The Twice Gifted Necklace

Maigo finds a room in her house that she had never noticed before.

The Twice-Gifted Necklace

 

  The earliest times, before coming to the house, are the least clear. Most of those memories are incomplete: flower-scented lotion, a woman with long fingernails but a fuzzy face, the warmth of a quivering radiator, my mother's halting chuckle, formless interlacing emotions hovering beneath an air of bittersweet nostalgia. It is bewilderingly vibrant, like the land of Oz, but always out of focus. I know only that one day, we left that busy, cramped apartment for the peace of my father's childhood home. 

My gramma lived on a street of one-story houses populated by old people who tended gardens and ambled through our yard to meet with other old people. Gramma had been on the way for a visitation, when she fell. The hospital called my mama and we moved into Gramma's home a week later. She complained constantly about new mouths to feed or about the noise we made in her quiet home, but she delighted in the work of taking care of us. She ordered my mother or my brother around the kitchen from her wheelchair, making foods I'd never tasted before with foreign sounding names. She'd tried to order me around too, but quickly gave up when my mama walked in on me with a knife and a bleeding finger at only seven years old.

What fascinated me was not her cooking, but her skills with a needle. Whenever I had a tear, she would spirit my clothes away and return them with tiny bluebirds or daisies where the gap had been. She quickly took me in as her apprentice. One afternoon in March, she taught me the basic running stitch from her wheelchair with a quilt strewn across her lap. Her soft wrinkled hands trembled slightly as she grasped the needle and pulled the thread through. The fabric tented as she lifted the needle, grasping onto the thread as it passed. My own movements were not so graceful and my thread rebelled against me, jumping from its lines and twisting itself into knots. I would look in exasperation back to her work. Her needle dived back down, flowing through the fabric, always steady and never rushed, rising and retreating like the ocean's waves. She drilled me in weaving, rosette, and lazy daisy stitches, until all my clothes and all our pillowcases were covered in brightly colored daisies and butterflies. Each time I finished a design she would hold her glasses folded to her face and raise her eyebrows as she gazed down at it. "The line is not quite straight here," she would say or "your stitches are too far apart here." But then she'd set down her glasses and smile at me and say, "You're getting better. Maybe one day we'll make a dress for you from new fabric." In class, I would sketch polka-dot sundresses on disproportioned versions of me next to my math problems.

  But less than a year after we moved, my mother came running out of my grandmother's room and grabbed the phone from the hanging receiver. My brother Sam and I watched her dial the three digits and her eyes caught mine with a wide-eyed look of simmering anxiety. 

She turned to face away from the breakfast table where we sat. "Ambulance, please." Her voice caught in her throat and she coughed loudly into the receiver. Sam took my hand under the table. "It's my mother-in-law. I think-" Sam was pulling me to my feet, but I wanted to listen to what she had to say. "She's cold. I think-" Sam pulled me out the front door.

  "What happened to Gramma, Sam?" We stood on the porch, shaded from the late-August sun. "Is she ok?" Sam didn't meet my eyes. Instead, he stared at the scuffed wooden floor with my hand still in his. "Sam?" I didn't know why my chest was tightening, or my eyes were smarting with fresh tears.

  "Grandma." He at last met my eyes. He was scared too. Scared and sad. "I think Grandma went to heaven." I stared at him, not understanding his words. Heaven was a paradise where you couldn't feel pain and everyone was always happy. Why, then, was my brother so sad? He sat down on the porch swing. It creaked even beneath a child's weight. "Grandma was sick and she had to go to heaven. We can't see her anymore." He paused. "She's dead."

  I still didn't really understand. Even so, just those words and his voice as he spoke were enough to make my tears come. I took in a breath preparing to wail, but my brother clamped down on my wrist, squeezing it painfully. My wail became a gasp. "Listen to me. You aren't allowed to cry."

  "What?" The tears were already streaming down my cheeks

  "There's no crying aloud. If you cry, I am going to be very angry, do you understand?" I squirmed to free my wrist from his grasp, but he was five years older than me and in middle school already. I gave up and nodded in submission. "And you can't talk about her when mom's around, ok?"

  "Ok!"

  He released my hand and I pulled it back from him. His eyes lingered on my wrist, which had blushed beneath my copper skin. "I'm sorry," he whispered. He nodded in the direction of the open space on the bench. "Sit down."

  Still sniffling, I climbed onto the seat beside him. He was looking away, out through the front yard to the mountains. We sat for a moment and listened. The birds were twittering lazily from the woods across the street and further away, the cars on the highway whooshed past, almost indistinguishable from the rustling of leaves. My mother was still speaking with the police inside, but I couldn't make out the words. I heard a gasp from my brother and I suddenly realized he was crying too. His shoulders shook, then another gasp. "Sam?"

  He covered his face with his hands and I leaned close to hear him. "It's ok to cry a little," he said softly. "It's ok to cry a little if Mom doesn't see you." I pressed my face against his shoulder and joined him, sobbing quietly.

  We'd finished our tears and gone inside by the time the ambulance came. From my room, I spied on them taking Gramma away on a metal bed while neighbors watched with grim expressions through their windows. When we saw her a few days later for the funeral, she didn't feel like my gramma anymore. She was dressed up in gaudy makeup and an expression that I'd never seen her wear. Many people told us stories I'd never heard before about her life, but I don't remember any of them. I didn't listen. They weren't stories about the woman I knew. My mama sat stone-faced through the line of condolences. I tried to form my own stone mask to wear when these strangers crouched down to hug the girl in black. Still, I couldn't help but cry a little, quietly in the bathroom. I think my brother did the same. His eyes were red.

  We rented a special car and took her to the graveyard to rest next to my father. My mother buried his St. Christopher medal with her. My head throbbed as the priest droned on about things I didn't understand. Instead, I stripped away the leaves of the white carnations we were to set on her grave. She liked daisies the most.

 

I stood at the doorway to my gramma's room and looked in at my mama, who sat crisscross on the bed. All around her were piles of jewelry and wooden drawers wrenched from their hinges. Mama had my gramma's quilt folded on her lap. Each square was a different fabric, made from baby's blankets and children's sweaters. Each square held a memory. I wonder now how many of the memories stitched into the quilt were buried with her. Perhaps my mama was wondering the same as she stared down, one hand laid against the stitching.

  Sam was there too. He was picking up her folded blue skirt. It was a slitted knee-length pencil skirt, but she'd sewn a black laced panel beneath the slit for modesty. She'd spent hours carefully cutting the outline of lace and stitching uneven lines to follow the patterns of the flowers. It was playful, but elegant, like her. Sam placed the skirt at the bottom of a cardboard box and picked up the next, moving methodically as he hid away the pieces of her.

  "What are you doing?" I asked.

  Mama looked up from the quilt as if broken from a spell and smiled absently at me. "Maigo, baby, come here." I ran to her. She plucked me off the floor and sat me on her lap so that my legs dangled over the edge of the bed. She took a necklace from the bed. "Do you know what this is?"

  I took the necklace between my own fingers. It was a simple, close-knit chain holding only a single, uneven milk-white pearl encased in threads of silver, no larger than a thimble. "No. Was it gramma's?"

  She nodded her head. "It was a gift from her mother for her engagement to your grandfather. It was very special to her. Even when she didn't have any money, she would never sell this little necklace. Do you think you can keep it safe for me? She would want you to have it, but you have to protect it."

  I agreed quickly. "Don't worry. I won't lose it." She pinched opened the clasp. The weight of the cold metal touched my skin as she carefully lifted my curls from my neck and fastened the clasp. I marveled at the little piece of jewelry, while my mother held tight around my waist and placed her chin on the top of my head. I could feel her voice vibrate through her chest as she said, "When you wear this, I want you to remember her. Remember that she's inside of you."

  I looked up at Sam. He didn't meet my eyes, just continued robotically placing the clothes inside the box, one by one. My mother cleared her throat, grabbed the rest of the jewelry by the fistful, and dropped it into a box layered with clothes and perfumes labeled 'MARJORIE' in blocky, capital letters. "Maigo, take this down to the storage room." I looked up at her in surprise. "Now, please. We have a lot to get through today." The necklace bounced as I landed on the floor. A soft and reassuring tap. Then, she shoved the box into my arms and guided me with a firm, but gentle hand out of the room.

  The door downstairs looked like a pantry in the kitchen, but behind it was a wooden staircase that led into a finished basement. In the 10 months we'd lived in that house, I never once traveled down those stairs. I was too afraid of the cold air and the creatures that might live down there. “You need to be brave," I whispered and turned the knob.

  The stairs were plain plywood with no carpeting. The wood wasn't even stained, as if it was built in an afternoon. Below, I could make out the shadow of a billiard table on the floor of the basement. I flipped the exposed light switch next to the door. The plastic-covered light fixture above the stairs as well as another from the main floor lit up. With the extra light, I could see the wires connecting the switch to each of the fixtures. Just wires and lights. See, not so scary after all, I thought to myself, but my heart was still racing.

  I took the steps one at a time so that my feet met on each before taking the next step and leaned into the creaks of the old wood. The air was cool, but moist despite the summer heat. The walls were white plaster walls and the floors uneven wood panels. As my vision cleared the basement's ceiling, I found that besides the billiard table, the basement was lined with dusty shelves. On each one, store-bought cans of soup and beans and corn and okra stood in neat rows. And as I continued on, it was unbranded, homemade jars of pickles and peaches and plums and radishes. And there was an old sewing machine bolted into an old green desk. It was the type you had to pump with your foot as you sewed because it didn't use electricity. I pictured my grandmother sitting at it, pumping the pedal as she guided the fabric beneath the needle as it went up and down and up and down. I focused on the beat, matching my steps to the pumping of her foot so that we created a waltz between us. As I passed her, the whirring of the machine halted, instead my focus narrowed on the cracked door in the basement's outer wall. 

When I nudged the door open and flicked on the bare incandescent lightbulb, the pretenses at wooden furnishings fell away. The space was carved out of the very earth with cut rock and packed dirt forming an unsteady carpet. This space was larger than my own room, but between the stacks of boxes and intruding earth, it felt much smaller. Above me, the wooden planks forming the support for the rooms above were decorated with cobwebs that had caught only dust. I placed my own box near the door, beside one that listed, 'DARYN'S THINGS.' Daryn. That was my father's name. I ran my fingers along the duct tape but didn't open the box. Mama wouldn't like it if I messed with my father's things. 

  I turned around to leave. That's when I noticed something by the door. There was a space between the hollowed earth and the wooden beams of the finished basement, less than a foot in width. I stood before it and looked down beyond the length of the basement, where there glowed a faint, bluish light. How strange, I thought, there's no space in the house for that room. I leaned further into the space for a closer look. I could make out a room with its own boxes and coats.

  Something moved in the dark pathway and I stumbled back. There came a rustling. In the absence of light my mind conjured up images of rats and shadow monsters crawling across the dark ground. The sound was edging closer. I scampered back toward the safety of the finished basement. From the corner of my eye, I saw a form emerge from the space just as I pulled the handle toward me, slamming the door shut. I pressed my ear against the door. Was that moaning I heard?

  "What are you doing?" Sam stood on the stairway, watching me, a 'MARJORIE' box in his hands.

  "There's something in the storage room."

  He rolled his eyes and finished descending the stairs. He placed his own box on the floor. "You're such a scaredy-cat," he muttered and took hold of the handle.

  "I'm not kidding. I saw something. There's something in there." 

  He opened it and a flash of orange darted past us to the stairs. Both of us squealed and Sam pulled me behind him. Then my pulse calmed as I stared at the creature that had come from the gap. It was a plump, orange-striped tomcat speckled with dust and cobwebs that eyed us defensively from beneath the stairs. Sam laughed. "It's just a cat!" He picked up his box and placed it above the one I had brought within the storage room and shut off the light I had left on.

  Relieved, I walked toward the creature, hand outstretched. It shuffled further beneath the stairs. "No," Sam said, "you have to come up slowly. And crouch down too." He crouched down, rubbing his fingers together as he gradually duckwalked up to the cat. The little orange cat watched him warily. Slowly, he came out of his hiding place to sniff Sam's outstretched hand. A second later, it nuzzled into his hand. Sam laughed, stroking the cat's fur. I took a step forward and the cat jolted, suddenly alert once more. I took another step forward and he rushed upstairs.

  Sam stood up. "You have to be careful with cats, you know. You have to move slowly and smoothly so they know what to expect." He glanced back at the storage room door. "I wonder how it got in there."

  "There's another room behind the basement. Come here, I'll show you."

  I lead him into the storage room. It was even more foreboding with only the light from the door to illuminate it, but Sam was with me, so I didn't fear the dark. He followed me as I turned and gazed down the space between the finished basement and the rock, but there was nothing there. Where there had once been a room lit in faint blue light, now there was nothing but a dark hole. "Maybe there's a tunnel from outside and the cat snuck in," he said. I gazed back through the darkness. Where had it gone? "We're going to drop off some of gramma's stuff at the church. Come on, we need to go."

  I took hold of Sam's hand and pointed down the passageway. "There was another room after the basement before. That's where the cat came from."

  Sam looked back through the dark passageway, then back to me. "Ok," he said. Then took my hand in his. "We need to go now. We can look for the room later." And we left the dark storage room behind.

 

Two weeks later, on a day when it rained so heavy that the sky was nearly black, I caught the cat. In the time since his discovery, Sam and I had named him Harry and fed him with table scraps and canned tuna. Still, he was always wary of me. Mom hadn't said anything about him or even seemed to notice he had come to stay with us. After my grandmother, she flitted from one thing to the next, rarely stopping to listen to the petty exploits of her young children. Harry had been pawing at the storage room door when I snuck up behind him and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, like my brother had taught me. The cat froze when I grabbed him. I lifted him, supporting his body weight with my left hand. Despite his immobile body, he meowed softly in complaint. "Good kitty," I cooed. The cat remained immobile.

  I hurried upstairs to my mother. She was leaning over a cooking book with a bit of flour smudged on her cheek. We'd finally run out of mourning casserole and since then, my mother was often in the kitchen puzzling over books and bowls. Usually, we would end up eating frozen corn or beans with buttered rice, regardless of what she was working on. Occasionally, we ate the strangely textured foods my mother invented while she watched us anxiously. Usually, by the end of the meal, no one was happy, one way or another.

  I held up Harry. "Mom, I caught the cat!"

  She glanced over at me for a moment, her eyes gliding over the cat before turning back to the recipe. "That's nice, sweetheart."

  I took Harry back through the kitchen to Sam's room, where he and his friend, David, were trading cards and joking about people in their class. I held out Harry to them. Sam's eyes widened as I held out the cat and pronounced, "I caught Harry! He was sitting in the basement and I snuck up behind him and caught him!" Harry meowed dejectedly in response. 

  Sam opened his mouth to speak when David cut him off with a scoff. "Sam, your sister still plays make-believe? What a baby!" Sam looked from me to David to the cat in confusion. David continued, "Maigo, go somewhere else if you're going to play with invisible friends. We're not interested."

  I tucked Harry back into the crook of my arm. "Harry's not make-believe. He's real, see?" I stepped closer for him to see, but David only smirked.

  "Go away. We're busy. We don't have time for invisible friends," said David.

  There was a long pause as before Sam spoke, ignoring the cat and looking squarely into my eyes. "Yeah, Maigo. Go play somewhere else. Nobody cares about your invisible cat." David turned away from me back to their game and Sam joined him, closing me off.

  The cat wriggled free and dropped to the floor with a soft thunk. Sam's eyes darted over to Harry, then back to his card game. Liar. Harry dashed out of the room back toward the basement and I ran out after him, seething to myself. 

I followed Harry back to the kitchen where his body slammed into a cabinet door as he slid across the floor. "Maigo! Be careful!" Mama shouted, not lifting her head from the book. I thundered down the basement steps. Harry was scratching fiercely at the storage room door. He slipped through as soon as I opened it. I flipped on the light. The stone and dirt room was just as I had left it, except for a suspicious feather duster tail that hung over the lip of a box. I crouched down and crept forward. The tale swished left and right and stopped. I leaped forward to grasp it, but the cat jumped out of the box, ran behind it, and disappeared into the crevice behind the door. 

  I followed him to the entrance. The other room was there again, maybe 30 ft away, glowing in that soft blue light. The cat meandered through the dark passageway, meowing all the way. "Harry," I called. Harry meowed again. "Harry!"

  The light from the other room shifted and I looked up. There was a face staring back at me. My heart skipped a beat. I stared at him and he stared back at me, wide-eyed. Harry meowed and the boy’s eyes flickered down to the floor of the dark corridor. It was difficult to make out the details from far away, but he looked only a few years older than me. He had stringy blonde hair that formed a solid line across his forehead. 

  "Tiger!" he exclaimed as the cat emerged on his end of the hallway. He picked up the cat and hugged it close. The cat didn't struggle, like he had with me. He latched onto the boy's clothes and held tight to him. The boy looked back at me, matching my own confusion.

  "Are you-" he began to speak.

  I ducked away from the hallway and slammed the door behind me, leaving the light on inside. There's a boy who lives in my walls, I thought. Then I opened the door back up, just wide enough for my hand to slip through and turned off the lights before closing the door once more. There's a boy in my basement. I left the basement, resolved never to return.

 

"Can't you call in Martin? He's closer. It will be an extra thirty minutes just for me to drive over and I'll need to watch Margaret." I looked over at the mention of my proper name. It sounded unnatural, only meant to be written, never spoken. Mama was leaning against the wall with her head angled up toward the ceiling. The three of us had been sitting on kitchen stools over sandwich bread and lunch meats when the phone rang. I was in a bright yellow sundress sprinkled with tiny white daisies and bright white stockings that itched when I sweat. My brother had already changed into a t-shirt and jeans. He hated his button up, which Mama insisted he fasten to the top button. She'd once tried to force one of my father's ties on him and he threatened to never go to church again.

  "Fine," she said, "but next time you call him."

  "But Mom-" Sam started. Mama leaned forward off the wall and turned to face the receiver as she hung up the phone.

  "Sam," she turned around, looking tired. Sam scowled down at his half-eaten ham and swiss sandwich. "I need you to call David's mom and tell her you'll be taking Maigo with you to the party." She walked across the kitchen into the hallway as she spoke. "I'll be a bit late too, so if you get back and I'm not here, lock the doors, ok?" Sam grumbled something unintelligible. Mama ducked her head back into the kitchen. "Ok, Sam?"

  "Ok," he snapped.

  She disappeared back into the room without bothering to comment on his tone. A few minutes later, she reemerged in her black slacks and navy-blue colored blouse. She grabbed her messenger bag from the counter and slung it over her head. "Thank you, Sam. Maigo, be good for your brother, ok?" She quickly pressed a kiss onto each of our foreheads. "Mrs. Dayton will need to leave her house at about 3:30, so you better call her now." And she was out the door. A few moments later, the car was humming down the road.

  I turned back to look at Sam. He was staring at his sandwich, simmering in his own thoughts. "Maigo, do you like going to David's house?"

  David's house was nearly twice the size of ours, with a wrap-around porch that overlooked fields of pockmarked tobacco leaves. Sometimes when Mama couldn't pick us up, we would stay on the bus until David’s stop and wait there until the evening when she got off work. David and Sam would find things to do just the two of them, in his room or in the field, but either way, they weren't interested in the little sister who had a tendency to cry over scuffed knees. So, I would sit next to David's grandfather on the porch. The man rocked forward and back for hours, chewing and spitting and glaring at anyone who crossed his eyeline. David's mother was kind with a thick twang that flowed to its own swinging rhythm, but she had strict ideas about young ladies with idle hands, so I preferred his grandfather. I shrugged in response to Sam's question.

  "You know why Mom wants you to come with me to the party, don't you?"

  "No."

  "She thinks you're scared of being alone. She thinks you're a baby who needs to be watched all the time," he spat out the words in disgust.

  My cheeks burned and I slid from the stool. "I'm not a baby!"

  "But you always cry like a baby." He stood up and squared off his shoulders with mine.

  "I do not." The emotions were bubbling up, pushing toward tears. I hated the feeling. I hated proving him right, that I wasn't strong enough.

  "You do too. You always ruin things for me. You're too scared. That's why you follow me around. Because you're a coward who can't even sleep in the dark. That's why Mom always makes me watch you."

  Angry tears were already streaking down my face. "You're wrong. I'm not scared."

  "You're too selfish. You only think about yourself. Because you're scared, I'm the one who has to bring you around everywhere. All my friends are going to be at the party and you're just going to cry and ruin the whole thing." He was shouting now. Alone, in the empty house, the voice filled the space and in the moment of silence after he finished, I could only hear my own sniffling. And I hated it. And he hated it. 

  "I'm not selfish," I muttered. Empty words.

  The look in his eyes softened. "Just once, can I go alone?"

  "But I don't-"

  "You can stay here. If you're really not afraid, you can stay here. Just today." He took my hands and pleaded with me, "We won't tell Mom. You come with me all the time. Just this one time, can you be brave for me?"

  I hesitated. I had never been alone before, not truly alone, but looking into his eyes and hearing my own sniveling in the air, I hesitated. He didn't rush me. It was my choice. "Ok."

  He smiled and squeezed my hand. "Thank you." I smiled automatically in return. "Thank you so much." I tried to be brave.

  Until the car came, we went outside to play at being settlers, like the girl in my favorite book. He said I was silly for liking it before, but this time he laughed as we played. I couldn't bring myself to really enjoy it. We just passed the time until David's mom came idling up in her dented green pickup and shouted "Sammy, hurry up and get o'er here. Maigo dear, go let your mama know I got Sam."

  "Alright, Mrs. Dayton. I'm coming," he hollered back and took my hands once again. "Thank you, Maigo. You're so brave." He clambered into the pickup and slammed the door closed.

  They drove away. The birds jeered from the trees and farther away, baritone frogs accompanying. I ran back into the house and closed the door, locking it. Alone. A shiver passed down my spine. I should go play with my dolls. I had no interest. I should go read. I couldn't concentrate. I'm brave. I didn't believe it. I have to be brave. I was alone.

  Before long, I found myself at the door to the storage room. I hadn't seen Harry since he'd trudged across the divide to the boy in the other room. I wondered if I would see the cat again. Or the boy. Curiosity tugged at me. Who was that boy and where was he? 

  I went into the room, clicked on the light, and found the other room. "Hello?" I called into the space. I didn't know where the boy had gone. I called again and after a few minutes, the boy's face appeared on the other side, flushed with surprise. "Hello? Who are you?" I asked. I had to speak almost shout so that my voice carried the distance separating us.

  "Hello. My name is Adam." He looked just like I'd remembered him, but now as he leaned into the space, I could make out warm brown eyes and a smattering of freckles spotting his skin. Adam. The boy in my wall has a name. "What's your name?"

  "My name is Maigo." After a pause, I added, "nice to meet you," because it sounded like what should come next.

  Adam stared at me for a moment and I wondered to myself if that was the wrong thing to say. "Where are you?" 

  "I'm in my house, where are you?"

  "I'm in my house, but there should be a wall here."

  "There should be a basement wall where you are," I replied. "Why do you live in my wall?"

  The boy, Adam, laughed. "Why do you live in my wall?"

  I shrugged. "Because we moved here."

  He had a sweet smile, an honest smile. "Maigo, let's be friends. I think we would be good friends."

  I nodded in agreement, maybe too quickly, but his smile didn't falter.

  "I think I've seen your brother before. How many people are in your family, Maigo?"

  "My mother, my brother, and me. My grandmother used to live here too, but she died a few weeks ago." I responded.

  "I just have my mother, my father, and me," he said. " What grade are you in?"

  "I'm in third grade. But I only just started it. And it's a new school." I sat down on the floor, as he perched on a cardboard box and I told him about my life, about my new friends and the friends I'd left behind. I told him about my hobbies and about my brother. I told him about my grandmother and her necklace that lay around my neck. It felt so natural, this boy in my wall who listened. 

  I wanted to go on talking to him until the sun rose, but my brother returned, hollering my name as he came in the door. Hearing his voice, Adam said, "Will you be back tomorrow? Please come back tomorrow. We can talk again."

  "I'll come back. Just wait." And I shut off the light and ran up to the room above.

  When I came up through the basement door, Sam asked me, "what were you doing down there?"

  "There's a boy in the basement wall," I told him. "His name is Adam. I think Harry is his cat."

  "You are too old to have invisible friends, Maigo." Sam announced. "What do you want for dinner? I ate at the party, but I can make anything. Spaghetti? There's pizza in the freezer."

  My brother busied himself about the kitchen and pretended to be older, pretended to not believe in the invisible cat and the boy in the walls. As I watched him busy about, I remembered his grip on my arm the morning my grandmother passed on. Maybe this was something that we shouldn't talk about too. Maybe it was meant to be secret, hidden away and cherished safely in my heart where it couldn't harm anyone else, like my fear and sorrow from that day. 

 

Day after day, I pretended to be a student at school and to be happy at home. I looked for what people wanted from me, the way Sam did, trying to find the answer for how I can make them happy. Then I would find time to slip away into the basement and meet with Adam. Adam didn't have an answer. So I didn't need to find his. That's what I thought, then. That Adam existed outside the world, like a star glittering above me. He would comfort me if I cried and laugh when I told him something funny. Even if I was angry or bitter, he wouldn't reason me down, only listen and agree.

  My mother asked me why I went down to the basement so often. I told her it reminded me of Gramma. That was the right answer.

  Sam noticed something strange. He asked me what I did down there, alone. "Just playing with my dolls. It's quiet down there." It was the right answer too, but he scowled. 

  One day, Adam interrupted me as I told him about my friends at school. "Maigo," he said, "I want you to come visit me."

  After everything he had done for me, how he'd listened to me for hours, I thought I should accept, but it frightened me. Even though we'd spoken across the dark pathway, I still feared the space between us. I was never brave, now as much as ever. He saw the fear on my face and told me, "You could take a flashlight. Then it wouldn't be so scary. And it would make me very happy. Then you could meet my father and my mother."

  I blushed. He knew about my mother and my brother and everyone else in my life, but I hardly knew about him and his life. I didn't know where he went to school or even his age. "Ok."

  "Tomorrow," he told me. "Come here tomorrow at 11:00. I'll be waiting." He was beaming a smile wider than I'd ever seen or would see from him again.

  The next morning, I waited until my brother was away and snuck into his room to find the headlamp he used when he and David went exploring the woods at night. It was sitting by his bedside table. I took it and pulled the Velcro tight around my head. I was ready. I was going through the passage to Adam's side. My heart fluttered with excitement. What will his world be like? Like mine? I felt like an adventurer, setting out onto my very own journey. 

  I slipped back out into the kitchen and came face to face with Sam, headlamp fastened tight to my head. "Is that-"

  I took off down the stairs, jumping them three at a time. With my left hand, I fumbled at the switch, clicking on the head lamp. I was across the basement before he even reached the top of the steps. I flung open the storage room door and flicked on the light. Please be ready. I turned to find Adam, sitting on the box with a book in hand, already waiting.

  "Adam! Sam's coming!"

  I hurled myself sideways into the passageway. Adam stumbled to his feet as I started down the passage, skip-stepping sideways in awkward strides. It was just wide enough for me to sidle through. Sam's heavy steps were clomping across the basement floor. He will catch me. I glanced back the way I had come. Maybe I wasn't too late, I could go back and hide somewhere else before he dragged me out.

  "Come on! You can do it, come on!" Adam's voice resonated through the tunnel. I let it calm me, as it had so many days before. "Just focus on your feet."

  I did. I could feel the rough stone scrape against my skin and cobwebs caught in my hair. I tried not to think of spiders and rats creeping up to hide in my clothing and nibble at my heels in the dark. Focus on my feet. I heard the rhythm of the skip-step. Tah-tah. My grandmother’s necklace thumped the rhythm into my chest. Tah-tah. Sam is in the storage room. Tah-Tah. The beat filled my mind. Tah-Tah. The needle rose. Tah-tah. The needle fell. Tah-tah. I was close. Tah-Tah. Very close.

  "Maigo?" I stopped and looked back at my brother. His face was pale in the blue light from the headlamp. I had expected anger at my theft or confusion when he realized the room was real. Instead, when I looked back at him, I saw wide-eyed fear as his eyes looked past me, to gaze at Adam. Why?

  Adam leaned in and took hold of my arm. He jerked me toward him. Sam’s headlamp fell from my forehead and clattered to the ground in the passage. I reached for it, but Adam was already pulling me through, towards him, into the other room. I tripped over something and fell into his arms as the light went off. In the sudden darkness, Adam let out a surprised laugh and hugged me tight to his chest. "Maigo! Finally, you're here. I've been waiting for you."