Would you walk through a portal to a new life?

"Beyond Rose Street" by Michael Barron

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Beyond Rose Street by Michael Barron

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“Don’t tell anyone what happened to Tyler.”

I stop running just long enough to turn, hoping for more instructions, but Leyton is already sprinting up his porch steps and through his front door.

“Should we—”

He slams the door behind him. Even from where I stand I can hear the lock click.

Fifteen minutes later, I stumble through my own door and find my folks watching an old episode of Family Matters. “Hey, son.” Dad pats the sofa beside him.

I head straight down the hall, pretending I can’t hear Mom ask if I had fun with my friends. Not bothering to remove my jeans and jacket, I crawl under my blankets, burrowing so deep I almost block out Dad’s earthquake belly laughs.

At this exact second Tyler’s mom is sitting in her den—which always smells of cinnamon—chewed up pen in hand as she wrestles with her Sudoku. Does she already sense something is wrong? Tyler never gets home until after midnight. She might not realize he’s missing until she calls him down for pancakes tomorrow. Even at the age of twenty-one, he’s the sort of guy who helps his mom make banana chocolate chip pancakes every Sunday morning.

By the time my bladder forces me to reemerge from my blanket cocoon, my bedside clock claims the time is one in the morning. The house is painfully silent. The sound my feet make as I creep through our one-story ranch is too similar to Tyler’s sneakers scraping against the barn’s bare floor.

I pee, flush, wash my hands and dry them on one of Mom’s new hand towels (“They’re peach, not pink.”). As I step out of the bathroom, I plan to turn left and head back to my room with its warm blankets and shelves stuffed with tattered Calvin and Hobbes collections. Instead I turn right and slip out the backdoor. I let my feet do all the thinking. It’s not until I’m pulling my bike from the garage that I realize I’m going back there.

One day when we were in kindergarten, Tyler pulled me toward the blocks, announcing, “We’re building a spaceship today.” Since then he’s decided everything we did; play Bioshock or Halo; watch movies at Oakland Cinemas or blow all our money at Eastside Comics in Dover; build a fort by the creek or shoot BBs at an old canister of propane. When the BBs failed to produce the Michael Bay-style epic fireball we’d both imagined, Tyler leaned against his air rifle, spat out his gum like it was a wad of chewing tobacco and said, “That was fucking anticlimactic.” He was the first kid I knew who cursed. He was also the only kid I knew who used words like “anticlimactic.”

As I bike past Leyton’s house, I picture myself banging on his door, threatening to call the cops, refusing to leave until he comes out and helps me.

I keep on pedaling, though, head down, peering through the darkness. The frigid March air cuts through my T-shirt, but I barely notice it. All I can think about is where I’m going.

Then, all of a sudden, I’m there. A green sign labeled “Rose St.” glints in my bike’s headlamp. Most people don’t even notice this road. It’s nothing more than a strip of gravel leading past a couple dilapidated houses, out to a crooked barn.

I’ve noticed it, though. When I was little, Dad would take me fishing down on the Oak River (“Just like my dad took me, and his dad took him.”) As we passed Rose Street I’d sit up as much as I could to see the barn. There are two holes in the roof that always made me think of hollowed out eyes. My knees would quiver as I dreaded and hoped to catch a glimpse of the ruins staring back at me.

Tonight, I leave my bike where the gravel road ends and follow my phone’s flashlight across the field of dead grass toward the barn. My breath comes out in short, desperate bursts as I pray the great wooden bay door has magically locked itself. However, it’s still wide open from when Leyton and I sprinted out, screaming, a few hours earlier. I already hear the perpetual, dry scraping of feet against floorboards.

I still have no idea why Tyler wanted to hang out with Leyton. In high school he’d always show up at parties with a Blu-ray copy of Clockwork Orange, which he’d play at an earth-shattering volume for the whole house to hear. Anyone who complained was called “an ignorant inbred hick.”

Then high school ended. My cousin, Aubrey—who used to babysit me with an iron fist—insisted that college was the only logical next step. She made a few good points. After all, she’d gone to the University of Maryland and was the only member of my family who ever moved out of town. Now she worked a cushy job at a financial company. But while trying to convince me, she never got around to writing a hundred-thousand-dollar check for tuition. I wasn’t quite ready to get crushed beneath crippling debt, so a couple weeks after we threw our mortar boards into the air, I got a job at The Oakland Cinema.

Most people call it “the trash theater,” but the job was perfect for me. I figured when we were slow—which would be all the time—I’d just slip into a theater and watch movies all day. As soon as I was hired, I headed over to Tyler’s house to share the good news. That’s when I found Leyton lounging on his basement sofa, watching TV.

The sight of some random asshole sitting on the sofa I’d basically grown up on was so surreal all I could do was stare. Tyler didn’t notice. He congratulated me on the job and said Leyton had just come over to hang out.

The guy spent all afternoon picking at a scab on his elbow while complaining that the shows we watched were “pedestrian.” I’d assumed Tyler was just as annoyed as I was, but Leyton burrowed into that sofa like a tick and never left.

He was there a couple years later when we debated whether we should give community college a shot, declaring, “education is for the ignorant.” He was there when we discussed moving out of our parents’ houses, something we never pulled the trigger on. He was there on my twenty-first birthday when Tyler convinced me not to go for the assistant manager position. And of course Leyton was there when Tyler showed me what he found in the barn at the end of Rose Street.

“I was biking home when I heard music. I figured someone was having a party so I followed it down a gravel road until I reached some old barn. But just as I was pushing the barn’s door open everything went quiet. The place was totally deserted. All I saw were a couple stray cats. I figured someone was pulling a prank and was about to leave when I spotted this.” He handed me a sheet of sky-blue paper. “It was nailed to the wall.”

“Did the cats look okay?” I asked. “Like, was someone feeding them?”

“Who cares?” Leyton snatched the sheet out of my hand. “What is this shit?”

The document was entitled, “Instructions For Summoning A New Life.” Most of it told the story of a traveler walking along a mountain road. At the top of every hour they reached a gate. Each gate was made out of a different material—wood, stone, marble etc.—and each one required a different trick to break through. The story stopped suddenly as the traveler reached a cliff. The last few lines stated that the story should be read out loud and the reader should clap each time a gate was opened. Then, just as the traveler reaches the cliff an offering had to be made and a candle lit.

“The writing style is pedestrian.” Leyton crammed a handful of Doritos into his mouth. “Toss it.”

“Maybe you should just put it back where you found it,” I murmured.

Tyler grinned his manic grin and took the instructions back. I already knew what he was going to do.

I only went because there was nothing else to do in our dead horse town on a Saturday night. The bowling alley had gone under, and I didn’t want to spend all evening sitting on the couch with my folks, watching the same 90s sitcoms we’d watched when I was three.

Leyton only showed up on the off chance the ceremony actually worked and he could sell some pictures and get rich.

Tyler was the only one of us who actually believed we’d “summon a new life,” whatever that meant. After we got everything set up, he stood in the middle of the barn and read the story with the confidence of someone who actually thought they were casting a magic spell.

I kept glancing at the barn’s door. Tyler had assured me we weren’t doing anything too satanic. Even so, when we reached the end and I emptied the can of Miller Lite on the floor as an offering, I felt my soul somersault.

Then, Leyton raised the pine scented candle he’d swiped from his mom’s bathroom. When he flicked his lighter to life, I was overwhelmed by an impulse to snuff out the flame with my bare fingers, but it was too late. He lit the wick. A tiny flame blazed, merrily.

I was the first who saw it. Initially, I assumed it was a sliver of a shadow or a stain smeared across the wall. It wasn’t until Leyton started screaming that I realized it wasn’t supposed to be there. Even so, I managed to stay relatively calm until Tyler walked toward it.

We shouted at him to stop.

Me: “Please! Dude! Stay away from that thing.”

Leyton: “I swear to God, I will fucking beat your ass if you touch that shit!”

It was the first time I’d ever sided with him on anything.

Tyler didn’t even look at us. He walked across the barn toward the shadow we’d summoned. As he turned sideways to squeeze through, I realized the shadow was actually a door. I rushed forward and grabbed his arm. He shoved me back, sending me tumbling to the ground.

We continued to shout. He continued to ignore us. Tyler was stepping through when one of us panicked and—it wasn’t me, I swear it wasn’t me—blew the candle out.

Now, hours later, I step back through the barn’s door.

All I want to do is run home. Forget my bike. I’ll sprint the whole way, burrow under my blankets and never come out again. But my hand turns the phone, illuminating the far wall.

Tyler is exactly where we left him.

One foot, one arm and half of his body stick out of the wall. The rest of him is somewhere else. I have no idea where that is, but judging by the way his left eye bulges like a bloodshot balloon, it’s clear his right eye can see the other side.

He shouldn’t be alive. He should be chopped in half. At least then a few of my problems would be solved.

I’m going to hell for thinking that.

Whether Tyler should be alive is irrelevant. All that matters is he is alive. His hand twitches and his foot scrapes against the floor as he tries to yank free, a squirrel caught in a trap intended for a lion.

“Tyler?” I try not to shine the light in his face.

He attempts to respond, but with half his mouth stuck on the other side, it’s impossible to understand what he’s saying.

His backpack still lays in the middle of the floor. I pull out a crumpled Taco Bell receipt and a pen with Eastside Comics written on the side. He must’ve gotten it from one of our countless visits when we’d spend all afternoon reading issues of X-Men and Saga.

He’s right-handed but manages to scrawl with his left, “Help.”

“Do you want me to try pulling you out?”

“No.”

“I think Leyton still has the instructions. We’ll open it again.”

“Yes!”

I hesitate, already certain I don’t want to know the answer. “What can you see on the other side?”

“A road.”

My plan was to show up with Leyton first thing the next morning, maybe even before Tyler’s mom realized he was gone. I told myself I’d hogtie the bastard if I had to.

But when I eventually do return, all I have is a can of cold soup.

I see the question in his one bulging eye.

“I tried to get him to come but…”

I realize I’m about to tell him his friend slammed the door in my face, shouting, “I already torched the instructions. If I ever see you again I’ll fucking kill you!”

“…Leyton says the instructions just vanished, like magic.”

He knows I’m lying, but when he motions for the pen all he writes is “Bathroom.”

I’ll never share the details of how I helped Tyler use the bathroom. All I’ll say is I had to cut off his pants with scissors, and all the parts he needed were on this side. The rest is between me, Tyler and the rusty bucket I found behind the barn.

Afterward, I retrieved a stack of old blankets from my attic and I nailed them to the wall, providing him warmth and the illusion of dignity.

Now, as I hammer the final nail I say, “I’m getting your mom.”

I can tell by the way he motions for the pen I should’ve just done it without telling him.

“No.”

“What else can I do?”

He underlines “No.”

“I need to get someone.”

“Camp Pinehill.”

That knocks the wind out of me.

When I’m able to talk again I say, “Camp Pinehill has nothing to do with….”

He writes it again, “Camp Pinehill,” followed by a row of exclamation points, crooked slashes that rip the paper all the way to the very edge.

It doesn’t take long for the police to show up on my front stoop.

I sit at the kitchen table, where Mom, Dad and I have eaten a thousand and one Thursday night meatloaves and hear myself describe the evening Tyler vanished. I tell them that we hung out in his basement that afternoon (truth), grabbed Burger King for dinner (more truth) and I last saw him at about nine thirty (technically true, I just skipped over the one monumental event of the evening).

As I talk, I silently scream at myself to tell them everything, to take them to the barn and say, “There he is! Help him!”

But I stick with the abridged version while picking at the tablecloth. They must be the worst cops in the world to not smell the guilty sweat dripping off me or to hear the desperation when I ask, “Do you want me to get the Burger King receipt?” I don’t know why I offer that, I threw it away before we even went to the barn.

The cops finally say they have everything they need and get up to leave. As they stand mom says, “Please find him. He’s such a sweet boy. His father left a few years ago and his mom doesn’t have any other family in town.”

As soon as I hear the front door shut, I run to the bathroom and puke my last two meals into the toilet. While I wipe my mouth on the peach-colored towels, Mom knocks on the door. “Are you okay, sweetie?”

“Yeah!” I call back. “Just worried”

It takes about a week to form a routine.

As soon as I drag my corpse out of bed in the morning, I bike to the barn (telling my folks I’m just trying to get more exercise). Sometimes I walk in to find Tyler sobbing. Other times his one visible eye stares into the middle distance, as if he can no longer see the barn. I have no idea which is worse.

I feed him soup through the left side of his mouth, help him with the toilet, hold up my phone so he could watch YouTube and promise him he’ll escape. By the time I’m done, I barely have enough time to bike home, shower, eat breakfast and head off to my shift at the movie theater. During my breaks I run to the grocery store and buy soup and toilet paper. Paranoia prompts me to buy them in small quantities and only pay in cash. As soon as my shift ends I bike back to the barn and feed Tyler his dinner.

When he’s through eating, he leans against the stool I brought for him and watches me attempt to retell the story of the traveler hiking up the winding mountain path. I’ve tried it a hundred times, but we can never remember how many gates there are or how the traveler breaks through each one (“Do they use fire to break through the gate of wood or the gate of ice?”) No matter how much Miller Lite I pour or how many times I light that damned pine-scented candle, the wall refuses to open.

At least once a week, I find myself standing on Leyton’s porch, pleading, demanding and sometimes threatening him to help me. Once I forced him to watch a news report of Tyler’s mom begging anyone with any information to help her son. Leyton threw me—literally threw me—off the steps. “Come around here again, and I’ll burn that fucking barn to the ground.”

The routine stands firm for three months.

Then, one sunny day in June I’m trudging across the field when I hear Tyler talking to someone. I freeze. The police have found him. Or maybe it’s his mom. Or maybe some passerby heard him crying. I was an idiot for thinking I could keep him hidden. The barn is out of the way but it’s not on the far side of the moon.

I come close to running for it, but force myself to peek through the bay door to see exactly how much shit I’ve fallen into.

The barn is empty.

I check every corner, but all I see is Tyler yammering away. With a board sliced through his tongue it’s impossible to understand what he’s saying, but he sounds like he’s joking around with a bunch of friends in the corner booth of a diner.

“Who’re you talking to?” I ask, stepping into the barn.

It’s like someone hits the mute button. The half of his mouth I can see snaps shut and he stares at me out of the corner of his one eye.

When I give him the pen he writes, “Myself. Who else can I talk to?”

The same thing happens that evening. I’m walking across the field—which is just as dead in the summer as it was in the winter—when I hear him chatting away. I make as much noise as I can opening the door so he hears me coming and doesn’t embarrass himself.

This continues all through June and July. Eventually, he stops being so self-aware and continues his conversations with no one even while I feed him.

“Seriously? You’d rather talk to yourself than to me?”

He laughs way too hard at that, producing a clipped, guttural sound that makes me step back.

It isn’t until the first week of August that I wake in the middle of the night and sit straight up in bed. Tyler is talking to someone. They just aren’t on this side.

The leaves are changing color before I have the courage to ask, “Who do you keep talking to?”

Tyler stares at me for much longer than he should be able to without blinking. When he finally motions for the pen, I’m certain he’s going to accuse me of being paranoid. Instead, he scrawls, “Don’t bring any more food.”

“Why not?”

“They’re feeding me.”

“Who is?”

He answers by tapping the wall.

When I try to give him more soup, he shuts his lips tight, refusing to take another bite.

I lay in bed that night, guts tangled in knots. Why didn’t I get help the instant I realized he was in trouble? I hadn’t done anything illegal at the time. He’d probably be free by now if I’d told someone. We might even be famous for punching a hole through reality.

I should tell someone now, but I’ve kept this secret for so long the police will probably arrest me for kidnapping. But if I don’t get help he might continue to refuse food and wither away into half a skeleton pinned to a wall.

But as the days pass, I notice that Tyler is starting to look healthier. He still doesn’t eat but his color has returned and he’s even gained some muscle.

I, on the other hand, am so ravaged by stress, I can barely pull myself out of bed in the morning. Mom places her hand on my forehead and asks if I have a fever. Whenever dad drives me anywhere he tries to cheer me up by talking about anything but Tyler’s disappearance. “Sure is nice weather we’re having.” “The Ravens are gonna have one hell of a season.” “Sounds like your cousin Aubrey will make it this Thanksgiving.”

“Dad, she used to pin me to the ground and make me eat worms.”

“Yeah but… It’ll still be nice to see her again.”

Even Tyler seems concerned, asking, “Are you eating enough?”

But by late October he loses all interest in my health, the same way he’s lost interest in food, music, news about his mom and everything else on this side of the wall.

He no longer needs me to feed him or keep him company. All he needs is a pair of hands to dump and clean his bucket, the contents of which are now streaked orange and green.

“What the hell are they feeding you over there?” I ask, not expecting an answer.

Thanksgiving dinner comes and goes. Afterwards, all of the adults—the real adults, I mean, not fake adults like me—end up lying about the living room, marinating in bitterness. The meal was going well until, as if on cue, the conversation turned to politics and then religion and then to my Aunt Stacy’s new boyfriend. Now my Dad glares at all his siblings and cousins while pretending to watch commercials.

I ease myself off the couch and head for the door, eager to escape before anyone can bring up any more drama. There’s already a container full of leftovers in my backpack. Tyler won’t even look at it, but I should at least offer him some turkey and stuffing on Thanksgiving.

I’m almost out the door when my cousin, Aubrey, grabs my shoulder. “I don’t know about you but after this much family I need a drink.”

I’m trying to stammer out why I can’t walk down to a bar with her when she looks me dead in the eye and says, “Be honest, is there anywhere else you need to be?”

I’ve still got several pitchers of Budweiser sloshing around inside me—I insisted we not order Miller Lite—as I pick my way across the field of dead grass. I’m so focused on making my feet walk in a straight line that I don’t even hear the laughter until I stumble into the barn.

It’s not the wild cackle of a split mind. It’s a deep, healthy belly laugh, as if Tyler is sharing a joke with an old friend.

He continues laughing until I reach down to grab the bucket. Then he cuts off and stares at me with his single, unblinking blue eye.

“Sorry I’m late. Thanksgiving.”

The explanation slips off my tongue before I can reel it back in. I don’t want to be the sort of guy talking about family holidays to the friend stuck in a wall.

To my surprise, he motions for the pen. He hasn’t talked to me in weeks. “Ur drunk.”

“Aubrey and I just had a few…. Remember Aubrey? My cousin. She’s in town and convinced me to walk down to the Blue Crab with her.” I glance at the bucket and wonder if there’s any way I can dump it without spilling the contents everywhere. “We had a really weird conversation.”

His eye prompts me to go on.

“She’s worked at this financial company since forever, but she’s quitting all that and buying some acres outside Pittsburgh to raise goats. She’s done a ton of research and has some friends signed up to help out. They’re starting an artists’ colony.”

“Weird.”

“That’s not the weirdest part.” I want to believe I’m just tipsy, but I would’ve told him what comes next even if I was dead sober. “The weirdest part is she asked me to help out.”

Tyler’s left eye doesn’t even blink. I have no idea what the right one is doing, but his left stares at me evenly. “You’re no artist.”

“That’s what I told her.”

“Who cares if you’re not an artist,” Aubrey told me while leaning over the beer-soaked table. “Maybe you’re an artist and don’t realize it. Maybe you’re a farmer. Even if you’re not….” She hesitated, took a swig of beer to encourage her along and asked, “Do you seriously want to dish out chemical popcorn for the rest of your life?”

Despite the bar’s broiling radiator, my skin broke into a cold sweat. “So instead I’ll milk goats for the rest of my life?”

“Or a few months. Just try it. Milk some goats, shovel some shit, hang out with some painters and musicians. I know you’re more interesting than you pretend to be. If you hate it you can always come back here.” She finished her beer. “Do you know how many people would stab someone in the face just to move out of their parents’ house for free?”

“Obviously, I can’t do it,” I assure Tyler.

“You want to.”

“I don’t….”

“Aubrey made you eat spiders.”

“It was worms. That was a million years ago. And her friends do sound cool. She was telling me about her one friend, María, who was on a bike trip with her band—”

Plunk.

The pen from Eastside Comics plummets into the bucket full of piss and shit. I could almost believe he dropped it by accident.

December comes and goes. I nail extra blankets over Tyler to keep him warm, but he doesn’t even notice. For a few weeks the Oakland Cinema is actually busy thanks to the usual slate of holiday movies, but the surge soon dies down to the familiar trickle.

Snow falls in February, and immediately turns to soggy mush.

March arrives, along with the one-year anniversary of the night we performed that goddamn ceremony. I don’t even bother to mention it to Tyler.

After March comes April and then May and then June and then….

Tyler’s mom calls one morning, just as I’m leaving for the barn. She’s holding a memorial service that Friday. There’s no way out of it. I have to attend.

When I arrive, I find a small crowd sitting together in the den, which still smells of cinnamon. It’s mostly neighbors and relatives. My folks have to work. No one from school bothers to show up. Leyton is nowhere to be seen.

Tyler’s mom hugs me and insists, “Call me June.”

After we gather together, she leads us into the backyard where Tyler and I made ourselves sick on the tire swing in the summer and constructed mutant snowmen in the winter. It’s eighty degrees out but we huddle together as she delivers her son’s eulogy with a surprisingly steady voice. Only her fingers quiver.

June ends her speech by announcing she’s moving back to Virginia to be closer to her sisters. Then she looks us over and says, “If anyone has something they want to share….” Her eyes land on me.

I still have no idea what I’m going to say when I step forward and open my mouth.

“Tyler is one of those friends you assume will be around forever. He—”

I make eye contact with June. She already knows her son should still be here. She needs something to take with her to her new home.

“When I was eleven my parents made me go to Camp Pinehill. It was miserable. The counselors despised us. The other boys…” June doesn’t need to hear how they’d pinned me to the bed and farted bare-assed on my face. “…were psychos. I was supposed to be there for three weeks, but after the first day I knew I wouldn’t make it. I called my folks, begging to come home, but my dad just told me about how he and his brothers had the best summers of their lives there. Also there was no refund. After I hung up, I wandered back to my cabin, feeling like the whole world had abandoned me. All I could think about was that my bedroom was ten miles away, but my parents would ship me right back here if I went home. Then, just as I was crawling into my bunk, I remembered I had a second home.

“Without even a plan, I stole one of the camp’s bikes, snuck off the property and pedaled all the way back here. It was after dark when I climbed that tree over there, knocked on Tyler’s window and he let me in. We spent all night watching TV in the basement.”

June places her hands over her mouth.

“I did that every night for three weeks. Seriously, those counselors were clueless. As soon as the sun set I’d sneak back here, hide the bike under the porch and spend the evening hanging out with Tyler. He even snuck me leftovers so I wouldn’t have to rely on camp food. Every night he went above and beyond to help me out, and never expected anything in return. People like that are rare, especially in middle school. He’s is the reason I survived Camp Pinehill. He’s the reason I survived childhood. And it hurts so much now that I have to…” I falter. I’m not ready to finish that sentence.

June hugs me. “Thank you so much for sharing that.”

“It’s all true.” I wipe my face.

“I know. That’s why it’s so hard.”

Two hours after the memorial service, Leyton opens his door, and I shove my phone into his face. The screen displays a photograph of Tyler stuck in the wall, his one bulging eye glaring into the camera. I don’t have to tell him what I’m threatening to do.

Leyton grabs the front of my shirt and raises his fist, but before he can strike I say, “I already sent it to my mom.”

He freezes.

“She won’t check her email until she gets home, but if I don’t delete this from her inbox in fifteen minutes, she’ll see it.” I pull my shirt out of his grip. “And if you don’t help me get Tyler out of that wall tonight I’ll text this picture to everyone in my contacts list.”

For a moment Leyton just stares at me, trying to determine if I’m bluffing.

At last, he steps back inside. “Wait here.”

I glance over my shoulder, wondering if I should put some distance between me and the door, in case he returns with a gun.

However when he finally reemerges, he’s gripping a sky-blue sheet of paper.

“You had that this whole time?”

“I didn’t want you getting your own stupid ass stuck in that wall.”

I snatch the instructions from him.

Leyton attempts to strike an imposing stance. “If you ever come around here again—”

“Yeah, yeah,” I walk down the steps and bike away. There’s no reason for me to ever see him again.

Tyler doesn’t even look at me when I arrive at the barn. I show him the sheet of paper, but he stares through me, like I’m delivering a lecture on linoleum.

I begin to read the story, following the instructions to the letter, crossing every mystical T and dotting every transcendent I. I tell the story of the traveler climbing the mountain, clapping whenever they open a gate. I empty a can of Miller Lite on the exact spot where I poured it over a year earlier and, when every other step is complete, I light the candle.

And as simple as that, the wall opens. Tyler stands in perfect profile so I can’t see his other half. He glances at me with his one visible eye. After several attempts he manages to croak, “Thank you.”

Before I can respond, he does exactly what I’m expecting him to do. He steps to his right, vanishing through the door.

“Wait!” I shout. “You’ve gotta at least say goodbye to your mom.”

Only his left foot is still visible. His toes press against the splintered floorboards in a way that makes me think he might turn around. But after only a moment’s hesitation, he disappears entirely.

“Tyler!” I run forward, determined to pull him back.

But just as my sneakers are about to hit the doorway, I stop myself.

The candle sits on the floor behind me. It would be so easy for a stray gust of wind to snuff it out. I could close the barn’s door or place the candle in a sheltered spot, but there’d be no guarantee I could come back.

I stare at the shadow door and count to a hundred, picturing Tyler popping back through with a grin on his face, like all those Saturdays when he’d shove his front door open to invite me inside for an afternoon of rotgut junk food and cartoons.

But he’s already said goodbye.

At last, long after I’ve counted to a hundred, I pick up the candle. The sun is setting outside. I’ve already spent too much time in this barn. I inhale deeply and extinguish the candle. With my eyes focused on the barn’s door, I tear up the instructions, letting the scraps of sky-blue paper scatter as I walk outside.

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Discussion Questions (Leave a comment!)

1. Tyler found “Instructions For Summoning A New Life.” Why do you think he wants to summon a new life? Why do you think he feels he can’t change his life right where he is?

2. If you could walk through a portal to a new life, would you do it? Does it matter if no one else could come with you? Would you let someone else go through the portal if they wanted to?

3. If you could summon a new life through a portal, what would you want it to look like?

4. If you are going to metaphorically “summon a new life” is it necessary that you leave the people from your own life behind?

5. It seems like the narrator has helped Tyler through the portal to his new life, but Tyler has continually discouraged the narrator from going through his own portal to his new life (i.e., community college, applying for assistant manager, the organic farm). Why do you think that is? Is Tyler the narrator’s friend anyway?

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What do YOU think? Leave a comment!

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