Outside In

Chapter 5 Evidence

Yarah's blankets were just starting to sink down into the frothy swirl of the washer when her mom arrived home.

"You're doing laundry!" Margaret came through the front door and walked into the hall after putting her work bag down with an unconscious exaggerated sigh she reserved for  after a long day at the office. "Excellent!" she reached down to kiss Yarah's sandy head and for a moment stood back to look Yarah in the eye with a puzzled expression on her face - like she was on the edge of asking a question, but was deciding if she should or not. Yarah held her breath, waiting for the sand and scrapes on her to be commented on. Her heartbeat felt loud, like it was shouting the beats until, with another sigh, her mother's thoughts seemed to slip into the usual routine and she was off talking about dinner options.

Later that night when homework and dishes were complete, teeth brushed, living room straightened and a million other little tasks done, short of taking a toothbrush and scrubbing the walls, Margaret finally took a stance said "enough! crazy child!" and firmly sent Yarah to her room and bed. Yarah had been using the craze of cleaning to put off thinking about what had happened as well as put off entering her room. Yarah hoped if she was being so useful and good about cleaning her mom wouldn't send her to bed until later. The activity helped too, but Yarah couldn't help but wonder, was it all just a dream? Scratching her head she found she still had sand stuck to her scalp - no, not a dream then. She had worried that simply entering her room would be enough to transport her again, but standing awkwardly in the doorway, breath held, she hadn't gone anywhere yet. Perhaps moving and laying on her bed would be enough to send her back to the strange place? Yarah eyed the bed and stayed put in the doorway.

Yarah generally talked to her mom about everything - but this seemed different like she couldn't talk about it with anyone unless they had gone too. If her mom had only commented on or seemed to see the sand and scrapes. But Margaret hadn't seemed to see and the words had dried and stuck in Yarah's mouth.

Tired by more than just a need for sleep Yarah approached her bean bag like it was a skittish unknown dog. Leaping the last three feet to her still crowded bed she sat on her knees waiting for something to happen. Looking around for any sign that the walls would waiver she crouched, twitching at any perceived sound. Her chest began to burn and she realized she had been holding her breath. She breathed a couple of ragged inhales and exhales and then she sniffed. The scent of the dryer sheets with an undertone of the fish tank gurgling on her dresser, nothing detected out of the ordinary. Stiffly and slowly she tossed all the items that usually lived in her closet off her bed and to the floor near her closet. She then spread her limbs across the bed all the while keeping an eye on her closet just in case it opened up and swallowed her into another land. Yarah was so tired, though, that no matter what she did to try and keep her eyes open, she was sound asleep before five minutes had passed.

...

Morning came as usual. First the sounds of her mother returning from her wee hours dawn workout followed by her chiming alarm calling her fully from sleep. Yarah was pleased to discover she was still in her bed and in her room. She got up and got ready all while still giving her closet a wide arch of space. Then, as usual, she went to school. No matter how she had tried to convince her mom that homeschooling would be better, it was never any use. Unless Yarah had a fever or was actively vomiting - she was going to school. On this day Yarah was glad of the escape that school offered. In the noisy crowded classrooms the strange events of the day before shifted into a distant thought, a story swept away by long division and lunchroom politics.

But school days end. When Yarah found herself home again she stood in the doorway to her room with her legs on each edge of the door frame and her hands stretched up palms against the top of the frame. She felt like a door herself, or rather that she could block or contain what had happened in the room. She knew she should be more afraid, have more fear at this moment of facing off with the unknown again, but instead she felt a tingle of excited apprehension. She now considered the experience more of a made-up story she had watched someone else experience. Some part of her brain logically pointed out that she really should be more terrified, but life is not always so logic bound. She stretched in the doorway a while longer and then slightly, gently, tipped her balance towards her inner room, letting gravity guide her forward.

She was still in her room.

The rocks the repair person, Chris, had given her were on the dresser by the fish tank currently looking harmless and peaceful in a wash of rays of sunlight from the window. They had been tossed there when Yarah had returned from her adventure yesterday. Now Yarah slid their warm bodies into her hand again. They didn't seem to be different from the hundreds of rocks she had collected from beaches and rivers. Plucking the one-ringed rock she held it up between her thumb and pointer finger. The 3-ringed rock she pocketed into her school uniform. Slowly, like a wedding march she had seen on tv, she made her way to the closet.