Thin Space (23 page)

Maddie snorts. “Something crazy, you mean?”

Good point. It is crazy. It’s always been crazy. And yet—

“Her husband,” Maddie says, “the one who died shoveling or whatever. Maybe she misses him, like desperately misses him.”

I shrug, tap my slippers on the icy asphalt. “I don’t know. He died a long time ago. God. I was in middle school. Would you still miss someone from that long ago? I mean when do you get over—?” But forget that line of questioning. It’s too disturbing to contemplate. “Wait,” I say again. “Let me think this through.” I shift through my memory frame by frame. I picture the bed positioned in front of the fireplace. Mrs. Hansel, thin and pale, raising her hand.

The memory clicks and there’s Mrs. Golden next to the bed, telling me I’m tiring Mrs. Hansel out. “She was there the last time I saw Mrs. Hansel,” I say. “She would’ve
overheard Mrs. Hansel talking to me. If she missed her husband, like you say, it could’ve gotten her thinking . . . ” Maddie’s shivering, nodding along, but there’s still a piece of this that doesn’t fit. “Mrs. Hansel died downstairs in the front room, that’s where she had the hospice people set up her bed. How could there be a thin space in your bedroom?”

“I don’t know.” Her teeth are chattering. “Mrs. Golden was sitting on my bed. The way she looked, Marsh—with her shoes on her lap—I just had to get out of there.”

“Okay, okay,” I say. I try to keep my voice steady because Maddie’s on the verge of losing it again.

The answer is so clear and yet impossible at the same time. That somehow Mrs. Hansel figured out she’d come through upstairs. That somehow, sick as she was, she managed to get up there. My head’s pulsing so hard I feel like it’s going to explode. I have a flash of Mrs. Golden bringing over cake and plants, cozying up to Maddie’s family. She was trying to get into the house just like I was.

I slide toward the front door, forgetting Maddie for a second until I feel a squeeze on my arm. I look down and she’s trembling.

“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?

M
addie 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 time 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?