Thin Space

by Jody Casella

  “I can’t stop thinking about my nightmares,” she says. “Those people. Do you think they’re real? Ghosts or dead people coming through the thin space? Coming into my room and standing at the edge of my bed—”

  “Shh,” I say, wrapping my arms around her shoulders, pulling her toward me.

  “I’m scared.” I can feel her breath against my neck.

  “It’s okay. I’ll go up to your room. I’ll check to see if she’s still there.”

  I don’t say the next part. I wonder if Maddie can feel that I’m shaking too.

  Is this finally happening? After two months of searching, am I going to step into a thin space? Find my brother?

  22

  Hiding

  Maddie tugs me back before I can make it past the third stair. “No,” she whispers. “I’m going with you.”

  “I thought you were afraid.”

  “You’ll be with me.” She takes my hand, joins me on the stairs, but I stop.

  “What?” she says.

  I don’t know how to say this. I’ve told Maddie more things about myself than I’ve told anyone. In some ways, she knows more about me than anyone alive in the world. But in another way, she’s just like everyone else. She knows nothing.

  What I have to do in the thin space—and my heart stutters just thinking that it’s possible after all—I’ve got to do it alone.

  “You can’t go with me,” I tell her. I keep my one eye looking somewhere over her head, but I can feel her tensing beside me.

  “Why not?” She squeezes my hand. “Marsh,” she says, and as always, my stomach clenches. “I told you about my father. I know you want to see your brother. Can’t we both go in together? See who we want to see and then come back out?”

  I twist her hand away, turn, take another step up the stairs. When was the last time I was on these stairs? All those Saturdays helping Mrs. Hansel, lugging boxes down. How many times did I pass my brother here? We’d grin, groan. Those first few weeks when we hardly knew Mrs. Hansel and she was just the crazy widow, and we were ticking off service hours. And later, when we did know her—funny thing, even during football season, Mrs. Hansel could tell my brother and me apart.

  “Marsh.” Maddie’s right beside me, tilting her head. “Answer me. Why not? We’ll hold hands, take off our shoes. Our slippers, I mean, and we’ll go in together, like we planned before.”

  I don’t tell her that I have never planned to do it that way.

  “Maybe we can see Mrs. Hansel too. Oh!” She waves her arms. “Do you think she’s the lady, the one I saw at the edge of my bed?”

  “Did she have white hair?”

  She nods, her eyes wide.

  We’re at the top of the stairs now. There’s a landing up here with four doorways. All the doors are open, and from where I’m standing, I can see into each room.

  On my left, the pink-tiled bathroom. Next to that, Mrs. Hansel’s sewing room, now clearly Sam’s room, with his unmade bed pushed against the wall. On my right, Maddie’s mother’s room is a mess of clothes and shoes. When it was Mrs. Hansel’s guest room, my brother was in charge of it, which was a job in and of itself—seventy-five years of storage, basically.

  And straight ahead, Maddie’s room—only a couple months ago, Mrs. Hansel’s. It’s the one room I never entered all those Saturdays. Mrs. Hansel kept the door closed, said it was too messy even for us to deal with.

  Here on the landing, three feet from the doorway, I can already feel the chill. I step closer, reach up, drag a finger along the top of the doorframe. But there’s nothing but dust.

  “What are you doing?” Maddie whispers.

  “Looking for, uh, stones.”

  She frowns. “To see if she was marking the room? Like the druids used to?”

  I swipe my finger off on my jeans, nod. Did Mrs. Hansel really make a thin space here? I peer into the room. The bed’s draped with blankets, different colored ones, a quilt, a sleeping bag unzipped and spread out on top of the pile.

  “Is she still in there?” Maddie says softly.

  For a second I think she means Mrs. Hansel. “No,” I tell her, and mist swirls out of my mouth. “Mrs. Golden’s gone.”

  I step over the threshold. Maddie’s behind me, bumping against my back.

  “It’s so cold,” she says. “Every night I wear socks to bed. Do you think that’s why I never stepped through before?”

  “I, uh, maybe, that’s—” I can barely frame a coherent thought. I’m staring at the edge of Maddie’s bed, where Mrs. Golden sat not too long ago, her bare feet pressed to the floor. What happened to her? Is she in the thin space?

  “Where was she exactly?” I say. “Show me.”

  Maddie hesitates, then inches closer, marks out the area with a shaky finger. She holds her body rigid, away from it, trying to keep a distance. “Her shoes aren’t here,” she whispers. “Do you think that means she put them back on and went home?”

  I shrug. Who the hell knows? The whole concept is nuts. I take two strides forward, and I’m standing right on the spot.

  Maddie cries out.

  But nothing happened, of course, because I’m wearing slippers. I wanted to touch it—the space—to see if it’s different in any way from the surrounding area. I turn my head, squint my eye at Maddie. “It’s colder here. You can feel it.”

  I wave my hands toward the ceiling, then squat down and tap the floorboards. I don’t know what I expected. Except for the fact that it is noticeably colder, there is nothing that defines this space. No boundary. No curtain. No doorway. But somehow Mrs. Hansel knew that she came into the world here, knew if she wanted to make a thin space, she would have to drag her dying body up here too.

  It’s time now.

  Time for me to go through. To do what I need to do. To fix what I set in motion last summer. I know it, but I can’t make myself move faster. I’m in slow motion, pulling off my right slipper. It’s my brother’s, which somehow seems fitting.

  “Marsh.” Maddie touches my arm as I bend down, reaching for his other slipper. “Are you okay?” Her hair swirls around her shoulders. Her cheeks flush so pink.

  My thoughts rush together, tumbling onto each other so nothing makes sense. I’m almost in the thin space. I can find him. I can do this. I can fix this—but running alongside that train is something else. It’s one word—Maddie—over and over.

  She’s got her hands holding both of mine, anchoring me here at the foot of the bed. A part of me feels her grip, the pain shooting through my sore knuckles.

  I can find him I can do this I can fix—

  Maddie Maddie Maddie

  “Are you okay?”

  I don’t know the answer. The truth is—“Maddie.” And for some reason I hear myself blurting it out. “I want to stay here. I do. But I have to try this.” I look at my brother’s slipper on the bed. It’s wet, I notice, from running down the street. I’ve probably ruined these slippers. Me, always the messy twin. I let out a strangled laugh. “You want to hear something funny?”

  Maddie’s forehead wrinkles up.

  I can’t stop myself. “Mrs. Hansel never mixed us up. My brother and me. When she called one of us, she didn’t pause, she didn’t have to look hard, she’d just say Austin, or whatever, can you help me with this? Other people, they messed us up all the time. That’s why it was so easy to switch places. They didn’t really look at us. They didn’t really know us. And the girls. Logan and Kate. They were just like everyone else.”

  Maddie nods, but I know she doesn’t get why I’m telling her this.

  Truth. It’s surging out of me. I’m opening up, expressing myself, letting it all out. Too bad I’m never going to see my doofball therapist again. If I did, I’d tell him: You’re right. It does feel good. I let out another laugh, even though what I’m trying to say is so pathetic.

  “I hated being a twin.” I wait for Maddie’s expression to turn to disgust, but there’s nothing but a raised eyebrow. “I loved my brother, but one ti
me I wished—well, we got into a fight, not a fistfight like I’ve been doing lately, but an argument. And I had this thought. It was so fast, Maddie. It went through my mind for one second—” I let out my breath, watch a wisp of mist roll out of my mouth. “I wished I wasn’t a twin. That one second I wished I was just one person. Me. Alone.” I feel myself sagging onto the bed, one bare foot pressed against the floor.

  Maddie’s arm’s around my shoulders now. “Is that what you feel bad about?” she says. “You wished you didn’t have a twin, and now you feel like it’s your fault or something that he died?”

  “Yeah.” She presses closer. I could do it. I could tell her the rest. I pick the slipper up off the bed. I cradle it in my hands. “This is his, you know. My brother’s. I’m going to leave it here and maybe he can . . . find it later.”

  Her eyes are searching my face. They widen and she snatches the slipper away from me. “Oh my God! I know what you’re doing. You want to switch places with him. That’s what you’re doing. You don’t want to see your brother in the thin space. You want to take his place in there. You want to—”

  “Yes.” The word rasps out of me, but the real word—die—hangs there too. Some kind of weight has been loosened. My whole body shudders.

  Maddie and I stare at each other, our breath puffing out between us.

  I’m emptied out. There’s more to say and I should probably say it. Leave the world with a clear conscience.

  “Marsh?” she says.

  My stomach tightens up and I know I won’t do it. I like Maddie, of course, but how can that change reality? “Let’s go.” I reach down to remove the other slipper.

  “Wait.” She jerks her head toward the doorway. “Do you hear that? A car.” She springs up, tugs me away from the bed before I can think to stop her. “It’s Sam,” she says. “He can’t see you in my room. You’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Hold on,” I tell her. I clutch the doorframe, look over my shoulder toward the thin space. “He won’t see me. I’m going in. I’m leaving. I’ll—”

  But she yanks my sleeve. “No. Not now. Please, don’t do this.” She tows me toward the stairs, and I don’t know why I follow her. We hear a key clicking in the front door, and we’re skidding down the hallway toward the kitchen.

  “Maddie, I’ve got to—”

  She flings the basement door open, shoves me down a step, tucks the slipper into my hand. “Please, Marsh.” Then the door’s shut, and I’m standing in the dark swaying.

  At the same moment, Sam’s voice booms down the hall.

  “Madison.”

  I lean my head against the door, stifle a groan. I am such an idiot. I was right there, one slipper off, standing in the freaking thin space, and now what the hell am I doing? Locked up in a basement—

  “Who’s coat is that?”

  I hear Maddie, low and clear. She must be standing right on the other side of the door. “No one’s. Just, I borrowed it.”

  “Where’s Mom?”

  “On a date . . . ”

  “Ugh. Forgot about that.”

  I can hear the refrigerator opening. A drawer squeaking. Silverware rattling.

  In a minute, Sam sounds like he’s chewing cud. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing.” Now Maddie’s voice is farther away.

  More loud eating. Sloshing of liquid.

  I sink down, sit on the top stair, press my back against the door. There’s just a slit of light slipping under. I can see three steps down. The rest of the basement is lost in the murk. Why does this feel so familiar?

  I almost laugh. When was it? Two weeks ago? Is that possible? Could only that much time have passed since I was standing here, on this step, locked in this same dark basement?

  Sam belches. “What’s that?”

  “My sleeping bag,” Maddie answers. She sounds out of breath. She must’ve run upstairs and back down.

  “I mean what’re you doing with it?” Sam says.

  “I’m sleeping on the couch tonight.”

  Another belch. “Why?”

  There’s a pause. The door shifts a little, so I know she’s leaning against it again. “My room’s too cold.”

  Grunt. “Whole house is cold.”

  “I’m not sleeping up there anymore.”

  “You can’t sleep down here.”

  “Why not?”

  “What about when she comes home?” he says, and his voice rises up high like I’ve never heard it before. “With the guy?”

  “I don’t care.”

  Dishes clatter in the sink. “Yeah. She’s probably not coming home anyway. It’s better,” Sam says, “if she doesn’t come home. My face like this.” More grunting. “Brad shouldn’t have pulled me off him.”

  I can see four steps down now. Maybe I should get out of here, use the other way out, sneak through the metal doors, go home. I imagine myself groping across the basement, hitting the back steps, leaping over the bucket of pebbles.

  “The guy’s messed up, Madison. You get that, right?”

  The door creaks.

  “You saw how he attacked me. I told him I didn’t want to fight.”

  “He likes me,” Maddie says in a small voice.

  “He likes me,” he mimics. “Don’t kid yourself. He doesn’t even know you.”

  “Yes, he does.”

  “Come on. Don’t you realize how guys see a girl like that? Throwing yourself at them, like—”

  “Like what?”

  Long pause. “Nothing. Forget it.”

  “No. I get it.” Her voice screeches into Logan territory. “You take that one time. One time. And you blow it all up just like everyone else.”

  “That’s how it starts, Madison. What do you think? You go down a road and you can’t get off it.”

  “It’s not like that. I’m not doing that. It’s different here.”

  “Right, Madison. That’s what you want to tell yourself.” Clomping footsteps across the linoleum. “Look in the mirror sometime. The truth is you’re just like Mom.”

  I hear the clomping moving farther away, down the hall, up the stairs. When the steps shuffle overhead, the door opens and I stumble into the kitchen. I squint my eye, try to readjust to the light. Maddie’s slouched in front of me. Her face is red, streaked with tears. Just seeing her like this makes me want to punch something.

  “Messed up” is probably an accurate description of my state of mind. I’m wearing one slipper. The other one’s clutched in my fist. I open my mouth but nothing comes out. I have no idea what my line is.

  Maddie juts out her chin. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  23

  Thin Space

  We tiptoe upstairs. Sam’s door is closed, but I don’t care about him. In two minutes, he’s not my problem anymore.

  The cold hits us a like a wall. Maddie closes her bedroom door behind us.

  I drop the slipper on the bed, pull off the other one, and set that one down too. I hate to dump the issue of Sam on my brother, but I figure, what the hell, it’s his turn now to deal with reality. I flex my feet, feel the cold wood floor. My breath’s ragged when I cross the room.

  “Wait,” Maddie says.

  “Maddie, no!” I practically wail. “I can’t wait anymore.”

  She grabs my hands. I’m one foot away from stepping into the thin space, and she presses herself closer to me. “Just one minute, okay? I have to tell you something first.”

  I let out a sigh, but I can’t help listening to her. She’s so close to me. And it’s nice, warm—someone holding me like this.

  “They’re things about me you don’t know,” she whispers.

  I can’t help laughing. “I got a news flash for you—there are things about me you don’t know.”

  She pulls back, glaring but still gripping my hands. Probably she’s making sure I’m not going to dart around her and disappear.

  Okay, I can wait one more minute. “What?”


  “You know the stuff I told you before, about how messed up things were after my father died?”

  I nod. “Sam had to take care of you. Your mother remarried a couple of times.”

  “There’s more. More . . . um . . . recent stuff.”

  “You can tell me,” I say.

  The color spreads across her cheeks. “I don’t even know where to start. It’s stupid. I wasn’t thinking. Just, last year I went to a few parties. Lots of older guys went too, seniors, guys Sam hated. People drank, coupled up. Sometimes things got, I don’t know, out of control. Once the police came. It was like this big scandal at our school. And Sam, he was so upset about it. Nothing really happened. I mean, I didn’t really do anything. But he’s just . . . crazy when it comes to stuff like that.”

  I don’t think her face can get any redder than it is now.

  “And then, at school people were saying stuff about me. It didn’t matter what I said. To him. To them. This one stupid decision you make and you’re branded for life. When we moved here, I thought maybe this was my chance. I could start over, be different, call myself Maddie, you know?” She heaves out a sigh. “But if Sam sees me that way, I mean, how do I ever get away from it?”

  “Sam’s wrong,” I tell her, and somehow I’m holding her, whispering in her ear. “Maddie. I know who you are. Now. It doesn’t matter what happened before. It doesn’t matter what he thinks. It doesn’t—” And then I don’t know what comes over me, but I’m kissing her. Right here in the freezing cold room. It’s crazy.

  I’m crazy. What the hell am I doing? She’s just told me a story about her supposedly bad reputation and now it’s like I’m taking advantage of her—kissing her right after she’s spilled her guts and feeling terrible about herself. I am such a complete ass.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, “I don’t know why—”

  But somehow we’re kissing again. Nothing matters but this. I like kissing her. I like her. I don’t know how it worked out this way or why. I don’t care. The stuff she said, what Sam thinks, I don’t give a crap about it. It’s true what I told her. I know her now; that’s the important thing here. I don’t want to let go of her. I don’t want to stop—