David thought about it. His face slowly twisted into an I'm-gonna-eat-it-but-I-know-I'm-not-gonna-like-it expression. “Yeah . . . I kinda do.”
Xander stepped to the nearest locker, number 76. “You or me?” he asked.
David did not approach. “Um . . . why not both of us?”
“Because in
The Fly
, two life forms teleported at the same time and ended up all mixed together. As much as I love you and all that, I don't want to
be
you.”
“I think I saw something like that in
SpongeBob
. It was pretty gross.”
“So . . . you or me?”
“You?” David said, closing one eye.
Xander shrugged. He put his foot in the locker.
David stopped him. “No, no, wait. I'll do it. I did it the first time; I can do it again.”
Hey, if Dae wanted to. “You sure?”
David climbed in without a word. Xander started to shut the door. David stopped it with his hand. “What if I end up in somebody else's linen closet . . . or worse?”
“What's worse? Like on their dining room table while they're eating? A trash compactor? You want me to go?”
David closed his eyes. “Shut the door.”
Xander pushed it until the latch clicked tight.
The scream was hideous. For the first time Xander understood the meaning of the term “bloodcurdling.” He pulled up on the latch. His fingers slipped off. The scream went on. He pulled again. Got it. He opened the door. David was hunched over in the tight space.
Laughing.
“Did I get you?” he said.
Xander half-yelled, “You and Dad! What's with you?”
David looked around. “I didn't go anywhere.”
“Unfortunately.” Xander slammed the door. He stormed toward the double doors at the end of the hall, then pulled up.
He turned back to the closed locker door, said, “David, don't keep it up. Don't make me come open that door.” The latch rose by itself and the door opened. David popped his head out, displaying a sheepish smile.
Xander said, “You're getting smarter.”
David stepped out and approached him.
“Look,” Xander said, “all this is weird enough. This is not the time for practical jokes. Don't you think that whatever can take you from home to school faster than a blink could make you scream like you just did?”
David lost his smile. He bowed his head.
“You could have really been in pain, dying,” Xander continued. “If we're going to be there for each other, you can't cry wolf. Understand?”
David nodded.
“Next time you scream, it might be for real and I won't come because I think you're joking.”
“I know what âcry wolf ' means,” David said quietly.
Xander gripped David's shoulder and gave him a little shake. “It's okay. Just don't do it again.” When David looked up, Xander saw in his face that he really got it. He didn't want David to be like Dad with his practical jokes, especially now; and he didn't want himself to be like Dad with unending lectures. So he patted David on the back and they walked on.
THURSDAY, 2:55 P.M.
As they approached the double doors, they heard voices. They looked at each other with wide eyes, looked around for a place to hide. Xander's first thought was the lockers, but David's test didn't prove anything. Any of these lockers could be portals to another place. He looked at David, whose eyes went from the lockers to Xander's face. He had considered the lockers as well and had ruled them out. And they were too far from the nearest classroom to hide in thereâ
if
the door was even unlocked. He pointed and David moved to the wall beside the door as Xander did the same on the other side. They pressed their bodies against the wall and waited. The voices did not get louder. One of them was Dad's. Xander came off the wall and stepped before a little wire-embedded window set in the door nearest him. Beyond the door was another wide hallway and another set of double doors. Looking down the hallway to his left, he saw his father talking to a man in coveralls. Beside the man was a rolling cart, upon which were a big red toolbox, an assortment of small boxes, and small brown paper bags open at the top. Xander could hear the rhythm of their conversation, but not their words.
Dad was smiling, nodding, probably telling the man about his family, the move here. The man laughed, stooped to reach a lower shelf on his cart, and stood again. He handed Dad what looked like a stack of wooden playing cards. Xander realized they were mousetraps. Dad said something, and the man stooped again for another stack. He turned one of the paper bags over. The clattering sound of dumped nails reached Xander's ears. The man dropped his stack of mousetraps into the bag, then held it open for Dad to do the same. He rolled up the top and handed it to Xander's father. Dad nodded and extended his hand. The man grabbed it and they shook. Dad turned and looked directly at Xander. Xander dropped down below the window, noticing David had been tiptoeing to peer out the window in the other door.
David whispered, “Did he see you?”
“I don't think so.” He rose again, expecting to see Dad looming just on the other side. But there he was saying his goodbyes and turning to walk in the other direction. Xander caught David's attention and jerked his head to go. They walked quietly away, toward the short corridor at the end of the hallway and locker one-nineteen.
David whispered, “How did they not hear you yelling at me?” “Or your screams?” Xander thought about it. “Maybe they met out there after all that.”
“I hope so. I guess we'll find out when Dad gets home.”
“It's not our fault,” Xander said, repeating his thoughts from earlier.
“We'll show him what happened. He
can't
blame us.”
Xander stopped walking. He looked back at the double doors, saw no sign of anyone. He hunched down to be at David's eye level. “I don't think we should tell Dad,” he said. “Or Mom,” he added in case that wasn't clear.
“But . . . why not?”
It was a fair question. They were a close family, not in the habit of keeping things from one another. What was embarrassing or personal, dreams and fearsâit was all fair game in the King household. Mom had said the world was tough enough without having to worry about hiding things in your own home, from your own family. “So what if you do stupid things?” she'd said. “We're humans, not robots.”
Recently, Xander had done some things he had not shared with his family. Just before school finals, a friend had shown him the answer key to the biology exam. Xander hadn't asked how he'd gotten it. But he
had
studied it and aced the test. Another time, Dean had bummed some cigarettes off his older brother, and they'd smoked them behind the school. His dad would have been disappointed, but wouldn't have jumped on him too badly. Still, they were secrets he'd kept from the family. He felt both bad about that and excited to have things they didn't know about. He figured when the time was right, he'd share these experiences and the family's openness would be complete again. Until then, he'd keep these indiscretions in a little footlocker in his mind. The linen closet's fast-track to school would go in there, as well. If his little brother had never needed a footlocker, Xander would have been happy for him. But something told him they were playing with fire. The fewer people burned, the better.
“Something like this will freak them out. They might decide we shouldn't live there. Then we couldn't explore anymore. If the house has a closet like that, what
else
could there be?” He nodded as if to say,
Yeah, this could be fun
.
They went around the corner and David frowned and Xan-der knew why: his brother didn't like secrets, but neither did he want to move away from the house. At last he said, “Okay, it's just between us. But if it turns bad, we tell them.”
Xander stood straight. “Of course.”
David stepped into the locker first. Xander shut it and counted to ten. When he opened it again, David was gone.
“I will never get used to this,” he said, then stepped into the locker.
Five seconds later, he stepped out of the linen closet into the upstairs hallway, where David was waiting.
THURSDAY, 11:32 P.M.
Xander and David's late-night conversations had become habit.
It helped both of them process the day's events and plan for tomorrow. So this night, like the two before, they faced each other in the motel bed.
“Do you miss Danielle?” David whispered.
“Of course.”
“Maybe you'll find a new girlfriend.”
“I doubt it. Maybe you will.”
David smiled. A year ago, he would have protested that no such thing would
ever
happen, not in a thousand years.
They fell silent. Their parents breathed. Something ticked, ticked.
“I don't think Dad saw us,” David said.
“No,” Xander agreed. An hour after they had stepped back into the corridor from the closet, from the
school
, Dad had returned home. If he had seen them peering at him from the windows in the doors, he had not let on. He had simply gone about organizing the rest of the upstairs exploration. Both of his sons said they could handle it and had urged him to find something else to do. He had wandered off, moping theatrically. By the time it became too dark to continue, Mom had made short work of the kitchen and butler's pantryâthat's what she called the small room with cabinets and counters between the kitchen and dining room.
Toria had proclaimed her room ready for furniture and decorations. Dad had walked the grounds, finding nothing of particular interest. And the boys had finished the second-floor investigation. They were all so wiped out, Toria had suggested turning off the television midway through
America's
Funniest Home Videos
. Despite its ranking as their favorite show, everyone had agreed.
But now, an hour later, the brothers were wide-awake, sharing their thoughts.
David whispered, “Do you think the closet's the only place that moves you from one place to another?”
“One place like that in the
whole world
is enough,” Xander said. Then he thought about how his father had seemed to instantly shift from the dining room to another part of the house when they had first been here. “I think there might be other spots like that in the house. We just haven't found them.”
“Yet,” David added.
“I was thinking. What if the spots come and go? I saw that in a movie. These portals moved around. Once it was in a phone booth. Another time, in the bathroom of a Chinese restaurant. Same portal, moving around.”
“That would suck.”
“Yeah. What if you were taking a shower and suddenly you were standing in the middle of a football field at halftime?”
“
Naked?
”
“Shhh.” Xander nodded. He could tell David was thinking about it.
“Ooh. That would
really
suck,” his brother decided.
“I don't think that could happen.”
“Why not?”
“With the closet and the locker, you know what to do to make it work: you step in and shut the door. In the middle of a field, what would you do to return?”
David made a sour face. “Maybe you don't.”
“Well, that tells you something, doesn't it?”
“Like what?”
“Like we don't know anything about what we're dealing with. It could be dangerous.”
“So . . . should we tell Mom and Dad?”
Toria popped up from the side of the bed nearest David.
“Tell them what?”
Both boys screamed in whispers.
“Toria, go back to bed,” Xander said.
“Tell Mom and Dad what?”
“That David feels like throwing up.”
“Ugh!” She was back in the rollaway before Xander realized she was gone.
“And no,” Xander said, almost touching David's nose with his finger. “Don't tell them. Not yet.”
David didn't respond for a minute. Then he said, “You know how when we got back from the school, we checked the rest of the second floor and closed closet doors with one of us in it?
Shouldn't we go back and do that in the rest of the house?”
“I guess.”
“The basement?”
“Everywhere.” Xander knew what David was thinking: they'd both been surprised when nothing turned up down there.
Now they were going to give it another chance. He thought of all the rooms down there, all the doors. Lots of places to hide a portal. And if there was any correlation between the connected placesâthe relative brightness and friendliness of a linen closest and a schoolâwhere might a portal in the dark, creepy basement lead?
He whispered, “We need to stick together.” David said nothing. His eyes were closed. “David?”
A slight snore.
“'Night, Dae,” Xander said, and rolled over.
FRIDAY, 11:17 A.M.
The power came on with a
pop! pop! pop!
Xander was standing at the top of the stairs on the second-floor landing when an electric light flared out from the big entryway chandelier. Then three bulbs exploded, one after the other.
“They're on!” he called.
Several lamps in the upstairs corridor came to life as well.
One of them blazed bright and went out. The master bedroom suite was down the hall on the opposite side of the house from the kids' bedrooms. Dad hurried out of there now, his eyes surveying the corridor's ceiling lamps.
Down the hall in the other direction, David came out of their bedroom. “Lights on here too!” he said.
Dad said, “I see.”
Xander pointed. “Some lights just blew on the chandelier.”
Dad nodded as he descended the stairs, two at a time. “Old wiring, plus water and rodent damage, dirt in the sockets . . .