Paradise

Chapter Twelve

I clutched Ms. Albert's satchel to my chest as I made my way off the back porch. My stomach was doing such a variety of flips and somersaults, it would have put any Olympic gymnast to shame. I paused to take a deep breath, glancing around. It was unusually quiet. Even the neighbor's old German Shepard, up the street, was as silent as a ghost.

The wind was very still too; the line of trees that hugged the field behind our house, unmoving. I stole another quick breath before I stepped into the yard. The grass was overgrown and discolored. My father had been trying to get me to mow it for some time now, but it wasn't really my thing. I sucked at yard work, and he knew it, so he hadn't tried too hard to push it off on me. I knew he'd eventually get tired of asking, and just do it himself. He always had to go over it after I did it, anyway, (He was so picky!) so I really didn't understand why he felt the need to bug me about it.

I made sure I was a good distance from the house before I reached into the satchel and pulled out the piece of sheet-music and crystal. I had my left arm curled around the satchel, the sheet-music to open the portal on top of it, and the crystal clutched in my free hand when I began to sing the words. I practically had the words memorized, but I read them off the paper anyway, afraid of what would happen if I got them wrong.

The crystal began to glow on the first note. By the time I was at the end of the song, it felt like I was holding a hot coal! Startled (and in quite a bit of pain), I yelped and tossed the thing in the air. Unfortunately, I didn't throw it far enough (not like Ms. Albert had), and the portal exploded right in front of me, sending me sprawling back and dropping the satchel. Papers flew out all around me, riding currents of air that sent them all over the back yard and into the field!

I could only stare ... feeling completely stupid for thinking this would work. No wonder Yvette had taken me up to the roof to open the portal. Now I'd have to track down all those blasted pages before I could even leave!

"Ugh, this is going to take freakin' forever!" I grumbled.

I crawled to my knees, sitting there for a moment, looking around ... trying to determine the easiest and fastest method for gathering all the papers. Did I need to shut the portal to do this, or would it be safe to leave it open?

Then I remembered how something had escaped last time. Yvette had to go find whatever it was, or something, so she'd left me with Ms. Albert. I had to wonder, though ... was everything that came from the other dimension bad? Daphne hadn't seemed bad, but, then again, she'd completely disappeared on the other side.... So, who knew?

I couldn't help but wonder what she was doing now ... or if Yvette even knew she was here. If she did, what would she do? What had she done to the "shadow" that had escaped when they were trying to force me through?

Enough! My mind shot. Figure out what to do and do it! You don't have all day.

I got to my feet with a sigh. Wind pushed and pulled at me, thundering in my ears like it had on the rooftop. I bent to grab the satchel off the ground and thumbed through the pages that were left inside. I couldn't find the song to close the portal, so that meant it was somewhere in the yard or field, just floating around....

* * *

I found the song to close the portal quickly, used it, and then went back to work finding the rest of the pages. After nearly 20 minutes of hunting, I figured what I hadn't found, I could find later, and hopefully Ms. Albert wouldn't notice any pages missing once I returned the satchel to her.

Yeah, right ... like you could get anything past her.

But I had to try. I needed to get her out of there before my mother got home from work. I wouldn't have another chance like this, especially since this would probably be my last sick day for the rest of the semester. (Somehow, that thought had managed to escape me earlier) And I couldn't just leave her there until fall break. That would just be wrong.