Thin Space (10 page)

“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? You 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—”

This room is so hot I can’t stand it anymore. I yank off my T-shirt, ball it up in my fist.

“I think we have to. We have to get it out. Tell each other how we feel.” She sets the glass down. She bows her head in front of the sink. “Just let it out.”

I can’t breathe in this heat. I may have to take off my jeans. A thought slides through my head: What if.

What if I
did
just let it out. If I told my mother what I’ve really been up to lately. And why.

But I know I can never do it. Just like I know I’d never strip down to my underwear in the sweltering kitchen. I stand up. “Mom,” I say, and I’m happy to hear my voice comes out halfway normal. “I miss him too.”

Hug her,
I tell myself,
just hug her and get it over with.

So I do that. My mother and I rock together, and when it seems the appropriate number of seconds have passed, I step away.

M
orning, I make a show of my boots. They’re my brother’s really. I found them in the back of his closet. I clomp down the stairs, the laces trailing on the steps. My father notices them right away. He’s in the hallway straightening his tie in the mirror.

“Good morning, Marshall.” He looks like he wants to say something else, but he nods instead.

I nod back and do a quick tromp through the kitchen so my mother can feel better about our lives too. She smiles when she hands me my lunch bag.

“See?” she says, sneaking a glance at my feet. “It was good that we talked yesterday.”

The wind burns my face when I open the front door. I brace myself for another gray November day. There’s a nice layer of snow plastered over everything. I trudge down the front steps. Looks like my father’s already shoveled. Once upon a time this would’ve been our chore.
Why do
you think I had two boys?
he used to joke.
Free manual labor.

Ha ha, Dad
, my brother always said back.

These boots are heavy, like I’ve got rocks strapped to my feet. My mind’s numb today. I’m tired of thinking, feeling. My mother’s teetering on the edge of a breakdown. My father’s probably just flirted with a heart attack by shoveling. There’s no thin space in Mrs. Hansel’s house. I punched someone in the mouth yesterday. What else? Am I forgetting anything?

When I reach Mrs. Hansel’s house, I remember. Maddie. The thought makes my stomach cramp up. By now, she’s had enough time for the things we talked about yesterday to sink in. I picture her shivering upstairs in her bedroom questioning my sanity.

Her front door slams and someone whirls out, skids on the stoop, grabs the railing. Maddie’s mother. “Yoo-hoo!” she calls. “Madison’s friend!”

I twitch my head into some semblance of a nod.

“You don’t happen to have an extra shovel by any chance?” Her accent’s thicker than Maddie’s, so
chance
comes out like
chay-unce
. “We don’t own one. In Nashville we could make do without.”

I clear my throat. “I’ll go get it.”

“Aren’t you a peach,” she says.

Before I’m halfway back, I see Sam crunching across the yards to meet me. “Thanks,” he grunts. He grabs the shovel
then stomps over to his driveway to dig out his mother’s car.

“The roads look bad,” she says to Sam. “I can’t believe they didn’t call school.”

“People here know how to drive in snow,” Sam says. He’s scraping the shovel back and forth, leaving a trail of snow clumps behind him.

“Well, it makes me nervous.”

Sam mutters something under his breath.

Maddie slips outside then. “Oh,” she says when she sees me.

“Madison, get over here,” her mother says. “I’ll let you clean off the back window for me.”

I’m already past the driveway when I turn to see Maddie dragging her arm across the glass. I don’t know what I’m thinking, but I stride back, step between her and the car, and swipe the snow off fast. I can see her out of the corner of my eye, shivering in her thin jacket, looking down at my boots.

She leans toward me, whispers, “Are you okay?”

Funny thing. I don’t remember anyone asking me that in a long time. Another funny thing: I have no idea what the answer is. Before I can say anything, a horn beeps and a car rolls up to the curb.

“Ride’s here,” Sam says, thunking down the shovel. “Madison, let’s go.” Apparently, he’s ignoring me.

Brad Silverman throws open the back door. His lips blubber out, fat and bluish. He’s not ignoring me. We lock eyes and I can tell he’s thinking about bailing out of the car and hurling himself at me. But Maddie’s mother totters between us, waving the shovel.

“What a lifesaver you are, honey,” she says to me. “I’ll just leave this on the side of the house. You can pick it up on your way home.” Then she turns toward the car. “Careful on these roads, y’all. My word, sweetie, what happened to your mouth?”

I don’t stick around to hear Brad’s response. I tromp off to the bus stop, still turning over my own answers.

Am
I okay?

Now that I’m wearing something on my feet, I can’t figure out what the purpose of school is. All semester I shuffled around imagining being sucked out of this place. Yeah, it was always a long shot, I know that, but there it was. Something to shoot for.

Today I clunk around like I’ve never seen these hallways before. Spilling my guts was stupid. Maddie was humoring me. She couldn’t have believed me.
I
don’t believe me. The proof was in the slanted front room of Mrs. Hansel’s house. I can’t kid myself anymore. I can’t say that maybe I missed a spot or maybe the bed was pushed over or whatever. I’m still here. I slapped my feet over every freaking inch of that floor and I’m still here.

I move through the cafeteria, ignoring the buzz around me. I can sense the speculation in the air. Barefoot one day. Plastic clogs the next. Today, boots. What’ll be tomorrow? Rollerblades?

I pass the football table, where a couple guys salute me. Next table over, the lacrosse players put on a little show for
my benefit. They rise up together, a wall, their arms crossed in front of their chests. Brad cradles his lacrosse stick, puckers out his swollen lips as I clop by. I notice some of the guys at the football table rising too. Chuck flashes me a grin, gives me a thumbs up.