It was a bright and sunny morning. Even with my eyes still shut and half asleep, I could tell. The sun was shining through what I thought were the yellowish tinted windows in my bedroom, and straight into my eyes. I turned around in bed, like any other fifteen year old, not wanting to get up, but the light was still there. I curled up in a ball, but the light still didn’t die away. So I did what I always do when I’m seriously annoyed and too tired to get out of bed. I buried my head in my pillow. There was only one teensy problem. My pillow wasn’t there. I sat up with a start, brushing the sand out of my hair. My eyes widened. Where was I? Where was my bed? Where were my dresser drawers? What about my closet? Everything was gone. Instead, I was on a sidewalk. Or what I though was a sidewalk. The sand walkway didn’t look anything like the cement sidewalks back home. And the street wasn’t familiar, either. It was made of heavy brown dirt, which only horses trotted upon. There were no cars in sight. There were no normal shops, either. The place was just as crowded at home, though. But the people were dressed like that of the middle ages. I was freaking out. What was this? Some sort of weirdo Renaissance appreciation festival?
“Whatever,” I shrugged to myself, running off onto an exploration.
I slowed down my pace a little bit, staring through the shop doors. Surprisingly, none of them had windows. I noticed as I looked around that everyone was staring at me like I was some sort of foreigner. In truth, though, I was. I couldn’t have been any more different than I was from them. The women were dressed in old- fashioned gowns and dresses, some dressed for casual wear, others obviously meant for work. It was the same thing for the men. Some were dressed in work clothing, others in an older version of the modern suit. Behind these fancy looking people trailed shabby looking young people. Many of them were dressed like little dolls in the most unflattering costumes. Many of them were black. It seemed to me like these people were servants and slaves as I watched more closely. They would stop into the shops and do all of the dirty work for their masters. They were the ones to carry the heavy items purchased by their masters. They were the ones that took a heavy beating if anything went wrong. Hey, was slavery even legal anymore? What were they doing with these poor, poor people? If this was a reenactment of the Renaissance, it sure was realistic. Suddenly as I was pondering this thought, a heavy rock hit my toe. I tumbled over, almost sure that I was going to hit the hard, now pebbly ground. Nearly a second before I was about to hit the ground, though, I felt hard, strong hands under my arms. As the man lifted me back up to my own feet, I turned around to see a young Caucasian man with an oval shaped face and prominent eyebrows. His eyes were dark yet bright, revealing great intelligence and compassion.
“Hello,” the young man, for he looked no more than seventeen years old, said in smooth Spanish, though for some strange reason, I could actually understand it! “It’s a pleasure to meet your acquaintance. How do you do?”
“Great, great,” I heard myself explain in Spanish, which back in New Jersey, I never would have understood.
“My name is Alvaro, apprentice of Diego Velazquez. And what is your name, my lady?”
“My name is Annabelle.”
“Well, Annie Belle, would you like to come back with me and meet the acquaintance of Master and Mistress?
“I’d be honored!” I blushed, forgetting for a moment how out of place I was.
“Now, if it is not too rude to ask,” Alvaro spoke in a gentlemanly way, which none of the boys back home would ever be caught dead doing, “ where did you find that peculiar costume of yours?”
