Zoe versus the Sparkles

Saturday afternoon and the skate park was packed. Zoey, just inside the treeline, watched dozens of kids riding their boards or standing around talking. Some rode bikes around the outside edges, waiting for their turn. Beyond them, another bunch were playing baseball and looking like they were making up the rules as they went along. Off to the side, a group of younger kids were chasing a soccer ball around the field. Zoey couldn’t figure out if there were teams or if it was everyone for themselves.

She watched all the people having fun for a while, then tugged the strap on her helmet tight and turned her bike around. Weekends when she couldn’t spend time with Sara, Zoey mostly spent riding around Bethel to learn the town better. It was that or stick around the house and be with her parents, which wasn’t as bad as most kids her age thought it was but … with her parents?

Today she’d headed left out of the driveway and, after several blocks in the area around her house, turned west to investigate the forest near the airport. Jackson Loop ran its lazy way around for cars and plenty of bike paths and unnamed roads split off here and there. Zoey wanted to visit them all at least once, just in case the sparkles sent her here. But before she started her investigation, she’d gone all the way past the forest to see the skate park and the Bethel Aquatic Centre.

She headed south and was soon riding through tall trees on a narrow road before turning onto a well-used trail. It was so calm and peaceful that she slowed down and took her time, both studying her surroundings and enjoying the experience.

There were very few sparkles here, Zoey found, but those she saw were big. She stopped to study a couple of them, but they were just as impossible to understand as all the others she’d seen. One, probably the biggest sparkle she’d ever seen, draped over a five-foot-tall boulder near a stone bench. She stopped to look at it more carefully, leaning her bike against a tree and securing it with a chain lock.

She found the colors on this one really bright and vibrant, very different from the normal grays and silvers. Because of the way it rested, hanging down all around the rock like a giant tablecloth, she could follow the colors as they moved across the surface. There seemed to be millions of tones of blues and reds, purples and yellows, greens and oranges. They moved in all directions, side to side, up and down, even diagonally. But they never merged for good. Some swept over or under others. Some went through others, the colors changing when they touched, then returning to their original shade when they separated. Some moved slowly, creeping along at a snail’s pace, while others swept along much more quickly, and Zoey had to walk around the stone to keep them in sight.

Fascinating. Now if only I could figure out what it means.

She spent a long while studying the sparkle, wandering around the rock, oblivious to the passing of time. She flinched when a pair of older boys on BMX bikes came crashing out of the trees on one side of the path and raced into the forest on the other. Such adventure riding wasn’t something she was interested in, but the sheer joy on both the boy’s faces reminded her of all the things she’d lost since the sparkles had come into her life. The only activity she thought she could take part in was swimming since she’d never seen a sparkle in the water, even on the bottom or sides of a pool. But she’d still have to go through change rooms and walk outside on the deck and don’t forget the diving blocks. Any of them, and a hundred other places, could house a sparkle just waiting to get her. One could even hide in her towel!

Giving her head a shake, she unlocked her bike and started off along the hiking trail again. Within a few minutes, the trail met a stream and she rode along with the burbles of running water in her ears. With a wide grin, she climbed down, locked her bike to a tree and splash through the stream, kicking up sprays of water and reveling in the beauty of nature. This freedom from worry was a rare occurrence, and she suddenly wished that Sara were here to enjoy it with her. No doubt they’d both wind up soaked to the skin from splashing each other, but the fun and laughter would be well worth a dripping ride home. Even though the day was chilly for October.

Her mother would worry that Zoey would get sick if she arrived at home in that condition, so she reluctantly left the stream and returned to her bike. Making sure she locked it up tight was a lesson she’d learned in Boulder. Every time she got off to wander around was an opportunity for the sparkles to sneak up on her. Twice she’d forgotten to secure her bike before the sparkles got her, and twice it had been gone by the time she got back. Her parents had bought her a new one the first time, but she’d had to do months of chores, raking leaves through the fall and shoveling snow in through the winter, to earn enough to replace it the second time. Since then, she’d been diligent in locking her only mode of transportation up every time she went on foot. It was something that Sara teased her about horribly.

Just as she was bending for the lock, her stomach let out a loud growl. A sudden, ravenous hunger surprised Zoey. She’d been enjoying herself so much that she hadn’t even thought about lunch.

Using a branch, after checking it carefully for sparkles, she swept the leaves and twigs from a patch of ground in front of her bike. Leaves were one of the best hiding spots for sparkles and she always brushed them out of the way before sitting down. Lunch was a PB&J, a small thermos of grape juice and an apple, packed carefully into a hard-sided lunch box by her mother and stowed away in her backpack. The sandwich was chewy, and Zoey liked the way the peanut butter stuck to the roof of her mouth. The apple was crisp and cool; the juice was both sweet and tart at the same time.

After cleaning up the containers and leaving the apple core behind for the squirrels, Zoey unlocked her bike and set off again. She smiled and waved to a woman whose dog was playing with a Frisbee in the stream, splashing at least as much as she’d been herself. She stared upward at a massively tall tree, wishing that she could park and climb it but knowing that one poorly placed hand or foot could see her sent who knows where. One time, she hadn’t seen a sparkle on a tree and brushed it with the sleeve of her jacket. Even that was enough to get her zapped almost a mile away.

After a short while of riding along the trail, the woods thinned, and Box Turtle Lake came into view. Having grown up not all that far from Hayden Lake, Zoey thought this body of water should be called a pond. She’d said this to her father, and he told her that there are some ponds that are a lot bigger than some lakes, some lakes that are a lot smaller than some ponds and that a name is just a name. Either way, it was a lovely place to visit. The sunlight sparkled on the surface of the water and, for once, Zoey smiled at the sight of them. When there was no chance that they could be real sparkles, they were beautiful.

She pulled over beside a tree and locked her bike to it, brushed off a patch of ground and sat down. Despite the chilliness of the day, there were plenty of people out on the water. None were waterskiing or swimming, but boaters were out puttering around. Some were fishing but most looked to be simply relaxing and enjoying the day, much as Zoey was.

She took a while to watch the people on the water, catching the odd laugh or word here and there, and felt a bit sad. She was usually alright with the loneliness but first the kids at the skate park, then the two on their bikes, then this crowd of people had her feeling it deeply. The connections they shared had her suddenly feeling sorry for herself. That was something she thought she’d given up on years ago when her father found her being grumpy and miserable. He’d sat with her in front of the television and they’d watched fifteen minutes of news. She’d heard about people dying, people hurt, people who lost their house and everything they owned. The constant sadness of it had her almost in tears and her father had told her that no matter how bad she thought things were for her, there were people out there who had it worse.

Now she thought about those news stories and those people and decided, yet again, that the sparkles were an inconvenience and she was lucky they were the worst thing in her life. Zoey looked out at the happy, laughing and in love people on the lake and decided that she was going to be one of them no matter what. Before standing, Zoey checked carefully then put her hands on the ground. She was still watching the ground when she reached for the lock on her bike.

There are times when you see yourself about to do something and want to stop, but it’s like you’ve already sent the message to your foot to take that step or to your hand to grab something and no matter how hard you think about not doing that thing, your body does it anyway. There was a little sparkle on the lock right under Zoey’s hand as it closed.

No! She screamed in her head. Stop!

But it was too late.

Blink.

Now wh-

This time the world did fall out from under her feet or, to be more precise, gravity took hold of her and she was falling. Fears of her appearing off the side of a cliff or beside an airplane or in the air outside a tall building flashed through her mind, but she was only falling for a second. Then she was under water and thrashing about. Zoey was an experienced swimmer, but fully clothed, wearing boots and a backpack, it was a struggle to get to the surface.

A swimming pool. At least the water was heated, and she wasn’t freezing cold. Zoey fought her way to the ladder and climbed out. She stood there a moment, coughing up water, before gasping for breath.

The back yard was deserted, and she didn't recognize the house, at least not from the back. Zoey left a water trail on the deck, got the gate open, and rushed out to the street. She started scanning about, looking for anything familiar.

A stiff, cold breeze hit her, and she was immediately chilled to the bone, her teeth chattering. With no idea where she was, she decided her best bet was to get moving and set off as fast as she could down the street. A residential area, houses around the same size as her neighborhood - oh! That one she knew. She’d never seen a house with that many planters out front. Huge planters full of tall grasses. When they’d first moved here, they’d also had lots of brightly colored flowers, but those were gone now.

Zoey hugged her arms tight around herself and turned around. The eight blocks to get home seemed longer and longer with each step as the cold got deeper and deeper into her. She turned left at a corner, breaking the rules and cutting across someone’s lawn, and a gust of wind froze her so much she couldn’t breathe for a moment.

How was she going to explain this to her parents? She wondered. The lake was so far that she’d probably freeze before getting home on foot. There was no way she was getting into a car with a stranger. If she said someone she knew gave her a ride home, her parents were sure to want to thank them, which would lead to a lot of confusion. Allen Lake and Buyer Creek were a lot closer and she could have fallen in, but why would she leave her bike way out at the lake and not take it on the way home? It was easily a half-hour walk, but a lot shorter on her bike.

Her fingers were so numb when she got home that she fumbled with the door handle three times before finally getting it open. Her mother was folding laundry in the living room when she stumbled inside. She knocked the basket off the table when she sprang to her feet.

“Zoey!” her scream caused a chair in the kitchen to scrape back and her father hurried in. “What happened to you?”

“I fell,” Zoey shivered as she spoke. “In the creek.”

Her parents were already grabbing blankets and towels, pulling her dripping hat off to scrub at her hair.

“Come on,” Mrs. Solis said. “We’re getting you into a hot shower.”

The hot water did a lot to ease Zoey’s trembling. It wasn't long before she sat, bundled up, on the couch mug of hot chocolate in hand.

“Now,” her mother began. “Tell us how this happened.”

“I was out near Box Turtle Lake on my bike,” Zoey began, having plotted out her story once the shower took the worst of the chill from her. “And I met these other kids who go to John Albert. 

We got to talking and goofing around. They were going over to Buyer Creek to catch crawfish and asked if I wanted to go along.”

“You made some friends?” her father asked. He’d been trying to get her to meet more people and make new friends since they’d moved.

“Yeah.” Zoey nodded, then sipped her hot chocolate. “I think so. But they laughed at me a lot when I fell in the water, so I don’t know if I want to be friends with them.”

“And they let you run home alone?” Her mother asked next, crossing her arms in a clear sign of disapproval.

“I, uh, didn’t really ask them. It was really cold, so I just took off as fast as I could.” The distance was about right, but Zoey suspected she’d have been a lot colder if she’d fallen in the creek instead of a heated pool.

“Hmmmm.” Her mother’s eyebrows scrunched together. “I don’t know that I like these children, 

Zoey. Perhaps you should stay clear of them.”

“Maybe, mom.”

“Where’s your bike?” her father sighed the question.

“It’s locked up by Box Turtle Lake.” Zoey gave a weak smile. “Safe and sound.”

“A small blessing,” Mr. Solis said. “I’ll take you to pick it up tomorrow morning.”

“But today,” Zoey’s mother leaned forward to fuss with the quilt and tuck it in a little tighter. 

“You’re staying inside where it’s warm. I don’t want you catching a cold.”

“Okay, mom.”

“Dinner in a couple of hours. Do you want to watch some TV or should I get your book?”

“Both!” Zoey laughed.

Chapter the Fifth