The Pantry Door by Julie Steimle (top 100 books of all time checklist TXT) 📕

the basement door so that she could grab her pajamas. She set her grandpa’s hat on the table and sighed, thinking it was a good thing to come to her grandmother’s after all. A very good thing.

She heard sobs.

“Grandma?” She stepped towards the bathroom.

But the noise wasn’t coming from there. Katy heard it again. This time the breeze from the pantry door opened up. Nissa’s voice carried down, sobbing so painfully that Katy darted to it, sticking her head in.

“Nissa?”

“Katy?” Nissa answered.

Katy climbed inside the cupboard and up the two-by-fours to the room’s doorway. Opening it, Katy climbed in. Nissa looked up, startled to see her.

“Where did that door come from?” Nissa asked, watching Katy climb in.

Looking back just once, Katy shrugged. “It was always there. That’s how I get in.”

“It wasn’t there before.”

Peering around at the dark room lit only by the moonlight, Katy turned to Nissa and frowned. Nissa’s dress, which must have been pretty at one time, was covered in mud and torn in several places. Outside the window, Katy heard a familiar tune, though at that particular moment she did not recall where she knew it. All she knew was that Nissa was scratched and incredibly dirty.

“What happened?” Katy pulled Nissa’s mud stained hands from her face.

Nissa sniffed loud then sniffed up her tears again. “T—Thomas Gibson. He pushed me down in the mud and rubbed my face in it.”

“That jerk!” Katy hopped up to take on that drunken adult herself. “He tried picking on me too, but Gran was there!”

But Nissa broke into tears again. “He ruined everything.”

Katy wrapped her arm around Nissa like her mother would. “You’re safe now. He can’t get you here.”

“—Nise! Come on honey! Climb down! It’s okay. They’re gone!” The voice came from the window.

Nissa looked around. “Daddy?”

Letting go, Katy nodded. “He’s probably worried.”

Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, Nissa nodded also. “I’ll see you tomorrow then, right?”

Katy nodded then sighed, handing Nissa the large sucker she had been carrying. “Here. You need it more than I do.”

Her friend’s muddy face broke into a smile, her straggly hair falling into her face. She took the sucker stick and waved to Katy, climbing back down the ladder to the world below. Katy leaned out, watching her friend go.

In the shadows, a tall man tipped his baseball cap to her. “Go on, clever girl. Your grandmother is probably wondering where you’re at.”

Shivers ran down her arms. He had looked at her like he knew her very well. Drawing her head in, Katy caught one last glimpse of the man putting an arm around his daughter while she showed him the sucker Katy gave him. Crawling back to the cupboard door, Katy heard him say, “Oh, how nice. Did she know yours got shattered?”

Nissa’s happy voice replied, “No. I didn’t tell her. Daddy, she’s got to be one of your friends, I know it!”

He chuckled—a sound Katy hung on to as if she were hearing the call of the piper promising wishes and dreams to come true.

But the voice of her grandmother called also. “Kathleen! Bathroom’s free!”

Katy climbed back down into the kitchen and waited until she was sure her grandmother was in the other room. Opening the door, she lowered herself onto the floor with care so that nothing would creak. Katy hurried as quickly as she could to the basement to gather her pajamas. Now it was certain that she could not wait for the next day. No way she could.

The Witness

Sunday was church. Though Katy wanted to visit the room through the cupboard, she never got a chance. Between services and her grandmother dragging her to visit with the sick, she was completely worn out by dinner time. And after dinner, her grandmother had guests over who had little children that Katy had to entertain, though she really didn’t want to. They sat on the front porch making shadow puppets until their parents went home.

On Monday, Nissa waited for her, pacing outside the window until Katy arrived to call her up. Of course, Katy could not get there until the afternoon because she had to help garden. But then when Nissa climbed up, she was grinning and carrying with her an acrylic box that had stainless steel edges and handles holding it together. That afternoon they painted their toenails, swapped stories, and did up their hair with all sorts of clips and bows.

Tuesday, Katy brought in the origami books she borrowed from her grandmother’s shelf, dumping in stacks of colored paper so they could make more than just flowers out of paper.

Wednesday, Nissa could not come up, though she tossed in a note she had written on a paper airplane telling Katy about the trip she had to take to the dentist that afternoon.

Thursday, Nissa lugged in her picture book of fairies, trolls, and other magical creatures and told Katy about the time that she actually saw a little gnarled man among the weeds near the garden sheds.

“They get the pictures all wrong.” Nissa tapped the page where it showed a pointed-hat gnome that looked like nothing more than a miniature dwarf. “What I saw was a gnome. Daddy said it was, and he told me to leave the man alone if I wanted to avoid trouble.”

“Does your dad see things like that all the time?” Katy lay on her back, holding up another book over her head while staring at a fanciful drawing of a griffin, its claws and wings so elegantly sketched that it was hard to not imagine something like that actually existing.

Her friend shrugged. “I don’t know. I never saw anything really like any of this except that gnome. My dad was pretty upset that I noticed that one. He said when regular people see the magical world, all it does is cause trouble.”

“But it sounds so exciting,” Katy murmured. “Before meeting you, or finding this room, I never would have believed any of it.”

Exhaling, Nissa gave a nod. “I’m not sure I believe in all this stuff either. Daddy says that some things are real and some things are made up, and both things should be left alone.”

It sounded like something her Grandpa Schmidt would say. Perhaps the magic of the house rubbed off on Nissa’s dad. On Katy’s former walks with her grandpa along the road, he would talk about how beautiful the world was without all those fanciful things in stories. Magical elixirs, exotic beasts, wishes from genies were all fine to him, as long as they remained in a book or a song. He used to say with a grave look on his face to make sure she did not miss it, ‘Trouble finds those who seek mystery. And mystery has a way of swallowing them up.’

Thinking about him while resting in the room he somehow made, Katy sighed aloud. “But, you know, I think there are some things that won’t leave you alone.”

“Like bullies,” Nissa agreed with a downturned nod.

That made Katy laugh. “Yeah. But also this room. I swear I was drawn here. The cupboard door kept opening on its own.”

“And that ladder,” Nissa agreed, nodding more with a glance out at the window. “You know, it pops up like it’s telling me to come visit you.”

Katy abruptly sat up. “Really?”

Nissa nodded again. “That night when I ran from Tom Gibson, it just appeared. And then so did the room.”

“Something wants us to be here,” Katy said.

“Or someone,” Nissa replied.

Both girls sighed together then broke into giggles, rolling back down onto the carpet.

“I don’t care really,” Katy said, clasping Nissa’s hand. “You are the best friend I ever had.”

“Me too.” Nissa squeezed her hand gently.

*

Friday, Katy had to accompany her grandmother to the nearby town to buy groceries. Their small store just didn’t have enough variety. Her grandmother drove.

Walking down the aisles with the fluorescent lights shining down in a somewhat bluish sick glow, which made Katy wish she was outdoors rather than in, they filled their shopping cart with canned julienne cut string beans, snow peas, and chopped potatoes in water. The elevator music version of a rock song floated over the shelves. Grandma Schmidt was reading the label of a green bean can, checking the salt content. She hardly noticed the people passing them by, or the Gibson kids that had walked in with cautious looks which suggested they were up to no good. But Katy saw them.

She leaned over, watching them cut through the checkout aisle. With the pretense of reading the tabloids, Trent swiped a candy bar and some M&M’s, stuffing them into his deep overall’s pocket. He didn’t see Katy, but then she had ducked behind the graham cracker display. The pounding of her heart overwhelmed the sweetened tuned of We’ve Got the Beat that played from the speaker just above her.

“Katy, do you…? For heaven sakes! Kathleen Neilson, what are you doing?” Her grandmother stepped set her hands on her hips.

But then her grandmother lifted her eyes. She drew in a breath, nudged Katy back to their cart, and walked straight over to Trent who had taken three packs of gum and was just now stuffing it into his pocket. Katy ducked behind the graham crackers display so she wouldn’t be seen.

“Trent Gibson, you had better pay for that!” Grandma Schmidt’s voice took an angry pitch Katy was familiar with.

The Gibson boy jumped first. Then he attempted to run from the store, ducking through the roped off end. In country grocery stores, the local folks didn’t let Trent get away as they would have in Katy’s hometown. The bagger, who was a tall lanky kid, grabbed Trent by the shoulder and got a hold of his arm. Katy could hear Trent’s shouts and curses as the bagger dragged him to the side of the doorway. Then she heard an even louder shout.

“Hey! What are you doing to my cousin?” Lloyd Gibson stomped over. A regular cowboy, tight pants, flannel shirt, hideously worn leather boots, and a lump of chaw stuck under his right lip where one day Katy imagined he’d grow a tumor—Lloyd was the scariest Gibson Katy had seen yet.

The bagger stuck his chin out with his chest. The clerk walked over to join him.

“Your cousin is a thief! Grandma Schmidt saw him stealing candy from the shelf,” the clerk said. He then glared down at Trent.

Lloyd cast a dirty glare at Grandma Schmidt. “Is that so?” He said slapping the back of Trent’s head. “Cough it up, loser.”

Trent took out the packs of gum. The candy bar and M&M’s still remained deep in his pockets. He held out the gum, looking sulky and sheepish.

“Now, say you’re sorry,” Lloyd ordered Trent in a voice that said other things, things like: ‘I’ll beat you up if you get caught again.’

Katy frowned, watching Trent look the other way and mumble out a sorry while the clerk took the gum and chided the boy, telling the bagger to let Trent go. Something jumped inside of her as she watched the two Gibsons walk to the front of the store. Trent stuffed his hands into his pockets over his other two steals.

“Wait! He still has a candy bar and M&M’s!” Katy shouted out.

Everyone froze.

Grandma Schmidt emitted a huff and