The secret hiding place in Jodie’s bedroom closet was just big enough for her to crawl into and sit with her knees up against her chest, but it was her very own secret place. Most importantly, her older sister Jamie knew nothing about it, which was a wonderful thing because her older sister spent all of her time bossing Jodie around and pretending like she was a big grownup just because she had long, blonde hair and she was old enough to have a part-time job taking care of horses.

Jodie thought her own brown, frizzy hair was perfectly acceptable, and she thought working at a horse farm was probably boring and stinky. But all that didn’t matter, because Jodie had just finished celebrating her ninth birthday. The last guest had just been picked up, and Jodie had raced upstairs to her bedroom.

Jodie kept a flashlight, a bottle of water, and a tiny dish of peppermints in her secret hiding place, and she was holding in her hands one of the best secrets ever. She set her flashlight down on the floor, and it cast a beam of light over her very last birthday present.

When Jodie had insisted on waiting to open this present by herself, her mother had not looked happy. But, of course, her mother had understood. Because this was what Jodie did every year with the present she received in the mail from her Aunt Dorothea, who was her favorite relative in the whole wide world.

While Jodie’s mother loved Aunt Dorothea very much, she always looked nervous when the special package arrived. Jodie, however, couldn’t wait to receive her package every year, and it was always delivered on the exact day of her birthday. Aunt Dorothea’s package had even arrived once when Jodie’s birthday fell on a Sunday. The postman had hand-carried it to Jodie himself.

Jodie’s mother had good reason to worry about Aunt Dorothea’s special birthday packages. The previous year, Aunt Dorothea had sent Jodie a jumbo Brazilian tree frog that was bright pink with purple spots. The year before that Jodie had received a chemistry kit for creating practical joke potions, and she had spent a long time in her room for giving her sister hiccups that lasted for more than a week.

Now, safely hidden in her secret place that nobody knew about, especially her sister, Jodie ran her fingers over the letters on the package’s brown paper. She loved her Aunt Dorothea’s fancy writing. Finally, it was time to open her special present.

Carefully, Jodie pulled away the brown paper to reveal an old book, bound in shiny leather. She turned the book over and read the two words on its cover.

Dream Journal

Gently, Jodie thumbed through the journal’s pages. They were lined, like a composition book, but Jodie didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Would her Aunt Dorothea really just send her a regular old journal? Then Jodie recognized her aunt’s fancy writing on the journal’s first page.

My Dearest Jodie,

Write five beautiful, wonderful words.

Place under your pillow.

Love and kisses,

Aunt Dorothea

Jodie looked through the rest of the pages, but Aunt Dorothea hadn’t written anything else. She wasn’t sure what her aunt had meant, but she crawled out of the closet to find a pencil. She looked out in the hallway to make sure her sister Jamie wasn’t looking. Quickly, she slipped back into her hiding place.

Jodie held her flashlight between her chin and shoulder and opened the dream journal to the page after Aunt Dorothea’s writing.

Beautiful, wonderful words, she thought. Beautiful, wonderful words.

As neatly as she could, Jodie wrote the word, “Rainbow.” Then she chewed on her pencil for a second and wrote the second word on the next line, “Kittens.” She couldn’t think about what else to write, so turned off her flashlight and sat in the quiet darkness.

She tried to think of everything that was beautiful and wonderful. She turned her flashlight back on and wrote the word, “Waterfall.” This made her think about swimming and the trip her family had recently taken to the beach, so she wrote, “Ocean” on the fourth line. Then Jodie heard her mother’s voice from downstairs.

“Jamie and Jodie, please come down and help set the table. Dinner is just about ready.”

Without thinking about it for very long at all, Jodie wrote down what her mother was cooking for her birthday dinner, “Lasagna.” Then she crawled out of her secret hiding place and slid the journal under her pillow.

By the time Jodie went to bed that night, she was so tired from her birthday party and from her birthday dinner that she completely forgot about the journal under her pillow. Her mother pulled the covers up to Jodie’s chin, kissed her on the forehead, and said, “Goodnight, my little birthday girl.” Jodie smiled and drifted off to sleep.

Then, Jodie’s beautiful, wonderful dream began.

She was swimming under the ocean, and all around her swam fish in every color of the rainbow. Through the surface of the water she could see a rainbow waterfall splashing brilliant colors into the ocean. She swam gracefully through the water as bright green fish and purple seahorses and sky blue dolphins darted playfully around her.

When her head came out of the water she saw the whitest beach she had ever seen. As she swam toward the beach, it almost looked like the sand was moving. Then she realized that the beach was covered with fluffy white kittens. She stepped out of the water and sat in the warm sunshine as the kittens purred and wrestled with each other and pounced on her toes. She picked one of them up and held him in her lap. His fur was as soft as her favorite baby blanket.

Then the kitten licked its lips and jumped down from Jodie’s lap to watch someone walking toward them. It was a man dressed in a butler’s suit, and he was carrying a covered silver platter. His suit was striped with glowing rainbow colors, and he leaned down to hold the platter in front of Jodie.

“Your breakfast, lunch, and dinner, Madame,” the man said as he lifted the cover off of the silver platter. It was Jodie’s mother’s lasagna, a big steaming plateful.

Jodie woke up the next morning and sat up in bed. She remembered every wonderful part of her dream—the waterfall’s rainbow colors splashing into the ocean, the purple seahorses, the fluffy kittens, the tasty lasagna. She reached under her pillow, pulled out the dream journal, and opened it to the words she had written the day before, “Rainbow. Kittens. Waterfall. Ocean. Lasagna.”

Then Jodie jumped out of bed and ran into her sister’s room to tell her about her dream.

“Jamie!” she shouted, throwing open her sister’s bedroom door. “I gotta tell you about this incredible dream!” Jamie was sitting on her bed, pulling on the boots she wore for her job at the horse farm. She turned her face away as Jodie ran into the room, but not before Jodie saw tears streaking down her sister’s face. “Are you crying?” Jodie asked.

“No. I’m not,” Jamie answered, quickly wiping her cheeks and pushing her long hair back behind her ears. Then she folded her arms and glared at her little sister. “Why are you in my room?”

Jodie thought she knew why Jamie was upset. Jamie had helped raise a horse named Peppercorn at the horse farm, and now he was being sold to someone who lived in another city. Peppercorn was an Appaloosa, and he had beautiful white and black spots. Jamie had a picture of him on her desk. Peppercorn had big, kind eyes and a mane of silky white hair.

“Oh,” Jodie said. “Are you sad about Peppercorn?”

“What do you think?” Jamie asked. Her lips quivered and Jodie saw another tear drop down her sister’s cheek. “They’re taking him tomorrow, okay? I’ll never see him again.”

“I’m sorry,” Jodie said. She wanted to say something more, but she couldn’t find the words.

“I have to go,” Jamie said, and she walked out of her bedroom, leaving Jodie standing there in the doorway.

That night, after Jodie got ready for bed, she crawled into her secret hiding place and opened her dream journal to the next empty page. She nibbled on her pencil and closed her eyes. What would she like to dream about? She couldn’t decide, so she turned off her flashlight and sat quietly again in the dark.

Then she had it. She snapped on her flashlight and wrote down five words: “Famous. Singer. Stage. Millionaire. Mansion.”

That night, Jodie became a famous rock star, singing in front of thousands of screaming fans. She had dancers behind her on the stage, and she was dancing with them, so smoothly it felt like she’d been doing it her whole life. The stage was covered in spotlights, and at the end of her song, fireworks went off all around her. The crowd screamed and wouldn’t leave the concert hall until she sang another song.

When the concert was over, she flew to New York in her private jet to do a guest appearance. Then she was driven by limousine to her mansion. While she was sitting by her private pool on the rooftop of her mansion, an assistant came in to have her sign another multi-million dollar record contract.

Before she went to bed in pink satin sheets, she watched cartoons until very late on a ten-foot television in her own personal theater.

Once again, Jodie woke up from her wonderful dream and ran into her sister’s room to tell her all about it.

Jamie was curled up asleep with her pillow on top of her head. Jodie burst into the room. She couldn’t wait to tell her sister about the dream, but she didn’t understand why Jamie wasn’t up out of bed.

“You’d better get up and get ready,” Jodie said. “You’re going to be late getting to the horse farm.”

“I’m not going today,” Jamie answered from under the pillow.

Then Jodie remembered about Peppercorn. Today was the day he would be taken away.

“I had this amazing dream last night,” Jodie said, trying to cheer her sister up. “I was a famous rock star, and I had my own private jet, and I lived in this big—”

“I don’t want to hear about your stupid dream!” Jamie shouted, sitting up in bed and glaring at Jodie.

“I know you’re sad about Peppercorn, but you don’t need to take it out on me,” Jodie answered.

“You don’t know anything about Peppercorn!” Jamie answered, and she threw her pillow right into Jodie’s face.

Jodie turned around and stomped out of the room. She stayed angry for the rest of the day. Even when Jamie came home from the horse farm sobbing and went up to her room for the rest of the night, Jodie was still angry.

Jodie was so angry that she got a really angry idea. She opened up her dream journal to the next blank page and she wrote, “Snakes. Homework. Spiders. Medicine. Dentist.”

That night, when she was sure Jamie was asleep, Jodie tiptoed into her sister’s bedroom and slid the dream journal slowly under her pillow.

But then, as she walked toward the door, she saw the picture of Peppercorn on Jamie’s desk. She stared at Peppercorn’s big, kind eyes.

Jodie turned around and pulled the dream journal out from underneath Jamie’s pillow. She picked up a pencil off of her sister’s desk, changed the words, and put the journal back under the pillow.

The next morning, it was Jamie’s turn to run into Jodie’s bedroom.

“You won’t believe it!” Jamie said, bouncing on the corner of Jodie’s bed. “This dream. I had this incredible dream. Peppercorn had wings, and he flew me up into the clouds.”

Jodie smiled and tried to look excited and surprised. It was tricky though, because she already knew what the dream was about.

“And I held onto his mane and he flew me up into the mountains. He landed up on the top and kicked around in the snow, and then he flew me up into the stars, Jodie! He flew me into space like a rocket, and we zoomed from star to star. But the best part, the best part of all… when he flew me back to the horse farm the owners were there and they gave him to me. He was all mine, Jodie! Peppercorn was mine!”

Then Jamie did something she almost never did. She leaned over and gave Jodie a huge hug. Jodie wasn’t sure what to do. She was still angry about getting hit in the face with a pillow. But it was nice to see her sister happy again, so Jodie just hugged her back.

When Jamie ran downstairs to tell their mother about the dream, Jodie slipped into her room to get the dream journal. As she crawled into her secret hiding place, she could hear Jamie’s excited words down in the kitchen.

Jodie opened up the journal and ran her finger across the words she had written the night before in Jamie’s room.

“Peppercorn. Yours. Stars. Clouds. Mountains.”

She turned off her flashlight and nibbled on her pencil. What would the next dream be? Then she had another beautiful, wonderful idea. Her mother had been talking about taking an Alaskan cruise for years. Jodie couldn’t wait to hear about her mother’s dream the next morning. She snapped on her flashlight and wrote five words.

Alaska. Ocean. Whales. Cruise. Sunset.

The End

Paul R. May is a full-time writer and stay-at-home dad. He writes children's novels, picture books, short stories for kids, and parenting articles. He taught writing for five years as an English teacher in Baltimore, Maryland. He then worked as a technical instructor for ten years. In 2002, he and his wife moved to Tampa, Florida to eliminate daycare for their children and to allow him to focus on his writing full time.He is an active member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators and the Tampa Writers Alliance. His website is - http://www.paulrmay.com.

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