Free Through the Medicine Cabinet by Dan Greenburg

Chapter 1
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    I ’m what you’d call a pretty normal kid. My name is Zack, which is a pretty normal name. I’m ten years old, which is a pretty normal age. I have normal brown hair and eyes. I have slightly crooked teeth, which is normal at my age. And I live in a big apart ment building in New York. I always thought my building was normal, at least until the thing I’m about to tell you happened.
    I’ve got to -admit I’ve always been interested in weird stuff. Stuff like dead people. crawling out of their graves at night. Or guys who stare at you and then suddenly their heads explode. I haven’t actually seen those things. But who am I to say they couldn’t happen?
    Anyway, the time I want to tell you about happened at the beginning of spring vacation. My dad arranged to take me down to Florida. We were going to visit the New York Yankees at their spring training camp.
    My parents are divorced. Part of the time I live with my dad. He’s a writer, and he gets to do lots of cool things. Like go to spring training and then write about it in a magazine. I can’t believe he gets paid to do this stuff. Neither can he.
    Saturday morning was when we were planning to leave. I was so excited, I woke up at about 6:00 A.M. The minute I opened my eyes, I realized something. I had forgotten to put my retainer in my mouth before I went to sleep. Where the heck was it? A retainer, in case you don’t know, is braces that you wear on your teeth at night. I don’t exactly love my retainer. It’s made of wire and pink plastic. It’s really gross-looking, especially when you take it out and put it on the table at lunch.
    My dad hates when I lose my retainer. They cost twelve hundred dollars, I think. Or a hundred and twelve. I forget which.
    I left one retainer in a pair of jeans, which went in the laundry. It melted to the inside of the pocket. One got chewed up in my Grandma Leah’s garbage disposal. Another got flushed down the toilet. Another one I’m almost positive a robber stole while I was out of my room, although I’ve never been able to prove this.
    All in all, I have not lost more than seven of them. Eight, tops.
    I was sure my retainer was in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, instead of in my mouth, where it should have been. I got up and opened the door of the medicine cabinet. Yes! There was my retainer. But then, just as I was about to close the cabinet door, something weird happened. Something very weird. The back of the medicine cabinet opened. And there, staring right in my face, was a boy who looked almost exactly like me!

Chapter 2
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    A boy who looked just like me? How could that be? I was so startled, I knocked over my retainer. It fell into his bathroom. Then we both screamed and slammed our medicine cabinet doors shut.
    What the heck was happening here?
    Very slowly I opened the medicine cabinet again. Nope. There was nobody on the other side. I pushed against the back of it. It didn’t open. Very weird.
    So where was my retainer? I figured I’d better check out the apartment next door. An old lady named Mrs. Taradash lives there.
    Mrs. Taradash is kind of cranky. I know she isn’t too happy about the basketball hoop I have mounted on my wall. She’s complained to my dad lots of times. When I slam-dunk, she says it’s like a 5.7 tremor on the Richter scale.
    But maybe Mrs. Taradash had a grandson. Maybe her grandson looked almost exactly like me. And maybe her medicine cabinet was hooked up to ours on the other side.
    I knew this explanation didn’t make much sense. But it was all I could come up with.
    I got dressed. Then I slipped quietly out of our apartment. I knocked on Mrs. Taradash’s door. There was no answer. I knocked again. It took a while before somebody opened it. Mrs. Taradash was in a fuzzy robe and fuzzy slippers. Her hair was all messed up. And she was rubbing her eyes. She