White Space

Coming back from these blinks was so different, too, like surfacing with the tangles of nightmares clinging to her like sticky seaweed. They feel like memories, something I’ve always known. She had this odd notion that if her brain was a hallway lined with doors, all she had to do was open the right one to walk into Lizzie’s life.

Or pull her into mine. A weird thought. And this last blink … “Want me, wear me,” she whispered, hugging herself against the cold. Tony’s space blanket let out a tired crinkle like soggy cellophane. “What does that mean, Lizzie?” Made about as much sense as Jasper going on about … “Dark Passages,” she said, slowly, to the still, cold night. “Lizzie knows about them—and different Nows? Like Jasper? But Jasper was drunk half the time.”

Was Jasper talking about something that exists? The fingers of another shiver skipped up the rungs of her spine. No matter how many times she’d asked, her guardian never had explained. In the end, she’d chalked it up to the fact that he was pretty permanently pickled. But what if the Dark Passages and the Nows are why he drank? Not just to forget or because he was so freaked. What if Jasper drank so it—they?—couldn’t find him? This idea had an itchy, tip-of-the-tongue feeling, something that felt true. As if I once knew this but … forgot?

Another, more bizarre thought: Or is this something I was made to forget?

“Oh, don’t be stupid, you nut.” A flare of impatience. “Jasper was soaked, and the blinks are seizures. They’re hallucinations, like dreams. Of course, you’re going to slot in stuff you know about. That’s the way dreams and hallucinations are.” Yeah, but she didn’t know a Lizzie.

“Emma, stop, you’re not going to solve this right now.” She really ought to go inside. Yet the idea made a twist of fear coil in her gut. Why? It was stupid. There was light inside the house, and it was warm. There was food. She could still smell the faint, rich aroma of cheddar from a mac and cheese casserole. Bode and Chad seemed fine, if a little odd.

But this farmhouse … I have seen you before, over and over again. In the blinks? Yes, and no: she thought she’d actually seen a picture of the house somewhere. She ran her eyes over the porch railing, the bay window, that snow-covered swing on its chains. Come spring, she’d bet money a froth of red geraniums would replace the mounds of white humped in those hanging planters.

If spring ever comes to a place like this. Swaddled in the space blanket and her parka, still damp with gasoline, she shivered as much from cold as a sudden premonition that, maybe, it was always night here, and cold. And that’s got something to do with Wyoming. Those license plates are important. But I’ve never been to Wyoming.

“Oh, don’t be a nut just because you can,” she said, watching her breath bunch in a gelid knot. Her eye drifted from the porch and past Eric’s snowmobile to that huge, outsize barn soaring up from the snow. Wisconsin was lousy with red gable-roofed barns with stone foundations and sliders and haymows and cupolas to draw in air and dry out the hay. But this thing was ginormous, much too big—and wrong, too. Why? Her gaze brushed over the exterior walls, then roamed over the gabled roof.

“No cupola,” she said after a moment. “No sliders, not even a ramp.” There was a door but no windows of any kind. The walls were blank. It was as she’d said to Eric: the skeleton of a movie set, someone’s idea of what a farm—a barn—should be.

“Or maybe it’s all the barn you need.” Then she thought, What? Enough barn for whom?

“Hey, Emma, you nut … what if this is a blink? You ever think about that? Or maybe you’re dreaming.” Hadn’t there been some movie about this? “Inception,” she said, and then more loudly: “So, okay, go ahead, kick me. I’d like to wake up now.”

Of course, nothing happened. “Right,” she snorted, watching how her breath smoked in the icy air. “It’s not like Morpheus is going to show up and give you a choice between red and blue. Get a grip.”