land just inside the door. On that thin edge was a fish, scaly and wet.
“Is that supposed to be a gift? A dead fish?”
“It’s not dead,” said Shrug. “Not yet.” Natalie looked down. The fish twitched feebly on the snow.
“Hey!” said Natalie. “It’s alive.”
“Leave it alone,” said Shrug.
“But I need to get it back in the water.”
“Don’t go through the door.”
The fish twitched again, gasped. Natalie had to look away.
“That’s horrible,” she said.
“It’s a gift,” said Shrug. “It’s doing what it has to do. Just like you.”
“You’re making a terrible mistake!” sang the first creepy girl. “You need to stop.”
In the morning she didn’t even glance at her desk; she dashed out of her room to breakfast, found clothes she could wear in the laundry room, got dressed in the bathroom. She went into her room just long enough to grab her backpack, but some little bit of curiosity betrayed her: at the last second she looked at her desk, just for a moment. There were three dolls there now.
She almost ran out the door, down the hall, outside; she turned at the sidewalk, nearly crashed into Jessie.
“Want to hear a riddle, Beth?” asked Jessie, dressed today in shorts over leggings, even though it was well below freezing.
“A riddle?” said Natalie. “No thanks. And I’m Natalie.”
“It’s easy,” said Jessie, but Natalie walked quickly past her, head down, towards school.
In social studies they met for their projects. Walter produced a ragged picture of an anime George Washington from the deep recesses of his backpack. It was rumpled, but perfect. Natalie couldn’t believe it. It had the anime look- with big eyes and wild hair- but somehow it was exactly George Washington as well, though just the head and shoulders.
“Wow, Walter,” she said. “That’s, um...sick.”
“Thanks,” he mumbled from under his hoodie.
“I was thinking,” said Heidi. “We could all dress up, in old fashioned clothes like they wore then, when we do our presentation.”
“Sick,” said Walter.
“Nah,” said Natalie. “Everyone will look at us. We can just give them the facts and Walter’s drawing.”
“It would be fun,” said Heidi, but Natalie held firm. It would be weird, and where would she get the clothes? Walter worked on his drawing some more while Heidi and Natalie browsed on a classroom computer, looking things up.
“See,” said Natalie. “I told you he didn’t really have wooden teeth.”
By the end of the class they had some good notes, and Walter had added some things to his drawing. Now George Washington had a whole body: a woman’s body, wearing a bikini. He had a sword in one hand and some kind of massive assault rifle in the other hand.
Walter!!! she shouted, in her head, once again seeing doom on the horizon. Mr. Meyer had made it clear: their grades all depended on one another. Nobody got an A unless they all earned it. Arrrgh.
Then it was off to math class. They were taking a test on graphing equations. Ms. Romero passed the tests out face down, then told everyone to get started. Natalie turned her test over, looked at the first page, and felt like someone was running their fingernails up and down her spine. It felt like the floor had dropped out from under her. It felt like her stomach had turned a somersault.
On the test, there weren’t any graphing problems at all.
All the problems were the same.
Every problem was 7 + 6.
Every one. A whole page of same problem, 7 + 6. Twenty of them.
Oh no, she thought. This can’t be. She turned the page, but the second page was blank. She looked to her left, where Julie Li was busily working. Natalie could see equations, and blank grids of graph paper waiting to be filled. To her right, Joe Hernandez was already done with the first graph. But there were no equations or places for graphs on Natalie’s paper.
Just 7 + 6, over and over.
She got up, walked to Ms. Romero’s desk. Ms. Romero was working on her laptop, updating the homework listings on the web.
“Yes, Natalie?”
“Um, there’s something wrong with my paper.”
“Let me see,” said Ms. Romero. She took the paper from Natalie, stared, frowned, then laughed. “Whoops. Must have gotten mixed up with some other teacher’s material. Sorry, Natalie. Here you go.” She gave Natalie an extra paper, smiled. “Back to work now.”
“But how would that happen?” said Natalie.
“Excuse me?”
“How could one extra paper get into yours like that?”
Ms. Romero shrugged. “Maybe I left them in the copy room close to somebody else’s stuff, Natalie. I don’t know.”
“Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Did you leave them somewhere? Put them down?”
“What? Well, I don’t remember, but I might have. I don’t think so. But it could have been anything. You should get to work.”
“But it looks just like the tests you make.”
“We all use the same computers, Natalie.”
“Why would someone make a test with just one problem on it?”
“Natalie, why are you asking me this? It was just a mixup. Now please get to work so you don’t run out of time.”
But, thought Natalie, how? If someone else’s papers had gotten into Ms. Romero’s, wouldn’t the odd one have been on the top or the bottom, not right in the middle where Ms. Romero would just happen to pass the paper to Natalie? And really, would anyone make a test with just one page of problems all the same, and a blank page? And...and...why was it exactly the same problem the creepy girl had asked her?
What was going on?
At home she tried to work on the George Washington project, but she couldn’t concentrate. She gave up at dinner time, ate, then watched The Princess Bride with her mom and dad.
“Let’s watch another,” said Natalie.
“It’s after nine,” said her dad.
“We could have a movie night.”
“It’s a school night,” said her mother. “Time for bed.”
“I’m not tired,” said Natalie, but she was already on her feet, heading slowly towards the hall.
They were there, the three dolls, on her desk, blank eyes staring at nothing, unless they were watching her. Natalie walked to the desk, examined them closely. They had porcelain faces, and thin hair that looked real. Their cone-shaped bodies looked like they were made of heavy paper or something, with the snowflake painted on precisely.
“I’m done,” whispered Natalie. She didn’t want to touch them. “I’m done with you. No more dreams.” Her family had gone on a trip once, a car trip to Yellowstone park, when Natalie was six. They had to leave early, and Natalie asked her mom for her own alarm clock. Her mother had told her to say to herself, over and over when she went to sleep, I want to get up at five, I want to get up at five, and it had worked! Natalie snapped awake in the dark, and ran to the kitchen to look at the clock on the stove. It was 4:59, almost perfect.
So she laid in bed, her back to the dolls, reciting over and over, I don’t want to dream about the Kingdom anymore, I don’t want to dream about the Kingdom anymore, I don’t want to dream about the Kingdom anymore.
Then she was sitting in the snow again, in the forest, in her dress. Shrug wasn’t there. Instead, creepy girl two and three were standing by the side of the path, eyes open, looking at her.
“Where’s Shrug?”
But the girls didn’t answer. Natalie stood, brushed off the snow, looked down the path towards the doors. She looked the other way. The path went that way, too, to somewhere else.
“Where does that way go?” she asked, but they didn’t answer.
“Do you guys have names? Can you talk?” No answer.
“Fine. You’re Green and Blue, the
n. Ms. Green and Ms. Blue. Like teachers. Off we go.”
She headed towards the doors, followed by Ms. Green and Ms. Blue. When she got to the wall Shrug was there, standing with the first creepy girl, the one always telling her not to open the doors.
I guess she’s Ms. Pink, thought Natalie.
“I told you,” said Shrug to Ms. Pink. Ms. Pink glided away into the forest, out of sight.
“I knew you’d come,” said Shrug. “You do what you have to do.”
“Is she angry?” asked Natalie. Shrug...shrugged.
“I have some questions,” she said.
“They always do.”
“They? There’s others?”
“Spring comes every year,” said Shrug.
“Spring?”
“That’s what you are doing. You bring the spring. That’s what Nightfall does.”
“Why spring? If I’m Nightfall, shouldn’t I be bringing darkness? Or sunset? Or stars or something?”
“Ha!” blurted Shrug. “That’s daytime thinking again. You’re Nightfall. You bring spring. That’s how it works.”
“What’s behind the doors?”
“Places.”
“What kind of places?”
“Different places.”
“Are they this place somewhere else or other places besides this place?” asked Natalie, wondering if she was making any sense at all.
“Now you’re making sense,” said Shrug. “They are other places besides this place.”
“Like other worlds?”
“If you like.”
“Sixteen worlds? Why sixteen? Shouldn’t they be infinite or something? Sixteen is too perfect.”
“Daytime thinking,” said Shrug. “You need to do your job.”
“What do those symbols mean?” said Natalie.
“What?”
“Above the doors. The little curly squiggles. What are