Thresholds (14 page)

Her new family?

All those times she went to Stephanie’s house, or Stephanie came to hers, as though they had two homes and were comfortable in either. She could imagine running up the steps and barging into Janus House as though she belonged there. All those other rooms and apartments. Would she be welcome in them? What else was underground? Maybe she’d be able to look behind all the curtains.

That was, if she consented to become part of the family.

Great-Uncle Harper talked as though there were no other option.

What if she said no?

They would help her with the egg anyway, she was sure. It was portalwise. Once that problem was solved, if there was any way to solve it, would they bar her from ever coming back to Janus House? What if there was some way to take away her memories? From what they’d said, they could do that.

She thought about her mother and father smiling at each other because they thought Maya had made new friends and come up out of the pit she’d lived in since Stephanie died. It was great to see them so happy.

Joining the Janus House family would make everybody over there at least acknowledge her, right? Even if she wasn’t their favorite relative. She’d have a whole passel of new friends, sort of, which might build a lot of parental smiles.

She imagined the Andersens and the Janus House clan having a barbecue on the lawn between their houses. It made her laugh.

She felt ready to say yes to Harper when he asked her again.

 

 

 

Before she went to bed, she brought two small sofa pillows to her room. She lay on her back and put one pillow outside her left arm and the other between her arm and her body. If she started to roll over in her sleep, the pillows would wake her up before she squashed the egg.

She turned out the light, closed her eyes, and concentrated on the way the egg felt on her wrist. Warm, vibrating in a silent purr.

She moved each finger of her left hand, felt them respond. The egg had scared her, but it hadn’t crippled her.

There was a little live thing inside her egg, a being struggling to be born. A little live thing that had gone through hard times, almost dying. Maybe it had been in pain when the boy gave it to her; maybe it had been hurt as much as she had when it sucked under her skin. She knew it missed
C
hikuvny Boy. Maya wasn’t its first friend.

“You aren’t my first friend, either,” Maya whispered, stroking her fingers over the egg. “I hope we’ll be best friends, though.”

She woke when she tried to roll over one of the pillows she had used to brace her left arm. She checked the egg. It was safe.

The orange streetlight on her ceiling was gone; sun shone there instead. She glanced at her alarm clock and saw it was almost six A.M. Her stomach growled with hunger, and her mouth was dry.

She struggled to her feet and went down to the kitchen. The only sound was the refrigerator’s hum. After gulping down a couple of glasses of water, she microwaved leftover potatoes and chicken. “Boy, if I’m this hungry now, I better pack a big lunch,” she muttered. She made three peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and added three apples, a big bag of carrots, and two Twinkies twin packs.

The stretched skin over the egg was no longer velvety soft, more dry and hard.

Still hungry
, it thought.

She ate two rolls with butter. Her stomach stopped complaining.

She was supposed to have P.E. today. She wasn’t sure what sport, but she had her P.E. uniform, and it wasn’t going to cover the egg. What did she have that would? There was that green blouse with the full pirate sleeves, the one that would make her look like the ultimate dork.

Better a dork than a hospital patient.

Probably.

She couldn’t possibly go to P.E. with the egg on her arm. Maya wondered if Gwenda’s aunt actually
was
a doctor and could write her a medical excuse. Worth a try. First she had better get dressed and ready for school, though, before everybody else was up and could ask her awkward questions.

Fifteen minutes later she was dressed, the pirate sleeves plenty roomy enough to cover anything that might have attached itself to her arms, and she had a fresh sketchbook in her backpack, along with the books and homework she thought she’d need for today. Keys, she thought, and went back for them. Then she went back to get her cell phone from the charger. She raced down the stairs and bumped into her father in the kitchen.

“Whoa! Up early! Nice change from yesterday. What do you want for breakfast?” he asked.

Maya grabbed the big bag lunch she had left on the counter. “I already ate.”

“I noticed somebody did, but I assumed it was Peter.” He pointed to the pile of chicken bones on the plate by the sink.

“Oh! Sorry!” She threw out the bones, rinsed off the plate, and stuck it in the dishwasher.

“Are you all right?” her father asked.

“Yes. Feeling much better. I have to go next door and ask Gwenda’s aunt something, though.” She stood on tiptoe to kiss him, then headed for the door.

“What was that streak that went by?” her mother asked her father as Maya closed the front door behind her.

Sully was out
in the backyard. He usually slept with Peter, who let him out very early and went back to sleep. “Hey, boy,” Maya said, going to the fence.

Sully growled at her.

“What?” she said.

The egg vibrated against her wrist.
Something wants to hurt you?

“No!” Not Sully. She’d known him since he was a pale golden puppy.

Sully growled some more, his tail between his legs, and backed away, his gaze on her left wrist.

“He knows you’re there,” Maya whispered, shaken.

I won’t let him hurt you
.

“He doesn’t want to hurt me. He wants to hurt you.” Maya pressed the egg against her chest, cupping her other hand over her left wrist to protect it. “Spooky.”

A minute later, Maya was knocking on the big front door of Janus House. No one answered. She looked around for doorbells or mailboxes or any way of getting someone’s attention. Nothing. She could go along the porch and knock on some of the apartment doors, she guessed, but what if she ran into people who didn’t know her? Maybe they’d give her drugged root beer first and ask questions second.

She tried the knob. The door opened. The corridor was empty. She walked to Benjamin’s apartment door and knocked.

A surprised woman opened the door. She was short and solid, with light brown skin and masses of wavy black hair. Her eyes were black and bright. She wore a yellow terry cloth bath-robe. “
Kiri kara
! Who are you, and how did you get inside?”

“I’m Maya from next door. Is Benjamin here?”

“Oh. Maya!” said the woman. “We’ve been hearing about you. But how did you get through the wards?”

Benjamin, fully dressed, appeared behind the woman. “Maya. Is everything all right?”

Twyla, buttoning her shirt, peered past her mother’s shoulder. “Maya! Hi!” she said, and then vanished.

“Is one of your relatives really a doctor?” Maya asked Benjamin. “I need an excuse to get out of P.E.”

“That would be me,” said the woman, straightening. “Sapphira Porta, M.D. What’s the problem?”

“Ma,” Benjamin said in an exasperated tone.

She turned to him, eyebrows up. He tapped his left wrist and nodded toward Maya.

“Oh,” she said. “May I see?”

Maya unbuttoned the cuff of her sleeve and turned it back. The egg was flashing many different colors this morning: buttercup yellow, orange, red, sky blue.
You’re happy
, Maya said.

“Oh,” said Dr. Porta in a different tone of voice. “I always wondered what those looked like before they hatched. Nice. Let me get my prescription pad.” She went back into the apartment.

“How’d it go last night?” Benjamin asked.

“Almost normal,” Maya said. A shiver ran through her as she stared down and buttoned her cuff, concealing the egg. She wasn’t sure why she felt sad. She glanced up at him through her lashes, and then she knew. “Everything’s different, and no one noticed.”

He sighed, gave her a rueful smile. “Come on in. I’ll make you some cocoa.” He headed for the kitchen, and she followed. “Have a seat.”

She slid out of her backpack and lowered it to the floor, then sat at the table. “The cocoa won’t do anything weird to me, will it?”

“Nope.” He poured some milk in a pan and put it on the stove, then turned on the gas burner.

Someone knocked. Benjamin lifted his head, turning toward the sound. His eyebrows drew together above his nose. “Now, how—” He went to answer the door and came back with Travis following him.

“No root beer this time,” Travis said, “okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Benjamin spooned chocolate powder into three mugs, then poured a little warm milk in them, stirred, and poured more. He set the mugs on the table with spoons still in them. “Drink up. We have to head out in a couple minutes.” He gave his own mug a brisk stir, then drank.

“How’s the bump?” Travis asked Maya.

“Happy. It’s weird. It’s not like it’s huge or anything, but I’m still eating for two.” Maya stirred and sipped. Rich, dark, warm chocolate. She felt better. The egg purred. She wondered if it could taste what she tasted.

Dr. Porta entered the kitchen from a door on the far side and stopped on the threshold to stare at Travis, who, having watched Benjamin and Maya drink their cocoa without ill effect, was finally tasting his own.

“Another one? Somebody’s not doing their job,” she said.

“Ma,” Benjamin said, exasperated. “And anyway, this is Travis, who’s going to be our new
giri
.”

“Oh.” She blinked, then came to the table and lowered herself into a chair. She had a pad of paper in one hand and a pen in the other. “Maya, tell me your whole name so I can make it official.”

“Maya Andersen.” Maya spelled her last name, and Dr. Porta wrote her a note, then handed it to her with a flourish.

“Thanks so much,” said Maya. She tucked the note in her pocket, took her empty mug to the sink and rinsed it, then put on her backpack. Benjamin and Travis rinsed out their mugs, and they all left.

“Do we have to stomp?” Maya asked Benjamin in the front hall.

He glanced at the mat. “Not if you haven’t been underground.”

The whole lunchtime crowd of Janus House middle schoolers was waiting on the front porch when Travis, Maya, and Benjamin left the building. They fell into step, the Janus House kids talking to each other, half of the chatter in the other language, half in English.

“Nice shirt,” Gwenda told Maya.

“Arrr, swabby,” Maya said, roughening her voice. “Scupper the bilgewater and skunnel the skinks.”

“What?” asked Gwenda.

“Avast,” said Travis. “Stap me for a scurvy dog, ye poltroon!”

“What? What?” Gwenda looked back and forth between them. Maya found herself laughing; she couldn’t stop. She loved that she and Travis shared a fake language the Janus House kids didn’t know. She laughed all the way to homeroom, and then she settled into her seat between Benjamin and Travis, breathless, and school happened, and only occasionally did she remember her otherworld passenger.

Like at lunch, when she ate everything she had packed and then stared pitifully at the Janus House kids’ lunches until Benjamin and Twyla gave her some of their soup and half of their softbread. After that feast, her egg was so happy it purred like a silent powerboat and almost put her to sleep.

Travis spent lunch with his eighth-grade buddies again, but he fell into step with Maya as they headed for social studies.

“Hey, did you talk to your grandmother?” Maya asked him as they dodged down the hall between other students.

“Couldn’t. Tongue wouldn’t work. I hate that. Did you try to tell anybody?”

“No,” she said.

“It’s really strange. You open your mouth and your throat closes up. It kinda hurts.”

“Yuck.”

“I hope I can get the old dude to change it.”

“Yeah,” Maya said. “Yuck!”

 

 

 

Ms. Rupert, the P.E. coach, accepted her note with raised eyebrows and a glance toward Benjamin and Gwenda. Maya spent gym period sketching on the bleachers.

 

 

 

Benjamin, Gwenda, and Rowan waited for her when she left school, and Travis fell into step with them a little way down the street.

“I’m not sure you’re supposed to come today,” Rowan told Travis.

Travis shrugged. “My first job starts at four every afternoon, which means I’ve got a little time to kill. Might as well stop by and see if Uncle Dude wants to mess me up some more.”

“He will for sure if you call him that,” said Rowan.

“Oh, yeah?” said Travis.

“He doesn’t tolerate disrespect.”

“We should have an interesting future together, then,” Travis said.

Maya leaned closer to Rowan, studying the half of his face she could see. Was Rowan . . . smiling?

“Enter at your own risk,” he said, and held open the front door.

 

 

 

Instead of taking a left and entering Benjamin’s apartment, Rowan led them on the route they had taken the day before, past other doors and the staircase to the etched glass double doors facing the Y where the corridor forked. Again smoked sunlight came through the frosted glass, and again Maya saw blurred blotches that might be trees or bushes, but today there were things moving beyond the glass, and faint cacophony.

“
Kesa navi
,” Rowan said as he turned the doorknob of the right-hand glass door, and the others repeated it. He opened the door and a wall of stench rolled toward them, an acrid beetle-crunch smell combined with burned gunpowder, jasmine, window-washing fluid, and roasted meat. This combined with a discordant assault of piercing sound: human conversation, song—bird, human, insect—the screech of metal on metal, high-pitched peeping, and lower froggy
grunk
s.