Falling In Read Free Page B

Everybody’s had the dream where you find a door inside your house you’d never noticed before. You open it and—
whoa!
—a room you never knew existed. Usually it’s filled with wondrous things, pinball machines and cakes, magnificent dollhouses, skateboard runs, a pony. There is the occasional vampire, of course, or a man in a brownsuit who lacks only a head. Those are the dreams where, when you turn around, you can’t find the door anymore. I hate those dreams.
    If you have a little time to waste, go put your hand on the knob of the door to your room. Close your eyes and take a deep breath. What’s that noise you hear? Could it be your books reading themselves to one another? Is that your goldfish whistling Mozart’s
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
? That
thump
,
thud
,
crash!
—your pillows having a pillow fight? Do you smell the earthy, froggy smell of trolls? What exactly goes on in your room when you’re not around?
    But I digress. Back to the story.

5
    Isabelle could feel Charley Bender watching her as she pulled open the supply closet door. She could sense Charley taking a step backward, in case the residents of Mice swarmed out.
    (Only later would it occur to her what a narrow escape she’d made. If Charley had stayed right where she was, if she hadn’t taken that fateful backward step, she would have been able to reach Isabelle in time. Instead Charley lunged forward, arms out, desperately trying to grab a sleeve or the toe of a red boot, but she was too late.)
    —and Isabelle Bean opened the door—

    —and Isabelle Bean fell in.

6
    She’d been wrong about the mice.
    There’d been the tunnel—or was it a shaft? A secret passageway? Just a great big hole?—the long fall down followed by the soft tumble onto what turned out to be a pile of coats, children-sized, not mouse-sized, tree bark brown, morning gray, and mossy green, big buttons for little fingers.
    Isabelle closed her eyes. She smelled mothballs tinged with licorice. She smelled dust motes and gingersnaps. She could hear the thudding of feet, voices yelling out directions, the scratching of chalk against a slate board.
    She could hear the buzz.
    In Mrs. Sharpe’s classroom the buzz had been adistant thing, felt more than heard. Here, wherever
here
was, the buzz flattened out into a low-pitched hum, the sound of tiny motorcycles, maybe, or an off-kilter ceiling fan endlessly running, issuing a quiet whine. Isabelle stood, determined to find its source.
    A hallway stretched before her, the floor laid out in broad wooden planks, knotholes the size of fists. If this was the basement of Hangdale Middle School, it had a strange way of showing it. What sort of school basement had windows, for instance, the glass set in waves as though still vaguely liquid, the sun falling through and staining the hardwood floor with wide bars of yellow light?
    Isabelle’s boots tap-tapped against the floor as she made her way down the hallway, a much more satisfying sound than the thud they made when she walked across the linoleum upstairs. Upstairs? Glancing at the ceiling, she saw thick beams and rough gray plaster. Definitely not Board of Education–approved building materials.
    Which caused Isabelle to wonder: Was there stillan upstairs up there? Was Charley Bender still standing at the open mouth of the closet, her hands waving, fingers wriggling, wondering where on earth Isabelle had tumbled to? Or was Charley Bender no longer there? Maybe what was up there had disappeared and there was no
there
there at all.
    Next question: Was there really a
here
, or had Isabelle conked her head and was now frolicking in the land of her dreams? Was this Fairyland? The Underworld? Or just a concussion? No, Isabelle decided quickly, feeling her head for bumps and not finding any. Wherever she was, it was real. But where was she?
    Eager to find out, she quickened her pace. There—an open door. Isabelle’s cheeks and the tips of her fingers tingled. What if there were