Spectra

One cold sunny morning, I noticed ice on the ground. While I was walking back and forth waiting on my parents, I found a little black notebook with the words “Rainbow Kingdom”. I continued to play. The grass was like ice and frozen. The beautiful sun was blinding me. I am Spectra, but my real name is Anastasia King. Yes, King like Martin Luther King, one of the greatest American leaders ever!

Oh, how beautiful the sky looked. It is so pretty with puffy clouds and a clear blue sky. I kept on looking at the sky. I could see a plane far, far above. I love to look at the planes when they are far away, but sometimes, if they are too close, I get frightened by the loud noise that the planes make. I want to kneel down on the ground and cover my head but my dad said that I am a big girl and that I shouldn’t be afraid.

I continued to play, but while I was standing close to the window, I could hear my teacher, Mrs. Practical tell my parents, she is on the Spectrum. I leaned closer to her and what she was saying. I looked at my mom’s face, she looked sad like when you are watching a really sad movie. I wonder what is a spectrum? Is it like the color that Mr. Zeigler described in science? He told us about the prism and how when white light shines through a prism all colors would come out of the white prism.

My mom’s name is Julia Christa. She is very pretty. She wears bright red lipstick. She knows how to fix hair in almost any style. I loved when she braids my hair in what I called “round and round in a circle”. However, my mom wore her hair or dress and she always looked beautiful.

Slowly, I walked under the window by the bushes to hear what Mrs. Practical was saying. But Mrs. Milky Way came to my rescue. Stasia is very bright. She is brilliant. Since she could count, she started to learn multiplication and can solve very complicated math problems. I smiled from ear to ear. I really like Mrs. Milky Way.

There were days that I missed the bus and would walk to school by myself even though I was afraid because I loved coming to Mrs. Milky Way’s class.

She made me feel so welcome. She was firm but still a nice teacher. We knew what she expected, but she allowed us to have a few minutes of free time after we completed our multiplication tables and handwriting in the morning.

Mrs. Milky Way continues talking, “She writes poems and has planned on writing a book since she was 6.

She held up the loose leaf paper with words on it that were hard to read because of how small I write. Let me share her poem,

“The Dew”

Like footprints in the sand,

The fingers of dew cover man

Grass painted nice

Treetops cover with misty ice

A gentle tiny burst of rainbows

Shoe glistens wet at the toe

Breaking out of moisture

Slowly misting rain

Dancing madly

Below our feet

But the Blazing Sun came out

What happened to the water

I must go and seek!

After she finished reading, my father James Isaac stood up and clapped, that’s my girl, she is going to do great things! She wants to be an author of books. By now, I was smiling from ear to ear with my hands on my hips. I started to sing a made-up song, “I am amazing….but I almost fell on someone's skateboard but I caught myself.

I continued to look at the words Rainbow Kingdom and next to it saw some foreign words with English words that said, Regin Bogen. It looks like another language. I thought I would ask Mrs. Cobb when I got to the Media Center on Wednesday.

I turned the page in the little black notebook. I saw an address. It saw 888 East Cyan Crayon Road. Another address was in the book. This address was 2525 Proud Peacock Park.

Then I heard Mrs. Milky Way telling my mother and father, “ A child like this is really unique. You have to protect her. She sees good in everyone. No one is evil to her. You have to teach her skills to protect herself.”

She continued, “Just yesterday, I caught Darren cornering her by the bathroom. He had a look of mischief in his eyes. Stasia looked like a deer in headlights. She is so innocent in some ways because she believes any words that people say to her. I grabbed her by her hand and pulled her to safety, but her new white dress was covered with blood on the back. Stasia told me, “ When he pushed me I got stuck by a nail that is why I was bleeding from my dress.”.

Once Mrs. Milky Way told my parents that my dad ran outside and grabbed me by the hand. He picked me up after hugging me for what seemed like forever. I loved my dad. I felt so safe with him. He told me, “ Brown-eyed girl, you are my little ray of sunshine. You are so bright, pretty, and wise beyond your years. You love with such purity but I am worried about you because you can’t trust everyone in this world”.

He asked me, “What did Darren do to you? I lied and said, “Nothing”. I did want my parents to know because I was so ashamed because Darren had stood by the bathroom and told me to come here. He was a neighbor of my favorite Aunt. I saw him often so I thought he was just being friendly. He pulled me into the bathroom and pushed me down.

I couldn’t stop him. I was like a little lamb dumb and innocent. I did not say anything, but I tried to push him off, but in the end, he won. I began to sob uncontrollably and ran out of the bathroom.

Darren followed me and began to corner me again, but Mrs. Milky Way came along and took him to the principal’s office. She took me to her room that day and let me rest away from the other children.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, my dad came out to me. I held up the little black notebook. I told my dad to look at what I found. I said, “It has an address in it.” My dad teased, “ You found the directions to the end of a rainbow. It will lead to gold.”

I responded,” I sure hope so. That way I can write books to make people laugh, cry and find happiness”.

My Pop was known as Mike Ike. He loved candy and children. One summer day, he told all of the neighborhood kids to the store and bought ice cream and candy for everyone. All of the adults just called him “Ike”. He had a great sense of humor. He told me, “You must work hard, but after work play hard, too.”

His beautiful brown eyes brightened. Then, he said, “Stasia, I know the owner of this Black Book.” It belongs to Mrs. Rocker, the banker. Mrs. Rocker was a banker and a teacher. Her people were from Germany. She dresses like a proper rock star. She had a huge diamond ring on her finger with blue sapphires around the diamond. She would read with enthusiasm and excitement.

Let’s take the book to her now, said my dad. I jumped up. Yes, let’s do it. My Mom sashayed behind us quickly to catch up. She told my dad that she was going home. I asked if I could go with my dad. She said fine but you must come home quickly as soon as we were done with our adventure.

I followed my dad happily to our destination. It took what seemed like hours to make it to the house. Finally, my dad stopped at this beautiful two-story white house. The house was surrounded by a fancy white fence. The yard was so large that you could see at least 30 horses in the back and there were peacocks everywhere.

I started to jump up and down. I said, “Daddy, Daddy, hurry up and knock on the door. I can’t wait to see what our prize will be if we turn in this black book.” My Dad walked up to the door and knocked. Mrs. Rocker came to the door. She opened and exclaimed, “Hi, Stasia. What are you doing here?” My dad and I told her that we found a little black book with the words, “Regin Bogen”. She began to cry and took the book and said thank you. She said, “This book belonged to my father. He died last month when some thieves broke into our house. They stole everything from our safe and took the book.

In this book, there are the instructions for how to find treasures. She went to the back and opened a compartment. Written on this small piece of paper, were the instructions to go to the Golden Bible and read Proverbs 23:7. She read the scripture, “As a man thinks in his heart so is he”, and beneath that she found a deed for the house and the instruction for her inheritance for 200, 000, 000 dollars. She was so happy.

She told my father that she would give 20, 000 dollars. Immediately, she took out her checkbook and wrote a check for the money. My dad rushed out of Mrs. Rocker's house dancing and singing. He had 2 checks. She had secretly given him 30,000 more dollars for our family. I was so excited that I began to think about writing a poem about the beautiful Mrs. Rocker, but just then we got home.

My mom told me sternly, “Go eat, wash up and go to bed.” I said, “Yes, ma’am.” Finally, I got into bed with this wonderful smile on my face as I dozed off to sleep. I was thinking some life can be so good in spite of setbacks.