“The answer is c.”
“It’s not multiple choice, idiot.”
I elbowed past her at the landing, kept my lead through the kitchen, and slipped out first, the moist night air swallowing me whole. That air. Warm and wet and suffocating.
It can’t be like this up north. I’ve seen pictures of New York in the fall. People wear sweaters. I could wear a sweater.
The screen door banged shut behind Charly. “Shhhhh!” I said, and turned to see her sprinting down the steps, giggling as she passed me.
“Don’t shake the Cokes!” I called, breaking into a run. Frogs screeched in the dark and I tried not to think about stepping on one. The crabgrass felt like a carpet of dry sticks beneath my bare feet, but I ran anyway, passing her easily. First one to the tree gets the best seat.
The black walnut is ours, mine and Charly’s. Grandpa carved our names into it after we—the three survivors—came here to live. I was a toddler, so I don’t remember anything, not the name carving, not the crash, not the funeral, not my mother. I think us living here was supposed to be temporary, but then Grandpa got sick so Dad had another reason to stay. And after Grandpa died, we just never moved out.
The tree is the perfect distance from the old plantation-style house for us to sit in its branches and chuck the green walnut hulls at the windows. Five points for a wooden shutter, ten points for an actual windowpane, and fifteen points for the French doors or any piece of the veranda furniture. Then there’s the impossible: the rooster-topped weather vane on the roof. Fifty points for the vane, but neither of us has hit it yet. Not for lack of trying.
We’re taking a break from it though, since last week Grandma promised if she saw one more walnut hull on the porch we’d be polishing silver till Christmas.
I swung myself up onto the lowest branch, then reached down to take my Coke from Charly.
Can in hand, I made my way down the branch to the first fork. It was too dark to see, but I know every knot and branch and mossy patch on that tree by touch. I didn’t say anything, just settled with my back against the trunk. Charly found the second-best spot farther down the bough, where it forks again and flattens almost enough to resemble a seat.
Charly opened her Coke. I opened mine too. All around us fireflies glowed and sank into the darkness.
She broke the silence first. “Do you think I should dye my hair red?”
“What?” I stared at her pigtails. Charly has the kind of buttery-blond hair people spend fortunes trying to imitate. “That would look so bad.”
“You think? Ty and Mitch said I’d look sexy with red hair.”
“Ty and Mitch are idiots. I’m telling you, those Baldwin guys have the collective IQ of a chimp. And why do you even care what they think? Dad would kill you.”
“No, Grandma would kill me,” she said. “Dad would cry.”
She was right. According to photographs, Charly looks just like Mom—the blond curly hair, the blue eyes, the freckles. Dad really might cry.
My hair is nut brown and I have all of Grandma’s angles, from chin to hips to knees. If I dyed my hair red Dad would be disappointed in me. Grandma would probably ground me, but only because seventeen is too old for the paddle.
When we were younger, sixteen was the legal age for everything fun: boys, pierced ears (one per ear), cell phones, etc. But now that we’ve both passed that mark, the list of forbidden activities has only shifted: drugs, skipping church, sex, etc. We can’t do any of those until Dad dies. To my knowledge, hair dying hasn’t been discussed, but Charly is a believer in do first, ask later.
She’d earned two weeks of grounding for piercing her ears when she was fifteen. It was dumb of her. I don’t know why she hadn’t just waited three months and saved herself getting in trouble.
“So you’re not over Will,” Charly said.
I took a sip of my soda and held it in my mouth until the bubbles stung my tongue and cheeks. When the fizz finally died, I swallowed. “Luciana can have him.”
“But you’re not over him.”
She said it so matter-of-factly I almost couldn’t deny it. “Am too.”
“I still don’t get why you guys broke up. A year and a half, and it’s just over for no reason?” Charly flicked a strawberry top off her thumb. “I mean, something must have happened.”
Of course something happened. You happened.
“Nothing happened.”
“You didn’t even have a fight?”
I accused him of being in love with you and he admitted it.
“No. We’ve been over this a million times.”
“Yeah, and it still makes no sense—him just breaking up with you out of the blue.”
I chucked a strawberry top at her, but it fell short. “He didn’t break up with me. It was mutual. Why doesn’t anyone believe that?”
“Okay, okay, I believe.”
Charly had been oblivious. As usual. She hadn’t noticed the way Will started looking at her last spring, the same way she doesn’t see how Dean and entire legions of other guys look at her now. I couldn’t even hate her for it. She was too clueless.
But hating Will didn’t seem quite right either. It’s not like he’d actually done anything wrong. I could just feel it, the way his body turned to her when she was around, the way he watched the words come out of her lips when she spoke. He smiled for her like she was sunshine and oxygen rolled into one, like he just couldn’t help it.
If I was mad at anyone, it was myself for not being more . . . something.
“What did Hershey say when you told her you’re missing the game?” Charly asked.
“I chickened out. I’ll tell her tomorrow.”
She snorted.
“What? She worked us hard today. I’d like to see you kick that wasps’ nest.”
“I don’t see why you don’t stay here, and just go to homecoming.”
“Why would I do that?”
“To have fun. Go with whoever Sebastian was talking about, and stop obsessing over Will and his trampy girlfriend.”
“I’m not obsessing. I really do want to go to Atlanta.”
“To quote Grandma, ‘And all liars shall burneth with fire and brimstone in hell,’” she recited, then held out the bowl of strawberries.
I took one. “You’re paraphrasing, but I’m pretty sure Grandma was quoting God anyway. And I’m not lying. I’m finished with high school boys. This year is about getting into Columbia.”
Charly shrugged. “Fine, but Luciana really is a tramp. She sits right in front of me in art, and her jeans were so low today she was showing about three inches of thong.”
“Lovely.” My last swig tasted more like metal than Coke. I propped the empty can beside me.
“Wanna hear my song?” Charly asked, and handed me the bowl.
“Do I ever.”
I’d heard her sing it a thousand times, but Wicked tryouts were only a week away. So Charly poured her heart into “Defying Gravity,” and I ate the rest of the strawberries.
In my opinion, Wicked is a little ambitious for a high school in the rural South whose talent pool consists of overly confident pageant girls. But Charly is better than all of them, so maybe she can carry the show. She has the kind of voice my choir director loves—clear and sweet and perfectly in tune.
Grandma objects to Charly’s Wicked ambitions, but not enough to forbid it. It’s a combination of the play’s name and the fact that Charly’s GPA is bouncing between embarrassing and fatal. I tried explaining that the play is a Wizard of Oz spin-off, but that didn’t seem to make a difference to Grandma. And of course, grades are grades. No sugarcoating a 2.5.
“So how was it?” Charly asked, a little out of breath from the soaring finish.
“Great. You’ll get the part.” If I could just remember what part that was.
“I hope so. I feel like I was born to play Galinda.”
Right, Galinda. The good witch?
I rubbed the branch beneath my fingers, feeling the
spongy bark crumble. Dad said Mom had loved the trees in Florida. She grew up in the Canadian Rockies with giant fir trees and other evergreen trees too prickly to climb. I wanted to ask Dad if she ever climbed the trees around the house we used to live in, over on the other side of Tremonton, but I could never quite find the right moment to ask. Besides, grown women, mothers, don’t climb trees, do they?
“I’m starting to feel kind of sick,” I said. “Maybe strawberries and Coke isn’t the best combination.”
“I’ll remember that next time I want to stay home from school.”
A halo of fireflies lit above Charly’s head. I reached out to catch one, but she was too far away. They scattered.
“You know what we discovered out at the golf course?” she asked.
“What?”
“When you light a golf ball on fire you’d think you could hit it and it’d look like a meteor, but it doesn’t. The flame goes out right away.”
“Scratch what I said about the collective IQ of a chimp. There are smarter chimps.” I rubbed my temples, picturing the scene. “I can’t believe you actually did that. I’m surprised the golf balls caught fire.”
“Oh, we had to soak them in gas first.”
“What?”
“It’s not like it was my idea.”
“Yeah, ’cause the cops really care whose idea it was when they’re arresting everyone. You could have killed someone!”
“It was the middle of the night. It’s not like some innocent golfer was going to get a flaming golf ball to the head.”
Unbelievable.
“Oh, come on, Amelia,” she said. “It was fun. Even you would have had fun.”
“If this is the stuff you’re telling me about, I can’t imagine what you aren’t telling me.”
“I don’t keep secrets from you.”
I hesitated, but not because I didn’t believe her. “I know.”
“So will you drive me out to that party tomorrow?”
“No. Again. I’m not taking you out to Baldwin to get into more trouble. The summer is over, the job is over. You have no reason to hang out with those guys.”
The mugginess and the croaking frogs were suddenly too much. I was being smothered.
“I’m tired,” I said. The thought of tomorrow, of field hockey, and calculus, and seeing Will, and pretending to be above it all made me want to fall asleep and wake up next year.
I glanced over at Charly. She’d pulled her knees up under her chin and wrapped both arms around her legs, nothing anchoring her to the branch. Her pigtails shone yellow in the moonlight, falling on her shoulders. A gust of wind, or a sneeze from me, anything to shake the bough, and she’d fall.
She picked up the empty bowl from the branch where I’d propped it, and held it out to me. “You take it in.”
I took it.
• • •
Charly went up to bed while I rinsed out the strawberry bowl.
The house was quiet except for the hum of the AC and Dad’s voice floating down the hall. I put the bowl away, then followed his voice to the closed door of his den. The words were muffled, but I could tell he wasn’t on the phone. It was his pulpit voice, or a quieter version of it, but with that same powerful mix of casual and caring he reserved for the Sunday sermon. People heard it and forgot they were sitting in church, not at Starbucks chatting with a friend. A voice like that could call people sinners and they’d still come back next week.
I knocked.
“Come in.”
“Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Of course.” He stood in front of his desk, dog-eared papers in hand. “I’m just running through the conference presentation again.”
“Do you need an audience?”
He took off his glasses and laid them on his desk. His face looked empty without them. “It’s pretty late, isn’t it?”
I crossed the room and climbed into the leather desk chair. “I guess.”
“Is your sister in bed already?” He rubbed the angry red marks on the bridge of his nose.
“I think so.”
“So, what was it you wanted to talk about?”
“Atlanta.”
He looked confused, but said nothing.
“I just wanted to ask if you’d decided about me coming with you. You know, since we talked about it last week.”
“To Atlanta?” He squinted, as if trying to remember a conversation from last year. “I don’t remember discussing that.”
“We did.”
“Well, I’m sorry. I guess I forgot.” He ran a hand through his silver-streaked hair. “Honey, I don’t think coming to Atlanta with me is going to work. Presenting at this conference is a big deal—I’m not going to have time for sightseeing.”
“It’s not like I’m five. I don’t need babysitting.”
“I know you’re not five, but you’re not an adult,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
He sounded sorry. But he’s good at sounding sorry, or inspired, or pensive, or joyful, or whatever. I stared at the grain in the hardwood floor. “You won’t even notice I’m there. I promise.”
“That’s not the point. Besides, I’ve decided to go up on Monday, and you can’t miss a full week of school.”
“But . . . ” He was right. He knew it. “Can I just fly up and meet you on Friday, then?”
He came over and hugged me, signaling the begging was officially over. “I really am sorry.” He put his glasses back on, and looked instantly wiser.
As I stood up I felt the fight drain from my body. I should have known. Tremonton is a black hole of suckiness and it wasn’t going to let me escape.
“Good night, sweetie,” he said as I left the den.
“Good night.”
• • •
I texted Savannah from bed:
change of heart. can u still hook me up
It took all of five seconds for her response:
done
Chapter 3
Against all odds, the state of Florida gave Charly a driver’s license.
“Lord, protect us” was Grandma’s response when Charly came running into the kitchen, waving the temporary license like a winning lottery ticket. Grandma went back to arranging her roses in a glass vase.
“Third time’s a charm!” Charly sang, and turned to me at the sink. She held out her arms for a hug.
“I’m holding scissors.” I snipped the stem of the last pink blossom and handed it to Grandma. Charly settled for holding the little piece of paper up close to my face, too close to even see the writing, like she thought I would want to verify it wasn’t fake.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were taking the test again?” I asked. “Who drove you?”
“Dean. I wanted it to be a surprise!”
She grabbed the Jeep keys—our Jeep keys now—from the hook, and swung them around her index finger. “How do I look?”
“Dangerous,” I said. “Have you called Dad yet?”
“Nope. I’ll call him tonight when he’s back at the hotel.”
His response would be like Grandma’s, but with a smile. Charly amuses him.
“Let’s go somewhere,” she said, twirling around the kitchen, still swinging the keys. “Come on, Grandma, let’s go get ice cream.”
Grandma placed the vase of top-heavy blossoms on the table runner. “Are those centered?”
“A little to the left,” I said.
She pushed the vase an inch.
“Perfect.”
Charly grabbed my arm. “I’m serious! We’re all going to Dairy Queen and I’m driving. You too, Grandma.”
“I’m too young to die,” I whispered to Grandma as we followed Charly out the front door.
“Pray, child. Pray.”
• • •
Charly cut off two people on the way to DQ, an impressive feat in a town as small as Tremonton. “Holy crap,” she shouted after the second time. The other driver honked and sped off, flipping us the bird. “He came out of nowhere.�
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“Feces are hardly holy,” Grandma muttered. “You’ve got to be cautious, Charlotte.”
“Sorry.”
Grandma rubbed her temples for the rest of the ride, muttering, “Thank you, Jesus, for letting me live another day,” as Charly swerved into the DQ parking lot.
“Or maybe she’s already killed us, and this is actually heaven,” I said from the backseat.
Charly pulled into a parking spot—two parking spots, actually—then we went in and ordered.
“Now that I have my license, I won’t have to bug you for rides all the time,” Charly said between bites of her banana split.
“Good. Here, eat this,” I said, dropping my cherry into her ice cream.
“This is heaven.”
“You’ve cheated on way too many math tests to end up in heaven.”
Grandma raised an eyebrow at Charly.
“She was kidding,” Charly said, sinking her red plastic spoon into whipped cream and fudge sauce.
Grandma turned her steely gaze to me. “Were you kidding, or does your sister cheat?”
I shrugged. Of course she cheated. I’d seen her spend more time copying answers onto the inside of Coke bottle labels than I’d seen her actually studying. “If she cheats, she does a terrible job. What’s your GPA again, Charly?”
Another lie averted.
Charly smiled sweetly and narrowed her eyes at me.
I grinned back.
• • •
Savannah loaned me a dress for homecoming. We would’ve planned a shopping trip to Tallahassee, but we ran out of time—I had my last crack at the SATs to study for, and she had extra cheerleading practices. The entire cheerleading squad (Savannah included) actually believed the outcome of the football game had something to do with whether they shook their pom-poms in perfect unison. I’d learned not to mock her aloud.
I didn’t really need a new dress, anyway. Savannah had a closet full of once-worn formals that nobody at school had even seen. Her dad was a judge and worked at the capitol building, which meant she got to dress up and eat lobster and crème brûlée at political functions in Tallahassee a few times a year.
“The green one with the pleats,” she said, after I’d tried on a whole pile of them. “It brings out your eyes and makes you look like you have hips.”
The Space Between Us Page 2