Short Stories

Mom was on the warpath again.

"Look at this room!" she yelled. "I can't even tell whether you have a carpet, let alone what color it is! The chest of drawers is so covered with junk that you can't find the drawers anymore, and I don't know how you manage to sleep at night in those beds! You girls are going to clean this room up, RIGHT NOW, and neither one of you is going anywhere until the room is clean to my satisfaction! Do you understand?"

"Yes, Mom," I mumbled, ducking down behind the wall of stuffed animals on my bottom bunk.

"Lisa?" Mom demanded.

My older sister didn't even turn around from her desk. "Yes, Mom," she said.

"Good," Mom snapped. She turned and left the room. She would have slammed the door if she could have closed it all the way. The doorway was a little blocked.

"What are we going to do?" I asked Lisa, slipping off the bed and approaching her. "You heard Mom. I think she really means it this time."

"No problem," said Lisa. I peered over her shoulder. She had two books open and was writing in a notebook, all piled on top of a tower of papers, books, paper cups and other stuff I couldn't see. It always amazed me that Lisa's desk didn't collapse.

"What do you mean, no problem? Lisa, she means it this time!"

Lisa turned to look at me, and pushed her glasses up on her nose a little. "Of course she means it, but we don't need to worry."

"Lisa, I know you would be content to stay at that desk of yours all summer long, but I want to get out! I can't stay in here all summer, and it'll take all summer to get this room clean! And don't forget, it's your turn to clean the room," I added quickly. I pushed several layers of papers aside on the bulletin board, so she could see the sheet where we'd written when each of us cleaned the room. My name was the last one there. I glanced at it. Wow, that was back in February. Had it really been that long?

"It's not a problem," said Lisa. She smiled and leaned back in her chair. "Erin, what's the biggest reason why we never keep this room clean?"

"Because we're both slobs?"

"Not quite."

"Because you never do your share when it's time to clean up?"

She didn't reply to that. "The biggest problem, Erin, is that we don't have enough space for all our things."

I took a step back, protectively, blocking my stuffed animals with my body. "When Mom says that, the next thing she says is that we have to get rid of some of our stuff."

"I'm not Mom. No, I'm saying we need more space, and I've found a way to get us more space."

"Uh-oh. Not another one of your ideas," I said.

She waved her hand lightly. "This is brilliant." She pushed one of the books away. "I've been doing some research, and I've just discovered that this room is next to a gateway to another dimension. If you say the right words in just the right spot, you can get the gate to open, and there you are! More room!"

"Complete with monsters?" I wasn't sure I believed in monsters, or in other dimensions, either, but with Lisa, you never knew.

She laughed. "No monsters! Space! Lots and lots of space for everything we could possibly want to store there! Come on, it should be over there, in the back of the closet, if my calculations are right."

She marched over to the closet, and I found myself following her.

"It should be right in here," said Lisa. Her voice was a little muffled by the clothes she threw behind her. Many of them hit me. In self-defense, I started pulling out boxes of stuff from the closet myself, and moving clothes out of the way. She acted as if she knew exactly what she was doing. That didn't prove anything. Lisa always acted as if she knew what she was doing, even when she didn't have a clue.

"Aha!" Lisa's shout was followed by a bump. "Stupid shelf! There! All right, now you have to be perfectly quiet so that I can say the right words."

If this was some scheme for getting out of cleaning up the room, it sure was an unusual one, even for Lisa. I kept my mouth shut, listening as Lisa chanted a bunch of nonsense words.

"And there it is!" Lisa cried. I stumbled over, and looked past her.

"I didn't know the closet was this big," I said, shocked. Instead of the back wall of the closet that I had expected, I could see a huge space, dark blue, with faint lights glittering in the distance.

"It's not the closet, dummy," said Lisa. "It's the other dimension. Just where I knew it would be. Now, we'll just put our stuff here, and presto! No more messy room!"

"Put your stuff there first," I said.

"Sure," she said cheerfully. She climbed over the boxes and out of the closet, and returned with an armful of papers and books. She carried the stuff into the blue space and dropped it. The papers and books hung in the air a little strangely, but nothing happened to them.

"See?" said Lisa. "I'm a genius. Now, all we have to do is get the rest of the stuff here."

I know where I made my mistake: when she said "we," I should have stopped her right there. I should have reminded her that it was her turn and I didn't have to do anything. But I was so surprised and so impressed that I didn't think of objecting until after we finished.

It still took us a long time to get all our toys and books and papers and clothes and miscellaneous stuff off the floor and the chest of drawers and our beds and even Lisa's desk. But it took less time than it would have taken if we'd been putting all that stuff away. When we finished, the room looked terrific. The carpet was green. I'd forgotten that. The space behind the closet wasn't even half filled up when Lisa said those same weird words, or maybe different ones, and the wall of the closet reappeared.

Mom couldn't believe it at first. She kept peering under the beds and in the drawers, trying to figure out where we'd put all that junk. Lisa smiled her peculiar smile as Mom left. I knew what that smile meant: Lisa had another idea.

I found out about her new idea a few days later, when I asked her to open up the secret space so that I could get some of my books out of there. The last time I'd looked, our things were surrounded by miles and miles of that blue, light-flecked space. Now I could hardly see any of the blue, with all the bags and boxes of things in there.

"Where's our stuff?" I demanded, poking through the bags and boxes, and stubbing my toe on an electric train that I know I'd never seen before.

Lisa had already returned to her desk. "Probably in the back," she said.

"What's all this other stuff?"

"Oh, that," she said. "Just some stuff I'm storing for other people. Nothing to worry about."

"Why are you storing stuff for other people in our space?" I felt like an explorer of some deep jungle. There was a chair under all those dolls over there.

"You don't think we're the only ones who have trouble keeping our rooms clean, do you?" I was so deep in the space that I couldn't see Lisa, but I knew she was making her serious face and pushing her glasses up on her nose. She always did that when she wanted to con me. "I figured that other people might like to have some extra space, too, for a price."

"There's a lot of junk here, Lisa. Are you sure there's room?" The deeper I went into the jungle of boxes and toys and books, the darker it got. I thought I could hear something rumbling, far away.

"Of course there's room. It's infinite space."

"It looks really crowded, Lisa. And I think stuff is moving around here."

"Just your imagination. Hey, while you're in there, could you get me my three ring binder? The one with the lions on the cover?"

I'd found the books I wanted, under a pile of notebooks that seemed to stretch up to the sky. Very carefully, I pulled the books out. That rumbling noise got louder. All of a sudden, I didn't really want to be in there. I looked around. Those boxes were definitely moving. And that chair was shivering. I grabbed Lisa's notebook for her, and then started pushing my way back to the closet again. When I glanced behind me, all the toys and books and papers seemed to be closer and closer, as if they were following me, or chasing me.

"Stop making that noise," said Lisa. "Mom will hear you."

"I'm not making any noise!" I ran as fast as I could out of the space, but I could feel everything pushing up against me, shoving into me, as if we were all about to explode out of the space.

Then we did.

I'd never been in an explosion before. One minute I was running towards the closet door, and the next minute I was sailing through the air towards our bunk bed. The air was full of books and toys and papers and dolls and sports equipment and furniture. I managed to land on my own bed. The rest of the stuff landed everywhere.

I couldn't see Lisa at all for a few seconds. "Lisa! Are you all right?" I cried. I struggled through the mess on the floor to where her desk used to be. Something moved under that pile of papers.

She popped her head out, her glasses slanting across her face, her hair loose from its braids. "Now look what you've done," she said, pushing the tide of papers away from her as if she were swimming.

"What I've done? What about you? Who put all that stuff in there in the first place? If it's anybody's fault, it's your fault!"

The door to our room opened, just a crack. It couldn't open farther than that. "What are you girls doing in there? It sounds as if you're breaking up house. Oh, no! Look at this room! I can't believe it!" Mom cried.

She was lucky. She couldn't see all of the room from where she stood.

"Clean this up right now! I've never seen the room in such a state!" She closed the door behind her.

Lisa half-walked, half swam across the room to the closet. I could hear her muttering her magic words by the gateway, over and over. She didn't sound very happy.

"It won't work," she said as she reappeared at the door of the closet. "You must have broken it."

"We're dead," I said, looking at the furniture and toys and dolls and books all over the floor. "We'll never clean this all up."

"No problem," said Lisa. She stooped to the floor and picked up one of her books. She started reading it.

"Why do you say that? Because you've got another idea?"

She looked over her book at me and grinned. "No, because now it's your turn to clean the room."