Free Thin Space by Jody Casella Page A

bare foot down on that spot. Immediately, the room disappeared.”
    “Disappeared?” Maddie raises her head. “What do you mean?”
    “I don’t know. She just said all of a sudden the room was gone, and she wasn’t there anymore, in that house. She was somewhere else. It was misty, she said, and cold.”
    Maddie smiles. “Well, this house sure has that going for it. I’m surprised you haven’t found anything here. I mean I can see my breath upstairs. I’ve been sleeping with like four blankets wrapped around me.”
    I knock the floor again and this time my knuckles blaze up in pain.
    “Then what happened?” Maddie says. “Did Mrs. Hansel find her father?”
    I nod. “He was wandering around in the mist, still wearing the same clothes he was wearing the night he said his stomach hurt. He hugged her. He told her everything would be okay.”
    “Huh,” Maddie says.
    Maybe I haven’t told this right. It seems sillier than how Mrs. Hansel explained it. Now I’m imagining a little girl version of Mrs. Hansel skipping around in a fluffy cloud, talking to this nice dead guy, and it’s hitting me that it could all just be a story—a story to make people feel better about death.
    I cradle my bruised hand against my chest. There’s a freaking lump in my throat. Reality is hitting me again. I can’t deny it anymore. There’s no thin space in this room.
    Maddie’s staring at me. She’s thinking I’m crazy. And I must be. Crazy to have believed this stuff. Crazy to have told her.
    “Marsh?”
    I groan.
    “You probably thought of this already, but that house Mrs. Hansel was talking about, the one she sneaked into when she was a little girl, have you ever tried to find it?”
    I swallow, take a breath so I don’t start moaning. “It’s gone,” I say. “Mrs. Hansel went back about ten years ago, after her husband died. He died in this house too.” I notice her face brighten up, and I shake my head. “He’s not from here. Hewas born in Canada. To make a thin space, the same person has to come through and go out in the same spot.”
    “That makes it kind of rare then, doesn’t it?” she says. “I mean, how often can that happen?”
    I laugh. “Not too often, apparently. That’s the problem.”
    “But you said that she went back there, to the house.”
    “It was burned down, she said. Just the cellar was left.”
    “Did she walk around the place anyway?” She’s talking fast now, waving her hands. “Maybe step around the general area where the bedroom used to be?”
    Funny. My brother once asked the same thing. “It wouldn’t work,” I say. “Mrs. Hansel said the thin space was up in the air. The bedroom was upstairs. That’s where the man’s soul left his body.”
    Maddie’s forehead wrinkles up. “I guess you couldn’t find a ladder, you know, try to get in that way?”
    I grunt out another laugh. “You sound like my brother. He asked her that too. She said you need a solid surface. You need to step onto it. Barefoot. He didn’t believe any of it, but he kept asking her to explain. I think he got a kick out of the whole story. Plus, it was kind of boring, the stuff she had us doing around here. Those stories she told us made the time go by faster.” I study the floorboard near my feet. There’s an old burn mark, probably from a fireplace ash. “Neither of us believed her. But now I just—” My voice breaks. “I want to see him.”
    “Yeah,” she says quietly. “I get that.”
    I keep looking down but I can feel her eyes on me, hear her soft breathing. I don’t understand how this happened, how I came to be sitting on this floor with this girl. It’s likeI’m waking up from a dream. Ha ha. Who am I kidding here? This is a freaking nightmare.
    “Oh, crud,” Maddie says, springing up and looking out the window. “Someone’s home. Sam!”
    I unfold myself from the floor. “I’ll go out the back.”
    “Hurry,” she tells me.
    I duck out through the dining room, trip