Body, Boundaries & Safety
The Door Is Opening
Ben’s front door swings open, and there is Ben’s dad — wearing a nose.
Not his own nose. A pink rubber one, nearly as big as a potato, with black whiskers curling off the sides.
“Boo,” he says.
Otis jumps so high his paper pumpkin bonks him on the chin.
Ben laughs so hard he has to hold on to the doorframe. Kit’s dragon hood flops down over his eyes.
“It’s just my dad!” says Ben.
Otis knows. He watched him put the nose on through the kitchen window, two whole minutes ago.
He laughs too. But under the pumpkin his heart goes bump-bump-bump, as if nobody has told it.
Next to the door, Otis’s mom is sticking a huge woolly spider to the window. One leg will not stay stuck.
“Again!” says Ben.
His dad pushes the nose back on. The elastic snaps onto his ear. “Ow,” he says, and fixes it.
Then he shuts the door, and his voice comes through it: “Ready when you are.”
Ben and Kit squash onto the doormat, shoulder to shoulder. Otis stands just behind.
Through the bumpy glass beside the door he can see two gray sneakers. Ben’s dad’s sneakers. Waiting.
Otis knows exactly who is in there.
His shoulders creep up toward his ears anyway.
“Your turn to ring,” says Ben, and shuffles over to make room.
The bell is right beside Otis’s hand. A few steps away, Mom presses the spider’s naughty leg flat against the glass.
From behind the door comes a very bad monster noise. “Grrraaargh.”
Then a cough.
Ben is waiting. The nose is waiting. Otis’s finger is one tiny push from the bell.
What does Otis do?
Every choice costs something. Let’s see what.
Ring the bell with them.
Otis presses. Ding-dong.
The door flies open.
“BOO!”
Otis’s feet jump backwards all by themselves. Kit bumps into Ben. Ben bumps into the doorframe. And the giant nose slides sideways, all the way around to Ben’s dad’s cheek.
For one second nobody moves. Then everybody laughs at once — Otis loudest of all, which surprises him.
“You went like this!” says Kit, hopping backwards like a frog.
“So did you!”
“I went sideways.”
They try both jumps on the path, again and again. Neither one comes out quite like the real thing.
Inside, Otis leans on the kitchen table and lets his heart slow down. Bump. Bump. Bump.
Mom has come in from her spider. Ben is telling her about Kit’s sideways jump, and every time he tells it, it gets a little more sideways.
Otis finds a paper bat stuck to his pumpkin. He has absolutely no idea how it got there.
“One more time?” Ben calls from the hall.
Otis has his drink halfway to his mouth. He holds it there and thinks.
Before he can answer, Kit squeezes past with the fallen nose.
“Look,” says Kit. “It fits on my elbow.”
Ask him to leave the nose off.
“Can you do it without the nose?” Otis calls through the door.
A little pause.
“Yep.”
The door creaks open, slowly this time. Ben’s dad is swinging the nose by its elastic. Without it, his face is just his face — the same one that cheers at Saturday soccer.
Ben peeks around Otis. “Oh. We were doing the jump.”
“Here,” says his dad. “You have the nose.”
Ben puts it on. The elastic is far too loose for him, so he has to hold the whole thing on with both hands, like someone trying very hard not to sneeze.
They go inside, and nobody jumps at all.
Ben walks backwards down the hall, holding his nose on. Kit follows him, making a dragon noise through his teeth. Hssss.
Otis follows too, with his eyes on Ben’s hands. It is much harder to be surprised by a nose when you can see it coming.
In the kitchen, Ben lets go.
The nose drops onto the table, bounces once, and rolls to a stop against the apple bowl.
Otis hooks the elastic around the biggest apple. It slides off. He tries again.
This time it stays — crooked, just the way it sat on Ben’s dad.
“Boo,” Otis tells the apple.
Go and stand by Mom.
Otis steps off the mat.
“I’m going to Mom,” he says.
He goes and stands right beside her at the window, so close that her sleeve brushes his pumpkin. From here, the door is just a door.
Behind him — ding-dong.
Out of the corner of his eye, Otis sees the door swing open and Ben and Kit hop backwards off the mat. The “BOO” sounds small from over here, like it’s happening next door.
“Hold this leg a sec,” says Mom.
Otis puts one finger on the spider.
Now the spider has seven legs stuck down and one sticking straight up in the air.
“That one’s waving,” says Otis.
Mom moves the tape. Another leg pops loose.
From inside, Ben is shouting something about Kit going sideways. Otis didn’t see how sideways. He keeps his finger on the spider.
Ben comes back out onto the step, still giggling. “You missed it!”
“I saw your feet,” says Otis.
Kit lifts one foot to show him — and treads on his own dragon tail.
Otis slowly takes his finger away. The spider stays put.
“Don’t move,” he whispers to Mom. “It thinks you’re still holding it.”