First 5 Pages November Workshop - Harris-Brady

Name: Heather Harris-Brady
Genre: (Upper) Middle Grade Speculative Fiction
Title: The Time Between

When you're a girl who's almost thirteen you get used to a whole lot of freaky random "stuff". Stuff that, even if you're not a foster kid, you keep to yourself. This dead deer in my lap is one of those things.

I was about halfway home from school, ready to cross the road by the church, when I heard horns, skidding tires, and a sickening thud. The driver got out and checked the damage, as impatient moms in SUVs waited to turn into the church parking lot. I could see them through their tinted windows tapping their phones with glossy pointed fingernails as the deer jerked in spasms in the ditch.

She was just another carcass to them, an inconvenience if they noticed her at all. Someone needed to care and something about it stabbed the dark untouched area of my heart, the spot I only know is there by the way it changes the parts around it.

Her eyes, a glossy brown like mine, reflected my face back at me. We'd both been going somewhere, alone. I didn't know what to do so I sat down here with her, holding her head in my lap and stroking her long tan face with its delicate black nose and curling eyelashes.

Every now and then I got a whiff of the apples on the tree across the road, rich sweet and thick. It was an old twisted tree with branches every which way. A bit of stone fence ran along underneath it, as ancient as the tree and well on its way to becoming sand once again. It wandered off back toward the busy part of Sudham, with its tall brick storefronts slicing off toward the ocean.

I've never had a pet, not even a belly-up goldfish to flush down the toilet, and I wasn't sure what to do but she seemed glad I was there. Maybe I imagined that part, but it might be true, who knows. Finally, with a sigh and a shudder, her head dropped to the side and she went limp across my legs.

I stood up, stiff and cold from the ground. I saw two fawns, twins, watching me from deeper in the woods. Since it was late in October they were plenty big enough to take care of themselves. They needed to stay away from the road, so I picked the last of the apples and threw them into the trees. Then I walked toward them to scare them away.

But they didn't run. They stood there, waiting. I took some baby carrots out of my lunch sack and went past them. When I turned around they were there at my elbows, nudging my hand.

“Listen you two,” I said, holding out a couple carrots for each of them. “You're going to have to take care of each other now. Stay back in here and away from the road.”

They twitched their ears and their long white tails, checking for more carrots. Somehow the whole thing made me feel guilty and ashamed even though I hadn't done anything.

When I got home I found a wrapped box propped against the front door, with fancy ribbons on both the top and the bottom. A nice touch because I could peek without being obvious, you know?

On top of the tissue was a card: Have a magical birthday - Dad. Underneath was an honest-to-God magic wand. JUST like Harry Potter's. For real. Well, it was a wand anyway and duh, who would buy a regular wand? That would be the worst gift of all time.

Now my dad's been gone forever, since before I was born really. I know, without anyone telling me, that if he showed up he wouldn't be welcome. No big teary love-fests here. So I stuck the wand in my backpack and stashed the box behind the summer clothes in my closet. When I looked for the box after dinner it was gone.

Poof.

Like it never was.

The wand was still in my backpack though - the backpack of a girl who hasn't had a good yearbook photo since second grade, on the eve of picture day.

I snuck into the bathroom and waved it around my general face area. I had no idea what words might turn bushy black hair and braces into something magically beautiful.

Whatever I said obviously wasn't the right choice, because nothing happened. At least not right away.

Overnight my hair twisted itself into dreads so tight I couldn't get a comb through it. And, yes, there were several new zits on my nose. At school the photographer adjusted the lights to take the glare off my oily face and braces while his assistant patted me on the head and pretended to fix my collar.

"Just smile," he said. "Don't worry, they don't call me the airbrush magician for nothing."

By Mrs. Dyson's class fourth hour things really started to go sideways.

Fertility rites!

The fact these words swooped across the chalkboard in loopy orange cursive didn't make them any less intimidating. Nor did the fact I got a text at lunch that my friend Aubrey, who won't be thirteen for another six months, started, leaving me the only one who hasn't.

“Unnnh-hunnmm!” Ms. Dyson said, rapping her fingers on the projector board. Her eyes narrowed to two dark bottomless slits. “Cindy, are you not interested in fertility rites?”

I could hear the giggling behind me and I knew that my ears were now fire-engine red as surely as I knew there was no good answer.

“I'm sorry,” I said, stretching my lips and cheeks so I could talk around my new braces without a spitty lisp. Ignoring my achy hip bones I sat up straighter even though it meant the chairback cut into my spine.

I didn't bother to look around. There were no friendly faces in World History or any other subject for that matter. All the friendly faces, including Aubrey, were at Sudham's other middle school across town.

“Very well,” she said after giving me a long stare. She turned around to tap the homecoming sign over the chalkboard. It said Homecoming — A Cinderella Story in swirly script over a football and a glass slipper, then Go Sudham Flames! In front of my eyes the banner wording changed to a bizarre whirl of symbols.

The next time I blinked it was gone.

Poof.

Like the gift box.

I looked around out of the corner of my eye. No one seemed to notice anything but then they probably wouldn't notice an elephant sitting in the corner since they're all using the phones hidden in their laps.

“As I was saying, fertility rites go back to the dawn of man. We're all participating in one right now even if we call it by another name. Fall has always been a time of giving thanks to mother Earth for the harvest, the fruits of the land and labor. These fertility rites grew into different forms of worship, first with the pagan gods and goddesses and then they assimilated into the religions we know today. Who can tell me about Halloween?”

This softball lob to the duller tools in the World History drawer brought the predictable answers: pumpkins, costumes, scary things, skeletons. Yadda yadda yadda.

“Yes, all those things you know today have roots back in the Middle Ages or earlier,” Ms. Dyson said, walking back over toward my desk. “This is also the transition time as the season moves toward winter, from light into darkness.