I became aware that Brady was standing on the spiral stairway behind me.
“Only the middle one works,” he said, referring to the door marked Today.
“What do you mean?”
“The others are just brick walls.”
I looked to Brady to see if he was teasing me, but he was staring with a deadly seriousness at the doors. So I decided to check for myself.
I opened the door marked Yesterday, and found, sure enough, that only a solid brick wall lay behind it.
“I told you. Kids have tried to pry the bricks out before, see if there’s anything behind them. But there’s nothing. Just more brick wall.”
The wall had a tiny little slit on the upper right corner that looked like an eyehole. I lurched up onto my tiptoes to peer into it, but could only see darkness beyond.
“The one marked Tomorrow is the same thing,” Brady explained.
I stepped back, closed the door to Yesterday, and turned to face Brady.
“Okay, so what about this one?” I asked, nodding my head towards Today and trying to sound less freaked out than I was actually feeling.
For all I knew, this was some sort of new-kid hazing. I had heard about these things. A roomful of cheerleaders was probably waiting behind the middle door to steal my backpack or spray paint loser on my forehead. I became acutely aware that this was a test. And Brady must be in on it.
“It’s okay. I didn’t believe it either. Nobody does. That’s why we all went through the door. Deep down, you don’t think anything’s really going to happen.”
“There’s nothing behind that door,” I insisted. “This is a stupid joke. It’s not funny.”
“It’s not a joke, Marina. But if you want, I’ll take you back upstairs. You don’t have to go in.” His voice shifted as he started to get more and more excited. “Come on, take my hand. Let me take you back up. This was a mistake. Come on.”
The urgency in his voice only made me more curious. And before I could form another thought, I walked straight ahead and opened up the door marked Today. But then Brady was gone. I held my breath and was momentarily blinded by a bright yellow light, accompanied by an intense heat. Then that quickly went away. As the light faded, I became aware of a wonderful smell. I would know this smell anywhere, because there’s nothing like it in the world. It was bacon frying in my mother’s kitchen.
And before I knew what was happening, my mother appeared before me, standing in front of the grill, turning the bacon with her red-handled tongs. I walked up to her, and with every step, more of my kitchen appeared before me, behind me, all around me. It was like walking into a painting that was still being created. One moment, there was nothing to my left—just light. But slowly, the longer I stood there, the details appeared and became cemented in reality.
A laugh came booming from the kitchen table, suddenly sitting in its usual place by the window. The laugh belonged to my father. He was reading the Sunday paper, complete with colorful comic strips. I looked down and saw that I was in my pajamas, my bare feet pressed against the brown laminate tile that my father had laid when we moved into this house.
Soon all the puzzle pieces came into stark light, the whole house embracing me with an aura of warmth and security. But there was something wrong. There was a feeling in this room that I hadn’t felt in my house for years. My mother’s shoulders seemed too relaxed. My father’s laugh a bit too sincere.
I realized I hadn’t seen them this way since—well, not for years.
They were happy.
And then I knew. I knew what this room was. My head turned slowly back towards the kitchen table. A knot formed in my mouth, and I started hyperventilating with excitement. Because I knew what I would find there. And for a moment, everything seemed right in the world.
There he was. There was Robbie. He was at the table next to my father. He looked about seventeen years old, the age that he would have been. He was tall, his head several inches higher than my dad’s. He was eating an enormous plateful of eggs. He always had such an appetite. My parents used to joke that he’d eat them out of house and home.
House and home. Robbie was at our table. Robbie was alive and eating eggs at the table.
“Have a seat,” said my mother, and her voice was simple and buoyant in a way I hadn’t heard in ages. “You better grab some eggs before they’re gone!”
My father laughed, but my brother just grunted. He started piling more eggs onto his plate—a game we used to play. Hurry, hurry, hurry. Grab it before it’s gone.
And I wanted so badly to go sit at that table. To fight my brother for the last bit of eggs. To eat that delicious bacon. To hear my father laugh.
No. It’s a lie, I reminded myself. Robbie is dead. This is a lie. It’s a trap.
I reached out and grabbed the first thing my hands could feel, an egg timer my mom kept on the counter. It felt real enough. I twisted the dial and could hear it ticking. Tick tick tick. The sound was real, the knob turning in my hand like in real life. But I knew it was a lie. And the knowledge made it ugly. The knowledge made it all seem ridiculous.
I pushed the images away from me, and like a painting left out in the rain, the colors and the shapes began to melt and swirl. My brother’s face blurred around the edges, and soon I couldn’t make it out anymore. I stepped backwards. I kept going farther and farther from my kitchen, the sight melting away and being replaced once again by that yellow light. Soon I backed into a wall. No, it wasn’t a
