Thresholds

by Kiriki Hoffman, Nina

  “Gosh,” Maya said, “how can you tell who’s who?” There must have been fifty of those gray, red, and brown things on the page.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Benjamin. “We’re more alike than we are different.”

  That shocked her. She and Candra were always looking for ways to be different from each other, and Peter was totally different, too.

  “Which one is you?” Maya asked.

  Benjamin’s eyebrows rose. He scanned his page of storms and finally pointed to a small one near the bottom. It was gray and brown, with not much red in it.

  “Huh,” she said.

  Travis looked, too. He frowned. “Hey, Maya, let’s see yours.”

  Ms. Jamila said, “All right, class, time’s about up! Five more minutes to finish what you’ve started, and then we’ll look at what we’ve produced.”

  Maya slid her family picture out from under the sticker-garden picture and showed it to Travis and Benjamin.

  “Wow,” said Travis.

  “Ditto,” said Benjamin in a soft voice. “You’re the brush?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s very cool,” said Travis.

  “Thanks.” Maya set the picture down again, feeling awkward. “You show me yours?”

  He held his up.

  She couldn’t tell what he had drawn. Three messes side by side was what it looked like. Lots of green and brown and gray loops, some awkward blobs stacked on top of each other. It looked like a left-handed picture, all right. Everything jerky and sprawling over the lines.

  “Uh,” Maya said. She couldn’t think of a single complimentary thing to say, but she didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

  “See? This is me.” Travis pointed to the mess on the right. “This is my dad.” The mess in the middle. “And this is Oma, my grandma.” The mess on the left. “Teacher said draw what we look like inside, so this is the guts, and here’s the stomach, and these spongy things are lungs, and I had to make the hearts green, and this gray thing on top is the brain, and—”

  Maya threw a pen at him. It hit him in the chest. He tumbled back off his chair. “You wound me!” he said from the floor, where he had fallen artistically into a sprawl.

  “Hey! Settle down back there!” Ms. Jamila came back to their table and said, “What’s the problem?”

  Oh, no! What if she got detention her first day in school? In art class?

  “Artistic differences,” Benjamin said.

  Travis lurched to his feet. “Sorry. I was fooling around, teacher,” he said.

  “It’s my fault. I threw a pen at him.” Maya couldn’t get Travis in trouble when it was really her fault. He had a reputation to live down already.

  “Artistic differences?” Ms. Jamila asked Benjamin.

  Benjamin pointed to Travis’s picture. “What he and his father and grandmother look like inside,” Benjamin said.

  Ms. Jamila studied Travis’s picture, then laughed. “I understand,” she said after she managed to stop. “Maya, in my class, everybody gets the freedom to express themselves however they choose. We don’t criticize unless the artist asks for feedback. Everybody can praise anybody else’s work, though.” Her voice had risen to reach the whole room, and the other kids were listening. “Travis, why don’t you take your picture up front and show it to us? Everyone, remember. You can say good things about each other’s projects or say nothing at all; those are your options. Let’s go.”

  One by one everybody took their pictures up front to show, and Maya got more insight into who she was going to school with.

  Ms. Jamila called Maya up last.

  Maya went up front. “I did the assignment wrong,” she said. “I forgot to draw with my left hand.” She held up her picture. She knew it was good. She felt blood burning in her cheeks.

  Some people said ahh! One or two gasped.

  “Wow,” said Guitar Hero Alex, “you draw like in comic books.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “It’s my favorite thing. I’ve been practicing for years. That’s why this paintbrush is me.” She explained the rest of her family, and then the bell rang.

  It was going to be okay. She was pretty sure.

  Art was the last class of the day. Afterward, Travis walked her to the counselor’s office so she could pick up some forms and a school map. “I come here all the time,” he said.

  “I don’t get that about you,” she said. “Why did you flunk?”

  He shrugged and looked away. “It’s complicated. Later, dudette.”

  “Okay. Thanks for your help.”

  He shrugged again as he headed down the hall toward the front door, weaving between other homeward-headed students.

  The corridors were empty when she left Mrs. Boleslav’s office. She wondered if she could find her locker on her own now that she had a map. If she went straight home, she’d just have to sit around and do homework, so why not explore?

  She dug out the map and the piece of paper with her locker assignment on it. Corridor G, locker bank 2, #1512.

  Corridor G. Sure. She scanned the walls to see if the corridors were labeled. Not as far as she could see.

  She checked the first locker bank she came to. Numbers ran from 500 to 600. Which corridor was she in? Was corridor G even in the main building?

  She walked down the hall and checked out another bank of lockers: 2700 to 2800. Sha, very helpful.

  This was dumb. She could just ask Travis tomorrow. She turned to head for the exit and found herself face to face with the tall, freckled boy from that morning.

  He looked even sicker than he had before. He stared at her, his nostrils flaring.

  Then he grabbed her arm and dragged her into the nearest classroom.

  EIGHT

  “What? What do you want?” she asked. They were in a science classroom. Sharp chemical smells. Lab tables, stools, Bunsen burners, test tubes. The squeak of mice running on wheels.

  “I need your help.”

  She tried to twist out of his grasp, but he was stronger than he looked. “Let go. What’s the matter with you? This isn’t funny.”

  “No. Not funny. Please stand still.”

  Fear pumped through her, prickled against the back of her neck, loosened her knees. She was alone in the middle of an empty school with some crazy, strong boy.

  “What do you want? ” She tugged at her arm, tried to push him away. She couldn’t budge him.

  Should she scratch him? Her fingernails weren’t very long. Maybe she should bite him. Or kick him. Dad had told her where to kick guys if they were threatening her.

  “Let go,” she said again. She didn’t want to wait until it was too late to kick him if she had to, to protect herself. But she didn’t want to kick him if there was an easier way to get away.

  He heaved a sigh. His breath smelled like he’d been throwing up. Air rasped in and out of him. His freckles stood out starkly against his milk-pale skin. He was sick and sweaty and still way stronger than she was.

  “Please,” he said.

  He let go of her and thumped down on a stool, covered his face with his hands. “Please,” he whispered.

  She edged away and put a lab table between them. She wouldn’t let him catch her again. Her wrist was already bruised where he’d gripped it. Should she run?

  Chikuvny.

  A controlled substance? Fairy dust? Something he knew about. Maybe he’d tell her more than Benjamin or Gwenda had.

  “What do you want?” she asked for the third time.

  “I need help. I need help of someone who comes from this Earth, someone knows where a portal is. Please. It’s not for me. Won’t you please help me?” His voice was full of despair.

  “It depends on what you want me to do.”

  He plunged his hand into his pocket. “Look,” he whispered.

  In his cupped hand was something that looked like a small egg, only instead of a shell, it was covered in a thin, velvety skin. It glowed from inside, soft pastel colors, pink, green, yellow, blue,
occasional streaks of silvery light. Some of it looked dark and sick, though.

  She edged closer and leaned in to look. So beautiful. So damaged. She swallowed a rising sadness.

  “Do you know this? Do you know this sissimi? How it is?” He had some kind of accent. She hadn’t noticed it before, and now that she did, she couldn’t figure out what kind it was, only that it was getting thicker. “That it’s a treasure, a precious,” he whispered. “A bond? A seer?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Your hand.” He took her hand, lifted it to his nose, and sniffed. “But is fading,” he said, his voice heavy. “But so am I.”

  “I don’t know what a sissimi is. I don’t know anything about a portal. I don’t know what chikuvny is.”

  “You don’t know! You don’t know.” His dark blue eyes looked sad. He lowered his eyelids, then glanced up at her again. “I am sorry. I found the wrong person. I have been searching for days. I could not find any of the right people. But look. She is dying.”

  They stared at the egg. As Maya watched, another patch of it dimmed.

  “I am not from here. I don’t have the right—” He frowned. He pinched the skin of his arm. “The right. So I can’t give the sissimi what she needs. You could do that.”

  “What? You want me to feed it?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “You could save her. You could keep her alive long enough to find a portal, and then she could get home. At her home they will know what to do. You understand?”

  “No.”

  “No,” he repeated. His shoulders sagged. “I stole her. The Krithi told me how. They said she would be my perfect friend. They told me what sissimi grow into. Companions. Collectors. Protectors. The Krithi said I could raise her here, far from her home. Then none of her masters can find me. I didn’t know she needs local host, or she doesn’t get the right—” He made a growling sound and shook his head. “Food, nutriment. I didn’t know,” he whispered.

  Maya bit her lower lip.

  “You can save her.”

  “How?”

  “Feed her. Keep her careful. She will hatch soon if she survives. Then she will be your companion. Your seer.”

  She touched the egg. Light flared around her fingertip. The velvet skin turned damp. Her fingertip burned and tingled.

  She snatched her hand back.

  “Please,” he said again. “I should not have stolen her. I am killing her. She is rare. She is precious. Please save her.”

  “What do I have to do?”

  “Just feed her. She will do the rest.”

  “Feed her what?”

  “Well, it is something inside you. She needs it. She needs the local. But she won’t hurt you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She will die,” he whispered. “Please.”

  Why was she even listening to this nut job? She should back away right now. He didn’t look like he was strong enough to chase her anymore.

  Last night she saw a fairy. Maybe this guy wasn’t crazy. Anything could happen.

  She should call 911 and get him an ambulance.

  The egg sparkled, and then half of it dimmed.

  She gasped. It shouldn’t die, no matter what it was, not if there was something she could do to stop it. “What do I have to do?”

  “Say yes.”

  “Yes, okay, yeah. What does it eat? Cereal?”

  He gripped her left hand and pressed the egg against the inside of her wrist. The egg felt warm, then hot and wet, then prickling, then pricking, definitely pricking.

  “Oww!” she yelled. Pain shot up her arm. She jerked, tried to get away from the boy, but he held her hand tight.

  It hurt, oh, it hurt. It felt like a vacuum sucking her skin, then her blood, muscles, bones. Were her fingers turning to dust? Did the egg suck them dry? She wouldn’t even have a hand in a minute. She felt her arm shrinking and shriveling. Hot needles pricked their way up her arm, into her shoulder.

  Stupid, stupid—why hadn’t she run when she could?

  She cried and sobbed and jerked against the boy’s hold, but he didn’t let her go. “It will be all right,” he said. “She won’t hurt you.”

  What did he think it was doing now? She had never felt such horrible, shocking, burning pain! Tears streamed down her face.

  Her left arm went numb.

  Better.

  In a way.

  She reached over with her right hand and tried to push the egg off her wrist. But it wasn’t loose anymore. It had sunk into her flesh, slipped under her skin, leaving only a glowing bump at her wrist. She couldn’t pry it off.

  The boy caught her other hand before she could start digging with her fingernails.

  “No,” he whispered. “Don’t kill her. You have saved her. Don’t undo it all now.” He pressed a few places on her shoulder, and suddenly her right arm went dead. It hung by her side. She couldn’t lift it.

  “Please,” he said. “She won’t hurt you. She will only be with you. She will only love you.”

  “It hurt! It was the worst pain I ever felt! It hurt.”

  “I’m sorry.” His eyes were wet. “Yes. I forgot. At first it hurts, but not for long. By tomorrow you’ll be fine. And she will survive.” He let go of her left hand. “Thank you. Thank you ultimately and endlessly. You will have to teach her. She won’t know right away.”

  “Teach her what?” Her left arm was numb. She had felt it being sucked dry. She thought about lifting her arm, and to her surprise, it rose. And it looked normal, except for the glowing bump. She turned her hand, looked at its top, then its bottom. Normal, not shriveled up into a dried-out sack of skin.

  The bump on her wrist glowed with colored radiance. Lights moved under the skin of her left forearm and flowed up to her elbow, then farther up her arm, as though fireflies swam in her veins.

  “Teach her?” she cried. “How can I teach something that’s eating me from the inside out? What did you do to me? Make it stop!”

  “I can’t. She won’t eat you. She only needs you very much. She is made to work with people, all kinds of people. You will be fine.” He lifted her hands and kissed the palm of each of them. “I am sorry I frightened you,” he murmured. He lumbered to his feet and staggered out of the room.

  She followed him out into the hall. She had to get home. She had to tell Mom and Dad what had happened and make them take her to a doctor.

  The corridor to the entrance stretched for miles. Light from outside came from the far end of a long, dim tunnel. The boy was nowhere in sight. Her head felt light and floaty, and she could barely lift her feet off the ground.

  She shuffled. One foot forward, then the next.

  Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, her arms swinging by her sides, beyond her control.

  After a while, she stopped and leaned against some lockers. The glimmer of light at the entrance looked almost as far away as it had before.

  The egg was dying, but it was killing her first, and she didn’t think it was a fair trade. On the other hand, she felt so tired and sick and faint she almost didn’t care.

  She started to slip down the wall to the floor.

  No!

  She shuffled forward before she could fall down. If she could make it outside, someone would see her.

  Where was everybody? How long had she been shut up in the science room with that crazy guy?

  “Help,” she yelled as she shuffled toward the exit, but it came out as a tiny muffled squeak. Maybe if she had headed back toward Mrs. Boleslav’s office instead of toward the doors, she could have reached it by now. Even if Mrs. Boleslav was gone, there were phones there.

  Cell phone. Dad had gotten everyone a cell phone when they arrived in Oregon. “Since we’re all going to different places now, we need a way to check in. These are just for calling the family. Don’t go texting your friends all day,” he had said when he handed them out, but he smiled when he said it.

  Maya had thought, Frien
ds? What friends? She had settled down and learned how to use her phone, like everybody else in the family. No camera on the phone, no music player, nothing fancy. Just a calling device.

  Which she could sure use now.

  Her cell phone was in her right pocket. She tried to reach across with her left hand. She couldn’t wriggle her left hand down into the pocket. Her right hand was dead.

  She couldn’t muster the energy to look back and see if the office was any closer than the entrance.

  Why wasn’t the janitor cruising the corridors and making sure everybody was gone?

  She kept shuffling. Gradually the entrance doors got nearer.

  “Help,” she muttered. She leaned forward, then got her feet under her before she could fall. Leaned forward, shuffled her feet forward. Leaned forward . . .

  She just wanted to lie down. Maybe sleep for twenty-four hours.

  What if she woke up dead?

  Keep moving.

  Her stomach gurgled, then growled.

  She was starving.

  Keep moving.

  Next thing she knew, she had her forehead pressed against cool glass, and it sure felt good.

  The glass moved and she fell forward. Someone caught her before she fell flat on her face.

  “Maya?”

  “Travis,” she said, in her tiny squeaky voice.

  “Maya! What happened to you?” He gripped her shoulders.

  “Help,” she said.

  “Help? Help!” He looked back over his shoulder frantically. “Hey, you sit here and I’ll go get somebody.” He started to lower her to the ground.

  She clutched his arm with her left hand. “Home,” she said. “Three blocks.”

  “What? You should go to the hospital! What happened? Did somebody hit you?”

  She closed her eyes. Dizziness made her sway. Travis could call for help on her phone, if he didn’t have one of his own. What kind of help did she want? Mom? Dad? A hospital? The pain in her left wrist had eased. Right now, her pain centered in her stomach. She said, “No. Nobody hit me. I’ve got to get home. I—I’m starving!”

  “What?” He slipped her backpack off her back and slid his arms through the straps, then leaned over and put his arm around her.