In his bed, Kyle twisted his torso uncomfortably. Something was happening inside his dreams: some shadow was disrupting the bittersweet fantasies of soccer games, running and kicking, joining friends on a green field and walking to and from school—simple things that had never seemed so precious. Some interruption threatened to wipe away the past memories of working legs that he only recalled when sleeping. Only knew he dreamed because, each time he awoke, tears were in his eyes.

Pressure was being put on his shoulder. He felt it in his dreams and thought at first it was the hand of Matt or David, calling him away to enjoy some piece of summer sunlight, but then his eyes flickered open to his drab bedroom and he was looking up into his own face, his own large eyes and messy hair, pale skin and spray of nose freckles. He gasped, startled, then recognized his brother. Immediately, Kyle's eyes closed again. He wanted to fall back into his cruel, vanishing dreams.

"Get up," Jack insisted, and Kyle didn't realize his brother had been commanding him to get out of bed over and over for the past several minutes. He hardly heard his twin's words at all.

But then he had to listen. Hands went up under his arms and began pulling at him, dragging him toward the edge of the bed.

"Get up, Kyle. Get up. It's time to go."

Kyle remotely understood what was going on. He felt like a lump of cement; his head was full of water. "Go where?" he heard himself mumbling, though the words came out as if he had a swollen tongue.

"Back. To fix things."

"What?"

Jack had managed to pull Kyle to the end of the mattress. His brother's legs were tangled in the bed sheets; he'd have to unwrap them if he hoped to get Kyle anywhere.

His brother was mumbling, but Jack was not paying attention to him. He knew one goal, and one goal only: to get Kyle to the door. The door opening into the outside world. The rest of the house. There was nowhere else to go but there. Jack knew no other alternative. He couldn't go back the way he'd come, because he didn't even know where exactly he'd come from; had it been the nothingness that had consumed his brother's room? If that was so, he most certainly couldn't see a way back except to wander off into emptiness . . . he wasn't even sure he physically could do that, as there didn't appear to be a floor or anything he could walk on. And if he was dragging Kyle with him? Well, it just seemed impossible. But the bedroom door was still there. He could see it through the haze. It stood there, a solid object in a melting world. The knob reflected some light that had no visible source; the wood, though clearly somewhat warped, was definitely intact. It was the only plausible solution—to get Kyle out of this room and into the house, which hadn't suffered nearly as much damage. Jack knew, somehow, that he needed to bring Kyle through that door.

His brother, though, was beginning to revive. After weeks of not saying more than a few words to Jack, Kyle began to grow belligerent as he awoke. He argued and grew flustered as his brother reached over and tried to pull his blankets off of him. He flailed and swore. He said unkind words.

Jack knew that Kyle was too lost to really understand what he was doing or saying. He knew, also, that he had to ignore everything his brother said or did if he wanted to do what he needed to do. Jack had to be stronger than Kyle, had to be more forceful than him, had to stand up for him, because Kyle certainly couldn't stand up for himself.

For the first time in his life, Jack found that his brother really, truly, absolutely needed him. It had seemed to him that he had always been the twin who lacked bravery or know-how. He had never been able to accomplish much without his mind trailing off into some distant, unfathomable world. Now, it was Kyle who was lost in a netherworld, and Jack was his only hope. Their roles had reversed.

With all his might, Jack pulled his brother free of the bed entirely. Kyle, of course, could not stand and fell halfway to the fast-liquefying floor.

"What are you doing?" wailed Kyle.

Jack faltered in his motions for a moment, stunned at the utter anguish in his brother's voice.

"It hurts . . . It hurts!"

Momentarily, Jack was confused. He assumed his brother was talking about his legs. Maybe he'd knocked them against something (although there was nothing to run into in the room) or they just plain stung with pain. But that was impossible, he soon realized; Kyle's legs felt nothing. It couldn't be the lower portion of his body that hurt him. He was clearly in pain, though—as he looked up at Jack, seeing past him, there was torture in Kyle's features. His eyes glittered darkly with a deep, smoldering hatred, and his half-open mouth was a tortured opening into whatever black hole was consuming him. Jack had never seen such pure, unadulterated animosity—such absolute hatred—but he saw at the same time that his brother's hatred was coupled with an excruciating self-pity so deep that it was the constant source of his pain; it was this, Jack knew, that was truly crippling Kyle. His twin's disability was hardly physical at all. The physical was a mask, a deception, a lie! Recognition of that fact freed the one trapped by it. It was the invisible, the abstract that truly held human beings hostage, but so few of them realized this, which led them to reincarnated disappointments and despair. Kyle must only understand that he was paralyzed with his own despondency and bitterness rather than his legs, which were bound by the falseness of reality.

"I know it hurts," cried Jack against the whirring absence of noise. "But you've got to move!"

Kyle's agonized words became mumbled and indecipherable.

Though he tugged at his brother, Jack couldn't get Kyle to move. Kyle's legs beneath him were weighing him down, keeping him where he was, and the boy was beginning to shake convulsively with whatever he was attempting to say.

Turning this way and that, as if some nonexistent thing in the room could help him, Jack became frantic when he saw that the floor around them was being absorbed into nothingness. All around them, Kyle's empty self was overpowering whatever remained of his bedroom. The bed, where Kyle had been lying moments before, was almost entirely gone—less than a hole or empty space—and all that was visibly left was the door, but Jack instinctively knew that that, too, would soon be consumed by his brother, and if they didn't get to it now, they'd turn into blank spots in time as well. From there, Jack had no idea what would happen.

"Get up, Kyle!" he shouted, attempting to make himself heard above the roar of devouring nothing.

Closer, closer came the border of vacuity, speeding up, quicker, quicker.

"You've got to try!" Jack cried, tears forming in his eyes. To lose his brother after all this—to lose himself after all this—it couldn't happen. "It was me, Kyle—me! I was supposed to be the one; not you. You're not strong enough, I know." Beginning to resign, he nearly sank down with his brother. But before he could reach the ground, something remarkable took place.

With a strength from some unforeseen hope, Kyle, trembling all over, rose.

Jack's eyes widened in absolute shock. His brother, precariously yet certainly, had gotten to his feet. He now stood, shaking all over, next to Jack.

Mouth quivering, face set in what resembled an oncoming sob, Kyle looked genuinely at his twin, gave one, solid nod, and then turned toward the door.

Jack watched as his brother, having tapped into some inner strength, took two very unsteady steps toward the door. Then, seeing not only that the ground he stood on was disappearing but also that his brother couldn't make it alone, Jack quickly went to Kyle and, with immense relief, found that his brother would take his support, now. With arms draped across one another's shoulders, the twins moved toward the door—their last opening into the world as they knew it—and hoped beyond hope that it would lead them where they needed to go.