Free The Tilting House by Tom Llewellyn Page B

never showed. We couldn’t have known it had something to do with the way Dad wired the dimmer switch in the dining room.
    A dimmer switch is a kind of light switch with a dial that you can turn down to dim the light or up to brighten it. At least, that’s how they usually work.
    When Dad had started installing the switch in our dining room that Saturday afternoon, Mom had told him he should ask Mr. Daga for help. “Be honest, dear. Do you have any idea what you’re doing? We live right next door to someone who not only knows about electricity but has proved he knows about the wiringof
this house
, and he’s offered to help you anytime you need it. I don’t understand why you won’t him ask for help!”
    Dad muttered a few things I couldn’t hear and insisted on wiring the switch on his own. But the lights in the chandelier above the dining table refused to turn on. The switch wouldn’t work. At least not the way dimmer switches usually work.
    Dad put his tools away and turned the switch all the way off. Since the pizza never arrived, we ate cheese sandwiches for dinner instead.
    The next morning, Dad, Aaron, Grandpa, and I woke up to Mom screaming. We ran downstairs and found her leaning against the closed front door, her face white as a glass of skim milk.
    “Something’s … wrong … outside” was all she could manage.
    “What do you mean?” said Dad.
    “I went out to the porch to get the paper. But … it’s missing,” she said.
    “The paper is missing?” asked Dad.
    “No. The porch. Look.” She opened the door.
    Mom was right. The porch was gone. Instead, the doorway opened to a four foot drop to the ground. The morning paper, meanwhile, floated level with our front door.
    Dad tried to step down to investigate, but his foot stopped in midair, at the height of the front door. He tapped his foot against something, then stepped out onto an invisible platform. It looked like he was suspended in space.
    “I don’t think the porch is gone,” said Dad, awe in his voice. “I think it’s invisible.”
    Grandpa leaned his wooden leg out the doorway. His wooden foot went
tap, tap, tap
, against nothing we could see.
    Dad inched his way across the invisible porch, down invisiblesteps, all the way down to the visible front yard. When he turned to face the house, he gasped. “Oh, my. Come and look.”
    Aaron and I carefully made our way to the yard. We turned and faced the house. It was gone. Mom and Grandpa floated in the open front door, with the hallway and kitchen still visible behind them. Dad tried to reassure Mom by jumping up and down on the invisible porch. He even felt his way over to the invisible porch swing, sat down in it, and started swinging. It looked pretty weird.
    “Maybe we can paint it,” Dad said.
    “You just finished painting it, Hal!” said Mom with a sob. Then she slammed the door shut. From where we stood, our house now looked like it didn’t exist.
    We were standing in the front yard discussing what to do when Mrs. Natalie came over from next door. “What the heck happened to your house, Hal?” she asked. Dad said he didn’t know what had happened and that the house was still there even though no one could see it. Mrs. Natalie raised her eyebrows. Dad stepped up to the invisible porch and walked across it. Mrs. Natalie raised her eyebrows even more. Dad felt around, then opened the front door, which looked to be attached to nothing, and Mrs. Natalie could see our hallway, same as ever, except that it was floating four feet in the air. She raised her eyebrows even higher until her eyes rolled back inside her head. With a ladylike groan, she passed out right on the grass.
    All the neighbors kept coming over, asking what had happened to our house. Dad kept trying to explain, walking around on the porch to show them it was still there. I could tell he was getting tired of it. At one point, while all the grown-ups were standing around talking, two boys from another