Jadie in Five Dimensions Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  1. Jadie

  2. Sam

  3. Jadie

  4. Jadie

  5. Jadie

  6. Jadie

  7. Jadie

  8. Jadie

  9. Sam

  10. Jadie

  11. Jadie

  12. Jadie

  13. TY

  14. Jadie

  15. Sam

  16. Jadie

  17. Jadie

  18. TY

  19. TY

  20. Jadie

  21. Jadie

  22. TY

  23. TY

  24. Jadie

  25. Sam

  26. Jadie

  27. Jadie

  28. Jadie

  29. Jadie

  30. Sam

  31. Jadie

  32. Jadie

  33. Jadie

  34. Jadie

  35. TY

  36. TY

  37. Jadie

  38. Jadie

  39. Jadie

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright © 2021 by Dianne K. Salerni

  All Rights Reserved

  HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  Printed and bound in May 2021 at Maple Press, York, PA, USA.

  www.holidayhouse.com

  First Edition

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Salerni, Dianne K., author.

  Title: Jadie in five dimensions / Dianne K. Salerni.

  Other titles: Jadie in 5 dimensions

  Description: First edition. | New York City : Holiday House, [2021] Audience: Ages 9–12. | Audience: Grades 4–6. Summary: Thirteen-year-old Jadie lives in 4-space and works as an Agent for the four-dimensional beings who adopted her after being abandoned as an infant, but when Jadie learns her origin story is a lie she works to uncover the truth.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020039134 | ISBN 9780823449095 (hardcover)

  Subjects: CYAC: Space and time—Fiction. | Families—Fiction Kidnapping—Fiction. | Science fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.S152114 Jad 2021 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020039134

  ISBN: 978-0-8234-4909-5 (hardcover)

  For my nieces and nephews: Abby and her three daughters; Stevie; Cameron; Olivia; Joe; Evie; Dominic; and in memory of Luke

  DIMENSIONAL SPACE

  DIRECTIONS TO MOVE

  1-space

  Forward, backward

  2-space

  Forward, backward, left, right

  3-space

  Forward, backward, left, right, up, down

  4-space

  Forward, backward, left, right, up, down, ana, kata

  5-space

  Forward, backward, left, right, up, down, ana, kata, and ??

  1. JADIE

  My target holds her phone against her ear, scurrying down the sidewalk in high heels. She’s dragging a wheeled suitcase and carrying a tapestry bag over her shoulder. The bag has sunflowers on it, which is how I know I’ve got the right lady.

  Coasting behind her on my skateboard, I weave between pedestrians. One man snarls at me—“Watch it, girl!”—even though I didn’t touch him.

  Great. Last thing I need is someone drawing attention to me.

  Luckily, the woman is too busy talking on her phone to notice. She’s heading for a subway entrance a block ahead, so I have to make my move.

  A lot of kids on my middle school soccer team talk about getting into “the zone.” I call it Jadie 2.0—an alternate me that pushes the regular Jadie Martin aside and tells my body what to do. Speed up. Bend your knees. Lean left.

  Bearing down on the woman, I hook my fingers under the strap of her tapestry bag and hurl it as far as I can into traffic. The bag strikes the windshield of a taxi, spewing its contents over the car and into the street.

  The woman whirls toward me with a furious shriek, her hands curved into manicured claws. Cutting sharply away on my board, I call over my shoulder, “Sorry!”

  I only did what I was ordered to do.

  Other people shout after me, but only the guy who yelled at me a few seconds ago gives chase. “Come back here, you little punk!”

  I steer into the closest alley, which turns out to be a mistake. A delivery van blocks the exit, and two guys are stacking crates around the vehicle. There’s no way I can get through them with the angry man ten steps behind me.

  What I do next is against protocol, but I don’t see an alternative. Hopping off the skateboard, I stamp on the back end and grab the front axle. As my pursuer barrels toward me, his hand outstretched, I stab the round button on my metal bracelet and vanish.

  Or at least that’s what it looks like to the man in the alley.

  For me, it’s like being knocked from my skateboard while traveling at top speed—a sudden wrench in a new direction. Not a normal direction like up, down, left, or right. I’m flying kata, out of three-dimensional space.

  Shutting my eyes to keep from getting dizzy, I hold out my arm. Only when my feet hit a metal platform and my bracelet clicks into a port-lock do I blink and look around. The alley is gone, replaced by what looks like a modern art painting sprung to life. In front of me, gold loops squirm and blue orbs pulse. Off to my right, silver tubes intersect in impossible ways like an optical illusion—but this isn’t an illusion.

  This is 4-space.

  I glance down between my feet, through the metal grid of the platform. Earth isn’t visible to human eyes from this position, but it’s there. My planet, the solar system, the Milky Way Galaxy… the entire three-dimensional universe, in fact, is nested inside the vastness of this four-dimensional universe the way one Russian doll fits inside another.

  A red glow illuminates the space around me—bright enough to see by, but not as satisfying as sunlight or even a strong lightbulb. It reminds me of a fire burning in the wilderness, which always makes me wonder if these platforms are inside or outside. Or if inside and outside aren’t the only two options when you have four spatial dimensions.

  The only things that make sense to my eyes are the platform I’m standing on and the items I brought with me: my skateboard and my bracelet, where today’s assignment is spelled out on a small screen.

  Woman with luggage walking toward subway station. Sunflower tapestry bag. Throw into traffic.

  Underneath these instructions are the spatial coordinates of the event—a string of numbers that mean nothing to me. They placed me in the correct location for my mission, but they aren’t necessary to get me home.

  At the edge of the platform there’s a clunky console that looks like something from the 1960s. It has large numbered keys for entering coordinates on the way to a course correction, and three buttons labeled Complete, Incomplete, and Return to be used afterward.

  Hugging my skateboard under my arm, I push Complete. The screen on my bracelet goes blank.

  Assignments like this leave me conflicted. On one hand, I’m pumped with adrenaline, like when I intercept a ball on the soccer field. On the other hand, what I did was an aggressive act against a player unaware of the game.

  It feels like a foul.

  I hope things turn out okay for that lady. Maybe she would’ve been flattened by a bus at the next intersection and the delay I created saved her life. Or maybe, when she misses her train, she passes the time before the next one by buying a winning lottery ticket.

  But Miss Rose tells us that the desired outcome of our missions rarely involves the target. The end result of throwing a purse into the str
eet might be four steps removed from the act. Maybe the taxi that got hit with the bag misses a fare, and because of that, two people meet who wouldn’t have met if the taxi had been there. They fall in love, get married, and have a kid who someday cures cancer.

  That would make throwing a stranger’s bag into traffic totally worthwhile.

  After I’ve registered my assignment as complete, I push the Return button. The platform whirs into action, sliding past four identical but unoccupied platforms. Traveling through 4-space creates a shortcut between any two locations in 3-space. Therefore, it’s only seconds before my platform stops, the port-lock releases my bracelet, and I’m yanked ana, the direction opposite from kata. The machine returns me to the same location I departed from earlier today: my bedroom in my house in Kansas, slipping me between the walls and the roof through the open fourth dimension (which is visible from 4-space even though humans can’t perceive it). The adult Agents nicknamed this machine the Transporter because when it deposits me on the fuzzy blue rug in the center of my room, I appear in the blink of an eye, like in Star Trek.

  Alia Malik looks up without any surprise and says, “Hey, Jadie.” She’s lying on my bed, scrolling on her phone. “Where you been?”

  “A city. Not sure where.” I drop my skateboard and nudge it with my foot, sending it off to a corner of the room. Alia isn’t surprised that I appeared out of nowhere, but I’m a little surprised to see her. She’s my neighbor and a fellow Agent, but she’s not usually waiting in my bedroom when I get back from missions.

  “I went to Thailand,” she says. “Third time this month.”

  Alia, her sister, and her parents often get sent to Thailand, the country of Alia’s grandparents. I wish I would get assignments overseas. “Did you see anything interesting?”

  Alia snorts. “I was in a field. I opened a fence. What’d you do?”

  “I threw some lady’s purse into traffic.”

  “Jadie!” Alia gasps in partly fake, partly real horror. “You get all the mean ones.”

  She’s not wrong. I hope it’s because I’m athletic and not because Miss Rose thinks I’m a criminal at heart.

  Alia flashes a wide, forced smile. “I have a favor to ask. Any chance you’d babysit for me tomorrow?” She holds up her arm and rattles a bracelet identical to mine.

  Babysit. She wants me to take her bracelet and cover her assignments, which is against the rules. Course corrections are designed specifically for each Agent. We aren’t supposed to swap them.

  Alia sees my hesitation and starts begging. “Please, Jadie! There’s a Cosmic Knight tournament tomorrow. I can’t leave in the middle without forfeiting.” Alia is obsessed with the online game Cosmic Knight, a race-slash-battle among alien players—water-breathing assassins, murderous spider ladies, poisonous floating gas bags—seeking a mysterious token that will protect the finder’s homeworld from destruction. I played once, but I prefer soccer.

  “If you tell Miss Rose, she won’t give you a mission while it’s going on,” I point out. Our 4-space liaison doesn’t assign course corrections during activities where our disappearance would be noticed. When Alia chews her fingernail and avoids my eyes, I get it. “Ohhh. You’re grounded again.”

  She grimaces. “I failed a history test. I’m not supposed to be out of the house this weekend, except for course corrections, and Mom says no online activities for two weeks. But she and Dad will be at Tehereh’s color guard competition tomorrow, soooo…”

  “I have a soccer game in the morning.”

  “I wouldn’t need you until one o’clock.”

  I sigh.

  “I already asked Huan and Jin.” Those are the fifteen-year-old Agents across the cul-de-sac. “But they’re visiting colleges this weekend. I know your brother would do it—and Ty probably would, for a price—but I don’t trust them to get the job done. No offense to Marius.”

  “None taken.” My brother, Marius, is always willing to help a friend but sometimes lacks good judgment. As for my next-door neighbor, Ty Rivers, I wouldn’t want to give him that kind of blackmail material if I were Alia.

  She presses her hands together. “Help me, Jadie Martin. You’re my only hope.”

  I recognize the line from Star Wars but shoot back, “You mean your last hope. ’Cause you already asked Huan and Jin, crossed off Marius and Ty, and you can’t ask your sister or one of the adults to do it.”

  “C’mon. I probably won’t get an assignment during the couple of hours you have the bracelet.” She hesitates. “I know you don’t want to get in trouble with the Seers because of… you know… but—”

  “Because of what?”

  Alia shrugs like she doesn’t want to bring it up. “Because you owe them your life.”

  My shoulders hunch automatically, but I try to look like it’s no big deal.

  Twelve years ago, my natural-born parents abandoned me by the side of a highway in the middle of a snowstorm. Like trash.

  I should have died. But superintelligent beings from a higher dimension sent their best Agents to rescue me and raise me as their own daughter. I grew up in a loving family with great parents and a brother who’s an idiot sometimes, but still my brother. For the past six months, since I turned thirteen, I’ve had the honor of serving as an Agent myself, assisting the Seers in their mission to put Earth on track for a brighter future. When they tell me to mug a lady on the street, I do it and do it well.

  I see that Alia’s face is falling, and I feel like trash on the side of the highway, disappointing my friend rather than break one tiny rule. It’s only a couple of hours, and if Alia is asked to close a fence in Thailand, I can close that fence as well as she can. In fact, I bet I can close a fence like it’s never been closed before.

  “I’ll do it.”

  2. SAM

  Sam Lowell hears the apartment door open and close, but, engrossed in gluing Popsicle sticks together, he doesn’t register it for several minutes.

  The drawing in front of him serves as his guide. The “impossible cube,” the geometric basis for the M. C. Escher print Belvedere, is simple to sketch—a cube with one of the back edges cleverly drawn to look like a front edge.

  Of course, it’s not really a cube but a two-dimensional drawing the human eye imagines as a cube. This object couldn’t exist in three dimensions, although Sam has read it’s possible to make parts of it from Popsicle sticks and—by photographing them from the right angle—cause them to look like an impossible cube.

  It’s trick photography, but it might help him with his project.

  First, he has to get his fake cube parts assembled correctly. As he works, a series of thoughts penetrates the fortress of his concentration.

  • One of his parents came home a few minutes ago.

  • Dad is out of town, presenting his latest physics theory at Princeton and hoping for funding, a teaching position, or ideally, both.

  • Mom had a job interview today. If things went well, she would’ve burst into Sam’s room to tell him.

  Sam puts down the sticks and the Elmer’s glue. Spurning the crutch that leans against the wall, he pushes himself to his feet, careful not to put too much weight on his left leg. That knee has a tendency to give way without warning. The crutch helps, but he hates it.

  There’s an eerie, horror-movie, what-am-I-going-to-find feeling to those dozen steps down the hall that end at the sight of his mother seated on the living room couch, bent forward with her head in her hands. Cleopatra, their sleek black cat, rubs against her shins as if trying to provide comfort. Or asking to be fed.

  “Mom?”

  Her head jerks up, and for a second she tries to smile. Then her face crumples and tears come. “I didn’t get it.”

  That, he’d already guessed. He looks at the time. It’s six o’clock—later than he realized. “Were they interviewing you all this time just to tell you no?”

  She shakes her head. “The woman was late. Missed her plane in Cincinnati. They said I could wait, th
at she was getting on the next flight. I sat there for two hours. When she finally showed up, she told me she filled the job on the plane, gave it away to the woman sitting next to her. She laughed like I was supposed to think it was funny—some kid tried to steal her bag and made her miss her first flight so that she ended up sitting next to a friend from college who needed a job.” She throws out her hands. “What was I supposed to say? I needed that job!”

  Sam plops down beside her on the couch and catches one of her hands in his own. “You should’ve told her off, Mom.”

  “I couldn’t. You can’t burn bridges.”

  Sam looks at their hands together. Her fingers are white and too thin, with nails bitten down to the nub. She slips her hand away from his and shifts it to his damaged knee. “How’s the physical therapy?”

  Sam hasn’t been to therapy in weeks. The owner of the place, the guy who worked with Sam, was okay. But his wife ran the front desk and reminded Sam every visit how much money they owed. She kept saying, “Therapy can’t take the place of reconstructive surgery. Has that been scheduled?” She knew perfectly well his parents didn’t have insurance or any way to pay for surgery.

  Cleo jumps onto the sofa beside him and butts her head against his hand. Sam rubs her ears and says, “They gave me exercises to work on at home.”

  His mother gazes at his face, and for a second Sam thinks she’s going tell him he’s not allowed to quit therapy. But her eyes are distant. “I have to call your father and tell him I didn’t get the job.”

  Sam’s good leg jiggles up and down. “You don’t have to call him tonight. Let him—” Let him present his proposal without worrying about you. But he can’t say that.

  “He knew I had this interview. He’s probably waiting to hear from me.” She stands and picks up her phone while Sam watches, rubbing his hands against his jeans legs. Her eyes dart to the Lowell family portrait hanging on the wall above the bookshelves.

  “We have more bad luck,” she whispers, “than any family ought to have.”

  After she leaves the room to make the dreaded call in private, Sam stares at the photograph that’s been haunting him practically his whole life. He doesn’t want to feed Mom’s paranoid delusions, but he has to admit it sometimes seems like the universe holds a grudge against the Lowell family.