Jasmine Lin and the Dollhouse Read online

  Jasmine Lin

  and the

  Dollhouse

  by M. Kate Allen

  Thea Press

  Jasmine Lin and the Dollhouse

  M. Kate Allen

  Thea Press

  P.O. Box 24905

  Tempe, AZ 85285

  USA

  www.theapress.org

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2022 by M. Kate Allen.

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Andrea Dobbins and Megan Hall.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-956604-04-7 (Ebook)

  For Miriam

  Chapter 1

  It wouldn’t be long now—a few more carefully placed miniature shingles and the finishing touches on Jasmine Lin’s dollhouse would be complete.

  Jasmine took care to place each stained cedar shingle, adjusting each with the nudge of a pair of tweezers, adding a drop of wood glue where more was needed.

  She stepped back and folded her arms, assessing her handiwork. She had built the dollhouse from a kit, putting it together piece by piece like a 3-D puzzle. Once that was done, she began modifying the outside and inside with added details. Every window frame had a perfectly placed plastic film to resemble glass, and the windows at the front of the house also had a special design of narrow columns with points at the top to resemble the windows of an old-fashioned bungalow. Before installing the shingles, she’d stained them herself with a little help from her mom, who opened the stain can and helped her set up a place on the back porch to work so she wouldn’t get woozy from the fumes. The outer walls of the dollhouse were a deep maroon color with stained wood trim. Inside, the walls of the dollhouse were off-white, and the floors had thin layers of vinyl glued to them that looked like hand-laid wood flooring. On the main wall of the living room, a wooden panel with carved lettering in the style of the famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, said, “Jazzy is the coolest kid on the block.” That had been her own idea, and a great one, she thought. She could hardly believe she was finished.

  Just in time for summer, she thought. Though she did well in school, Jasmine was usually bored with her daily classwork. She preferred creating wild adventures on the playground, spinning perfect pirouettes in P.E., and—above all—creating something from nothing with her hands at every opportunity. Most of the time, school meant a bunch of bookwork about stuff she already knew. At home, though, she could do all kinds of hands-on activities that stretched her imagination and tested her skill. This dollhouse was her latest in a long line of projects that required patience and a sharp attention to detail.

  “Your daughter is a rare soul,” Jasmine overheard her third-grade teacher, Ms. Dobbins, say to her parents once. “Whatever you’re doing with her, keep doing it.”

  School was over as of yesterday, though, and the whole summer lay before her. Jasmine knew that a bunch of her friends on Grove Street would be headed outside to play after lunch, and it was nearly lunchtime now. Jasmine heard a quick rap at the door. The door opened and Jasmine’s dad peeked in.

  “Time to eat, Jazz. Hey, did you finish your dollhouse?”

  Jasmine was about to reply when she caught sight of the open wood glue container. She blushed, hurrying to put the lid back on before her father noticed. But he was already busy examining her work. Both he and Jasmine’s mom were architects. They believed that to be an architect meant to practice perfection every day, and they both expected the same of their daughter.

  Jasmine exhaled as her father looked up with a smile. “You’ve done a fine job, Jazzy. Now come on, let’s go eat.”

  Downstairs, Jasmine and her dad joined her mom on the back porch for one of her favorite lunches—bento boxes that included chicken teriyaki, rice, and salted edamame pods. The smell of magnolias wafted on the breeze, tickling Jasmine’s nose as she sipped iced tea. She and her parents ate without talking, enjoying the birdsong and the rustling of the leafy trees around them.

  When they had eaten their fill and Jasmine had helped clean up, she asked her mom if she could go out and play. Her mom nodded, gave her a kiss on the forehead, and told her to have fun.

  “I will!” she called, and she ran out the front door and down the street to where two of her best friends, Roxy and Kennedy, were talking excitedly.

  “Hey, guys, what’s going on?” Jasmine called. Her friends waved her over.

  “You’re not going to believe this, Jazzy,” Roxy sputtered.

  “Believe what?”

  “You know the empty lot at the end of Arcadia Lane?”

  “Where we play kickball?”

  “Yeah,” Roxy said excitedly. “You know how I can see the end of the street from my bedroom? Last night everything was normal, right? When I woke up this morning and looked outside, the lot wasn’t empty anymore!”

  “Oh-kaaaaay,” Jasmine said. “So what’s there?”

  “A house.”

  “A house?”

  “A house. A whole stinkin’ house. Overnight. I swear it wasn’t there when I went to bed. Wanna see?”

  No way she didn’t want to see. She and her friends ran together till they had reached the corner of Grove Street and Arcadia Lane and looked down the street where Roxy pointed.

  Jasmine gasped. The lot wasn’t empty, all right. There was a house, all right.

  It was her dollhouse. Right down to the windows. And it was human-sized.

  Chapter 2

  “What’s the matter, Jazz?” Roxy said.

  Jasmine blinked, then rubbed her eyes.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “Let’s go in!” Kennedy said. She and Roxy high-fived and began running toward the house. Suddenly worried that they would figure out her secret, Jasmine hurried to catch up with them.

  “Guys, I don’t think we should go inside,” she said when they reached the front door. “What if someone is in there?”

  “It was just built. There’s no way anyone has moved in yet,” Roxy reasoned.

  Kennedy nodded and then climbed the front steps. She peered in the main window.

  “I don’t see anyone,” she said.

  Jasmine knew they wouldn’t see anyone. It was a dollhouse, after all, and she had built it. That made her the owner. It was all too strange for words.

  She wanted to tell them that it was a house she had built, but would they believe her? And even if they did, what would keep them from blabbing the truth to everyone?

  Kennedy tried the front door. It was unlocked. Her face lit up. “Come on, you guys!” she said in a loud whisper.

  Kennedy and Roxy tip-toed inside.

  “Wow, this is the weirdest place I’ve ever seen,” Roxy said.

  Jasmine blushed a deep red.

  “I mean, it’s a house, but it looks like little kids built it,” Roxy said, pointing to one of the living room walls. Paint was missing from one of the corners above the fireplace.

  “Yeah,” Kennedy said, brushing her bottom. “I think I just got a splinter in my butt from this window seat.”

  Serves you right, Jasmine thought.

  “Come on, let’s go upstairs,” Roxy said. Kennedy and Jasmine clambered after her. At the top of the stairs, a door with an old-fashioned keyhole stood to the left. Roxy tried turning the doorknob, but the door wouldn’t budge.

  “I wonder what’s in here,” she said.

  Jasmine shouldered her way in front of Roxy. “Let me see,” she said.

  She tried the door, wonder
ing if it would open at her touch, but it stayed put.

  Strange, she thought. This door wasn’t part of her dollhouse. It was something she had dreamed about one night. In the dream, the door opened to a secret passage.

  She rattled the doorknob again, but the door didn’t budge.

  The girls explored the rest of the upstairs. Kennedy and Roxy got onto the bed that stood under the slanted ceiling of the bedroom and began to jump on it, each trying to outjump the other in an effort to touch the highest point in the ceiling.

  “Stop doing that!” Jasmine shouted.

  Kennedy and Roxy stopped jumping, breathless and giggling.

  “What’s your problem, Jasmine?” Kennedy said.

  “I don’t want to jump on the bed. I want to get out of here,” she said.

  “Why?” Roxy said.

  “The owner could be here right this second,” she hissed. “We could get sent to jail for this.”

  “The police don’t send kids to jail for having fun,” Kennedy said, rolling her eyes.

  “How do you know?” Jasmine retorted.

  Just then, something creaked downstairs. They froze.

  Jasmine held a finger to her lips.

  The three of them stood still, eyes wide.

  Then they heard footsteps on the stairs.

  Desperate, Jasmine looked around. There were no covers on the bed to hide them if they crawled underneath. It was just a bedframe and a bare mattress. There was no closet. They were going to be seen.

  The footsteps grew louder.

  Jasmine looked out the windows to the street below. Then she had an idea.

  “Come on,” she mouthed wordlessly, pointing to the window. They tiptoed across the floor. Jasmine slid open the window, relieved when it didn’t squeak. She helped Roxy out first, then Kennedy. Then she took Kennedy’s hand, slipping onto the eaves and away from the window just as the bedroom door opened.

  Jasmine, Roxy, and Kennedy crouched on the shingles of the gabled roof. A minute passed, and then they heard a low sliding noise. Jasmine kept her feet planted but stood somewhat to see if any car was visible. A white van, windowless except for the front and unmarked on the sides, stood in the driveway. Jasmine motioned with a pointed finger for Kennedy and Roxy to follow her. They ascended the roof and climbed over the ridge. They crouched down again. A door slammed, and then a vehicle started and rumbled away.

  A few minutes passed before Jasmine braved a look over the roof. The white van was gone.

  “I think the coast is clear,” she whispered.

  They returned to the window. But when Jasmine tugged at the muntins, the window didn’t budge.

  It was locked.

  Chapter 3

  “We could break it,” Roxy said.

  “No!” Jasmine said.

  “Why not?” Kennedy asked. “How else are we going to get through?”

  Jasmine sighed. She had a point.

  “Here,” Jasmine said, pulling off her windbreaker. “I’ll hold this against the window and one of you can kick it in.”

  “Roxy, I’ll stand behind you so you don’t lose your balance,” Kennedy said.

  Roxy planted her right foot sideways on the roof. “On the count of three,” she said. “One, two, three.”

  She kicked hard, and the sound of shattering glass erupted behind the jacket. She wobbled as she set her foot down, and Kennedy grabbed her shoulders to steady her. Jasmine lowered her jacket. There was enough room for them to step through, and one by one, they did so.

  They stepped gingerly around the shattered glass.

  “Oh my gosh, you guys.” Roxy held her hand against her chest. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever done.”

  “What if someone saw or heard us?” Kennedy whispered loudly.

  Roxy’s eyes rounded. “We need to get out of here.”

  As quickly as the three girls had come, they dashed out of the house and ran home.

  Jasmine paused before her front stoop to catch her breath. When she caught it, she entered the house, walking and breathing as calmly as she could. She returned to her room without drawing her parents’ attention. She clicked her door shut and hurried across her room to her dollhouse. Her fingers brushed across the window-frame on the second floor of the house. Shards of plastic clung to the window-frame’s edges and also littered the floor inside the dollhouse and her own bedroom floor. She picked up the loose pieces first, then tweezed the remaining plastic off the dollhouse. When all the plastic shards were disposed in the wastebasket next to her desk, she opened her lower right desk drawer and removed a sheet of plastic film, a ruler, and a dry-erase marker. With a quick glance behind her to confirm her door was shut, she measured the now-empty window-frame and marked the plastic. She withdrew a pair of sharp scissors from her top right desk drawer and cut out a new window. With practiced motions she applied a thin layer of wood glue to the perimeter of the window and pressed it into place, holding her breath and the new window for thirty seconds.

  “Jazzy?”

  Jasmine jumped as her mother opened her bedroom door.

  “Did you have fun playing with your friends?” she asked, glancing from her to the dollhouse.

  Jasmine’s eyes darted to the dollhouse. The new window was in place.

  “Yeah, we had fun.”

  “What’d you do?” her mom asked, moving toward the dollhouse.

  Jasmine hesitated. “We played down the street from Roxy’s house.”

  “What’d you play?”

  “We played house,” she said.

  “Mm,” she said. “Do you want to pick out a new dollhouse to work on, Jazz?”

  “No, I think I want to work on this one some more. I found more details I can improve inside.”

  Her mom smiled. “I appreciate your attention to detail. You’re becoming quite the house designer!”

  Jasmine flushed with pleasure. Her mom gave her a kiss on the forehead. “Come help with dinner as soon as you’re done, okay?”

  “Sure, Mom.”

  Her mom left the room, closing the door behind her. Jasmine took a deep breath and looked at her dollhouse. The front half and the back half stood apart, joined by hinges along one side. Jasmine scanned each room, beginning with the bottom floor. There was the front door. There was the splintered window seat Kennedy had sat on. Jasmine made a mental note to sand it down. Her eyes continued their scan up the stairs. The locked door from her dream wasn’t there.

  Jasmine frowned.

  With a flash of inspiration, she swung the house closed on its hinges and peered in through the new window on the second floor.

  She gasped.

  Just through the bedroom doorway, she could make out the locked door.

  Chapter 4

  That night, Jasmine lay in bed, eyes wide open. She needed to go back to the house at the end of Arcadia Lane, but she couldn’t risk getting caught. Were her parents asleep? Were the neighbors asleep? Who was the person in the white van, and why were they in the house she had created? She turned on her side and breathed in the scent of her freshly laundered bedsheets.

  Why do I feel like someone is watching me?

  Her bedroom floor creaked and she sat straight up. The usual shadows of the trees coming through her thin curtains seemed ominous now. She strained to see in the dark.

  A minute passed, then two. As she listened, she heard the gentle, even snores of both her parents from the next room.

  This is my chance.

  She slipped out of bed and opened her door without a sound. She descended the stairs, keeping to the places that she knew wouldn’t squeak. She slipped on her sneakers, appalled at not having put on socks first. Then she turned the front door lock until it clicked softly. She paused. Nothing changed.

  She slipped out, looked around to make sure no one was watching, and descended the porch steps. Then she walked rapidly down the sidewalk and crossed the street at Arcadia. All the ho
uses were dark except for a front porch light, but her house had no light at all. She kept her head down, focusing on the cracks in the sidewalk.

  Then she was there. She climbed up the porch, the smell of acrylic paint and sawdust lingering on the air. Lights bobbed faintly on the front door all of a sudden. She turned and saw a large vehicle approaching. Would the driver see her?

  She slipped inside and pressed her ear against the door to listen. Outside, a vehicle’s lights flooded the windows before going dark. The engine cut off and a door slammed. She jumped before running up the stairs. Where would she hide? She looked in the bedroom and tried to slide the window open just as the front door opened.

  The window wouldn’t budge.

  She whirled around, one hand over her mouth as the other flailed.

  Footsteps sounded on the stairs.

  The stairway was her only way out.

  As quietly as she could, she moved out of the bedroom. The footsteps grew louder. Desperately, she tried the locked door.

  It opened, and she crept in. The door clicked shut. The footsteps stopped. Her hand was still on the doorknob. It began to turn.

  A deadbolt gleamed faintly at eye-level. Her mind raced, wondering what light source had caused the gleam. Her hand didn’t wait for an answer before engaging the deadbolt. The doorknob rattled furiously now. She stepped back.

  Then she fell.

  Jasmine woke with a start in bed. Faint light from the street streamed through her curtains. She sat up.

  Something was wrong.

  The window of her bedroom was too high.

  She sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. She wondered how she’d gotten from the closet to the bedroom. Was the intruder still lurking?

  Looking up, she saw that the bedroom door was closed. Nothing stirred. She was alone.