Chapter Two

In a way, I remember the walk home that day better than I remember watching Lannie step into the other dimension. When the actual event was happening, I couldn't keep up. My mind, obstinately refusing to process that particular input, formed something of a construction-zone traffic jam with all the other thoughts that were suddenly rushing in. By the time school was out, I hadn't come any closer to understanding the implications of what had happened, but I was beginning to adjust to the fact that I might not actually know anything about the world. Luckily, Charles and I took an almost identical walk home. And since he hadn't witnessed the event, his perspective on it ended up a good deal sharper than my own.

One of the things that had drawn Charles and me together in the first place was our apparently unique outlooks on most subjects with which we were presented. At a time in our lives when everyone else seemed to be trying their hardest to adhere to the most popular opinions and trends, Charles and I never seemed to have problems forming our own judgments. Well - it was that and a shared enthusiasm for the Ninja Turtles, but he was the only other kid in fifth grade with whom I could debate the moral implications of the Turtles' brand of vigilante justice against that of Casey Jones'. Admittedly, I've run that thought through a filter of interpretation far beyond what we could have understood at the time. Back then, it was more along the lines of, "Casey Jones is a human, so he can be a police officer, but the turtles can't. He should do that instead of hitting people with hockey sticks."

Our social circle didn't extend very far, but after maybe a week of knowing each other, that didn't seem to matter.

"So you're sure she disappeared. Like, really disappeared. It wasn't a trick?" This was the third time we'd come back to this question.

"No," I said again, "she was just gone. Like she was a hologram and somebody turned the projector off. Just gone."

"Well, I mean, this is what everyone's been talking about this year. Maybe we were just wrong and everyone else was right."

I didn't like admitting it, but he had a point. I was there; I saw it happen. Charles eyed me carefully. "Do you think we could do it?" he asked.

The question caught me off guard. I had been so busy trying to think of ways it could have been a magic trick, imagining how David Blaine would have done it, that I hadn't even considered making our own attempts.

"I heard some people talking about it in my last class. Ms. Kelker was writing all these different equations on the board, so she had her back to the class, and Theresa and Ashley were talking the whole time about how they'd both seen it happen."

Ashley Frank. She'd been a constant fantasy of mine since third grade. That first, indestructible crush. I imagined how her beautiful, dark hair might feel between my fingers or if her eyes were even more enchanting from up close. On the other hand, the fantasy also usually involved her and me taking our respective places in the plot of The Legend of Zelda, and her affections remained firmly outside of my reach.

"She was saying that it's tricky." Charles was still talking; I rejoined the story. "Like you have to imagine moving inwards."

"Wait, what?"

"She said you have to imagine kinda like sucking yourself into your own stomach." He didn't seem to have noticed my lapse in concentration. "Like in the spot you're standing, there's another spot inside that, not one you can see, though. And that's where you have to go. That's how you get to the other dimension."

I stopped and looked at Charles. He stopped as well; a breeze was blowing the strands of his black hair backwards off his forehead, and his dark, beady eyes questioned me from behind his glasses. I couldn't help thinking he looked a little bit like a rabbit. In glasses. "Charles, that doesn't make any sense."

"It makes just as much sense as the story everyone's been telling. The one you told me you saw."

Again, he had a point. I was starting to wonder if somewhere along the line I'd gotten a lot dumber than my best friend. "Look," I started walking again, "if that's true, then where do you go? I mean, yeah, you go to the other dimension, but where is it? It's inside of where we're standing? It's inside of where everybody's standing?"

I looked back for an answer. Charles was gone.