people in this album. The mother. The father. The brother. I can’t bring myself to give them more personal titles—titles that belong to three other people in my life. I glance at their faces but avoid really
looking.

  Worst of all, the inner core of me is screaming behind a glass wall, pounding with her fists against the barrier. For now, I imagine that wall as soundproof. This has to stay impersonal until I find out who the Lowells are and what happened to J.D.

  Throwing myself in front of my laptop, I Google variations of that name. Jocelyn Dakota Lowell. J. D. Lowell. I finally get a hit on Jocelyn Lowell—a link to an article with an Amber Alert title. The twelve-year-old link is broken, but Jocelyn Lowell must have been kidnapped or they wouldn’t have put out an alert on her.

  An electronic chirp interrupts my thoughts: text notification on my phone. When I check, the message is from Alia.

  Ack! Parents coming home early OMW

  Alia is on her way to retrieve her bracelet. My eyes automatically shoot to the baby album and its incriminating photos. I don’t want Alia coming to my room and seeing that, so I unsnap her bracelet and race to meet her downstairs.

  In the hallway, I collide with Marius coming out of the bathroom. It’s only a small bump, but he staggers backward, one hand on his stomach and the other going to his head. “Sorry,” I say, hurrying past him. But then I stop and give him another look. His normally olive complexion has gone pale, his forehead is shiny with sweat, and there’s something weird about his hair. “Are you sick?”

  “No,” he mumbles before turning away from me and walking straight into a decorative table. “Oops.”

  “What did Ty make you do?” My brother was fine earlier, but now he’s absolutely green. Did he smoke a cigar? Drink something from Dr. Rivers’s liquor cabinet?

  At the mention of Ty, Marius glances at a scrap of paper in his hand before trying to shove it into his pocket. He misses but doesn’t notice it fluttering to the floor because he’s too busy staring at his closed bedroom door like it’s a complex Chinese puzzle box. He reaches out to rotate the doorknob. With his left hand. The wrong way. Twice.