Thin Space

by Jody Casella

  Kate and Logan, maybe it’s like that for them too. Both pretty, perky, popular. But I know Kate. Or I used to. She has this insecure streak that other people don’t see. Had to ask a million times before we went out if she looked okay. Constantly fiddling with her hair, sneaking looks at herself in the mirror. One word and you could crush her. It made me like her more though, that vulnerable part.

  Over by the tree, she’s still studying her boots. The plush fabric is stained with snow. I could slide over to her now, put my hands on her shoulders, lift her chin—

  My heart stutters just thinking about it. How many times did I look down at her, lean toward her, kiss her? I know the freckles spattered across her nose. I know her blue eyes, the shape of her face when it’s tilted back.

  And I know what those eyes look like closed. When she was kissing him.

  She snaps her head up, like she can hear what I’m thinking. “I’m sorry.” Her voice breaks.

  The white sky blurs. I shut my eyes, feel snow wetting my face.

  “I need to go.” She pulls away from the tree. Has she always been so thin? The coat she’s wearing swallows her up. She stumbles toward me, slipping a little on the slushy lawn. She stops a few feet away from me, pulls her hair back behind her ears, wraps a strand of it around her finger, a habit of hers when she’s nervous. “I guess I’m not ready to . . . Marsh . . . I’m sorry . . . I can’t talk . . . ”

  Her voice is a punch in the stomach. It reminds me why I can’t give up.

  Maddie’s sitting on the stoop. When I reach the edge of Mrs. Hansel’s driveway, she jumps up. “Hey,” she calls. She wraps her arms around her flimsy jacket, crosses the lawn. “You weren’t on the bus.” She looks quickly at my plastic shoes. “Are you okay? Did you get in trouble?”

  “Trouble?” I look past her at the house.

  “After the fight,” she says. “I saw the principal and then Sam wanted me to leave—I can understand what he’s thinking, but anyway, I’m sorry.”

  Second time in thirty minutes I’ve got a girl telling me she’s sorry. Must be my lucky day. “So, what’s he thinking?” I blurt it out without planning to. I don’t really care about the answer one way or another.

  “He gets a little overdramatic sometimes, that . . . someone will take advantage, that I can’t handle myself.”

  “Hey,” I say, taking a step closer to the house, because I know what I’ve got to do. “We’re getting wet out here.”

  “Can I ask you something?” She lowers her voice. “Logan . . . um, so I heard—I mean, is she your girlfriend?”

  I sigh. “Logan?” I don’t even know how to answer this question. It hits me that it’s girls who have gotten me into this mess, who’ve started this whole crazy ball rolling.

  “Are y’all serious? Because someone told me—Brad—he said that you’ve been kind of mean to her since the . . . um . . . accident.”

  “Brad?” I close my eyes and think about his mouth dropping open, his head falling back. I flex my hand, halfway enjoying the dull throb in my knuckles.

  “He’s in Sam’s carpool. That was one of the things he went on about this morning.”

  The snow’s really coming down now. The flakes plop on the ground fat and wet. “You think we should get out of this?” I say. “You know, go inside?”

  She takes a step back and her foot slides in the snow. I reach out and touch her arm to steady her. “I don’t know. Sam . . . ”

  “He doesn’t want me in your house.” Why does this surprise me? Has anything about this whole ordeal ever been easy? “So where is he?”

  “Out with his friends, I guess. I don’t know. I told him—” Maddie blinks at me. Snow wets her cheeks, her hair. “Hey, do you ever wish you could go back in time, do something over?”

  I sigh again. Don’t I wish that every second of my life? But I don’t say that, of course, and I also don’t say that if things go like I plan, right this moment, I’m going to get my chance. “Come on. You’re freezing. Let’s go inside.”

  We stamp our feet in the entryway. It’s not much warmer inside the house, but at least it’s dry. Maddie pulls off her jacket. “I’m going to grab another sweater,” she tells me. She runs upstairs.

  My heart’s thumping when I kick off my clogs, peel off my socks. But now that I’m in here again, peering into the front room, my head’s clear. This time it’s going to work. This time it has to.

  I march in, start at the corner, pace the floor. I walk the first wooden board, slowly, careful to press my foot all the way down, keep it there as I slide forward. When I reach the wall, I turn, leaving no gaps, and walk the next board.

  Maddie’s back in the entryway, but I pretend I don’t see her. I’m on the fifth board, moving along like I’m skiing. When I hit the corner of a throw rug, I pause, nudge it up with my feet, and skim under that too. I’m not sure how rugs work with thin spaces. I’m not taking any chances.

  Eighth board and Maddie’s in front of me, blocking my way. She’s wrapped in a sweater but still shivering. “Tell me what you’re doing,” she says.

  I consider lifting her up, moving her out of my path. It doesn’t seem right somehow. I don’t know what is right anymore. “Please,” I say, and I don’t care that my voice cracks. “I have to do this.”

  She puts her hands on her hips. Then miraculously she steps aside. I’m past the section where Mrs. Hansel’s bed was, way past it, but I keep going. Maddie helps me roll up the rug. When I hit the couch, she helps me push that out of the way too. I can’t imagine what she’s thinking.

  I glide across the whole room. I don’t stop until I’m in the entryway. Then I don’t know what to do next. I sag against the wall. There’s nothing to do but stuff my feet back into my socks and freaking blue clogs.

  Maddie sways in front of me. “Marsh,” she says.

  I push my aching fist against my eyes.

  “You’re going to tell me now, right?” She draws the word out.

  I am out of options. I let my hand fall to my side. I look down at Maddie. I don’t believe I’m doing it. But I tell her.

  9

  Truth—Or Something Like It

  We sit in front of the fireplace, legs crossed, facing each other. Maddie keeps chewing her bottom lip. “I’m trying to understand how it all works,” she says.

  Oh God. What possessed me to spill this story to some girl I hardly know? To some girl who without a doubt is thinking I’m the biggest lunatic she’s ever laid eyes on? Who’s got an overprotective brother who’ll probably come after me with his lacrosse stick if he catches me in here with his sister?

  I look down at the floor between us. I want it to swallow me up. I want to drop into it. Disappear. I am such an idiot.

  “But I guess it makes sense, sort of, too,” she says, and I blink at her. “A place where the same soul came in and went out. There’s a logic to it. I don’t get how Mrs. Hansel would know that, though. How she knew where exactly . . . ”

  “I know. My brother, he said the same thing to her. But she was sure of it. She had it all worked out.” I can’t believe I am having this conversation. Later I’ll probably regret it, but right now, it almost feels good, throwing this stuff out there—stuff that’s been knocking around in my head so long.

  “Well, what did she say?”

  Is she mocking me? She draws her knees up to her face, wraps her arms around her legs, waiting patiently, it seems, for my answer. I clear my throat. “Mrs. Hansel was born in this house. She showed us an old picture, her mother, pregnant, standing in front of the fireplace. She said something about that picture, her mother’s smile—it just hit her that it was the moment she’d come through. And I know she died in the same spot. I mean, she made sure of it. She had the hospice people set up her bed right here.” I trace my finger along the floorboards between us. “She knew she was dying and she wanted to die—to leave her body—in the same place.”

  “Ancient Celtic beliefs,” Maddie says, her mouth twitching i
nto a smile.

  I feel my face burn. “That’s what she said. You can look it up, you know, online. Thin space.”

  “I might do that,” she says. “So, what are you going to do now?”

  “Now?”

  She shrugs. “You walked over every inch of this room and nothing . . . you know, happened. What are you going to do?”

  I let out my breath, force a laugh. “That’s the million dollar question.”

  “Why do you think it didn’t work?”

  I knock my fist against the floor. My knuckles are swollen up, purpling, but I hardly feel them. I’m remembering that the head of Mrs. Hansel’s bed was right here, the pillows probably just a little higher than where my face is now. When she squinted her eyes, that last time I saw her, I didn’t think she recognized me. Because she was dying. Because I was pretty messed up myself with my scarred forehead and dented nose.

  But she leaned forward. She held out her hand. Jeez. She sounded so sure of herself.

  “I don’t know,” I say, and my voice is too loud for this room. “But one time she told us a story about how she found a thin space. She went into it.”

  Maddie’s eyes widen. “Really?”

  I nod.

  “Tell me.”

  It’s strange to hear myself say it. When I talk, I can hear Mrs. Hansel’s voice, quiet and twittery, in my head.

  “She was only five years old when her father died. It was unexpected, she said. One night at dinner, he complained of a pain in his stomach. The next day, he was dead. Mrs. Hansel’s mother fell apart. There were days she wouldn’t get out of bed. She stopped taking care of Mrs. Hansel and her brothers and sisters. Finally, their grandmother had to move in to help out.”

  “Huh,” Maddie says. Then she looks at me like, go on.

  “Yeah, so the grandmother used to tell the kids these creepy stories about growing up in Ireland. Stereotypical stuff about leprechauns and pots of gold, but other stories too, ancient ones about spirits in trees and haunted caves. And she talked about thin spaces, where the wall between this world and the afterworld is thinner. Mrs. Hansel got it into her head that if she could find a thin space, she could go through and look for—”

  “Her father,” Maddie says.

  I’m surprised to see she’s following the story with some kind of interest. That or she thinks I’m nuts and she’s humoring me so I’ll hurry up and finish.

  “You said she found a thin space,” Maddie prods me. “Where?”

  “Okay, so the grandmother told Mrs. Hansel about a house. It was in another town, down the road from the grandmother’s, and a man had died in the upstairs bedroom. Anyway, after a while, Mrs. Hansel’s mother got better, started taking care of herself and her kids again. The grandmother moved back home, and one day when the family went out to visit her, Mrs. Hansel snuck away to go looking for the place. She found it all old boarded up, but the door wasn’t locked, so she let herself in and went upstairs. In the bedroom, she took off her shoes—because that’s what the grandmother told her you were supposed to do—and she put her bare foot down on that spot. Immediately, the room disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?” Maddie raises her head. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. She just said all of a sudden the room was gone, and she wasn’t there anymore, in that house. She was somewhere else. It was misty, she said, and cold.”

  Maddie smiles. “Well, this house sure has that going for it. I’m surprised you haven’t found anything here. I mean I can see my breath upstairs. I’ve been sleeping with like four blankets wrapped around me.”

  I knock the floor again and this time my knuckles blaze up in pain.

  “Then what happened?” Maddie says. “Did Mrs. Hansel find her father?”

  I nod. “He was wandering around in the mist, still wearing the same clothes he was wearing the night he said his stomach hurt. He hugged her. He told her everything would be okay.”

  “Huh,” Maddie says.

  Maybe I haven’t told this right. It seems sillier than how Mrs. Hansel explained it. Now I’m imagining a little girl version of Mrs. Hansel skipping around in a fluffy cloud, talking to this nice dead guy, and it’s hitting me that it could all just be a story—a story to make people feel better about death.

  I cradle my bruised hand against my chest. There’s a freaking lump in my throat. Reality is hitting me again. I can’t deny it anymore. There’s no thin space in this room.

  Maddie’s staring at me. She’s thinking I’m crazy. And I must be. Crazy to have believed this stuff. Crazy to have told her.

  “Marsh?”

  I groan.

  “You probably thought of this already, but that house Mrs. Hansel was talking about, the one she sneaked into when she was a little girl, have you ever tried to find it?”

  I swallow, take a breath so I don’t start moaning. “It’s gone,” I say. “Mrs. Hansel went back about ten years ago, after her husband died. He died in this house too.” I notice her face brighten up, and I shake my head. “He’s not from here. He was born in Canada. To make a thin space, the same person has to come through and go out in the same spot.”

  “That makes it kind of rare then, doesn’t it?” she says. “I mean, how often can that happen?”

  I laugh. “Not too often, apparently. That’s the problem.”

  “But you said that she went back there, to the house.”

  “It was burned down, she said. Just the cellar was left.”

  “Did she walk around the place anyway?” She’s talking fast now, waving her hands. “Maybe step around the general area where the bedroom used to be?”

  Funny. My brother once asked the same thing. “It wouldn’t work,” I say. “Mrs. Hansel said the thin space was up in the air. The bedroom was upstairs. That’s where the man’s soul left his body.”

  Maddie’s forehead wrinkles up. “I guess you couldn’t find a ladder, you know, try to get in that way?”

  I grunt out another laugh. “You sound like my brother. He asked her that too. She said you need a solid surface. You need to step onto it. Barefoot. He didn’t believe any of it, but he kept asking her to explain. I think he got a kick out of the whole story. Plus, it was kind of boring, the stuff she had us doing around here. Those stories she told us made the time go by faster.” I study the floorboard near my feet. There’s an old burn mark, probably from a fireplace ash. “Neither of us believed her. But now I just—” My voice breaks. “I want to see him.”

  “Yeah,” she says quietly. “I get that.”

  I keep looking down but I can feel her eyes on me, hear her soft breathing. I don’t understand how this happened, how I came to be sitting on this floor with this girl. It’s like I’m waking up from a dream. Ha ha. Who am I kidding here? This is a freaking nightmare.

  “Oh, crud,” Maddie says, springing up and looking out the window. “Someone’s home. Sam!”

  I unfold myself from the floor. “I’ll go out the back.”

  “Hurry,” she tells me.

  I duck out through the dining room, trip through the kitchen. I grab the doorknob at the same time the front door opens. I hear Maddie saying something about the snow, and then I’m stumbling down the back steps.

  I skate through the backyards, glad again for these blue clogs. The snow’s several inches deep now and still flaking out of the white sky. I’m out of breath, soaked, when I clomp into my house.

  “Marsh,” my mother says in a broken voice, and I fight the urge to tear back out into the snow. She’s hunched over the sink, sponging a glass. “I talked to Mrs. Golden today.”

  The day flickers back at me. Morning: soaking my feet in the dishpan. Afternoon: punching Brad in the mouth.

  I fall into a kitchen chair and tug off my coat. Unlike Maddie’s house, our house is a steam bath. Or maybe I’m just overheated from my sprint through the backyards.

  “Marsh.”

  I never know what I’m supposed to say.

  “A fight? Yo
u got into a fight?”

  My mother looks very tired. Or maybe she’s always had purple smudges under her eyes and lines dragging down the corners of her mouth. Maybe I’ve never looked at my mother’s face.

  “Mrs. Golden said something about trying counseling again.” She lowers her eyes, and now I notice the lines etching her forehead.

  When you come right down to it, does anyone ever really look at another person’s face?

  “She thinks that maybe it’s time for you—for the three of us—to talk to someone again.” Her voice shakes. “It’s been three months.”

  I study the knuckles on my right hand. Now the skin’s swollen up around Brad’s teeth marks.

  “I miss him. I can’t believe he’s gone. I see you, and I see—” She’s turned her back to me, sobbing, still dragging a sponge over the same glass.

  I’m supposed to comfort her. You don’t just sit there in front of someone—your mother—when she’s breaking down. But I can’t make my feet move in my plastic shoes.

  “Austin,” she says, and the word comes out like a wail.

  In the hospital, she sounded like that too. When I opened my eyes and the light was so bright and my parents swayed over me.

  I don’t like to think of this. But like other memories, it sneaks through when it wants to. The cloying medicinal smell of the room. The nurse scratching something on a clipboard. The welcomed beep of pain medicine surging through my IV. The chair in the corner, a different person hunched over in it each time I opened my eyes. My father. My mother. One of the girls. Chuck or another guy from football.

  No one had to tell me. No one had to say it. The wreck came back in pieces. Later. But only a few minutes after I woke up in that room, I knew my brother was dead.

  “I know,” my mother says. The glass shakes in her hand. “I know you don’t want to talk about him.”

  I kick off the plastic clogs, peel off my wet socks. My sweatshirt too—I’ve got to get that off. It’s damp with snow and sweat.

  “I don’t think it’s right what we’ve been doing. Going on like nothing’s happened. Pretending we’re not thinking about him, missing him. I thought it was easier not to talk about it. But, Marsh—”