Lots of kids live on my street. I usually don’t play with most of them because they’re heaps younger or older. But last June, when the sky stayed light forever, we all started getting together for hide-and-seek. It was fun with so many kids, but mostly I just liked being out till it finally got dark.
Sometimes I’d sneak away from the game and hide in my secret spot. It’s in the corner of my backyard, between our cedar hedge and Mrs. Petovsky’s bramble bushes and Mrs. Carol’s fence, and there’s a sort of little clearing in the middle of everything just big enough for me. I’d lie on the grass and look up through my “sky window” and see the stars and think about what our minister read from the Bible about the heavens and the earth and about dividing the light from the dark. I’d get all shivery down my back just like the time I snuck into the Sanctuary when it was all dark and there wasn’t anyone there. The Sanctuary with a capital S is the part of the church you go to on Sundays to sing and pray and listen to the minister. I snuck in one time when it wasn’t for church, and I felt like I was full of electricity. And I just knew I wasn’t alone in there, let me tell you! It was spooky, but not scary-spooky. That’s how I felt looking at the stars.
I like the word sanctuary. Miss Gowdy says writers have to like words and I like this one because it sounds mysterious. I asked Miss Gowdy what it means, but this time she took a deep breath and said, “Look it up in the dictionary.” So I did, and it means “a holy place.” In a church it’s the holy place around the altar, and that makes sense because if you look at the word, it has a T exactly in the middle, looking just like a cross. Sanctuary. Anyway, in olden days people could be protected from enemies if they could just get to the altar before being caught. From what I can figure, it was kind of like yelling “Home Free!” when you’re playing hide-and-seek.
I was glad Miss Gowdy made me look up sanctuary. Now I look up lots of words all the time. If you ask a dictionary, you always get an answer. I wish adults were like dictionaries. I wish my mother would answer all the questions I have to ask. Why couldn’t she just tell me about Cassandra Jovanovich without me having to ask so many questions? She always makes me feel nosy, and I’m glad a dictionary doesn’t.
Cassandra Jovanovich. “Cas-san-dra,” I said again, counting on my fingers. Three syllables. “Jo-van-o-vich.” Four syllables. It wasn’t fair. I wondered if she called herself Cassandra. Or she might be Cass or Cassie or C.J. I am only Lee Mets. Two syllables. Of course, I am really Leanna, but nobody calls me that, not even if I ask. And I asked a lot after reading Anne of Green Gables, and I read Anne of Green Gables lots. I borrowed it from the bookmobile at least once a month. Anne Shirley really wanted to be called Cordelia Fitzgerald because she thought her own name didn’t have much oomph to it. I thought about calling myself L.M., just like the writer L.M. Montgomery, but it sounded stupid, like I had got to the part in the alphabet where you go elemenopee. I tried it once when the school nurse asked my name. I said, “Ell Em,” and she thought I was saying “Ellen” with a stuffed-up nose.
And Cassandra Jovanovich was an orphan.
All of the best stories are about orphans. There’s Anne of Green Gables and Mary Lennox of the Secret Garden. That last one isn’t the real title, but it should be. Orphans always get to be of somewhere. I tried this out at school this year. I told Mr. Morgan that I was Leanna of Westlawn Avenue, but he said, “Don’t be stupid.” If I were an orphan, I’d like to be Leanna of the Castle or Leanna of Mountain Valley. I feel very sorry for Jane Eyre. She’s an orphan with a name like mine and isn’t of anything, either.
Sometimes I pretended I was an orphan and I was adopted. If my mother and father weren’t my real parents then I could make up lots of stuff about who my real parents were. Even that they were still alive and rich and royal and would come to get me one day when it was safe. Like the Little Princess who turned out not to be an orphan. This is what I did at night when my parents (so-called) wouldn’t let me read in bed and made me turn out the light. I made up stories about my real parents.
I hoped Cassandra Jovanovich would be like book orphans. I hoped she’d have lots of imagination. Maybe she’d even be a writer, like me. Maybe we could write books together and become each other’s muse. That’s another word Miss Gowdy told us. It’s some sort of spirit that whispers good ideas in your ear.
I hoped we could be best friends because after Kathy did you-know-what, I didn’t have a best friend anymore. But more than that, I hoped we could be kindred spirits. That’s what Anne Shirley called some people, the people she just felt an instant connection to, as if there was some electricity between them. Once Anne Shirley called her best friend her bosom friend, but I wouldn’t want to do that. My mother won’t let me say the word bosom and I don’t want to get Cassandra Jovanovich and me in trouble.
I didn’t have any kindred spirits my own age. I knew Miss Gowdy was one as soon as I met her, and I knew Mrs. McMillan, who teaches Sunday School, was a kindred spirit, too. But I wanted a kindred spirit who was a friend I could play with. I once had high hopes for Kathy, but that didn’t work out.
I looked up the word kindred in the dictionary. At first, I was disappointed. It just meant “family” or “having the same blood.” I have lots of family that I don’t want to be kindred spirits with, let me tell you! But I kept reading down the definition and it said kindred was the same as the word congenial. So I looked up congenial and it means, “being the same in spirit.” So I guess what I was looking for were spirits to be spirits with. Sometimes the dictionary is confusing.
I was still looking at the stars when my mother started calling for me to come in and I had to leave my secret place. Only from then on I called it my Sanctuary.