Chapter One

I was fourteen when I first heard about the other dimension. I was at Charles' house, and one of his older brother's friends was over. I guess he thought he was going to be some kind of idol or hero to us, but what ended up happening was just that neither of us believed him.

"You guys ever hear about the other dimension?" He had just made sure Charles' mom wasn't around the corner.

Charles and I glanced warily at each other, not sure how to answer, both hoping the other would take the lead. "No," I finally ventured.

"It's this place, and it's kinda all around us, but it's - it's in a different place. It's like if you jumped right now into the air, but you didn't go up, you went - I don't know, I can't really explain it. It's a different direction than you can go right now." Such a sound explanation did little to sway our initial reaction that we were being set up for something. He was two years older than us; that was just survival instinct. He must have noticed our skepticism. "Fine, don't believe me. You'll see," his equally apt conclusion. He left the room shouting for Charles' brother to hurry up. I'm pretty sure he also managed to work in something about Charles and I being stupid and probably gay.

We watched him leave; Charles was the first to broach the subject. "That's dumb."

"Yeah."



That was eight years ago. Eventually, we realized that he wasn't lying, but most of the pieces we had to put together ourselves. We'd hear kids whispering about it in the halls at school, and it all sounded like one of those stupid urban legend games like Bloody Mary. There were more alleged methods for getting to the other dimension than I could keep track of. Clyde Davis swore you had to be naked to do it, that clothes couldn't go with you; that assertion combined with his deeply serious eyes more or less effectively ended the conversation. I tried to ignore it all. Talking about that kind of stuff always made me feel like a little kid, even if everyone else my age was talking about it. And ignoring it actually worked pretty well up until the day Lannie Sanders disappeared.

Most people when they talk about teenagers disappearing, it's in place of a word they don't want to say: kidnapped, usually. But this was a lot more literal than that. As in she was standing in the gym and took a step, and then she wasn't standing in the gym anymore. Just to be clear, she wasn't near a door.

Nobody moved for a long time after it happened: twenty, maybe thirty of the longest seconds of my life. And even though I'd just seen something impossible, my mind still took it upon itself to harness this strange thought that the rest of us were now frozen in place, that if I reached out and touched anyone else there, they'd just tip over like an unbalanced statue. But I also thought that trying to move might tip me over, so I stayed still.

Someone else moved. Rich Halstead, I think. He took one tentative step towards where Lannie had been standing. Another. He craned his neck closer like looking at the spot from a new angle might suddenly render her visible again, like he had some massive blind spot right in front of his face. Nobody had made a sound. Before anyone could, Lannie came back, stepped right out in front of us again, blinking into existence from nowhere. The entire group, ten or eleven of us, took one startled, synchronized step backwards, in perfect unison like we were a marching band or a school of fish. And still we managed only stunned silence. It was what everyone had been talking about for months, and now that we'd witnessed it, no one had anything to say. Finally, Lannie, looking just as surprised as the rest of us, spoke up. "How long was I gone?"