STEPPING OVER
Copyright © Tracy Lane 2005/2021
All rights reserved

1.

It was Saturday morning in the second week of spring, and nine year-old Kim Taylor was practically busting to get out of the house.

Leaning out of the window of his upstairs bedroom, Kim gazed across the lawns and fences of Heartsfield. The air still carried a hint of winter; he could taste it on the back of his tongue as he breathed. A deep, clear sky framed the distant mountains, lazy white clouds drifted sedately across the horizon. Too nice a morning to spend in front of the TV, no matter what was on. The day beckoned him with all the promises of childhood - some of which he was still too young to understand.

He'd promised to meet Janet and Suzie at the playground around half-twelve, which was why he'd grabbed lunch early today. His Mom was really big on the three squares thing and she wouldn't let him out the door without a bite or two. Well, she couldn't complain he wasn't getting his daily ration; he'd downed three BLTs and a glass of Quik only half an hour before. He'd also cleaned up his room, just in case she tried to hold him on a technicality. Mothers were like that, they almost never played fair.

Closing the window, Kim walked over to the dresser, keeping one eye to the clock. It was quarter of twelve; still plenty of time to get down to Memorial Park if he left in the next ten minutes or so. He passed a brush over his hair and tucked his t-shirt into his jeans, making sure to tighten the belt a notch. Unlike most boys his age, Kim was small and delicately built; it was difficult to find clothes that fit him. Even with his hair cropped to the nape of his neck, strangers regularly mistook him for a young girl (a situation causing him considerable embarrassment until quite recently).

Grooming rituals completed, he stepped into his runners (thick, pumpy Docs, roughly three sizes too big) and made for the door. All he had to do now was sneak past the Guardian of the Living Room and he'd be home free. Unfortunately, this final obstacle was also the most difficult to avoid, as his Mom had eyes like a proverbial hawk. Worse still, he knew she was getting curious about how he was spending his afternoons, which meant she would probably go fishing for answers.

And that might pose a few problems.

Kim trotted down the staircase, wondering how he was going to handle this. He wasn't old enough to deceive her (the woman was a human polygraph), but he obviously couldn't tell her everything - not even the parts she'd be capable of believing. Trouble was, she wouldn't let him leave until she'd satisfied her interest. Well, some of it, at least. Maybe that was his solution; throw her a couple of tidbits. Not too much; just enough to keep her guessing.

His mother was stretched out on the sofa, languidly reading one of her Anne Rice novels. This was a familiar scene: Lynne Taylor was a binge reader with a preference for the supernatural. The Vampire Chronicles was her all-time favourite, she must have read it at least sixteen times, as if searching for passages she hadn't noticed before. Kim honestly had no idea what the attraction was. Once you read a book you already knew how it ended. There was no point in reading it again from what he could see.

Kim approached the foot of the lounge with all the caution of a mouse approaching a sleeping lioness.

"Can I go out now, Mom?" he asked, trying hard not to shuffle his feet.

"Cleaned up your room?" Lynne asked without looking up.

"Yeah," Kim replied with an absent-minded nod.

"OK, then," Lynne said indifferently, "where are you going?"

"Down to the Park," the boy answered, "I'm meeting J and S at the swings."

Lynne glanced up, eyebrows arched with uncharacteristic surprise.

"J and S?"

"Janet and Susie."

"And who might they be?"

"Some girls in my class," Kim told her conversationally, "we catch the bus to school together. They live out in Chamberlain Heights."

"Oh, Chamberlain Heights," Lynne smiled, putting on her best la-de-da accent, "moving up in the world, are we?" Kim was aware that she was trying to reel him in with a touch of humour, but he didn't understand what she meant. He shrugged, not really sure how to reply.

"Yeah, I guess so."

Lynne stared at him a few seconds longer, studying his expression, his posture, the lowering of his gaze. He was holding something back, obviously, although he looked more uncomfortable than secretive. Well, whatever it was, it couldn't have been anything too serious. He was nine years old, how serious could it be? Probably just embarrassed about having a little girlfriend or something. Well, whatever it was, she could afford to be patient. She'd find out everything eventually. She always did.

"All right then," Lynne nodded, turning back to her book, "have a nice day with your friends." Casually turning a dog-eared page between her fingertips, she signaled that audience was finished.

Kim said goodbye and exited the room, hoping to avoid further questioning. He made it as far as the hallway before she issued the usual reminders, almost as an afterthought: "Dinner's at five. And be careful crossing the road."

"Yes, Mom," he called back, and let himself out through the front door. A fine day greeted him with a freshening breeze. He was glad to be out in the fresh air, away from his mother's interrogations. He could see that she'd been surprised he was meeting a couple of girls at the playground, and would have given her eye-teeth to know what was going on. And that would have been a little difficult to explain, particularly since J & S weren't really his friends.

They were Kitty's friends.

Kim ambled along the sidewalk swinging his arms, watching dragonflies zither across the nature strip. Memorial Park was five blocks up the Drive, about fifteen minutes walk from his place. Except he wasn't heading for Memorial Park, not exactly. He was heading for the playground, just as he'd told his mother, but it had a different name over there. A lot of things had different names over there, come to think of it.

Over there.

That was his name for Kitty's world. That land of wonders he'd discovered almost a year ago, when he'd learnt that dreams weren't always dreams. It was a place of infinite possibilities, where fantasies came true and there was no need to keep secrets from anyone, least of all his mother.

Over There.

Crossing the road at Lethbridge Canal, Kim turned left into Memorial Drive. The Drive was the main street of Heartsfield, running the length of the town and dividing it neatly in two. Hopscotch grids decorated its sidewalks with meticulous regularity, shaded by the leaves of a thousand maples. Kim knew every crossing, curb and corner of the Drive, because he'd lived here all his life.

Heartsfield was your archetypal picket-fence township, a picture-postcard village nestled around the foothills of the Chamberlain Ranges. It was pretty much the same in Kitty's world as it was in his; chalk-white footpaths and tree-lined avenues. You could almost smell the cinnamon pie cooling on every second window sill. His Mom adored the place, said it had a Norman Rockwell feel to it. Kim didn't know who Norman Rockwell was, but the sentiment was clear enough.

Kitty's town was virtually identical, only it was called Hartsvale on her side. Kim supposed the similarity wasn't purely coincidental; everything in Hartsvale was like a reflection of Heartsfield. He'd seen something similar on Star Trek, one time - that episode where Worf found himself falling through a bunch of quantum realities (whatever they were) and everyone seemed to have a double. Which was how things were in Kitty's world. It was like everybody he knew had a twin, someone who looked and acted the same as their counterpart.

Kitty Tyler was his twin, in a way.

Yes, she was a girl, and she wore dresses and ribbons and everything, but she was his twin nonetheless. He'd realized that the very first time he'd "stepped over" to the other side, nearly a year before. It didn't matter that she wore panties and skipped rope and slept with a cuddly panda in her arms every night. They were so similar, so alike in every other respect. The cast of their features, set of their gaze, the very colour of their thoughts. Yes, Kitty Tyler was his twin in every sense of the word.

His twin, and much more besides.

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