Excerpt: The Stretch

I was in heaven. No, better than heaven, because this was my favourite place on earth, but for once I wasn’t alone. Candace and I were sitting smack-dab in the middle of Jolly’s Meadow, wild flowers surrounding us. Everything seemed to be in full-bloom. There were Blue-eyes and Lucky Reds and masses of bright yellow Butterpuffs. Bees zig-zagged around us. The temperature was perfectly warm without being hot.

We stopped along the way and drank our full from the Gorge River and finished off the melon after we got here. I flopped back, tired and as happy as I could ever remember being. Candace was already lying on her back staring at the blue sky.

I could feel my eyelids getting heavy. I didn’t want to fall asleep because I didn’t want to miss out on such a fulfilling birthday, but I was too relaxed to fight it.

When I woke up, the sun was setting. My first thought was about the amazing dream I’d just had. The second and more important thought was whether or not Candace was still there. I got up abruptly and let out a noisy sigh of relief when I saw her sitting up, her back to me, arms hooked around her bent knees.

She turned her head toward me and then looked back at the glowing clouds. “It’s getting late,” she said. “We both fell asleep.”

I didn’t know what to say. I was afraid, very afraid, that she was going to get up and go home. What if I never saw her again? I kept quiet, scared that anything I said or did would break the spell.

After a few moments, she turned again. “I had the most amazing dream.”

“Really? That’s funny. Me too.”

“Must be sleeping outside that makes it so vivid,” Candace said. I could still hear the sleep in her voice.

“What was yours about?”

“Japan.”

“Huahhh!” The sound came from me. “No you didn’t!” I scrambled on my hands and knees to face her. Her skin looked like the inside of a peach, the sunset’s glow touching her.

She was annoyed. “Yes. I did. Why would you tell me I didn’t?”

“Because that’s what my dream was about.”

She reached out and pushed my shoulder. “Stop it. You’re teasing me.”

“No Candace, I’m not. I dreamed about sailing on a huge and magical ship to Japan. I had help there from people I didn’t know...some of them could turn into...”

“Foxes?” she whispered.

I was alarmed but I kept going. “And they all had...hair as black and shiny as yours...and we went to...the Forbidden—”

“Temple!” she squealed. “And there I was taken in and schooled in the ways of the—”

We stared at each other, mouths open. Then at the same time we said, “The hen-ge!”

She got up and started hopping from one foot to the other, flipping her open hands back and forth. I jumped up too. We both shrieked and hollered as if we’d stepped in a barrel of rats with our bare feet. Candace kept saying, “We had the same dream! We had the same dream!” over and over again.

The sun was sinking, but we were too involved in what had happened to notice. After our outbursts we sat down to compare the dreams. The details were the same down to the brilliant orange of the teacher’s robes and the soft tee-hee of the tiny servant girl’s laughter.

“Okay,” Candace said finally, “now, what’s the explanation for this?”

Thinking hard, I could come up with nothing that made sense and said so. “I like it though,” I added. “It feels like a perfect end to my best birthday ever.”

Candace looked at me a long time before saying, “You don’t get a lot of frills at home, do you?”

“Frills?” I laughed at her. “No. I guess not.”

“Is it because you’re poor?”

I was immediately indignant. “We aren’t poor. Whiskey is good money.”

“You look poor. You’re house looks poor. You have no frills, no birthday presents, no pretty dresses. Sukey, my dear little friend, you are poor.”

I knew we weren’t. I knew lack of money wasn’t why my life had no frills, but I didn’t care to argue. Candace of the shiny black hair had just called me her “dear little friend.”

My tenth birthday just went down in the book as my best ever.