The Space Between

by Brenna Yovanoff

  I’m standing under a bridge. The sky above me is blue, but it’s much paler than I had expected sky to be. At my feet, the pavement is littered with empty bottles and the stubs of cigarettes. I can feel the air on my face, uncomfortable and strange. This is cold. And I like it.

  I stoop to touch the ground and my palms come away gritty and smeared with something black. A new and hungry part of me wants to stand under the bridge forever, breathing the air, feeling the cold on my face. But time exists now. I don’t think I have very much of it.

  I take out my map, opening it against one of the cement pylons supporting the bridge, and run my finger along lines meant to represent roads, trying to find Cicero. I trace the streets, their almost-regular intersections. The sheer vastness of the world is thrilling.

  I’m scanning the map for Sebastian Street when there’s a stealthy footfall behind me.

  “Hey,” says someone from quite close by. “What are you doing down here?”

  When I look around, a man of indeterminate age is standing in the shadow of one of the pylons. His clothes are grimy and his beard is heavy and matted. “You lost?” he asks.

  “Perhaps.” I turn to face him, rattling the map closed. “Can you tell me how to get to Cicero from here?”

  He comes closer, parting his lips to reveal crooked yellow teeth. The movies can’t convey how everything on Earth has a smell. He is an unpleasant array of things I don’t know the words for, all of them tight and sharp and high-pitched.

  “I’ll do you one better,” he says. “I can show you.”

  He motions me back into the shadow of the bridge and when I follow, he takes something from his pocket. It’s black, as long as my hand from wrist to fingertips, and decorated with pictures of the same red flower over and over, linked together by a tangle of vines.

  “What is it?” I ask, leaning closer.

  His wrist twitches and suddenly the thing opens with a click and I see that it’s a knife. He holds it out to me.

  “It’s beautiful,” I say.

  Then he brings the blade up level with my chin, not offering it after all. “Give me your money.”

  I watch the knife tremble, red flowers swarming over the handle. They wriggle and squirm as his hand shakes, making it hard to identify the genus.

  “Are you deaf?” His voice is taut now, panicked. “Give me your fucking money.”

  “No,” I say, stepping closer, reaching out.

  At first, I’m not sure what I’m about to do, only that he’s standing much too close and my hands are tingling. Then he lunges for me and as he does, I reach out, pressing the tips of my fingers against his throat.

  The instant I touch him, red light blooms behind my eyelids and I smell a strange smell, heady and sweet. It’s the smell of burning flesh.

  His cry is short and shocked. Then it cuts off and he wrenches away, my fingerprints smoking along the side of his neck. The knife falls from his hand, clanging on the pavement, and I bend to pick it up. When I straighten, he’s gone, the sound of his feet still echoing under the bridge.

  Petra warned me about the dangers of Earth—traffic accidents and fairy tales. But those things only seem to happen to people who aren’t being careful, and I just burned a man by touching him. Above me, the bridge begins to shake, making a noise so loud I feel it in the ground. It shudders through the soles of my boots, and in a parking lot across the street, the cars burst into a cacophony of loud, rhythmic honking, each with its own tempo and pitch.

  A train rumbles overhead, rattling and clattering along its track, and for the first time, I understand that I’m the most dangerous thing here.

  There are a lot of streets in Cicero, which is confusing, but not impossible. The map shows them laid out in uniform squares—nothing like the chaotic spirals of Pandemonium.

  I’m six blocks from Sebastian Street when I first notice the ache in my chest. It echoes in my ribcage, making me breathe too fast. I think it started under the bridge, right after my encounter with the thief. The farther I go, the worse it seems to get.

  On the steps of a public building, three skinny boys are passing a cigarette back and forth. The smoke looks like home, and I have a strange, unbidden idea that I want to put it in my mouth. The ache in my chest is terrible now, and with it there’s the ghost of something else, something like emptiness. I find myself clenching my teeth and wonder if this is what people mean when they talk about feeling hungry.

  I walk faster, searching the storefronts for a place that serves food. Halfway down the block I find a small shop with a neon sign in the shape of a sandwich. When I pull the door open, a bell rings, far off and tinkling. Inside, the shop is warm. It smells sublime and after a few deep breaths, the ache isn’t as bad anymore.

  The boy behind the counter has dark, golden-hued skin and is wearing transparent plastic gloves on both hands. I think they must be to keep him clean from the world.

  I approach and he smiles. His teeth are very white.

  “I’d like the best thing you have to eat, please,” I say.

  He smiles wider, and the wideness makes dimples at the corner of his mouth. “Best? Isn’t that different for everybody?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. What do you like best?”

  “On a sandwich? I like something with capicola and salami, peppers, mozzarella, maybe vinegar, salt and pepper. Some flavor, you know.”

  His accent is different from mine, dusky and lilting, and at first I think he’s saying Salome, who once asked her father for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. I repeat the word, trying to pronounce like he does. “Salami, what’s it like?”

  He passes a small piece of marbled-looking meat over the glass countertop, holding it between his plastic-gloved fingers. “Try it and see.”

  When I reach to take it though, he stops and pulls his hand back. “Whoa—you need to go wash your hands.” He grins wide, shaking his head. “They’re filthy!”

  I study my palms, which are black, greasy from touching the pavement.

  “Go,” he says again, waving me past the counter and down a short hall to the bathroom.

  Inside, the floor is tile, smeared with footprints. There are a pair of cubicles with toilets against one wall and two chipped porcelain sinks with a long mirror above them along the other.

  I regard my reflection with interest, trying to see the girl I am on Earth. The girl someone thought it would be a good idea to rob. Of course he did—of course he thought it would be so easy to take something from me. I still look like the silly princess at her vanity, hair long, face pristine. Hands, dirty.

  I run them under the faucet, soaping and scrubbing until the grime sloughs off down the drain. Then I open my bag.

  The razor is on top, nestled in with the maps and the clothes. I pick it up and unfold the blade. I don’t cut myself, even though I keep thinking about it, how it might be good to know what my blood will do. How maybe I should have let the man under the bridge try it, because then at least I’d know what my protection is. I examine the edge of the blade and consider finding out.

  But I’m here in the bathroom of a restaurant and some of the protections are dramatic enough to damage the floor, or possibly destroy whole buildings. The boy outside seems friendly and I don’t want to do anything that might vandalize his shop.

  Instead, I adjust my grip and grab a handful of my hair. Standing on top of my bag, I lean over the sink until my nose almost touches the glass. My reflection saws at her hair, and in my hands, I feel it drop away. The cut ends tickle and scratch against my neck and already I feel wild and a little frightening, the kind of girl no one would ever think to steal from.

  When my mother speaks, it’s in a fierce whisper and directly into my ear. “Daphne.”

  Her reflection stares out at me from just over my shoulder and the sight of her startles me so badly that I almost lose my footing on the bag.

  The razor slips from my hand, landing in the sink, but when I whirl around to face her
, no one’s behind me. I turn back to her reflection, feeling breathless. “What are you doing here?”

  It’s a stupid question, though. I should have been expecting her to find me—it’s what she does. I’ve just never seen it from this side of the glass.

  “Have you learned anything yet?” she says, staring out at me with ringing gray eyes. “Do you know what happened to your brother?”

  I shake my head, forcing myself to hold her gaze. “Not yet—I only just got here, but I’m about to go talk to someone who knew him. Have you seen anything in the sundial?”

  “Nothing but a silly girl ruining her hair. You need to hurry.”

  “I will, but I have to eat first,” I whisper, feeling guilty for the way my breath comes faster when I remember the scrap of salami still waiting for me out in the shop, held in the boy’s plastic-covered hand. “I’m on my way, I just have to get a sandwich.”

  Lilith smiles, but it’s chilly and tightlipped. “You can feed yourself on salt and bread and meat. It still won’t be enough. You’d be better served looking for a fix.”

  And then, without any warning, she’s gone. I’m alone in a bathroom, standing in front of a smudged mirror. The sink is full of my hair.

  I brush the loose cuttings off the razor and drop it back in the bag, staring past myself to the place where Lilith appeared, then vanished. It’s strange to hear her talk about the fix the way my sisters do, like it’s necessary. I don’t quite believe it.

  Out on the street, I was nearly desperate, but now the ache has settled down to more of a dull throb and I feel almost calm. Simply breathing the air inside the shop made the hunger recede—at least a little—so there have to be other ways to cure it. If I go back out into the restaurant and buy myself a sandwich, maybe that will be enough to fill the hollow in my chest.

  When I leave the bathroom, the boy is waiting at the counter, still holding my scrap of salami. “What’d you do to your hair?” he asks, eyeing me doubtfully. “You had a whole lot more a minute ago.”

  “Yes, but now my hands are clean.” I reach for the salami and he lets me have it.

  The meat feels greasy, flecked with white, and when I put it in my mouth, it’s full of flavors—sharp, oily, tingling.

  I buy a sandwich with extra salt and some of everything. As he makes it, the boy tells me about meats, the difference between dry-cured and hickory-smoked. Sausages and ham, and how cheese gets made by squeezing water out of milk in a cloth. When I ask him about the gloves, he just laughs and says they’re for hygiene.

  “To keep you clean?”

  “No, to keep all this clean from me.” He wraps my sandwich in white paper and passes it across the counter to me.

  “You’re very kind,” I tell him. “How did you become so kind?”

  He smiles an honest smile for the first time, and the difference is hard to describe but easy to recognize. “It’s my job, you know. Just a job.”

  The way he says it makes me think of Obie, always so preoccupied with his job, but talking about it never made him smile. I can’t say for certain, but I don’t think I’d mind a position in the Department of Good Works. At least it would mean knowing that I wasn’t going to turn out like my sisters.

  Now, I take my sandwich, counting out dollars for the boy behind the counter. “You do your job well,” I tell him because it seems like something people ought to hear, and I don’t remember anyone ever telling Obie that, even though it’s true.

  “Nah,” the boy says, shaking his head, grinning like I’m the strangest thing he’s ever seen. “You ain’t from here.” It’s not a question.

  “No,” I tell him, handing him my money. “I’m not.”

  SEBASTIAN STREET

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  In my bag, I have a folder containing the address of Truman Connor Flynn. I have a memory of him—his fierce, anguished eyes, his hand fumbling for mine. How wholly shocking it was when he touched me, and how real. The memory is bright, but strangely transparent, like it’s already starting to fade. I wonder if I’ll even know him when I see him again.

  I go four more blocks before I come to a dingy brick building with a sign out front reading THE AVALON APARTMENTS. A boy is bouncing a hard rubber ball against the wall, his breath like smoke in the cold air. When I approach the double doors, the sidewalk feels uneven beneath my boots.

  Beside the entrance is a panel of buttons, lettered and numbered, but if there’s a password, I don’t know it. I push numbers randomly, but nothing happens. After a moment, the boy stops bouncing the ball to watch.

  “It’s broke,” he tells me. “You don’t got to buzz in—just open it.”

  When I pull the handle, the door swings wide, squealing against my weight. It opens into a stairwell with a large number 1 painted on the wall. According to Obie’s file, Truman lives in apartment 403, and so I begin to climb. The stairwell smells damp and is nearly as cold as the air outside. The sound of my boots is almost deafening.

  When I step out onto the fourth-floor landing, three girls are sitting on the floor. All of them are wearing tennis sneakers and extremely short skirts. They look away when I approach and pull their feet up to let me pass.

  Apartment 403 is at the far end of the hall. I knock crisply and when no one comes, I knock louder. When I press my ear to the door, I can hear muffled noises inside, but it takes several minutes of bumping and rustling before a short, stocky man answers, blinking hard in the light from the hall.

  “Is Truman Flynn available, please?”

  The man’s eyes are squinted to slits and his hair seems slightly on end. “He’s not here.”

  With my hands clasped in front of me, I smile without showing my teeth. “Can you tell me when you expect him back?”

  “Sweetheart,” he says, closing his eyes and sighing deeply before he answers, “I’ve got no idea.”

  I thank him for his time and leave the building, trying to conceal my disappointment, trying to think what do to next. I’m outside, almost to the sidewalk, when one of the skinny girls in bare legs and tennis sneakers comes running out after me.

  “Hey,” she calls. “Hey!”

  Her hair is limp and stringy, flopping against her shoulders as she jumps down the front steps. I stop and wait until she catches up. She has on a jersey athletic shirt with a zip-front and is pulling it tightly around her shoulders. She comes to a stop in front of me, looking skittish and out of breath.

  “Who are you?” she says, staring hard. “Did one of the Macklin brothers tell you to come here? I mean, you don’t know Victor or any of those guys, do you?”

  “No,” I say. “Should I?”

  The girl only steps closer, staring up into my face. “What’s your name?”

  “Daphne. What’s yours?”

  “Alexa.” She waves a hand dismissively at herself, still pinning me with her muddy eyes. “How do you know Tru? You a friend of his or something?”

  “I don’t even know him.”

  This makes Alexa raise her eyebrows and she stares up at me with deep distrust. “What do you want him for, then?”

  “I’m looking for my brother. I think Truman may have seen him.”

  “Oh.” She bends forward, picking at a scab on her knee. Then she sighs and straightens. “Okay, look—I bet you I know where he went, but you can’t tell Charlie.”

  “Charlie?”

  “Yeah, his dad. Stepdad. It’s not a big deal, but Charlie doesn’t like him going so far.”

  “How far did he go?”

  Alexa shrugs, looking apologetic. “When I saw him this morning, he was saying he might go to Dio’s later.”

  Her face is so clean that it seems reflective. I can see a soft, whirling affection in her eyes when she talks about him. It’s sweet and steady, a world away from the feverish desires of Myra and Deirdre. This must be what they mean in movies when they say “crush.”

  “Might?” I say, trying to discern how this is useful. Might is uncertain. Might is no good to
me.

  Alexa sighs again, raising her hands and letting them flop back down. “He meant would, would go to Dio’s. Desmond, I mean.”

  “What’s Desmond?”

  “A person, a guy. Desmond Wan. He lived here a long time. Him and Tru are sort of best friends.” She’s talking faster now, like the words are in danger of bursting inside her chest. She has to get them out before they detonate. “Then Dio got into college though—Northwestern—I mean, it’s crazy. They gave him this huge scholarship and everything. So now we don’t really see him except when he comes home to visit his grandma. Tru just goes there a lot. They still, like, party together and—”

  I can only decipher half of what she’s telling me and I hold up a hand to make her stop. “Thank you. Could you tell me where to go?”

  “Can’t you just come back later?”

  “I have to talk to him now, as soon as possible.”

  Alexa is watching me shrewdly, her gaze traveling over my black bag and my boots, studying my face. “Is your brother in a lot of trouble?”

  “I think so.”

  She nods, and now her eyes are shining in the sunlight, clear and glittering. “Boys,” she whispers, looking at the ground. “They’re just so dumb sometimes.” Then she reaches into the pocket of her sweatshirt and pulls out a battered cell phone, clattering with plastic charms. “Do you have anything to write with?”

  When I offer her a subway map and a ballpoint pen, she takes them. Pen in hand, she leans forward, copying something out of the cell phone, scribbling against the top of her thigh.

  “Dio’s,” she says, handing the map back to me. A street address is printed in the margin and she’s drawn a sloppy circle around a pair of cross streets. “It’s pretty far. But I guess that’s kind of the point. To be far, I mean, to just . . . get out.”

  She trails off, waving the phone halfheartedly, watching as I study the map. Her expression is complicated and something about the sweetness and the sadness of it makes me think of Petra.