10
estrenar
That evening I sat at the table staring at the Magic 8 Ball, picking at my TV dinner despondently. Usually I didn’t mind the congealed mac ’n’ cheese or the gray meat loaf, but tonight I couldn’t even swallow a bite.
That man in the garden . . . he’d said he was locked in. Trapped. And I hadn’t believed him. Had I left him there when I exited the garden and the door was gone? Was hereallytrapped?
I poked at my congealing macaroni.
Men didn’t just disappear, and neither did doors, and neither did gardens.
It was impossible.
“How many times will I keep telling myself that?” I mumbled to my awful dinner. I’d even taken a long, hot shower, done a face mask, and put on my most favorite and softest pajamas. They were a duck-printed button-down and matching shorts, and Istillwas in an awful mood.
The storm hadn’t helped, either.
As soon as it had rolled in, it left in a blink, doing enough damage that tomorrow I’d spend half the day cleaning up the debris.
But mostly my mood was because of that door. And the garden. And the man who, I hoped,didin fact leave, even though I knew in my gut he hadn’t. I kept replaying in my head the moment when he disappeared, wondering if it could have been a trick of the light or a particularly good illusion—I’d left through the door, and at that moment Ihadfelt the wind shift. I’d thought it was just the storm coming in, but now that I thought about it, the shift had felt odd. Wind from the wrong direction—from behind me—causing the door to slam closed.
And then when I turned around, there was no door at all. Of course there wasn’t. The garden I had seen the first time was in the Hedges, not the Wildflower Garden. While they weren’t on opposite sides of the estate, they were far enough away that I wasn’t sure how the garden could be in both places.
Actually, Iknewit couldn’t be.
Maybe I had hallucinated all of it. The door, the garden, the man with the storm-dark eyes. That would have been a breath of fresh air.
Wouldn’tit?
Frustrated, I dropped my fork into my TV dinner and snatched up the Magic 8 Ball. “Ishe real?” I asked and gave it a shake.
The die tumbled in the blackish liquid. If it landed on something positive, would I believe it? If it landed on something negative, would I take it to heart? What if the 8 Ball didn’t know, either? The die bobbled deep into the dark liquid and slowly surfaced. My chest felt tight as I hung on the words it’d give me—
Suddenly, the front door gave a hard rattle.
I glanced up. The wind from the storm?
But then there was the jingle of a key ring, a soft hiss of a curse word, and the doorknob twisted.
A man pushed the door open wide.
I jerked to my feet, chair legs screeching against the hard-wood floor, Magic 8 Ball tight in my grip.
He was tall, dressed in a soft white Henley that stretched tightly over his broad shoulders and light-wash jeans over scuffed white sneakers. Short dirty-blond hair and an angular face, damp with rain. The sound of the storm rushed into the cottage, loud and rumbling. His brown eyes locked onto mine.
Surprise flickered across his brow. His mouth dropped open.
I shrieked. He gasped.
I threw the Magic 8 Ball.
His reflexes were fast—and my aim was poor—so he ducked as it sailed over his head and into a thicket of soft weeds in the soggy yard.
“What the hell?” he cried, whirling back at me in astonishment. “You could’ve killed me!”
I batted back, “And you might be here to killme!”
He seemed utterly offended at the thought. His face pinched. “Why would I do that?”
