“Well, my part comes now,” said James, smiling.
Cora straightened, ran a hand over her perfect hair, and said, “Dee, since you’re the newbie, you watch. Cal will keep the void stable while James and I go inside.”
Cal squatted down, then did a sort of crab-walk into the void.
Dee watched with fascination. She hadn’t seen what being the human doorstop looked like from an outside view. Half of Cal simply vanished, like he had been sliced down the middle by a mirror. He glanced to his left, one eye seeing something Dee couldn’t. Then he nodded, gesturing, and James and Cora stepped forward. James first, angling sideways to slip past Cal, and then Cora. They vanished, one after the other.
And then there was silence.
Dee felt her fists clench. She was too hot; whatever magic kept her in stasis did nothing for the feverish sweat that broke through her skin. She could feel it dampening her shirt.
She had not counted on the seconds dragging by like hours, the agony of waiting for the others to reappear. Cal appeared calm, crouching with his elbows on his knees and gaze resolutely forward. With only half of him visible, he reminded her of one of those statues with pieces missing, the eyes old and face worn.
Dee paced back and forth, checked her cell phone for the time. “How long does this usually take?” she asked.
One of Cal’s eyes—the only one visible to Dee—flicked toward her. “Depends,” he said. His voice warbled oddly, an echo of an echo.
“On?”
“If there’s trouble.”
At once, she remembered that creature. None of the other heartless had mentioned seeing anything like that, and she had not dared to mention her own glimpse of it—for fear of drawing attention to herself. She was still new to this, after all.
But still—the thought of what might lie beyond that flicker of unreality…
She needed to see.
“Could I look inside?” she asked.
She expected Cal to argue; it was what Cora would have done.
But Cal smiled slightly. “You won’t like it.”
“I want to look around,” she replied. “I’ll just be a moment. You can watch me the whole time, right?”
He nodded. “Go on and try it.”
She ventured closer, hand reaching for the void. It felt like touching the surface of water—a slight resistance against her fingertips before it caved inward.
Fingers extended, she stepped past Cal and into the void.
It was like stepping through a door into a sandstorm. Wind flung her hair out of its ponytail and she found her breath yanked free of her lungs.
She stepped into this non-space, this half-formed world and—
—It knew her.
That was the only way she could describe it. This void knew her, tugged at something inside of her and then she was falling to her knees, sand and grit digging through the material of her uniform and—
—She is ten years old and trying to clean the bathroom. Her legs are too short, arms too stumpy, and she can’t quite reach the mold behind the faucet—
Dee yanked herself free of the memories. It felt as if the void were pulling at her own mind, feeding on her memories.
—She is eight and so excited about a new cartoon, but then there is a voice telling her, “Only losers watch cartoons every day. You don’t want to be a loser, do you?” And she is ashamed because she does want to watch cartoons—
—She is six and the house is quiet, heavy with silence; her mother has told her that Dad is feeling ill today and Dee does not know why—
She scrambled back on hands and knees. She hit Cal’s leg and scooted to one side, until she felt cool pavement rather than hot sand, and she was panting as if she had just run a mile.
