Authors: Emily Hainsworth
“Owen, what are you—” a girl’s voice says.
The door swings open and Nina stares at me, open-mouthed.
“Cam—”
She’s not wearing an apron. She isn’t laughing. And she isn’t green. Her eyes are like saucers. There’s a kid in pajamas holding the door open. He looks about ten and he’s white as a sheet. She glances at him like she just realized he’s there, and closes the door in my face.
So far this is going better than it did at the diner.
I hear murmuring voices through the wood, and when the door finally opens again, Nina’s alone. She turns the porch light off, glances up and down the street, and ushers me through the door. She turns the deadbolt once I’m inside, looks at me like I’ve got the plague or something, then lunges for the light switch. The dim entryway goes black. She sweeps in front of me, brushing my arm. I jerk away—and feel dumb. She’s tugging at these lacy curtains on either side of the door, but the moon is shining through the windows so brightly, I don’t know why she bothers.
She stops and stares at me like she’s evaluating some problem. I’m shivering, but I don’t think it’s because of the cold. I can’t shake the memory of her at the diner, the pitying look in her eyes. Pity for a stranger.
“Tell me what’s going on,” I demand.
“What?”
“What
is
that green light thing? What does it do? And what’s with pretending you didn’t know me at the diner?”
She starts to speak—but I cut her off.
“How did you know my name before I ever met you? If you live on Mike’s street, why don’t you go to our school?” I think about the tattered ribbon on the empty pole. “And what the fuck is with taking down my girlfriend’s memorial?”
Nina glances up the stairs to a darkened hallway. She hustles wordlessly out of the room, and I follow her to the source of the only light in the house—the kitchen. She closes the door behind me, and we’re in a yellow room. Yellow cabinets, yellow counters … even these white-and-yellow plastic chairs that look like they belong in a spaceship conference room. She crosses the room and closes the door to another narrow staircase.
“I don’t want my brother to hear you,” she snaps. “You’ve scared him enough.”
I notice for the first time that she’s fully dressed in jeans and a sweater. Either she’s up ridiculously early or she hasn’t been to bed tonight.
“What’s the matter with him?”
She hesitates. “He’s sick. I just got him settled down again when—you showed up.” She throws her hands in the air. “Why did you come through?”
I blink. I shouldn’t have to justify anything to her, she should be the one explaining things to me.
“Do you even know where you are?” she asks.
“I know I’m at the point I want to hit something. Bad.”
“No, please don’t.” She closes her eyes and rubs her forehead with one hand. “Look, right now, you’re in my house—which is not my house where you came from. I don’t really understand why, but it’s like … where you’re from and where I’m from are the same. Except different.”
A door in the front of the house slams.
Nina’s head jerks toward the closed kitchen door.
“Owen?” she calls.
“Just me,” a woman’s voice answers. “You’re up early.”
Keys are tossed on a table. I hear shuffling like a jacket or boots being removed. Nina turns a panicked face to me. She grabs my arm and tries to shove me toward the back door. I plant my feet. She pushes harder, but her size is nothing against an ex–football star.
“Get out of here!” she hisses.
“Who is that?”
“Just—get out, get out—please!”
Nina can’t get me to the back door fast enough, but when she yanks on the scuffed brass knob, it doesn’t budge. Her hand moves automatically to the deadbolt, but there’s no key. She fumbles over an empty hook on the wall. I pull on the door a couple times myself, as if the right amount of urgency is the combination for the lock. In the front hall, the woman starts hacking a phlegmy smoker’s cough, coming toward the kitchen.
Nina whirls and looks at me like the police are outside and I’m something she stole. Her eyes dart away, around the room, to a different door she’d closed.
“Up the stairs!” she hisses, dragging me over.
“No way—”
“Aunt Car will be asleep in fifteen minutes—just stay in my room until then.”
“Then what?”
I’m already on the second step trying to whisper at her, but the woman’s voice—Aunt Car’s, I presume—forces me past the landing to the second tier of stairs. I scramble up the last couple of steps into the upstairs hall.
“Owen has to be back in school today, I told you—”
“He will be,” Nina insists.
A cabinet door slams. The voice sighs heavily.
“Good. I had a long night. Make sure he gets on the bus. I’m going to bed.”
“No, wait, I could—make you pancakes!” Nina’s voice rises too high.
“Pancakes?”
“I was going to anyway—for Owen.”
The faint smell of burning Pop-Tarts makes its way up the stairs.
“I’m all set.” Aunt Car’s voice is louder, closer, and it sounds like her mouth is full. “That sugar-free stuff is crap.”
Nina yells, “Well, have a good sleep—
upstairs!
”
Heavy footsteps climb toward me. I back away from the stairs. There are two doors to my right, both closed. There’s an open room across from them, next to a bathroom. The hall disappears around a corner that leads I-don’t-know-where. Only one door could be the wrong choice, the aunt’s room. I dive for the only one that’s open.
It latches behind me with a click.
The footsteps reach the top of the steps, and there’s a pause. I hear someone chewing loudly, coming closer to the door.
I hold my breath.
A door opens and closes across the hall. I slump against the wood.
Someone coughs behind me and I spin around.
Owen is sitting on a bedspread decorated with footballs and yard lines. He’s got the video game in his hands again, but he’s lost interest in it. He’s staring at me like I’m some kind of freak.
“Sorry … wrong room,” I whisper. I reach for the door, but hesitate. There’s no way Nina’s aunt’s asleep yet, and I’m not sure what will happen if I get caught. I glance back to the kid, who still looks completely spooked. “Uh, mind if I hang here for a sec?”
His mouth opens a little, but he shakes his head. His hair is darker than his sister’s, but they have the exact same brown eyes and freckled nose.
“Thanks.”
I rub my knee and look around. This is just awkward. There’s an old TV at the foot of the bed and posters from various pro teams on the walls, though they seem weighted toward the Cowboys. A few Pee Wee trophies dot the bookshelf. I used to have a bunch just like them.
“Guess you like football,” I mutter.
Something lights up in the kid’s flat eyes.
“I’ve been working on my deep pass,” he says with some hesitation. “Throwing from the hips, like you said.”
Like I said?
“Yep, that’s … what you’re supposed to do,” I say, glancing away from him.
If he doesn’t close his mouth and blink pretty soon, I’m out of here. I don’t care who sees me.
“So … did it hurt?” he asks.
I tear my eyes from his posters. No one has ever asked me that except Viv. My mind flashes school colors, red and white, then blue and orange—
it’s wide open, my feet are flying—then impact
. I rub the scar above my knee.
“Yeah. It hurt.”
The door bursts open, hitting me in the shoulder blade.
“Ow!”
“Shhhh!” Nina hisses. “What are you doing in here? I said
wait in my room
.”
I hold my palms face up. “I didn’t—”
“You okay, O?” Nina interrupts, turning to her brother, concerned. “Sorry about this, give me fifteen minutes … best pancakes you ever had. You okay?”
“I’m fine.” His face reddens. “Leave me alone.”
“Fifteen minutes,” she promises, pushing me back toward the door.
He ignores her and looks at me. “Cam?”
“Yeah …?”
“It doesn’t hurt anymore?”
Nina drags me out of the room before I can answer. She clicks the door gently shut behind us and leads me to one of the closed doors across the hall.
She’s holding my hand. I pull out of her grasp as she turns the knob. She looks back in surprise for a second, but then raises one finger to her lips and points to the next room. A low, rumbling snore rises and falls through the walls. I follow her into a bare white room.
The bed is neatly made, covered in a plain white bedspread. There’s a worn dresser by the closet, a small desk with nothing on it but a couple of pens in a mug. A red beanbag chair sits in the corner under a window next to a precisely arranged bookshelf. There are no clothes on the floor. Not even a pair of shoes. I’m afraid to touch anything.
Viv’s room was always messy like mine—well, maybe not quite as bad as it is now. Her one chair was always heaped with clothes she designated “not clean
or
dirty.” She tacked photographs and magazine ads all over the walls, interspersed with quotes and phrases she picked up in books, movies, or other people’s conversations.
Nina’s walls are blank, perfectly white, like a cell. Her bedroom feels more like a guest room, like no one really lives here. There are marks on her mirror as if she used to have pictures taped to it. On one shelf there’s a small photograph in a frame that looks like one of those red British phone booths. The picture is of a man and woman with a baby and a little girl. She has copper hair and a great big smile just like Nina did at the diner.
“How come your little brother acts like he knows me?” I ask.
“What?” She looks out the window, away from me.
“How come Owen acts like he knows me—and you act like you know me—except you didn’t last night at the restaurant?”
She doesn’t say anything, just keeps staring out the window.
“Look, I’m not even mad anymore,” I lie. “I just want to know why.”
Nina finally turns around and there are tears in her eyes.
“You’re my … best friend.”
This I’m unprepared for. I hesitate, unsure of what to say—I’d never even met this girl before last week. She wipes her face and her expression goes blank again, emotionless, like she’s regaining some kind of militant self-control. She takes a deep breath.
“Look, you went through the green light, right?”
“I was in it,” I say. “What
is
it, anyway—”
“Did anyone see you?”
“What does it matter?”
“It matters, Cam—did anyone see you?”
“Who cares?”
She makes this noise, and at first I think she’s laughing, but she brushes her hair away from her face and I notice her hand is trembling. Her eyes are so serious, I wish I could look away.
“
This
Fayetteville already has a Cam,” she says.
I let that sink in, and my skin seems to tingle all over again.
“So you can’t—just, it would be bad—if someone saw you.” Her whisper sinks so low, I have to read the last part off her lips.
I remember her in my kitchen, going on hysterically about her house not being hers. Then I think about the boarded-up art-room window at the school. The one I saw tonight that looked like it had never even been damaged. I wait for her to blink or twitch or
something
. She finally blinks.
“
This
Fayetteville?” I echo.
She slips past me to her bedside table and starts digging through the drawer. My gaze wanders out the window for reassurance, to the houses on Genesee Street. They look just like they should, like they always have. How could it be different? She pulls something out and slides the drawer closed.
“This was just last summer, out at the lake.” She hands me a photograph.
My stomach drops.
It’s us. Me and Nina, laughing, holding a fish at least three feet long. She’s got one end of it and I have the other; our free arms are around each other. I pull the image closer to my face, looking for signs it’s been Photoshopped, but if it has, I can’t tell. I recognize the shoreline in the background. I could draw the pine trees along that ridge with my eyes closed. We have a boat out there—
had
, before Dad left—I spot the blue-and-white bow over Nina’s shoulder in the picture. The dock stretches out behind us. I can almost hear the sound of water lapping under the planks.
“That’s not possible,” I say, forgetting to whisper. “I haven’t been to the lake in two years. Dad sold that boat when he and my mom divorced.”
“He canceled the sale … when you called him,” she says.
I shake my head. “No way, and besides, I only went there with my—”
“Viv was still your girlfriend,” she says softly. I stare at her wordlessly. Her face flushes. “I told you … you’re my best friend.”
Nina’s got that awkward look everyone gets now when they slip up and say Viv’s name in front of me.