Free Through to You by Emily Hainsworth Page A

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,