The Madrona Heroes Register: Echoes of the Past (2 page)

The Jordan house was large, tucked
away on a steep slope. The hill was so steep that decades earlier
the entrance to the yard had been moved to the side of the house so
the residents didn’t have to climb so many steps every time they
wanted to come and go. As such, when Binny shot out of the front
door, she still had a ways to go until she could see where Cassie
was performing.

§

As Rembrandt and his owner walked
their familiar path past the Jordan house, the man saw the
oblivious jelly bean of a seven-year-old bouncing with the mirror
on the sidewalk below the big house, and the determined and angry
ten-year-old storming out of the house on a retributive mission.
The man could see what was coming next, yet there was nothing he
could do to stop it. Like watching two cars speed towards an
intersection.

Rembrandt was distinctly less
interested in the inevitable altercation between the girls, but
seemed to have found something worthy of his attention at a
telephone pole down the street. He started insistently dragging the
man towards the pole.

The more the older girl yelled and
advanced on her sister, the more interested the man was in seeing
how the little drama played out. But Rembrandt was intent on
reaching his own destination of interest. He’d already dragged the
man halfway to the pole, and now the man was at least fifty feet
from where the little girl was standing.

§

Three separate things happened almost
simultaneously: 1) the little girl finally heard the older girl
yelling, 2) the older girl turned the corner and finally was in a
position to see her quarry, and 3) Rembrandt got sick of waiting
for the man to move. Rembrandt jerked his leash and made a break
for the telephone pole. The man almost fell over, losing his grip
on the leash, catching his balance at the last second before he
would have ended up with his face in the dirt.

When the man regained his balance and
surveyed the scene, the little girl was nowhere to be found. She
had been there one moment, and in the time it took for the man to
recover from Rembrandt’s over-enthusiasm, she seemed to have just
vanished. Into thin air as they say. But that was ridiculous. She
must have heard her sister coming and high-tailed it out of there.
And yet, how did she do it so quickly? Where did she go?

The older girl approached the spot
where her sister had been. From what the man could tell, the older
girl with the deepening scowl had never actually witnessed that the
object of her vengeance was standing there in the first place.
Apparently the younger girl was able to vanish before her sister
caught sight of her. And anyway, the older girl was fixated on a
shiny object that was lying on the ground. Abandoned.

§

Binny was triumphant and
angry. She
knew
that Cassie had taken her mirror. It was the object Cassie
stole the most from Binny’s room. And sure enough, there it was,
lying in the middle of the sidewalk. Cassie had probably gotten
sick of playing with it and just dropped it when she got bored,
like a spoon half-empty of its peanut butter. Anyone could have
trampled it or just thrown it away. Or even, the thought horrified
her, taken it as their own keepsake. Her sister’s carelessness was
positively mind-boggling. Binny inspected the mirror – at least it
wasn’t cracked and didn’t look too worse for wear. It was already
quite old and not in perfect condition, so a tiny scratch here or
there, as her mom said, was just part of its “character” at this
point.

After that brief inspection, the
mirror went into Binny’s pocket. Still angry, but satisfied that
she’d recovered the stolen property, she now had more of Cassie’s
crimes to document in her journal. Binny marched back up the hill
and towards the house. The little mirror thief was still nowhere to
be found. She’d deal with her later.

§

Rembrandt was quite satisfied with
himself, having made it quite clear to the telephone pole who was
in charge. The man, however, was not the least bit satisfied. His
eyes were wide. His dog temporarily forgotten. Where was the little
rock star? Kids don’t just disappear. People don’t just disappear.
His mind was racing. The man was used to being able to explain
things, and he couldn’t help thinking he’d made a terrible mistake
in letting Rembrandt distract him.

When he’d been told to keep an eye on
the children and look for any strange signs he never expected
something quite like this. As a man of science, it was altogether
too much to ask to believe that a seven-year-old girl had
completely vanished before his eyes. There must be a tree behind
which she had hidden, or a little alcove in the hill below the
house into which she’d folded herself. There was no other
explanation.

The man collected himself, still
considering the possibilities, (could the little girl run that
fast?). He slowly walked a few yards down hill to collect
Rembrandt’s leash. For his part, Rembrandt was patiently waiting,
panting, smiling, as if to say, “hey, where ya been?” The man bent
down to collect the leash when something caught his
attention.

Out of the corner of his eye the man
saw a brief bright tangle of glowing silver light, and then in a
flash, the light was gone. In its place, as if she’d been there all
along, was the little girl. Without missing a beat, she was back to
her routine. The man didn’t appreciate people who stood around with
their mouths open but for the moment he’d become one of them.
Usually articulate, even when only conversing silently with
himself, the man was now completely without words.

Could he have witnessed some trick of
the light? Could something shiny have reflected the sun into his
eyes momentarily as the girl came out of her well-concealed hiding
place? Could the light he saw be the result of a migraine headache
coming on? Or maybe he was having a stroke? An aneurysm? None of
these were comforting thoughts.

No number of possible explanations
could change what the man already knew in his heart. The man had
seen the little girl disappear and then reappear a minute later out
of thin air. It should have been impossible. In the history of
humanity, up until this very moment, disappearing has been
permanently placed in the column marked “impossible”. And now,
not.

This must be what he had been sent to
observe. What could be “stranger” than this? The man tried again to
persuade himself that he hadn’t seen what had so clearly happened
before him, groping for another logical explanation. But none was
forthcoming. He wasn’t getting a migraine, and he wasn’t having a
stroke. But confronted with the truth of the situation, the man’s
head had in fact started to hurt.

2

Dinner, as with most things in the
Jordan household, was a haphazard affair. And that was before the
eating even started. Jay Jordan, Binny and Cassie’s father, was
calling his three boisterous and bickering children to the table.
It usually took at least two tries, and often three or four to
eventually get all of the Jordan offspring in one spot. This
evening was no exception.

“
Kids. Dinner. Now. I
won’t ask again.” Jay yelled, his shiny head, eyes sparkling behind
wire-framed glasses poking out from the kitchen doorway. Of course
though, he would do just that. He often laughed at his own jokes,
and the growing personal catalog of his own not always effective
parenting efforts was a never-ending source of humor. But neither
the futility nor the amusement stopped him from trying to sound
convincing.

Zach Jordan, Jay’s oldest, was already
sitting at the table during this latest plea. A skinny
twelve-year-old with a mop of brown hair, a healthy smattering of
freckles across his cheeks, and a seemingly endless collection of
sarcastic t-shirts, Zach seemed to think his job was to point out
inconsistencies and errors in other people’s thinking. “I’m already
here. Why are you yelling at me to come to dinner?” Zach smiled his
toothy jaunty sarcastic smile.

Jay’s brow furrowed with annoyance as
he tended the grilled cheese sandwiches. “Zach, must you? You know
I wasn’t talking to you.”

“
How would I know that?
You just yelled to ‘kids’, and last time I checked, I’m one of the
kids.” Zach either didn’t notice his father’s growing annoyance or
more likely was thoroughly enjoying it. Zach loved demonstrating
his intellect by coming up with new and inventive ways to annoy
those around him.

“
As usual, you know what I
meant. And also as usual, stop being a pain.”

Jay again made his way to the doorway
to yell for the kids and just as he let out the first bellow, Binny
rounded the corner into the kitchen. Whether she was still
irritated over Cassie’s theft of her mirror or annoyed at being
yelled at by her father wasn’t clear. Needless to say, her sour
mood had hardened and showed no signs of leaving anytime soon.
“GEEEEEEEEZZZZZZZ!!!! I KNOW! I HEARD YOU!”

“
Don’t yell at me, Binah
Jordan.” Her father cautioned her. The use of her given name was a
tradition that parents all over the planet seemed to adopt to
demonstrate seriousness to their children. “I have no way of
knowing you’re coming if you don’t respond the first three times I
call you.”

“
I was washing my hands,”
Binny offered with a smug look on her face, her eye roll serving as
a gentle punctuation to her comment. But Jay missed it as he’d
already moved on to his dinner ministrations. As Jay brought a bowl
of steamed cauliflower to the table, Cassie finally made her
appearance, striding in as if there were no chance dinner would
start until she made her grand entrance. This ‘inexcusable’
lateness wasn’t lost on Binny. “Where have you been?” she
asked.

Cassie looked up at her sister and
shrugged. ”Dunno.”

“
Well, I know what you
were doing. You were in my room going through my stuff.”

“
No I wasn’t!” Cassie
screeched. Cassie’s escalated her anger especially quickly when
confronted with judgments from her older siblings.

“
This isn’t the first time
you’ve done it either. I’ve been keeping track.”

“
I didn’t touch your
stupid mirror!!”

“
You left it on the
sidewalk. Someone could have stepped on it. YOU’RE! SO!
RUDE!”

“
Girls, stop the
bickering. And eat your cauliflower.”

“
She took my mirror,”
Binny complained.

“
Binny, I mean it. I’m not
interested. Eat your vegetables so I can give you your grilled
cheese.”

The kids served themselves. Binny took
a bite. “It’s cold.”

“
Ah shoot,” Jay collected
the vegetables back into the serving bowl. “Sorry. Give me a
second.” Jay put the serving dish filled with cauliflower into the
microwave and added “you know kids, I could heat up your meal with
my heat vision if I wanted to. I just choose not to.”

“
You don’t have super
powers.” Binny chided.

“
Yes he does,” Cassie
disagreed.

“
Don’t be
dumb.”

“
SHUT UP!”

“
Binny, stop calling your
sister dumb. And Cassie is absolutely correct. I do have super
powers. I’m not sure why you don’t believe me. But I suppose it’s
better that way, since I’m not supposed to use them unless I’m
doing my job fighting crime.”

Zach piped up, “I thought you were an
illustrator, not a super hero. Am I confused?” Zach’s eyebrows were
raised as far as they would go in mock surprise.

Jay continued pedantically, “It’s
true, I do draw for a living, but when called upon I also fight
crime. Where do you think I get my inspiration for drawing
crimefighters? It’s hard leading a double life but someone has to
take on the responsibility of making the world a better
place.”

Binny’s eyes rolled
furiously.

BEEP. The cauliflower was hot
again.

“
While my responsibility
is fighting crime,” he looked at Binny as if to emphasize the next
words, “and keeping the peace,” Jay placed the serving bowl filled
with steaming vegetables on the table, “your responsibility is to
eat your vegetables.”

“
I’m thirsty!” Cassie
blurted through a mouthful of cauliflower. Her lips glistened with
melted butter, and little white bits of cauliflower flew
indiscriminately from her mouth. At that moment, Zach poured the
last of the apple juice into his glass. He looked at his thirsty
baby sister and gave her a half shrug and smile.