Daddy's Medicine

It's nighttime right now, and Daddy is laying against a wall. He isn't happy. He's been sick for a while, and he's out of medicine again.
I'm standing over him in some kind of box with a broken fence in it. It looks like an empty room, but the broken fence leads to an alley outside. Every time I see it, I think of closets like the one I used to have, except dirty and without a place to hang your clothes. I never knew alleys had closets until I saw it the first time.
Daddy's been sick for a while. I don't know what he's sick with, but it must be bad. He looks like a zombie. His skin is all tight and pale, and his eyes have big puffy bags under them, like people who don't sleep enough, but worse. Like he hasn't slept for years and years.
I remember when we had rooms, and he wasn't so sick. He looked better. He had colorful pink skin and wasn't so wrinkled all over. His hair had more color too. Bright blonde, not dull like it looks now. His smile was brighter. His eyes were brighter. Everything about him was brighter.
"I need my medicine, Deb." he says, "Go get it for me. Go on."
I wish I didn't have to leave him, but he gets worse when he doesn't have his medicine. His nose gets runny and he sweats a lot, and he always sounds like he's got a cold when he talks. Sometimes he even throws up if he goes without having his medicine for too long.
I'm waiting for the day Daddy gets all the way better. Until that happens, I have to keep going to the hospital and getting his medicine for him. He'll feel better as soon as he takes it. He always does.
"Go on, Deb. Don't waste time."
"Yes, Daddy."
I leave him and the closet with the fence behind and go outside. There's a hospital around here, across the street from the end of the alley. I've been there three times. They always have Daddy's medicine when I go there.
I can't just walk through the door, though. I gotta go in the other way.

- - -

When me and Daddy still had our house we used to live in, in that neighborhood he called a "cull-da-sack", I found out I could do things that other girls and boys couldn't.
It happened when I was outside playing hide-and-seek with the other kids. I was angry because the other kids kept finding me first every time I tried to hide. One of them, Tommy (I hated him, but all the other kids in the neighborhood liked him), teased me about it. He said I'd never win. Said I didn't know how to play right. Said I was too dumb to know.
When I went to hide again, I went behind one of the houses. Joey's house, the one with the messy backyard that had all the toys and buckets and the inflatable pool him and his sister never used. His backyard had a back porch with some wood stairs. I hid under them. Curled my knees to my chest with my fists at my sides so I wouldn't get splinters from the old wood. I was so mad, I kept telling myself over and over in my head; He's never gonna find me. Nobody's gonna find me. I don't wanna be found.
Right up until some kind of change happened around me. It felt like I went "up", or maybe the world went "down" while I stayed in the same place, and my body started to feel lighter all of a sudden. I had my eyes closed after I crawled under the stairs. I opened them again.
I was still behind the neighbors' house, but everything around me was different. All the colors I saw were more colorful, all the lights were lighter and brighter, and there were weird patterns in the grass and the trees that weren't there before. The grass in the yard was all fuzzy, and it looked like it was rustling and standing still at the same time. The toys and buckets and the deflated pool looked like they were melting, all their colors blending together like runny paint. All the sounds in the world started to echo more than were supposed to.
And I felt free. Like I could run around wherever I wanted and nobody could stop me.
When Tommy ran around the corner right then (he looked all weird and fuzzy and colorful too), I swear he turned and stared right at me, right at the place I was hiding under the stairs. He even ran up close like he was gonna pull me out and laugh at me like he always did when he found me hiding. But then he looked right past me, like he was trying to find something behind me. And then he got under the stairs and crawled right through me.
I didn't feel him. When I looked down, it looked like our bodies were blending together and I thought I was gonna be sick just from seeing that. But even though he was in the same space I was, it didn't feel like we were anywhere near each other. It felt like I was in my own little space and he was still stuck in his. Stuck back in his own world where Joey's backyard still looked normal.
Then, as quick as he came, he crawled out and ran off to look somewhere else. He never saw me. He didn't even know I was there.
I remember I crawled back out and went back to the middle of the cull-da-sack, to watch Tommy look for everybody else in a whole world that looked like somebody was microwaving it. Every time he turned toward me I felt like hiding again, but he couldn't see me. Once he started finding the others and they went looking for me with him, they couldn't see me either. I shouted at them a few times, and they didn't even hear me.
I thought it was funny for a while. But then I started to worry. I didn't know what this was. I was standing right near everyone, but it felt like I was far away from them. Nobody could see me. Nobody could hear me. Nobody could find me. They called for me and I called back, but my voice never reached them. It was like I was in another place. Like I was on another floor of a building that only I could get to. And I didn't know how to get back.
When time passed and all the other kids looked everywhere they could, they got worried too. One of them told my dad I went missing, and he came out looking for me. I tried to yell out at him, but even though it sounded like my voice echoed for ages, nobody heard the sound but me.
I started to get scared. Started to think I was gonna be stuck like this forever. This wasn't what I meant when I said I didn't wanna be found! I wanna go back! I wanna go back!!
...Something changed again the moment I started thinking that, and just like that, everything was back to normal. No bright lights or colors. No patterns in everything, no stuff melting together or looking fuzzy, no echoes on every sound. When I called Daddy, he heard me, spun around and saw me. Then he ran up to me and hugged me. Said I had him worried sick, and told me never to disappear like that again.
That was how I found out about the Other Place.
I don't remember how long it took, but after a while I learned how to go back. The place was just like being in the normal world, except that whenever I went there, nobody in the world could find me. In the Other Place, I could walk anywhere I felt like, anytime I wanted, and I was the only person who knew where I was. I never disappeared as long as I did that first day, but once I knew how to go back and forth, I went there more often.
After that, I figured out that I could do more in the Other Place than I could in the normal world. I could walk through walls and sink through the ground without getting dirty. I learned how to quickly find stuff and people I already saw before, just by thinking about them a certain way. Later on, I learned how to take things with me to the Other Place and back, and I started bringing stuff to do whenever I went.
I didn't tell Daddy about any of this when we were still living in the house. But when Daddy started getting sick and stopped being able to go to work, he said we were gonna have to leave the cull-da-sack. He said if we couldn't find a new place to stay, I'd get taken away and put somewhere without him. I asked him why we couldn't just stay with my friends. He said they were afraid to let us in because he was too sick. Said we couldn't live with anyone but ourselves, and to do that, we needed somewhere safe to live.
I told him we had another place. Told him I knew somewhere else we could go. He didn't believe me.
So I showed him.

- - -

I walk through the hospital without looking at anyone. Nobody saw me when I came in, and nobody sees me now.
The first time I came in here, Daddy showed me a bottle of his medicine so I could find it easier. He said the doctors stopped giving it to him once we left the cull-de-sack. I still don't understand why. When I asked him, he said he didn't either. But he said he needed it, and that if they wouldn't give it to him, I should get it for him. I thought that was stealing at first, but he said it was already his. 'By keeping it from me, they're the ones stealing. We're just taking back what's supposed to be ours.' I guess that makes sense.
As I go down the hospital hallway, the Other World tells me where his medicine is and how to get to it. I make myself stay in the hallway. When I tried to take a shortcut through the walls the first time I was here, I ended up going through a bunch of rooms where people were being looked at and treated. One of the rooms had a woman with red all over her. She looked hazy like everyone else does when I'm in the Other World, but I could tell that all the red stuff was blood, and I felt sick just looking at her. If I was in the normal world when I saw her, I feel like I would've thrown up.
It doesn't really take long for me to find the stairs and go up to the third floor. Like last time, there's less people up here; only a few doctors and nurses, some standing around while the rest hurry to places they've gotta be. I don't look at any of them. I keep my eyes pointed at the ground. In the Other World, the hallway looks so bright and white that it almost hurts to look anywhere. It's like walking in a big spotlight that never ends.
I'm still thinking about that when I pass by a doctor and a nurse talking to each other. Right after I do, something goes off in my head like an alarm.
I feel it all of a sudden. My brain tells me someone's watching me, looking right at me. It makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I freeze in fear. Someone can see me? How?
I turn around, and the nurse I just passed is looking in my direction while the doctor speaks. Now that I'm staring at her, I realize I've seen her somewhere before...
- - -
One of the times I was out walking, [...]
- - -
"is something the matter?"