by N. D. Wilson
“I don’t know,” Henry said.
“It’s a lot of water. You’ll have to curl up on the dry end of your bed tonight.”
“Yeah,” Henry said. “I don’t know if I’ll sleep, though. I drank a lot of soda.”
“So did I.”
“I’ve never had soda before.”
“What? You haven’t?” Henrietta laughed. “Why not?”
“I think because it’s bad for your teeth.”
“Isn’t everything bad for your teeth?”
“Probably.”
“I think the worms are funny. It’s weird that they came through.”
“Yeah. I don’t think they like my floor.”
“Do you think the worms were Quantummed?”
“I don’t know where they came from, but they’ll probably like the backyard.”
“I’m done with your wall. Should I put some on the ceiling?”
“Sure.”
“What about the other wall?”
“Sure.”
Henry was not thinking about what Henrietta was saying. He was slapping towels on the floor and squeezing them out into a bucket. His bucket needed to be dumped. He picked it up and walked to the top of the stairs.
Anastasia was splayed out on all fours about halfway up. She straightened quickly.
“Hi, Henry,” she said. “I was just coming up.”
“Oh,” Henry said. At the sound of her sister’s voice, Henrietta came scurrying out of Henry’s room.
“Anastasia, you’re awful!” Henrietta said. “You were eavesdropping!”
“No, I wasn’t.” Her eyes went big. “I was just coming to ask you something. Can I come up?”
“No,” Henrietta said. “You were sneaking.”
“It’s okay,” Henry said. “You can come up.” He put the bucket down and moved aside. Anastasia climbed the remaining stairs quickly, trying not to look at her sister. Henrietta was making faces.
Anastasia stepped into Henry’s doorway. Henry and Henrietta stood behind her. “Where’d you get all the posters?” she asked. The wall was completely covered with images of a basketball player, arms crossed, glaring. The posters were all taped together into a single sheet. Most were vertical, some were leaning, and one was upside down. Another one dangled from the ceiling, where Henrietta had not yet finished her taping.
“Dad gave them to me for Henry’s room,” Henrietta said. “He had them in the barn.”
“All the same one?” Anastasia asked.
“Yeah, I don’t mind,” Henry said. Anastasia looked down at the still-wet floor. “Were you trying to keep a fish?” she asked. “Mom wouldn’t mind a fish.”
“No,” Henry said.
“Frogs?”
“Nope.”
“Salamanders?”
“Uh-uh,” Henry said.
“Then what’s the water from?”
“Nothing,” Henrietta said.
“A rain cloud,” Henry answered.
Anastasia stepped into Henry’s room. Henrietta followed, standing right beside her.
Anastasia felt the bed. Then she saw the worms.
“I wish you would tell me about your secret. I’ve been wanting to spy, but Penny won’t let me. Why won’t you tell? I won’t tell on you. Penny and I can keep a secret.”
“Penny can,” Henrietta said. She crossed her arms and shook back her hair.
Anastasia looked hurt. “I keep secrets!”
“Who told Mom about the rat skulls in the barn?” Henrietta asked.
“Well, I didn’t mean to.”
“Who told Becky Taller about the fort in the chestnut trees?”
“I don’t even like Becky Taller!”
“Well, who told her, then? Who told Dad about the boots we were getting him for his birthday?”
“He forgot! He was still surprised.”
“Who told Mom when I tried to climb the water tower?”
“I did not tell that!”
“You climbed the water tower?” Henry asked. “The tall one on the other side of town?”
“Yeah. Dad came and got me before I could get very high because someone told.” She stared at Anastasia.
“It wasn’t me,” Anastasia said. “It really wasn’t. I promise.”
“Well, you told all the other times.”
“Not on purpose. If you tell about the water and the worms, then I promise I won’t tell anyone, not even Penny.”
“If we told you, we would tell Penny,” Henrietta said.
“I already told you,” Henry said. “It came from a rain cloud.”
Anastasia looked at him and curled her lip. “That’s not very nice. Most water probably came from a rain cloud.”
“We might tell you soon,” Henry said. “I have to go dump the bucket.” He scooped the towels up, carried them to the bucket, and started down the stairs. Anastasia followed him down onto the landing.
“Henry?” she asked.
“Yeah?”
“Do you think I can’t keep a secret?”
He stopped and looked at her. “I don’t know, can you?”
“It’s kind of hard, but sometimes I can.”
“Okay. I’ll tell you a secret. Don’t tell anybody.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t want to go back to Boston.”
“Oh.” She looked disappointed. “What about your parents?”
“I hope they’re okay, but I don’t want to go back. They would never let me have a knife or ride in the back of the truck or drink soda or play baseball without a helmet.”
“Real baseball players wear helmets,” Anastasia said.
“They made me take a special class when I wet the bed.”
“You wet the bed?”
“I used to.”
“I won’t tell anybody.”
“Okay,” Henry said, and he went into the bathroom. Anastasia went downstairs. She didn’t tell anyone. It would have been harder if Penelope had asked.
“I thought he was keeping a fish,” she whispered to Penelope. “But Henrietta said they weren’t.”
That night, Henry read on the dry end of his bed until he was sure his aunt and uncle were asleep. Then he pulled down the sheet of posters and looked at his collection of doors. He got out the chisel Henrietta had brought him and began prying and scraping at the remaining plaster.
Downstairs, Frank told Dotty not to worry about the scratching noise, rolled over, and went back to sleep.
Henry worked much faster with a chisel, and he was getting the hang of how the old plaster broke off. He was also still heavily caffeinated from the barbeque and not even slightly tired.
The plaster in the upper corners came off quickly, and he tipped his dresser onto his bed so he could stand on its side to reach the very top of the wall where the ceiling peaked. There were no little doors that high, just a wooden panel crowning the whole wall. He climbed down off his dresser, stood it back up on the floor, and tried to quietly pull his bed away from the wall to get at the bottom.
Henrietta came in just as he finished moving his bed. She had waited a very long time for her sisters to fall asleep.
Most of the plaster behind the bed came off quickly because water had seeped down behind it and loosened it up. But the bottom corners still took the two children a great deal of time to clear off. The plaster was thinner there, cracked easily, and came off in tiny pieces.
When Henry finished and stepped back to look at his wall, the caffeine was gone and he was tired enough to fall asleep standing up. His arms and wrists were sore, and yawns came with almost no break between them. Henrietta, who had been sweeping and cleaning while Henry chipped, stopped as well and stood beside him.
“How many are there?” she asked.
Henry yawned. “I don’t know. A lot. They’re pretty small.”
Henrietta started counting. Henry was too tired to count, so he just waited for her to finish.
“Ninety-nine,” she said finally. “There are nin
ety-nine. Ninety-nine is a lot.”
“Yeah.” Henry yawned again.
“Should we go dump all the plaster now?” Henrietta asked.
Henry yawned again. He nodded. He couldn’t talk.
The blanket was not piled as high as it had been the last time, but it was still very heavy. An exhausted Henry heaved his makeshift sack, and Henrietta followed him, picking up the pieces that he dropped.
When they arrived outside, the night air roused them a bit, but not much. Every time Henry yawned, Henrietta’s jaw quaked and then opened wide as she fought one of her own.
The two of them finally made it to the irrigation ditch, watched the plaster slide down into the oily-looking night water, and sat down.
“I fell asleep here last time,” Henry said. “It was early, but the sun was up. Your dad found me. He didn’t even ask what I was doing.”
“He never does.”
“I’d like to sleep here again. It’s much nicer than inside.”
“You’d get cold.”
“It’s not that cold out here,” Henry said. “It’s just nice.”
“I’ve done it before,” Henrietta said. “Eventually you still get cold. Have you ever slept outside at night?”
Henry shook his head.
“Not even in a tent?”
Henry shook his head again. “I slept in a sleeping bag once. Mom said I had to keep it on top of my bed, but I slept on the floor. She thought I’d fallen out of bed.” He was staring at the moon’s strange face. Henrietta didn’t say anything. He turned to look at her. She was asleep in the grass. Her mouth was open.
“Henrietta,” he said. He poked her in the shoulder, and she woke. “We should go inside, or we’ll both fall asleep.”
“Okay,” she muttered, and he helped her up. The two of them dragged bare feet through the beautifully damp grass, a wet and dirty blanket dragging behind them.
Henry said goodbye to Henrietta at her door, climbed his stairs, and threw his blanket on his bed. Where it had been wet, it was now filthy with dust that would not shake off. He didn’t care. He didn’t even bother to reattach his sheet of posters. He dropped his clothes and climbed onto his bed, put his head in the corner, remembered something, reached over, turned off his light, and closed his eyes in the darkness.
Henry didn’t know if he had been asleep for hours or if he had only just gotten into bed. All he knew was that there was a light on in his room. It was supposed to be dark. What does that matter? his sleeping mind wondered. He didn’t open his eyes. His bare feet squirmed around on the wet part of his sheets.
Suddenly he was wide awake. The light was shining across the end of his bed, lighting his damp feet. It was coming from the post office box.
Henry sat up and slid to the end of his bed, kicking his tangled bedding to the floor. Holding his breath, he looked through the narrow glass panel. Inside the darkness of the box, a single postcard leaned against the left side. Beyond that, the box opened onto a yellow room glowing with light. Henry’s mind, back up to normal speed, remembered the key in his pants pocket.
Henry jumped off his bed and rustled through the sheet-and-blanket pile on the floor, hunting for his pants. When he found them, he reached for the pocket, then he panicked. What if the key had fallen out when he fell down at first base? Or when he fell down at second base? Or in right field? Then his fingers found the string and pulled it out.
The key swung and spun in the dim light. Henry hopped back onto his bed and felt for the keyhole. He pressed the key to the lock. Nope. He flipped the key around and tried again. It slid into place. He turned it, felt the latch release, and pulled open the little door.
Henry was peering through a mailbox into somewhere else. The somewhere else was mostly yellow. Then Henry heard someone whistling, and a pant leg came into view not two feet from Henry’s face.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The pant leg was gray. It shifted, shuffled, and then stood still. The whistling slowed and stopped. A thick hand, wiry with black hair, reached down and slid a long envelope into Henry’s box, next to the old postcard. Then the pant leg moved on, just one step judging from the click of the shoes, but out of Henry’s range of vision.
Henry did not wonder if he was dreaming. He was too surprised for that. Instead, he stared, hardly breathing, into the yellow place. He could still hear the whistling, sometimes faint and distant, sometimes closer. He could hear the clicking of shoes as the pant legs walked about, but he only saw them walk by once more. The yellow place was not something that would have normally intrigued Henry, and a man’s pant leg never would have. But seeing them just through a small box in his bedroom wall, which he knew to be an exterior wall facing the barn and miles of fields, made them far more interesting. And so Henry stared for quite a long time, at nothing much, which should never have been there.
When a boy finds a spider that isn’t moving, he generally stops to examine it. If it persists in its lack of motion, even if it looks like it might be dangerous, he will poke it with a stick, just to see what it does. If it’s a snake, he might use a longer stick or even a well-tossed rock. Henry was in a similar situation. He was looking at something more surprising than most people imagine possible. And yet it wasn’t doing much.
Henry didn’t have a stick. He didn’t have a rock. So he reached up and pushed the long envelope back through the box and heard it drop to the floor on the other side. The whistling stopped. The yellow place was silent for a moment, and then the shoes began clicking toward him. Half a pant leg came into view. The leg inside it bent. A hand passed by. It traveled to the floor, then passed back the other way. It was holding the envelope.
“Hmm,” a voice said. Henry caught his breath as a face, cocked sideways, came into view and looked straight at him. It was a man’s face, long and thin, with a biggish gray mustache. The man peered inside the box while the hand came up and reslotted the envelope. Then the man stood, the whistling began once more, and the feet clicked their way elsewhere. Henry began breathing again.
It did not take Henry very long to become uncomfortable, hunched over with his face filling the small door. He tried shifting his weight, sitting instead of kneeling, but his neck kept kinking and his back ached. Finally, he pushed the sheet of posters to the far end of the room and slid off the bed onto the floor. He sat facing the cupboards, with his back against the opposite wall and his feet under his bed. From this position, he stared at the little rectangle of yellow light. But he didn’t stare for long, because now that he was finally comfortable, he fell asleep.
When he woke, his right cheek was resting on his shoulder, his neck was kinked, and the light was gone. Henry hit his shin on the bottom of his bed standing up, yelped, then crawled onto his bed and felt for the small door. When he found it, he pulled out the long envelope and the postcard and dropped them on his bed. Then he sat and stared at the darkness, wondering what he should do next. He put his hand in the small post office box and felt around. Then he reached in deeper. It was only about a foot deep, and his hand quickly found the open back. He had an idea. With his left hand, he felt around for the latch on the door to the wind and trees. It slid easily, and the door swung open, letting in its earthy smell. That door was just above the little mailbox; a two-inch strip of wood was all that separated them.
Leaving his right hand in the mailbox, Henry leaned to the side and put his left hand in the bigger cupboard. He waddled as close to the wall as he could get, until he thought both of his arms had to be sticking out the other side of the cupboards. Then, resting his chin on the wall, he felt for his hands. His right hand waggled around in the air, touching nothing. His left squished against something soft and damp. His hands were in two very different places, but his mind knew that they ought to be touching just on the other side of the wall. Adjusting to push farther into the mailbox, he bent his arm and reached as high as he could. His fingers twiddled around and felt an envelope. He had found the back of another post office box. He reached to t
he side and found another one.
Henry pulled his arms back through and rubbed his hands together. The back of the mailbox was apparently in a wall in a post office somewhere. The front was in his bedroom. The back of the other cupboard was in a forest or somewhere with trees. The front was in his bedroom. His left hand had felt moss and dirt in some place where it had just rained. His right had been in a post office, fingering other people’s mail. His body was in his bedroom.
Henry sat in the dark for a long time, thinking thoughts that led nowhere and asking questions he couldn’t answer. Eventually, breathing in the air that crawled through his wall from some other place, he slept again. He slept with both little doors open. And while he slept, he dreamed.
Henry stood barefoot in a green place. His toes curled and uncurled, digging into wet, thick moss. And there were trees. Enormous trees. It was a forest, but the trees were far apart, at least one hundred feet in most places. The canopy intermingled above him, sprawling out from the straight-trunked, smooth-skinned towers that had waited to throw out branches until they had reached well into the sky.
Henry was on a gentle slope, almost flat where he stood. But below him he could see the tops of trees. This and the coldness of the air told him he was on a mountain. Henry looked up the hill behind him, at the green, mossed earth and the trunks of great trees. He watched himself walk. He was not controlling his walk or his pace or what he looked at. He was simply following along as he wandered through the dream. He could feel the water squeeze out of the moss between his toes. He could smell the cold air and feel it in his lungs. He wanted to stop and run his hands along the smooth bark of the trees, to grip a great wooden belly with his arms. Instead, he walked and soon found himself in a clearing surrounded only by grass and sky. The slope rose only a little farther, and there at the top, a great rectangular slab of stone lay flat. It was almost as tall as Henry, and its edges were rounded.
Henry watched his hand reach out. The stone had been smooth once. Now moss and time had roughed its skin. Henry left his hand on its surface as he walked all the way around. On the other side grew the last tree.
