Magic Street by Orson Scott Card Page B

looked normal. He'd stand there on the sidewalk, looking around him. Nobody doing anything, except perhaps some neighbor in another yard looking up at him, probably wondering why Miz Ura Lee Smitcher's strange boy was standing there dazed like somebody smacked him in the head.
    He always shrugged it off, because he had someplace to go. And yet he remembered it, too, and walked on the east side of the street as often as not, sometimes even crossing over, going out of his way to avoid it, only to cross back again afterward.
    What am I afraid of? he asked himself.
    Which is why, on one day in that hot summer of the year he turned thirteen, instead of avoiding that spot on the west sidewalk of the lower part of Cloverdale, he made straight for it, made it his destination, and found himself standing there wondering what it was that had bothered him so many times before.
    He still couldn't see anything. This was stupid.
    He decided to go home.
    And there it was again. That moment of startlement. He'd seen it. Out of the corner of his eye.
    But when he turned to look, there was nothing. He sidestepped, looking between the houses, going up and down the sidewalk, and there was nothing.
    Again he decided to go home.
    Again, as he passed the same spot, out of the corner of his eye he saw...
    It was out of the corner of his eye.
    Instead of sidestepping, he now turned his face resolutely southward, looking up Cloverdale toward the place where it jogged to the west at Sanchez Drive. Without turning his eyes to left or right, he took a few steps backward, then forward, and both times he saw it, just a little flash of something to the right, directly between the houses, right at the property line.
    Finally he got it exactly right and stopped, right there, with whatever it was holding steady at the corner of his eye.
    He knew better now than to try to look right at it—it would surely disappear. Instead, keeping his gaze southward, he took a step onto the lawn between the houses. And another.
    The shimmer became a vertical line, and then it became thicker, like a lamppost or a telephone pole—how much could he see, really, out of the corner of his eye? With each step it widened out, shoving the other houses aside.
    Another step and it was as wide as any house in the neighborhood. A whole house, directly between Snipes' and Chandresses', and nobody but him knew it was there, mainly because there was no way in hell it could possibly be there. A whole house that was skinny enough to fit between two houses taking up no space at all.
    He reached out a hand and touched a bush growing in the nonexistent front yard. He sidled closer to the house and in a few moments he had his hand resting on the door handle and it was as real and solid as any door handle in the neighborhood.
    So he slowly turned his head and this time it didn't disappear. It stayed right where it was.
    A whole secret house.
    Somebody else might have doubted his sanity. But Mack Street knew he lived in a neighborhood where young swimmers could wish themselves inside a waterbed.
    He rang the doorbell.
    In a little while he heard someone moving inside. He rang again.
    "Don't keep pestering the doorbell," a man called out.
    a couple of years.
    "Can I use your toilet?" asked Mack.
    "No," said the man. "Go away."
    But Mack ignored him because he knew that the man didn't really mean it. He walked past him and found the bathroom behind the first door he tried.
    "Can't you take no for an answer, boy?" asked the man.
    "You want me peeing on your floor?" asked Mack.
    "I don't even want you walking on my floor. Who do you think you are?"
    "I think I'm the only person in Baldwin Hills who knows this place even exists." Mack finished peeing and flushed and then, being a nurse's son, he washed his hands.
    "Doesn't do any good to wash your hands," the man said from outside the bathroom. "The towel's filthy."
    "I don't know how it could be," said Mack. "It ain't like you ever use it."
    "Not all