Free Thin Space by Jody Casella

it, but right now, it almost feels good, throwing this stuff out there—stuff that’s been knocking around in my head so long.
    “Well, what did she say?”
    Is she mocking me? She draws her knees up to her face, wraps her arms around her legs, waiting patiently, it seems, for my answer. I clear my throat. “Mrs. Hansel was born in this house. She showed us an old picture, her mother, pregnant, standing in front of the fireplace. She said something about that picture, her mother’s smile—it just hit her that it was the moment she’d come through. And I know she died in the same spot. I mean, she made sure of it. She had the hospice people set up her bed right here.” I trace my finger along the floorboards between us. “She knew she was dying and she wanted to die—to leave her body—in the same place.”
    “Ancient Celtic beliefs,” Maddie says, her mouth twitching into a smile.
    I feel my face burn. “That’s what she said. You can look it up, you know, online. Thin space.”
    “I might do that,” she says. “So, what are you going to do now?”
    “Now?”
    She shrugs. “You walked over every inch of this room and nothing . . . you know, happened. What are you going to do?”
    I let out my breath, force a laugh. “That’s the million dollar question.”
    “Why do you think it didn’t work?”
    I knock my fist against the floor. My knuckles are swollen up, purpling, but I hardly feel them. I’m remembering that thehead of Mrs. Hansel’s bed was right here, the pillows probably just a little higher than where my face is now. When she squinted her eyes, that last time I saw her, I didn’t think she recognized me. Because she was dying. Because I was pretty messed up myself with my scarred forehead and dented nose.
    But she leaned forward. She held out her hand. Jeez. She sounded so sure of herself.
    “I don’t know,” I say, and my voice is too loud for this room. “But one time she told us a story about how she found a thin space. She went into it.”
    Maddie’s eyes widen. “Really?”
    I nod.
    “Tell me.”
    It’s strange to hear myself say it. When I talk, I can hear Mrs. Hansel’s voice, quiet and twittery, in my head.
    “She was only five years old when her father died. It was unexpected, she said. One night at dinner, he complained of a pain in his stomach. The next day, he was dead. Mrs. Hansel’s mother fell apart. There were days she wouldn’t get out of bed. She stopped taking care of Mrs. Hansel and her brothers and sisters. Finally, their grandmother had to move in to help out.”
    “Huh,” Maddie says. Then she looks at me like, go on.
    “Yeah, so the grandmother used to tell the kids these creepy stories about growing up in Ireland. Stereotypical stuff about leprechauns and pots of gold, but other stories too, ancient ones about spirits in trees and haunted caves. And she talked about thin spaces, where the wall between this world and the afterworld is thinner. Mrs. Hansel got itinto her head that if she could find a thin space, she could go through and look for—”
    “Her father,” Maddie says.
    I’m surprised to see she’s following the story with some kind of interest. That or she thinks I’m nuts and she’s humoring me so I’ll hurry up and finish.
    “You said she found a thin space,” Maddie prods me. “Where?”
    “Okay, so the grandmother told Mrs. Hansel about a house. It was in another town, down the road from the grandmother’s, and a man had died in the upstairs bedroom. Anyway, after a while, Mrs. Hansel’s mother got better, started taking care of herself and her kids again. The grandmother moved back home, and one day when the family went out to visit her, Mrs. Hansel snuck away to go looking for the place. She found it all old boarded up, but the door wasn’t locked, so she let herself in and went upstairs. In the bedroom, she took off her shoes—because that’s what the grandmother told her you were supposed to do—and she put her