The Chosen by Lisa Jane Smith, now you can read online.
It happened at Rashel's birthday party, the day she turned five years old.
"Can we go in the tubes?" She was having her birthday at a carnival and it had the biggest climbing structure of tubes and slides she had ever seen.
Her mother smiled. "Okay, kitten, but take care of Timmy. He's not as fast as you are."
They were the last words her mother ever said to her.
Rashel didn't have to be told, though. She always took care of Timmy: he was a whole month younger than she was, and he wasn't even going to kindergarten next year. He had silky black hair, blue eyes, and a very sweet smile. Rashel had dark hair, too, but her eyes were green-green as emeralds, Mommy always said. Green as a cat's.
As they climbed through the tubes she kept glancing back at him, and when they got to a long row of vinyl-padded stairs-slippery and easy to slide off of-she held out a hand to help him up.
Timmy beamed at her, his tilted blue eyes shining with adoration. When they had both crawled to the top of the stairs, Rashel let go of his hand.
She was heading toward the spider web, a big room made entirely of rope and net. Every so often she glanced through a fish-bowl window in one of the tubes and saw her mother waving at her from below. But then another mother came to talk to hers and Rashel stopped looking out. Parents never seemed to be able to talk and wave at the same time.
She concentrated on getting through the tubes, which smelled like plastic with a hint of old socks. She pretended she was a rabbit in a tunnel. And she kept an eye on Timmy-until they got to the base of the spider web.
It was far in the back of the climbing structure. There were no other kids around, big or little, and almost no noise. A white rope with knots at regular intervals stretched above Rashel, higher and higher, leading to the web itself.
"Okay, you stay here, and I'll go up and see how you do it," she said to Timmy. This was a sort of fib. The truth was that she didn't think Timmy could make it, and if she waited for him, neither of them would get up.
"No, I don't want you to go without me," Timmy said. There was a touch of anxiety in his voice.
"It's oilly going to take a second," Rashel said. She knew what he was afraid of, and she added, "No big kids are going to come and push you."
Timmy still looked doubtful. Rashel said thoughtfully, "Don't you want ice cream cake when we get back to my house?"
It wasn't even a veiled threat. Timmy looked confused, then sighed heavily and nodded. "Okay. I'll wait."