Jadie in Five Dimensions

by Dianne K. Salerni

  When he starts walking down the street, I follow him, keeping half a block behind. Sam looks over his shoulder, and I almost bang my head on a lamppost ducking for cover. He turns a corner, and I hang back as long as I dare before trailing after him.

  Four blocks later, he reaches his destination—a public library. I loiter on the corner while Sam limps up the stairs and through the glass doors. Then I take the stairs two at a time and peer through the glass before pulling a door open and walking into a vestibule.

  “Why are you following me?”

  I whirl around. Sam Lowell stares at me from a corner.

  My cheeks flame. Getting caught is a rookie mistake.

  Sam is tall enough that I have to tilt my head to look up at him. We have the same eyes, the same shape of nose, the same kinky curls in our hair. It’s a connection I’ve never had with my own family. It rattles me, throwing me off my game.

  Belatedly, I compose my face into a friendly but clueless expression. “What do you mean? I’m going to the library.”

  “No,” Sam says firmly. “You followed me from my building. I saw you. A streetlamp isn’t wide enough to hide a person.”

  Ouch.

  “You’re right. I followed you. Because… there’s a game I play with my friends. How long can you follow someone before they notice? I earned four points, for four blocks.” This is the worst lie I’ve ever come up with. Something a seven-year-old might say. He’s never going to buy it. I’m dying here.

  “More like one point, for one block,” Sam corrects me.

  Okay, maybe Sam isn’t up on the difference between seven- and thirteen-year-old girls. Wiping my sweaty hands on my jeans, I poise to run if this goes badly.

  “What’s your name?” he asks.

  “Alia. What’s yours?”

  “Sam.”

  “Do you always take your laptop for walks after dinner? You dropped it last week. Maybe you should leave it at home.”

  “I don’t plan to drop it again,” he says indignantly. “I come here for the internet.”

  It takes me a few seconds to realize Sam means he doesn’t have internet at home. For everyone I know, wireless internet in the house is a given. Like oxygen.

  Sam’s eyes dart around and end up focusing on my arms rather than my face. “This is going to sound strange, but you were the one following me, so… Would you do me a favor and roll up your sleeve?”

  “What?” I say, like that’s the weirdest request I’ve ever heard, but inside, my heart is racing. He knows.

  “Last week, I saw something…” Sam’s face twists in a combination of pain and hopefulness. “On your arm. I want to see if I was imagining things—please?”

  I hesitate, considering whether it’s better to refuse outright or to comply and rely on my fail-safe plan. Weird request or not, he’ll be suspicious if I refuse.

  “You mean my birthmark?” I finally say, rolling up my sleeve. I’ve worn long sleeves on my visits this week, hoping to avoid this situation.

  Sam draws in his breath. His eyes get wide, and he clutches his laptop tighter to his chest. “My sister had a birthmark exactly like that.”

  “Really? On her right arm?” In addition to the long sleeves, I took the precaution of reversing myself. “Are you sure?”

  I watch Sam think about it. Then his shoulders slump, and he exhales. “No, on her left.”

  I nod. “Birthmarks like these are pretty common. That’s what my doctor says. Hope I didn’t freak you out.”

  “It’s okay.” The disappointment on his face hits me like a soccer ball to the stomach. “No problem.” He turns, limping, toward the inner library door.

  “What happened to your sister?” I call out.

  Sam stops and gives me a look. “I didn’t say anything happened to her.”

  “You said your sister had a birthmark like mine. So I’m guessing something happened to her.” After a second, I add, “I’m nosy.”

  “You sure are,” Sam says. “We lost her.”

  “Sorry, but how do you lose a person?” My heart stops. I’m afraid he’s going to tell me to mind my own business—that I’m going to get this close to an answer, only to have it snatched away.

  “It was a carjacking. My mom stopped for a red light, and a guy opened the driver’s door.” Sam blinks, slowly, like he’s trying to speak unemotionally. “He yanked her out of her seat. She fought him as hard as she could, but…” He trails off.

  My mouth is dry, and my heart must’ve started again because now it’s thumping like a kettledrum. “Did she get hurt?”

  “Her coat got caught in the door, and she was dragged a few yards. If the guy hadn’t cracked open the door to release her, she might’ve been killed. But she was okay.” Sam heaves a big breath. “The guy drove away with J.D. in the backseat. She was only a baby. Police found the car two days later. They never found my sister.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

  “That’s why I thought… when I saw your arm… maybe…” He shakes his head. “But it’s the wrong arm.” He’s still staring at my birthmark, like he’s stunned by the coincidence: a girl the right age, a mark the same shape and in the same position, but on the opposite arm.

  “I’m sorry I remind you of your sister.” I roll down my sleeve. “I’m sorry you thought you found her.” This is a cruel trick.

  “I didn’t. Not really.” That’s a lie. Sam can barely wrench his eyes off my arm.

  “What’s wrong with your leg?” I blurt out.

  Sam looks surprised, then laughs outright. “You’re not shy, are you?”

  “I told you I’m nosy.” I might as well go all in. I can’t come back here. It’s cruel to these people, and it’s not doing me any good either. If I want to know anything else, now’s the time to ask, because this is going to be my last trip. It has to be.

  “A hit-and-run driver clipped my bike six months ago,” Sam says. “I fell, twisted my leg, and tore a ligament in my knee. The ACL, if you know what that is.”

  A wave of cold rolls down my body, like my blood is rushing toward my feet. I suspected his injury had something to do with the Seers. But Dad was the Agent who did it? And he told me the boy seemed fine.

  “You okay?” Sam asks. “Wow, you got pale. Are you squeamish? You did ask.”

  I’m staring at his leg. “Does it hurt a lot? Tearing your ACL?”

  “When I fell there was a snap, but it didn’t hurt much. Wasn’t until my knee wouldn’t hold my weight—and it swelled up like a basketball—that I knew something was wrong.”

  My breath rushes out of me. Dad thought the boy was okay. He didn’t lie. That part of my world is stable.

  “Well… the library closes at nine, and there’s a podcast I wanted to listen to.” Sam tilts his head toward the inner doors of the library.

  I’ve already pressed my luck. It’s time to go. “Okay. See you around, maybe.” With a cheery wave—which might be overdoing the goofy girl act—I turn and exit the library.

  So now I know. My mother fought a carjacker for my sake, and my big brother still hopes I’ll be found someday.

  I also know the Seers are messing with the Lowell family. Over and over. Why? There’s no hint that they’re a crime family or terrorists. Whatever the Seers are trying to accomplish by wrecking their lives, it’s wrong.

  What can I do about it? Tell my parents? Confront Miss Rose?

  I don’t care about getting in trouble. But I worry what my parents will do when they discover they didn’t rescue me—they stole me.

  Walking into the first deserted alleyway I find, I hit the button on my bracelet. Being lifted into 4-space by the Transporter is so automatic, I don’t give it a thought—until I stick my arm out for the port-lock and my bracelet doesn’t latch in. Stumbling onto the platform, unanchored and off-balance, I grab for the console and miss because I reach for it with the wrong hand, forgetting I’m reversed. It’s only luck that keeps me from pitching off the other side.

&
nbsp; Once I have my feet solidly in the center of the platform, I knock my bracelet against the port-lock, but it won’t latch.

  Okay. Forget the port-lock. I press the Return button on the console. Nothing.

  Ty said he thought our bracelets were strung on a four-dimensional fishing line. What if mine snapped? Nobody knows I’m out here. How am I going to get home?

  Don’t panic. Breathe, think, and then act. Play smart.

  I take in a deep breath, stand up straight, and let the air out as I consider my options. I have just decided to enter the Philadelphia coordinates again and redo my request for pickup, when something invisible shoves me in the middle of my chest. I stagger backward, my right foot slipping off the platform.

  That’s when the abnormal gravity of this place catches me.

  I don’t fall like I would on Earth: 4-space whips me sideways in a dizzying arc and robs me of my breath before dropping me into an unfathomable universe.

  15. SAM

  Watching the girl leave, Sam regrets shooing her away. He enjoyed talking to her. But the disappointment of realizing she isn’t J.D.—after a week of imagining she might be—is a blow.

  Choosing a library table, he opens his laptop and connects to the Wi-Fi, his fingers moving listlessly through the steps. You should’ve known it couldn’t be her.

  He didn’t get a good look at the girl’s birthmark last week. He’d been humiliated by his fall and relieved to have his computer saved. After thanking the girl who caught it, he’d only spotted the mark on her arm as she ran off.

  If he’d possessed two good legs, he would’ve chased her. Instead, he spent the next seven days in agonizing limbo. He watched for her every time he went outside, hoping that if she lived nearby, they’d cross paths. He said nothing to his parents. He couldn’t get them riled up on the basis of a glimpse.

  Inserting his earbuds, Sam tunes in to the podcast, although he’s now lost interest.

  His sister is almost certainly dead. What would a violent criminal do with a baby discovered in his possession? At the very least, he’d put her out of the vehicle. And it had been a cold, snowy day.

  J.D.’s abduction was the worst thing that ever happened to his family, but there’s no reason to be freshly upset about it now. It’s an old, old wound.

  While the host of the podcast introduces this week’s topic, Sam opens the graphics program. His dad’s formulas have given the software a new way to depict the geometric oddities of an Escher-type building, but there are still errors. He has two more weeks to turn in a working project, and if he can’t meet that deadline, his teacher’s friend will use a different landscape design. “We can circle back to your idea next year,” the guy promised. But Sam’s family needs the money now, not next year. He has to eliminate these flips, blank spots… reversals.

  Sam sits up and freezes the program. Just now, one of the characters in his landscape walked up a set of stairs and turned, and the computer—glitching—flipped the image. Reversed it.

  Sam stares at that reversed image on the computer screen.

  To see such a similar birthmark on a girl the same age J.D. would’ve been—a girl with the same golden-brown hair J.D. had—is improbable. To have it be an almost-identical reversal…

  What if I’m wrong?

  Based on the photograph hanging in his living room, that birthmark was on J.D.’s left arm. What if the photograph is a reversal? He’ll have to check against other pictures. But J.D.’s baby album is missing. Sam groans, rubbing his forehead. He can ask his parents. They’ll remember for sure.

  What outcome does he expect, realistically? That his father will say J.D.’s birthmark was really on her right arm? And then Sam will tell his parents that he’s found her—that she’s living somewhere nearby under the name Alia? Ridiculous!

  But she followed me, not the other way around. After a week of Sam looking for her, the girl had found Sam and stalked him like a spy in a bad movie. What if she suspects something too? She asked what happened to my sister. Why did Sam let her go? He should’ve asked where she lived and who her parents were.

  This is more than a coincidence, and I blew it!

  Sam pounds a fist on the table, then looks up, realizing that two boys have stopped in front of him.

  They’re a couple of years younger than he is—middle school kids, like Alia. One is thin, white, and blond. The other, taller and Latino, scowls like he has a personal grudge against Sam. “What?” Sam asks.

  The blond boy gestures at his own ears. Sam takes the hint and removes his earbuds. “What do you want?”

  “This.” The boy slaps Sam’s laptop closed and snatches it off the table, earbuds trailing behind.

  “Hey!” Sam launches to his feet.

  The blond boy and his Latino friend both touch metal bracelets on their wrists. Their bodies contract into thin, smeared lines and vanish.

  Sam charges around the table as fast as his bad leg can carry him, but there’s no one to chase. No boys running away. No stolen computer to retrieve. The library is empty of other patrons, and the librarian isn’t at her desk.

  No one but Sam has seen two boys disappear into thin air.

  With his computer.

  16. JADIE

  My back slams against a solid surface, knocking the air from my body. The blow stuns me so much that it’s a couple of seconds before I try to take a breath—and when I do, I fail. My lungs won’t expand. I realize, with horror, that Miss Rose never told us whether there’s oxygen in 4-space past the Transporter. Spots dance before my eyes.

  Then my chest spasms and I suck in air. There is oxygen. My lungs do work. I had the wind knocked out of me. A brief paralysis of the diaphragm, was how Coach explained it to a girl who’d been hit in the chest with a ball. You’re okay. It only lasts a few seconds.

  I lie there for a minute, enjoying the sensation of breathing, but when I try to sit up, I panic again. Why can’t I lift my arms and legs? Is my spine broken?

  Gravity. I slide one arm backward and then the other until I can push my torso up and rest on my elbows. It takes every bit of strength I have. Gravity has pinned me like a rare-earth magnet on a steel plate.

  In training, Miss Rose told us: “Gravity is a weak force in your braneworld.”

  “How so?” Ty asked. He was quick to challenge her.

  “Drop something,” she suggested.

  Ty pushed a pencil off a table. It fell to the floor and rolled over next to Alia’s feet. “Gravity. Works pretty good, in my opinion.”

  “But you can pick that pencil up without much effort.” The smile on Miss Rose’s avatar didn’t waver. Well, it couldn’t waver, no matter how much sass Ty gave her. Alia helpfully picked the pencil off the floor. “In my world,” Miss Rose said, “counteracting gravity is not done without a great deal of energy.”

  Now I understand what she meant. I’m sweating by the time I make it to a sitting position. My body trembles like I’m lifting weights instead of holding my torso upright. When I move one hand to push the button on my bracelet, the sideways movement doesn’t take as much effort. Lateral motion is not as hard. Unfortunately, the Transporter doesn’t collect me.

  There’s one other button to try, the recessed one that summons Miss Rose. I press it with my fingernail and pray it works.

  Lifting my chin to look up strains the muscles in my neck, but I want to see the platform I fell from. As always in 4-space, it’s hard to identify anything. I see gray cylinders and sparkly strings in the ember-red sky—if it is a sky. A sheet of metal that’s not the right color to be the platform juts out, and something made of magenta crystal hangs above me. But it’s like that comparison with the pineapple. If you can’t tell what a whole pineapple looks like from a tiny sliver, how can I tell what the platform looks like when my eyes have only seen a portion of it?

  “Help!” I holler. “Is anyone out there?”

  My voice vanishes into space. I’m a paper doll, making tiny paper noises. Who’s listening,
anyway? Ty claims there’s no one out here, and considering the many unauthorized trips I’ve made in the past week, he’s probably right.

  That blow that knocked me off the platform—was it a broken piece of the Transporter? Did I accidentally land at a port-lock that’s closed for repair?

  Not only am I a paper doll in this world, I’ve fallen into malfunctioning machinery. Giving in to the gravity, I sink back onto the metal plate. Stay still. Conserve energy. Wait for help.

  But is help coming? If my bracelet is broken and the call for Miss Rose doesn’t work… My heart flutters. When Mom and Dad realize I’m gone, will they think to look for me in 4-space? I hate to think that might depend on Ty. If he hears I’m missing and guesses I ran into trouble out here, will he tell someone?

  Suddenly, I realize I don’t have to depend on Ty. Marius will figure it out and tell Mom and Dad. He may be Ty’s partner in mischief, but he won’t leave me stranded. I need to be patient. It’ll take time for everyone to figure out where to look for me, but they’ll get here eventually.

  Patience isn’t my strongest quality. Lying on the slab of metal, I poke at the buttons on my bracelet, over and over, just in case they start working. I yell “Help!” until my throat is sore. I stare into 4-space, hoping to see activity—specifically, someone coming to rescue me. But the only thing out here that moves is that magenta crystal above me, which shrinks and expands mysteriously.

  Then, from somewhere closer to my level, red, glowing lights flicker, winking in and out, followed by a snuffling sound. I open my mouth to shout for help… and stop. Because what I’m hearing sounds more like wet, snotty breathing than the approach of a search party. And those glowing red lights look a bit like predator eyes peering out of the gloom.

  The snorting grows louder, echoing so that I can’t tell exactly where it’s coming from. I swing my head back and forth, searching. Without warning, a black, twitching mound appears near my right elbow before morphing into a parade of sharp, jagged teeth—each one half as large as my body. I scream, instinct spurring my muscles into lifting my body—to stand, to run—but 4-space gravity slams me back down.