The Story Begins Page 3

  “Heeeeeeellooooooo!” she said again.

  Where was she, he wondered. Looking about but not seeing her from where he sat, he stood up, hoping that he’d see her then. No luck. As he sat down, bewildered, he noticed through his peripheral vision that the inner seat beside him, which had been formerly vacant, was now occupied.

  “Heeeeeeellooooooo!” said the child next to him.

  “You’re back!” he exclaimed, hugging her. “My daddy was right. Some dreams are real.”

  She smiled at him lovingly. “Oh, you silly boy, of course I am real.”

  “I know because I think I might have a bruise on my cheek to prove it.” He touched his cheek. “Ouch!” He realized that he had hurt himself a little more than he had initially thought. The painful sensation was quickly forgotten though. It occurred to him that he hadn’t seen her get on the bus. His was always the very first stop the bus made so it stood to reason that she must have boarded the vehicle at a subsequent stop. But how could that have occurred without him having noticed her get on? His being the first stop, he did not believe that he had missed any of the other children boarding the bus. Even had she gotten on without him having noticed it, how did she get into the inner seat without him noticing that?

  “When did you get on the bus?” he asked, perplexity written all over his face.

  “Just now,” she answered, still smiling.

  “But Randy’s stop was the last one and the driver hasn’t stopped since,” he said. “How did you do that?”

  She answered with a question of her own. “How did we fly?”

  “I don’t know… but it was fun,” he said, thinking back to his overnight adventure.

  “Me too, I dunno,” she said sweetly, almost singing the words.

  “I’ve never seen you at school before.”

  “I’m here to be with you,” she explained.

  “Would you like to meet my friends?” he asked.

  “No!” she said sharply then frowned and pouted. She was not pleased by the invitation.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, unsure of what to make of her reaction.

  “You’re the only friend that I want. I do not want other friends. Why am I not your only friend?” she demanded. “That’s not nice of you,” she complained, all with the innocence that only a child can have.

  The verbal onslaught caught Jaden off guard. “Don’t be mad,” he pleaded with her. Being the precocious child that he was, he decided to reason with her. “You know what?” he asked.

  “What?” she asked grudgingly.

  “Whenever we’re together, I’ll play only with you. Also, you won’t just be my friend but you’ll be my best friend in the whole wide world.”

  “No! I’ll be your best friend ever in the entirety of existence!” she demanded.

  Jaden could not even begin to fathom the extent of the world let alone the sum total of existence, and though it sounded impossibly grand, starting to see things differently, he gladly obliged. Now he thought that he, too, wouldn’t want to share such a special person with anyone else. He would keep her all to himself. “Okay,” he agreed to the demand.

  At that she brightened up, literally becoming radiant.

  He was too mesmerized and having too much fun to notice that everyone else was oblivious to the fact that this was not a typical school-bus ride.

  THE school now lay in sight. “We’re almost there,” Jaden said, looking down as he reached between his feet for his backpack. “School is so, so boring.”

  She didn’t answer.

  He looked up. She was gone. He turned back to ask the girl sitting behind him if she had seen where his friend had gone; however, whenever he tried to open his mouth, he couldn’t quite get his thoughts together. Every time he tried, he’d forget what exactly he wanted to ask. He’d, however, remember as soon as he turned back around to face forward but would again forget the instant he turned back yet again to ask.

  “Are you okay, Jaden?” Kimberly asked, after he had turned to her at least a half dozen times without saying a word.

  “Yeah, I just can’t remember what I want to ask you.” He looked away then remembered it again. A thought struck him; if his new friend could simply appear out of nowhere, it only made sense that she could just as easily vanish as well.

  Even though she had sat beside him making as much noise as any other child and making fun out of nothing at all as children can, what was unbeknownst to Jaden was that only he could see her. Had anyone looked to where he had sat busy at play with his friend, all they would have seen was a child slouched in his seat, his dislike for school all too evident in his demeanor.

  SCHOOL was more of a bore than usual that day for Jaden. Even recess, a favorite time of the school day for many children, was barely bearable. He did play with his friends and do all the things he normally did but everything just seemed so meaningless without his new playmate. Though he had known her for only a short while, he was inexplicably attached to her. In her absence he felt as though a part of him were missing, almost as though he were missing a very close friend who had moved off to a very distant place.

  While in class, rather than pay attention, he wondered where his new friend attended school. He decided that once he found out where that was, he’d go there as well. Certain that he had never seen her anywhere near home or in any of the playgrounds around his neighborhood, still he did believe that she couldn’t have lived far away. After all she was on the bus with him.

  Unbeknownst to the child, however, his new best friend lived a bit farther than he could have imagined, a bit farther indeed.

  “HI Mommy, I’m home,” he called out as he placed his backpack on the kitchen table.

  “Hi, sweetie,” said his mom, pulling off her gloves while walking in from the garden out back. “How was school, sweetheart?” she asked, leaning forward to kiss him.

  “It was boring. Recess was no fun today,” he complained.

  “Oh dear! I’m sorry, sweetie. Why don’t you tell Mommy all about it while I get lunch ready, okay?” As she rose, she noticed that his cheek was sore. “What happened here, dear?” she asked, touching it ever so lightly.

  “I pinched myself!”

  “Why would you do a thing like that?” she asked, mystified by his action.

  “I saw my friend again today… on the bus, and I wanted to be sure that she was real.”

  A curious thing happened then. His mom simply stood up and went about preparing his lunch as though she hadn’t heard him say anything, seemingly having forgotten about his bruised cheek.

  “Mommy?” he called out, wondering why she’d just get up and carry on as though all was well and not tend to his injury.

  “Yes, love,” she said affectionately.

  “Aren’t you going to fix my booboo?” he asked, nursing his cheek.

  “Oh my goodness!” she said, rushing back to him. “Does my little prince have a booboo? Where, sweetie? Show me!”

  “But you were just looking at it… see, right here on my cheek,” he said, pointing to his right cheek.

  “There’s nothing there, honey. It looks perfectly fine to me, dear,” she said.

  That’s impossible, he thought. He felt his cheek again. To his sheer amazement, his mother was right. He felt absolutely nothing by way of a bruised cheek.

  “Did you hurt yourself at school today?” she asked, very concerned about her little boy.

  “It was nothing, really. I’ll be right back.” He ran upstairs to the bathroom to observe himself in the mirror. Once in, unwittingly, he shut the door behind him. To his complete astonishment, his cheek bore no signs of ever having been injured. As he stood there stupefied, out of nowhere came the greeting.

  “Heeeeeeellooooooo!”

  “You’re back!” he shouted cheerfully.

  “Honey, is everything all right?” his mom called out.

  He opened the door, told his mom that all was well, closed the door again and then turned his attention bac
k to his friend.

  “I missed you!” he said. This made her brighten the bathroom, forcing him to cover his eyes.

  “I’m sorry… Daddy tells me I should be careful not to hurt your eyes.”

  Jaden looked about him, wondering just where her father was and if the invisibility of the mysterious figure would ever come to an end. Not seeing anyone he brushed the mystery aside and then asked, “Where did you go this morning?”

  “Home,” she answered casually.

  “How do you appear and disappear like magic?”

  “Do you know how you breathe?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. It just happens. I guess God made me that way,” he explained.

  “Me, too,” she said nonchalantly, a wide smile resting upon her face.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Rya.”

  “Rya. That’s a pretty name.”

  “Is it really?” she asked bashfully.

  “Okay, honey, lunch is ready!” his mother called out.

  “Coming, Mommy!” he shouted. “Come, let’s go eat. I think my mom made spaghetti,” he said as he walked towards the door. Then he remembered her knack for simply vanishing without warning. “You’re not going to disappear are you?” he asked.

  She chuckled. “Maybe.”

  Not liking his chances, he decided that he’d stay with her and not head downstairs just yet. He didn’t want to risk being half way down the stairs only to discover that she was gone again.

  “Where do you go to school?” he asked, resigned to follow her wherever that might be.

  “I’m still a little girl, I’m not old enough for school yet,” she explained.

  “Where do you live?”

  “Where Daddy lives,” was the vague answer.

  Jaden was thinking of something and, knowing what it was, she said, “Do not worry about not seeing or finding me. I’ll come to you. You won’t have to look for me.”

  He thought about asking how she knew what he was thinking but decided against it when it dawned on him that the things that were happening of late were occurrences one sees only on television. If this was happening in real life, then anything was possible, including mind reading, he decided.

  “Sweetie, your food is getting cold,” his mother called out from the foot of the stairs.

  In a hurry to get downstairs and hopefully avert trouble, he took Rya by the hand, opened the door then bolted. The instant he opened the door he realized that something was different; however, because of his momentum, it took him a few steps before he could come to a halt. He was definitely out of the bathroom but not where he was expecting to be. He looked around. He was no longer in his house, or anywhere in his neighborhood for that matter.

  Looking around him he saw mountains, hills, valleys, lush green fields, flowers, trees, a sun, two moons, and behemoth creatures, some of which looked familiar only because they bore semblance to creatures he’d seen in books about dinosaurs; the majority, however, bore no affinity whatsoever to anything that he’d ever seen or could have imagined. Before them, not too far in the distance, was a pond of sorts. He and Rya walked over to it. Though water-like by touch, liquefied silver might have been a more apt description. A creature was jumping in and out of it and playing very curiously.

  It looked like it might have been a dilophosaurus, he thought, thinking of dinosaur pictures he had seen in some of his books; only this creature had two heads, neither of which had a crest. Two heads struck Jaden as odd until he realized what the animal was doing, which was even more unusual but it at least explained the phenomenon that he was witnessing. Jaden had come upon it at the beginning of a rather bizarre play idea, though it certainly did awe the child. It would split into two distinct creatures, chase itself around, splashing in and out of that which appeared to be a body of liquid of sorts and then, when it would catch up with itself, it became a whole again but with a single head.

  Jaden stood awestruck and bewildered by all that he beheld around him. Then he remembered Rya. Where was she? Looking around he saw that she was off playing with what looked very much like a polar bear except it was much larger. His senses couldn’t quite discern its color as it wasn’t any color that he had ever seen. Rya seemed to be very much at home and carried on as though this was quite normal.

  “Where are we, Rya?” the bewildered child asked.

  “Daddy says this is where we always come to play,” she explained.

  “But I’ve never been here before.”

  “Of course you have. Daddy says it’s our favorite place in the sky.”

  “In the sky!” he repeated after her. “We’re not in the sky.”

  “Of course we are.” She pointed to the stars up in the heavens. “See all those stars up there?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Your home is somewhere up there.”

  “Did we fly through space?” he asked, incredulous over what had to be impossible.

  “No. Flying would take forever and ever to come this far,” she said.

  Then it occurred to him that he was seeing stars and two moons in the heavens even though it was daylight. “Rya, why can I see the stars when it isn’t dark yet?”

  “You’re special,” was the simple answer.

  Though utterly amazed he decided that this was not the time for curiosity but rather to simply have fun. He felt apprehensive about joining Rya in playing with any of the creatures here but his desire to have fun was indeed overwhelming. They look friendly enough, he thought. Besides, what kind of a boy is afraid of that which a little girl isn’t? So he decided to join her.

  THEY ran around playing with the creatures and riding those that were small enough to climb and strong enough to support their weight. They splashed about in the water-like substance; and as much as they splashed about, they never got wet. They dipped themselves in it time and again yet came out as dry as before. Jaden found it quite mind-boggling to be able to run across it and, unless he thought to do so, never break the surface regardless of how far out he skipped. The fish swimming just under the surface looked fairly normal though a lot shinier than the fish he was used to.

  They played hide and seek among gigantic plants that reminded him of when Alice shrank after eating a piece of mushroom. Rya wanted to pick flowers but the smallest she saw had a stem wide enough for her to have fit in very comfortably had it been hollowed out. The pretty flowers reminded Jaden of his mother’s garden. His mommy! He remembered. Lunch! Goodness! Was he in trouble? Yet, though his mind insisted that he was in quite a bit of trouble and sure to be grounded for disappearing, which, though beyond his control, was literally what had happened, somehow he felt that everything was actually just fine, and that he needn’t be worried. Choosing what he felt above what he thought, he decided to go with his heart and not to listen to his head.

  After playing and running about for what seemed like hours, he began to feel tired and hungry and longed for his mother. Then it occurred to him that he had no idea where exactly in the heavens he was and how his mother was ever going to get to him, or how he’d get home. He still hadn’t quite gotten accustomed to the idea that everything was simply magical.

  Rya noticed that his expression had changed and asked, “What’s wrong, Jaden?”

  “I miss my mommy!” he sighed.

  “Okay, we can go,” she said, wishing that they could have stayed longer. “Daddy says you’re tired and it’s time to go home. He said we’ll play again and that I should not be sad.”

  Again Jaden looked around, wondering just where this mysterious father was. She spoke of him as though he were always right there with them yet Jaden never saw him. “Where is your daddy?” he asked. “I don’t see him. It’s only us.” But before another word could be said he was back in the bathroom, as energetic as ever. It was as though he hadn’t been anywhere. Rya wasn’t with him. That was okay, though. He was beginning to catch on.

  “Sweetie, are you on your way?” he heard his mom ask from
downstairs. Looking up at the mirror one last time, he saw Rya blowing kisses and waving spiritedly from where they had just been playing. Beside her was someone, a being that looked like… Jaden wasn’t sure what the being looked like. The being was bright and kind of like a… as hard as he tried to think of something, he really had no guess for what the being might be. The radiance was too bright and seemed to mask all of its features; if it had any, that is. Because he had a hard time keeping his eyes on the being beside Rya, his eyes momentarily flashed a luminous turquoise light. His eyes had been made to adapt. His sense of cognition, however, couldn’t quite seem to understand what his eyes were seeing. Whatever it was it was very, very bright; far more radiant than when first he had looked upon Rya. That must be her dad, he thought. He wondered how they communicated and why he wasn’t physically there during the time that he had played with her. He then wondered why Rya never mentioned her mommy. Those were questions for another day, he decided. He did not want to keep his mother waiting any longer. After waving and blowing back kisses, he raced through the doorway then dashed down the stairs.

  While Jaden was dashing down the stairs, the being of light the child had looked upon remained visible in the mirror. It was looking upon the elderly Jaden and Lydia who, unbeknownst to the child-Jaden, had been present with the little boy as he parted company with Rya.

  Jaden and Lydia neared the mirror then lowered their heads in reverence. Lydia knew the little girl Rya to be her. With her head still hung low, she spoke to the being in the mirror. “I am the child that now prepares to leave your side even as I speak,” she said as the child beside the being of light slowly became an intensely bright light before simply vanishing. “When I was yet unborn, Father, I called you; yet now I know not who you are.”