Thin Space (4 page)

So we’ve got that in common. One side of my mouth twitches up. I hold my arm out, think the words
after you
, and New Girl sighs out a swirl of mist and climbs onto the bus.

I don’t run into her again until lunch.

I’m sitting in the corner today, over where the lunch line exits. The table’s wedged against a brick column and gives me a nice, unobstructed view of the people spilling out of the doorway with their trays. It’s as good a place as any for someone to drop dead.

I’m hunched over, just about to chow down on my tuna on whole wheat when I see her. She’s paused in the doorway, the lunch tray shaking in her hands.

Several weird thoughts flip through my mind. One, those pink cheeks. It hits me that it’s got to be makeup and not some natural freshness. Which makes me think of Kate and Logan, and I can’t help shooting a glance in the direction of the football groupie table but neither of them are there, and who cares. Second thought: New Girl’s clearly nervous and doesn’t know anyone, so why can’t I be the one to show her the ropes around here and she’ll be so thankful she’ll invite me in . . .

I roll my apple between my hands. This could be my ticket back into Mrs. Hansel’s house. Forget trying to break in. Forget my clearly lame backup plan of canvassing the entire town—school, streets, hospital—and freezing my feet off in the process. Instead, all I have to do is make friends with some girl.

But she’s no longer shaking in the doorway, and I’m half out of my seat trying to figure out where she’s gone when I notice that she’s plunked down at the other end of this very table. Ha ha. Fate.

I raise my hand, start to wave it in her direction, and feel a shadow drifting over me.

Great. It’s Logan. Just looking at her makes my head throb and a clump of tuna on whole wheat churn in my stomach.

Something flutters off her tray, a napkin, and she huffs out an annoyed sigh. It floats down, landing near my dusty feet, and I dunk my head under the table, take my time reaching
for it.
How long can I hide down here?
I wonder.
How long will she keep waiting?
Finally, I suck in a breath, heave myself up, return the crumpled napkin.

“Thanks, Marsh,” she says, but how she says it sounds more like
up yours.

She’s ticked off at me. Which God knows I probably deserve. I watch her flounce away, and then I remember New Girl. We lock eyes for just a second before her face gets pinker and she looks down at her soggy french fries.

Am I up for this? Making small talk with a girl? I gather my lunch stuff with one arm and slide it across the table before I can change my mind.

“Hey.” I clear my throat. “We meet again.”

She smiles. “Bus stop, right?” She says it in a soft drawl, so that
right
comes out in two syllables. “I’m Maddie Rogers, and I heard you’re . . . um . . . Marsh Windsor?”

Can’t think of anything to say for a minute so I stare at my apple. Clearly, I’m rusty at this kind of thing. I clear my throat again. “So, uh, what do you think of your house?”

“My house?” She lets out a light laugh. “Well, it’s cold. It’s old. The whole place looks like it’s sinking into the ground. And it smells musty.”

Her voice is so twangy when she talks, that without thinking about it, I start laughing.

Her cheeks get redder, if that’s possible, and I can see now that it’s not makeup. So I was wrong about that. It
is
natural freshness. Whatever that means.

Get back to the real issue,
I tell myself,
that her house—the room downstairs—contains a doorway to another world.

Not exactly sure how to bring this topic up, though—without scaring the crap out of her, at least. I open my mouth, but the stupid warning bell rings. Whatever her name is—I forget—New Girl is out of her chair in a flash. So I may have already scared her off. Or else I hurt her feelings by laughing in her face. I
am
rusty at this. But whatever, I’ll catch her on the bus home.

I shovel my stuff into the trash, make my way around the tables, scraping my feet along, ignoring the stares. I have to walk by the sports tables to get out of here. Which means passing the football table and my former friends. That tuna sandwich is a damn brick in my gut because I know what they think about me. God knows I probably deserve this too. I turn my head to make it easier for all parties concerned, but when I do, I end up facing the lacrosse guys.

They’re splayed out, not taking the bell seriously, huddled up in some intense conversation. One guy, a guy I don’t recognize, squints at me, and the guy next to him, a guy I do know, unfortunately, Brad Silverman, smacks the stranger on the back.

“Yeah, that’s him,” Brad says. He lets out a snort and looks away, but the stranger doesn’t.

He’s a pretty big guy, I can see just in that second or two that we stare at each other. And he’s blond with a square jaw and a blank expression. So he’ll fit right in with Brad and his Neanderthal buddies. Only difference is he’s got pink cheeks. I don’t know why it takes me another second to figure it out: it’s New Girl’s brother.

Afternoon, I forget about her until it’s our stop. I stand. Notice her across the aisle a few seats up, not moving. Her head’s pressed against the grimy glass. Lindsay and Heather shoot by like they’re on fire. One of them elbows me in the side, yells, “Sorry, Marsh.” And they’re both out the door.

But I’m blinking down at New Girl. What, is she planning to ride the bus all day? I hover over her for a second and suddenly she scrambles to her feet. It hits me that she didn’t know it’s our stop.

I hold my hand out. “After you,” I say. It comes out like a bark, but the girl smiles and thanks me. A blast of cold air hits our faces when we step off the bus. New Girl cranes her neck around.

“Uh,” I say. “We’re that way.”

Her cheeks blaze up.

Probably because I’m grinning like a maniac.
Is this it—this girl—my key into the thin space?
Who knows. But I stroll along with her toward Mrs. Hansel’s house and keep grinning, even though the icy sidewalk’s practically burning the skin off my feet.

S
ay something! “I’ve been in your house.”

New Girl’s head snaps up.

“I live three houses down from you. Knew the lady who lived there. Used to help her out before she . . . ” I stop, wondering if I should get into all this, but she nods.

“I know. She died. Last night, this neighborhood watch lady came over and told us all about it.”

“Mrs. Golden,” I mutter.

“Right,” she draws out the word. “She was very, um, neighborly. She gave us a big basket with cleaning products and flowers and a pie.” She says pie so it sounds like “pa.”

I cough out a nervous laugh, and she shivers, clutching her thin jacket around her chin. I notice her glancing at my feet, which truth be told feel like frozen blocks strapped to my legs.

“I don’t like shoes,” I tell her. “They’re restrictive.”

She just nods. We’re in front of Mrs. Hansel’s house—
New Girl’s
house now. “You want to come in?” she says, and I almost fall over on the sidewalk.

Can it be this easy?

“We’re not half done unpacking,” she says as she fiddles with her keys. “You’re going to laugh at how messy it is.”

“I won’t laugh,” I promise, even though I can feel it already burbling out of me.
This is it,
I’m thinking.
Don’t blow this.
I flex my feet, rub the soles across Mrs. Hansel’s old welcome mat. They’re numb, buzzing. Every muscle in my body is twitching.

When the door opens, the smell hits me: Mrs. Hansel’s powdery scent mixed with medicine crossed with some kind of piney cleaning solution. Then the cold. Or really the lack of expected warmth. “Whoa,” I say, making an exaggerated
brrr
sound.

“I know,” New Girl says. “My mother thinks the furnace is broken. It’s even colder upstairs.”

I sway in the entryway, shoving my hands in my pockets so she won’t see them shaking. I’m three strides into the front room, focusing on the fireplace, when my foot hits something. An open box. That’s when I notice the room is full of boxes and furniture. There’s a couch wedged over the space where Mrs. Hansel’s bed used to be.

“It’s slanty,” New Girl says, reminding me she’s still there.

“What?” I squint at this obstacle course, wonder how I’m going to plow my way across the room.

“The floor. It’s slanty.” She tilts her head toward the chaos. “We’re probably just going to keep all the furniture against
the fireplace since it’s going to slide down in that direction anyway.”

“Huh?” My heart’s slamming so loud in my chest, she’s got to hear it. But what do I care? I hardly know this girl. I flex my feet and take another step, nudging a box aside with my knee. I’m about ten feet away from the fireplace. All that stands between it and me are two couches, a coffee table, and about twenty boxes. What’s the right way to do this? Do I just climb over, move the boxes, step in—

“Is your house like this—slanty?”

“Uh, no.” A laugh escapes.

“Hey, you want a snack or something?” She starts walking down the hall. I watch her ponytail swish back and forth. For a second I’m flashing back to Kate and Logan. How their ponytails did that too. I shake the image away because New Girl’s chattering.

“Don’t you just love this? Now here’s a room that says fruit explosion.”

I blink at her. She’s waving at something in the kitchen. “Well?” she says. It sounds like
whale.

I don’t know what she’s talking about. I drag myself toward her, poke my head into the room. I guess she means the wallpaper? Never really noticed it before, but she’s right. The pattern’s got every kind of fruit spattered across it—grapes, apples, oranges, and some unidentifiable greenish fruit that might be melon.

“It’s a miracle there’s still some left,” she says, pulling a half-eaten pie out of the refrigerator. “Sam inhaled most of it last night.”

“Sam?”

“My brother. You want a piece?”

I look over my shoulder, down the hallway. Which leads to the front room. Which leads to the thin space. Can I be this close? Again? And not take advantage of it?

“Pie?” she drawls.

“Pa,” I hear myself repeat. “Yeah. Sure.” What the hell is wrong with me?

We sit across from each other and eat pie—it’s not half bad. Thanks, Mrs. Golden! And I tell myself I’m being productive by dragging my feet back and forth across the floor. I know the thin space is in the other room, but who’s to say there isn’t another gateway in this house?

“The lady who used to live here,” New Girl says. “You knew her?”

Ha ha. You don’t know the half of it. “Yeah. Mrs. Hansel was an interesting person.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, and I don’t know why at first. The thing is I did like Mrs. Hansel once I got to know her. And the last time I saw her, after the accident, she was the only person who—

The front door slams and a deep voice calls out, “Hey.” The guy striding down the hall has a lacrosse stick slung over his shoulder, all his gear dangling off it in a neat little pack. “Madison?” he says. He stops in the kitchen doorway when he sees me.

I rise partway out of my chair.

He thrusts out a hand. “Marsh Windsor, right?” He gives my fingers a twist before letting my hand go.

“You’re, uh, Sam,” I say. I was right. He’s the guy I saw at lunch. Close up, his cheeks aren’t pink like his sister’s. They’re red, which just makes him look mad.

He props his lacrosse stuff against the counter, grabs the pie tin off the table. “Heard you play football.”

“Not this year,” I say.

“Heard that too,” he grunts out the words, openly gaping at my feet.

My toes twitch self-consciously. “You’re going out for lacrosse?”

“Yeah. Played defense last year in Nashville.”

“Nashville. Cool,” I say, like I’ve been there. This small talk is killing me. Plus, I’m getting the feeling Sam’s not too thrilled about me being in his kitchen. “Well, it was nice to meet you.” I stand, nod at Sam, who’s shoveling a chunk of pie in his mouth with his fingers, and then I force a smile in the general direction of his sister. “See you later”—I have to think for a second what her name is—“Madison.”