White Space

“Okay, House, time-out,” she said. “I get it, I do. I’m supposed to walk through this door and into that room. I’ll bet that even if I leave—go outside and wait by the snowmobile—eventually, I’ll end up here again after another blink, because this is what you want.” This is a … test? Part of a process? What I’ve been brought here to learn and do? That all felt right. So, really, the only choice was whether she turned the knob this time around, or on the hundredth repetition.

Just do it already, you coward.

The brass knob was icy. Heart thumping, she tried giving it a twist, but it wouldn’t turn and nothing happened when she pulled.

Push, the way Lizzie’s dad did with the Mirror.

That did something. She felt the shift under her hand, almost a … a mechanical click? Same thing when I touched that … that membrane down cellar, when I was twelve. As if I’ve activated something. She instinctively backed up a step as the slit-door glimmered, not opening so much as dissolving. Melting, like a phase shift, the way ice changes to water. And then she thought, What the hell?

The slit-door vanished. A faint coppery aroma, like the rust-scent of that snow, seeped on a breath of frigid air. Inside, there was no light at all. From deep within, however, she could hear the buzz and sputter of that radio. Otherwise, it was pitch-black.

No, that’s not quite right. She realized the reason the door opened out. My God—she stared at the smooth, glassy, jet-black barrier—it’s solid.

It was, she thought, like the mirror in her blinks. And what I found in Jasper’s cellar. A week after she had, the blinks had begun. And I’ve got the feeling there’s something else I’m not remembering; was made to forget. But what? And why would anyone make me forget anything? Who could even do something like that? How?

At her touch, the black shuddered. Her hand instantly iced, then fired to a shriek, but she could stand this; and although her heart was still hammering, she wasn’t as frightened. It’s like what happened upstairs, in the bathroom. As if that had been a demonstration designed to show her what to do.

Beneath her fingers, the darkness gave and rippled, that weird sense of something transitioning from one state of matter to another, and then she was moving, pushing, feeling the suck of that oily black, stepping through

2

INTO SUMMER.

She is on East Washington in Madison. She knows this because the capitol’s white dome is just up the hill. To her left is the bus stop on Blair that will take her back to Holten Prep. The air is warm, a little humid from Lake Mendota, where sailboats scud like clouds over lapis-blue water. Her left hand is cold. She looks, expecting to see that her hand isn’t there but still wrist-deep in blackness. Instead, she holds a mocha Frappuccino topped with a pillow of whipped cream, fresh from the Starbucks down the block. In her right hand is a book.

This is a memory. She cranes a look over her shoulder. There is no room, no slit-door. The street presses at her back. A steady stream of cars hums past. Distant tunes and radio voices tangle and swell, then fade, trailing after the vehicles like pennants. Light splashes her shoulders because it’s summer. A light-aqua sundress that brings out the indigo of her eyes floats around her thighs. This is from six months ago. “That’s really cool.”

“What?” Disoriented, she turns back to discover that she stands before a table heavy with boxes of half-priced books. Her eyes crawl to the storefront window. There is a sign advertising the sale, and the bookstore’s name emblazoned in black-edged gold: BETWEEN THE LINES.

I remember this. I was here in June, after exams, a week before my birthday.

“I said your necklace is so cool.” The voice belongs to a guy about her age. In one hand, he cups a perfect glass sphere on a dark ribbon the color of a blood clot that she’s wearing around her neck. The pendant is elegantly crafted: a miniature universe, sugared with stars, that swims with a tangle of twisting bodies and strange creatures. She knows this necklace, too. It’s her galaxy pendant, the one she hasn’t flameworked yet and which exists only as an idea.

“Did you make it?” the boy asks.