100 Years Project Anthology

Faith keeps telling herself that she’s not scared of it. It’s only
a door, after all. A door that follows her wherever she goes, true,
a door that can find its way into her dreams and twist them out of
shape, but still—just a door.
“It can’t hurt me if I don’t open it,” she tells herself. “it will be
fine.”
Faith has started talking out loud to herself when she’s alone,
just to remind herself she is still alive, that she still has a voice.
People can get used to almost anything, though, even fear. Soon
enough, Faith has a routine – whenever she sees the door, she turns
around and walks calmly in the other direction. This works, for a
while, until it suddenly doesn’t.
One day Faith gets home and her mother is not there. She
has not seen the door for nearly a month now, and tried to hope that
it was gone for good. Last night she did not dream of hooting owls
and yellow doors, and did not wake until her alarm went off at seven
o’clock. She feels almost happy as she hangs her blue plastic raincoat
on a hook by the door and calls to her mother, “I’m home!”
There is no answer. Faith isn’t worried; often her mother will be so
immersed in research and paperwork that she will forget she lives
with another person. Faith isn’t entirely sure what her mother’s job
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