Thin Space (3 page)

Apparently, I’d been out of it for a few days. When I woke up, my mother and father were standing by my bed sobbing. I tried to touch my face but the IV cord tugged my arm back. Probably a good thing. Later, when I finally got a good look, after I begged the nurse to hold up a mirror, I could see the problem. The face that looked back at me was not mine.

The intercom clicks on. Some doctor needed in OR stat. I reach the corner and turn, dragging my feet down the center of the hallway now. At least they keep these floors fairly clean. I don’t feel much dust. Or maybe the skin on my feet has toughened up.

I hear talking, footsteps. I take a step out of the way as several people turn the corner. When they pass, I slide back to where I left off. I do this all day, peeking my head into rooms, pacing around the few that are unoccupied.

Around four o’clock I give up, head over to an elevator. Could the elevator contain a thin space? Who the hell knows?
Since no one else gets on with me, I skim the floor as I jab the button. Feel the whoosh as the bottom drops out.

Unfortunately, I don’t get whisked out of this world.

Outside I catch the city bus. Ignore the passengers’ stares. When I first started going barefoot, it ticked me off. I mean, who cares if I’m not wearing shoes? It’s not like there’s some law. Okay, maybe there are guidelines. Health codes. But isn’t that
my
problem? Broken glass, germs, cold weather—if I can deal with these irritations, what difference does it make to anyone else?

Whatever. I can handle stares. Funny thing: for a while, I thought I would need to come up with some kind of story. But not one person asked me about my feet. It was like some unspoken agreement, like someone had fired off a mass email. I’d notice people look down, and then avert their eyes. After a couple weeks, they didn’t even bother to look down. Probably a good thing, since my reasoning sounds nuts.

The bus spits me out in downtown Andover and I trudge up the road, stuff my hands in my pockets. It’s getting colder lately. The sun’s just a memory. But that’s how it is in November, beginning of “cloud season,” as people in Andover like to call it. Every day, the sky stretches out gray.

I cross the street so I won’t have to walk in front of the movie theater. I hate that place. It reminds me of the double date from hell—Logan and Kate, giggling, hanging all over us. And him—him! My brother—looking right at me when he kissed her. But I don’t want to think about that.

Leave the movie theater behind. Turn the corner and I’m striding up my street. Fairly certain there are no thin spaces
on this stretch of sidewalk, but I carefully smack my feet down anyway. When I near Mrs. Hansel’s house, I’ve got what’s probably an insane thought about smashing one of the basement windows around back. It might be big enough for me to squeeze through, and because of the landscaping, I’m pretty sure no one will see what I’m doing.

I glance around quickly. No nosy neighbors lurking, so I scuffle down the driveway, kneel, shove the bushes out of the way. I must be losing my mind. There’s no way I can fit through that window. And I’m not even the bulked-up guy I was before the accident.

I fall back on my heels, let out a sigh. My eyes settle on the basement doors. It makes my foot ache just remembering how I kicked them yesterday morning. I don’t know what makes me do it, but I stand up, waltz over, and tug at the handle.

One door swings open.

Huh.
For a second, my heart seems to stop beating. I feel it start up again, thudding in my throat as I practically throw myself down the stairs. I stop, reach up to shut the door. Then it’s pitch black and I’m blinking in the dark, trying to get my bearings.

There’s a hanging switch somewhere—at least I think I remember one from times my brother and I were working down here, hauling stuff in and out. I lurch forward, flailing my hands, feeling for the chain. When I do, I give it a yank. Nothing.

I start laughing. I can’t help it. It was one of
his
jobs back in the spring to change the light bulbs for Mrs. Hansel.

“Hey,” I say into the blackness. “You must’ve missed one.” Hearing my own voice, even wild and shrill as it is, makes me feel halfway better, strips away some of my hysteria. Because I can imagine him answering. Like it’s just another long Saturday slaving away for Mrs. Hansel, and if I yell loud enough, he’ll hear me, poke his head down here, flick the damn light on.

“I’m coming,” I call, and my heart jackhammers as I stagger across the floor in what I hope is the direction of the stairs. When I get there, I’ll feel my way up the steps, let myself into the kitchen. Only a few strides and I can be in the front room. Step into the thin space. Get the hell out of here and find him. See him. Do what I’ve got to do.

My fingers hit a cobweb, and I shudder. “I’m coming,” I yell again.

Now I imagine he’s the one laughing. He didn’t believe her. He thought she was crazy. Really, we both did. “Blah blah thin space” was what it sounded like to us then. Who would’ve blamed us? All those creepy stories from “the old country,” as she called it—

My hip whacks something.
Ow.
I grope around and find I’ve bumped into the stair rail. I try to slow my breathing, keep my feet steady as I climb. I can’t mess this up again.
Focus
, I tell myself.
One step at a time. Just get to the top, open the door, and then run toward it.

There. I’ve found the knob. I grip it with a shaking hand. The damn thing is locked. I try it again, not wanting to believe it.

My mind’s spinning. I lean my head on the door. Try the knob again.
Break it down,
is what I’m thinking.
Just kick the door in
. Who cares? Once I’m inside, I’m going to disappear anyway. Someone else will have to worry about the consequences.

But just as I’m about to heave my body against the wood, I hear footsteps clomping across the floor. A click, and then a slit of light leaks under the door. I can just make out my clenched hand.

“My goodness!” The familiar voice is bright. “Has the house sold already?” It’s Mrs. Golden. Self-proclaimed neighborhood watch captain. President of the welcoming committee. Coincidentally, she’s also my school guidance counselor. Great. I squeeze the doorknob so I won’t be tempted to punch the wall.

“I know.” Another voice. Which has got to belong to the realtor. “Not even two months. And in this market!”

“My goodness,” Mrs. Golden says again. “Can’t imagine anyone living in this house but Rosie Hansel. She grew up in this house, you know. Lived here her whole life. Died in this house.”

“I heard about that. I’m so sorry.” But the realtor doesn’t really sound it. “We don’t have to share that piece of information with—”

“Oh my! I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Buyers are a nice family. They’re moving in this weekend. Single mom. Two teenagers.”

“Hmm. I think I just processed those transfer files at school. A boy and a girl . . . ”

They keep blathering on. I’m clutching the doorknob so hard it’s probably imprinting onto my hand.
I’m going to wait it out,
is what I’m thinking.
I’ll stand here all day if I have to.

“Darn it!” I hear the realtor say. And I’m horrified to feel a jiggling movement on the doorknob. “Do you happen to know which key opens the basement door?”

And then I’m tripping down the stairs like a maniac. That slit of light keeps the place from being completely black, but I can still barely see, and I can hear the clatter of keys, a clicking sound, and the door opening as I huff it toward my exit.

“You seem to know so much about this house,” the realtor is saying. “Do you know where the light switch is?”

And Mrs. Golden’s voice. “On the wall, by the door.”

I’ve reached the back steps when the light switches on. The room blazes up, and I thank God, because I realize I was just about to trip over a bucket of pebbles. It’s on the second step, and I leap over it, heave open one of the metal doors, throw myself into the yard, and then as carefully as possible in my state of total mania, I close the door.

My heart’s slamming in my chest as I race across the backyards. Bucket of pebbles! Jeez.

Ironic too, since I’m the one who put them there last spring, when Mrs. Hansel had us doing odd jobs. And somehow that meant collecting these stones so she could scatter them all over the place. On the tops of doorframes. In random piles in the corners of rooms.

She was figuring out borders, marking her potential thin space. I know that now. But then, my brother and I rolled our eyes.

She’s out of her mind.
I hear his voice plain as day.
You know that, right?

No. No. No.
The word pounds in my head.
She wasn’t crazy. Couldn’t be crazy.
Because there
has
to be a thin space. Because I have to go into it.
I sail over a hedge, trip over a tree root, pinball away from the trunk.

I can almost hear his snickering.

Listen,
I imagine myself telling him.
You weren’t there. You didn’t see her that last day. When she was in the bed in the front room. When she pointed her finger. She stared right at me. She knew—She said—

Oh, little brother.
He shakes his head, smirks, and I want to smack him.

For two seconds I’m pissed off, and it’s such a relief from this panic and the sickening ache that never freaking goes away. But then it all slams back into me and now it’s wrapped up in a nice slab of guilt.

Like I have a right to be pissed off at anyone. Like I have a right to even
be
here.

I’m sprinting up the back steps into my house before it hits me that once again I was so close to that front room, and once again I’ve blown my shot. And then I remember what the realtor said about the new family moving in. My stomach seizes and I have to clutch at it to keep from hurling all over my kitchen.

How am I going to break in now? How am I going to get into the thin space and fix this mess?

M
onday morning it’s weird to see lights on in Mrs. Hansel’s house. But I have to remind myself it’s not her house anymore.

Yesterday I itched to go outside, stride right by Mrs. Golden and her crew of cronies who milled around at the curb and chatted it up with the moving men. What stopped me from doing it? Why would I care what those busybodies thought? The front door was propped open, for God’s sake!

Because you’re a coward,
says a voice that sounds suspiciously like my brother’s. I laugh into my hands, but it’s like I’m choking. I realize I’m standing in front of Mrs. Hansel’s house, rocking back and forth on cold feet, staring at the place like some kind of stalker.

I get a flash of Mrs. Hansel one of those Saturday mornings, waving a list: Clean out the closets. Box up old
clothes . . . Her kids were going to come, she said, to get the stuff they wanted. She went on about it while my brother and I worked. About her kids. Her dead husband. About growing up in that house and Andover over the years. Blah blah blah.

I can’t remember exactly when she started telling us about thin spaces.

I trudge down the sidewalk. Someone’s at the corner waiting. I don’t think it’s Lindsay or Heather. As I get closer, the first thing I can pick out in the murky light is a ponytail. The girl’s back is to me. I don’t want to scare her, so I clear my throat.

She turns and her breath eddies in front of her face. She’s very pink cheeked. I do a quick scan. Note the blond hair pulled back, a jacket clearly not warm enough for Andover, jeans—those flashy designer ones—and boots. Same plush boots that Kate and Logan wear. It figures.

She’s scanning me too. I see her eyes widen when she takes in my bare feet, then they readjust and her mouth curves into a shaky smile.

I clear my throat again. “Your family moved into that gray house?”

She nods.

But Lindsay and Heather are suddenly upon us. “Marsh,” they say. I notice them checking out the new girl. They don’t bother hiding their appraisal. Lindsay even moves her head up and down like she’s making some kind of mental checklist. New Girl will probably pass their inspection. She’s wearing the approved Andover female attire. She’s got the ponytail. She’s cute enough, if I cared to think about it.

If she does meet their criteria, though, Lindsay and Heather don’t clue her in on it. Instead, they blow her off, jumping into one of their inane conversations.

“Then I was like get out of my face.”

“You did NOT say that.”

“Uh, yeah I did.”

New Girl shoots a look in my direction. Her cheeks are really pink. She’s got to be freezing. Her jacket is worthless. But maybe she doesn’t care. I’ll be the first person to admit that I don’t understand girls.

The bus squeaks up, and Lindsay and Heather march between New Girl and me like we aren’t even there. New Girl doesn’t budge. She’s got a funny expression on her face when she looks past where I’m standing to Mrs. Hansel’s house—
her
house now. She takes a step in that direction, and I bet I know what she’s thinking. She wants to run back home, forget the damn bus and the new school she’s got to go to, forget the idiotic girls and the crazy barefoot guy, and just get the hell out of here.