The Story Begins Read Free Page B

and then spoke. “Silly boy! I am not a stranger,” it said. “But my daddy says that your mommy and daddy are right. You should not talk to strangers.”
    Then, out of nowhere, stepped forth the voice in the form of a little girl in a flowing silvery gown, who looked like she might have been five or six years old. Jaden thought the pinkish glowing light that emanated from her rosy complexion was very pretty. Like most children, full of naiveté and seeing the world as simplistically as only the innocence of a child would allow, he thought that she must be God. He remembered the priest telling him that some people believe that God is a being of light, so he simply concluded that the little girl must be God. But then he also remembered the priest had also told him that God is the Father of everyone. He decided that he must have either misunderstood the priest or the priest was wrong in what he had said because this little-girl-God just mentioned her own father and, being a girl, she obviously could not be a father. But he still believed her to be God.
    “Wow!” he said amazed, while conjecturing as to the possible whereabouts of Jesus. “You must be God!” he said. “I thought you were big and huge and lived in the sky but you’re a little girl and… dude, I’m bigger than you.” He couldn’t comprehend how it was at all possible that he was bigger than she whom he perceived to be God. But even more puzzling now that he looked upon her closely was that the little girl seemed to look like Liz, or was it Amber… actually, she seemed to look like all the girls he knew at school. In her face he saw the face of every girl that he knew, perhaps every girl that he had ever seen.
    “You silly boy!” said the sweet little girl. “I’m not God. What’s your name?” she asked as she set about creating a shiny spherical object by simply gesturing with her hands, then she gently blew it away and it was buoyant, just as are bubbles when created by the breath of a child.
    Jaden, however, was much too distracted by his preoccupation and didn’t hear her question. She glowed so how could she not be God, he pondered. “If you’re not God, how can you have a glowing light around you? Even when I put a flashlight beneath my chin that does not happen to me so how can you not be God?”
    “I like you. You’re nice.” She smiled. “What’s your name?” she asked again.
    “Jaden,” he answered then wanted to ask hers. However, before he had a chance to ask, again she spoke.
    “I’ll ask Daddy to make you look just like me.”
    “Okay,” he agreed. He looked around in an attempt to ascertain the whereabouts of her father. He was nowhere to be seen. What’s with all these invisible people, he thought. He hadn’t noticed that no sooner had she said that she would ask her father, Jaden had begun to glow as well.
    “Look! You’re just like me now.” She brought the fact to his attention.
    He looked at himself. “This is sooo cool,” he said. This, unquestionably, was the most marvelous event that had ever happened to him. He couldn’t wait to get back home to show his mom and dad the amazing occurrence.
    She floated over to him, took him by the hand, and then said, “We’re going to have a lot of fun.”
    He looked around and wondered what she meant. “How? I don’t see anything around us. It’s just you, me and plenty of nothing.”
    “Yaaah, and that’s all we need,” she said cheerfully.
    “Don’t you have any toys?” he asked, befuddled as to how one could possibly have fun without anything fun around.
    “No. And we are very far away from your home,” she said.
    No toys sounded absolutely boring to Jaden; he thought of all his toys and all his stomping grounds. He loved playgrounds. He also thought of all the toys he was yet to get and the many more playgrounds yet to be discovered. “I have some really cool toys we could play with,” he tried to convince her, “but we’ve got to go back to my