The Space Between Us

by Jessica Martinez

  “Oh, I see. Under a keg.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Not whatever!” I stood up and followed her into her room. “I thought you were dead in a ditch somewhere! I spent all morning looking for you. I lied to Grandma!”

  “You lied to Grandma?” Her eyes widened with relief. “Oh, thank you, Jesus.”

  “No, thank you, Amelia. And Grandma knows now.”

  “What? Why? You said you would cover for me!”

  “I did! And then I realized I was covering for someone who was probably dead or kidnapped or who knows what and I got scared. Grandma is totally freaked out. She may have already called the police.”

  Charly slapped her forehead with her palm and moaned. “Why would you do that?”

  “Savannah made me realize you might be in trouble.”

  “You’re taking orders from Savannah? That girl is a fourth-generation cheerleader.”

  “Yeah, and she’s ten times smarter than you! This is all your fault. You didn’t come home, you didn’t call, you didn’t care about anybody but yourself—and now you’re blaming Savannah? Unbelievable.”

  She winced.

  “I’M SORRY, IS THE VOLUME OF MY VOICE HURTING YOUR ALCOHOL-SOAKED BRAIN?” I screamed.

  She scowled. “Calm. Down. Amelia.”

  How dare she pretend I’m the emotional one. I took a controlled breath. “Fine. Explain.”

  A beam of sunshine sliced through the clouds and the glass, cutting her face in half. She squinted and turned away, like the light was piercing her skull. “I fell asleep. I forgot to charge my phone. That’s it. I’m sorry.”

  It took everything in me to keep from reaching out and grabbing a handful of wet hair.

  “Fell asleep? Are you kidding me? Is that what we’re calling passed-out drunk now?”

  She opened her mouth to respond, but the sound of tires on gravel stopped her.

  I smiled bitterly. “Good luck.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Grandma’s going to kill you,” I said. “And you totally deserve it.”

  The front door opened and slammed. “Amelia?” Grandma yelled. “Charlotte?” Her voice sounded hard, not shaky like it had on the phone. She’d seen the Jeep out front.

  “We’re up here,” I called.

  Charly looked at me and I realized, too late, that the teams were all wrong. It was always us versus her.

  Propelled by rage, Grandma climbed the stairs fast, and stood before us in pink lipstick and a floral dress—full doctor’s appointment regalia. Anger pinched her thin face, making it even more severe than usual.

  “This had better be good,” she said, pointing a shaky finger at Charly.

  “I was at a friend’s house. I fell asleep.”

  “Not good enough. Whose house?”

  “Katie. From work.” Charly’s words were quiet and empty, like they weren’t coming from her. I didn’t even think there was a Katie.

  Grandma glared in my direction and I couldn’t help it, I winced under it. “So not a friend from school? Not practicing for the audition?”

  I opened my mouth to explain, or not to explain, but to lie, except a plausible lie, like that’s not what she told me! didn’t come. I just stood there, mouth open.

  She turned back to Charly. “Why didn’t you call? Did you even think about how worried we would be?” Her glossed lips trembled as she spoke.

  “My phone was dead. I forgot to charge it.”

  “And this Katie has no phone at her house? How about electricity? Running water? From the looks of you, she at least had plenty of alcohol. Thank goodness.”

  “Sorry.” But she didn’t sound sorry. Charly usually groveled her way through trouble, but apparently the booze had drained the grovel out of her.

  I closed my eyes to brace for it, but even still, the crack of skin on skin, Grandma’s palm on Charly’s cheek, knocked the breath out of me. Charly reached up to cradle her face in her hand, and I couldn’t not stare at the rash that bloomed between her fingers.

  “Not sorry enough. You’re grounded for a month.”

  Charly didn’t respond, just stood with her back bent and her hand on her cheek.

  “And you,” Grandma said, turning to me. “One week for lying.”

  “But homecoming,” I sputtered. “I have a—”

  “No homecoming, no play rehearsals, no sports, no hanging out with friends for either of you.”

  “What?” I yelled, forgetting myself, forgetting Grandma, forgetting Charly’s flaming cheek. “I have a game today! You can’t ground me from that!”

  “Don’t tell me what I can’t do,” she said. “And don’t ever use that tone with me again. I expect more from you.”

  “But I’m team captain,” I said, bringing my tone down to pleading.

  “I don’t care who you think you are. You’re grounded.”

  My mind went white, a searing-hot white, and I shut my eyes to push back the tears. Don’t cry again, don’t cry again. “But they’ll lose without me.”

  Grandma snorted. “I’m glad to see your confidence is intact, but your principal has an attendance policy on game days, doesn’t he? Do I need to remind you that you’re cutting class right now?”

  Panic tightened the muscles in my chest. I was cutting class. I, Amelia Mercer, the girl who’d never missed a day of school for a nonmedical reason, had just walked out the front doors in the middle of the day, like I was allowed to. Blackburn’s no-exception attendance policy for school sports—full day or no play—hadn’t even occurred to me. I’d been too busy freaking out over Charly, the crumpled Jeep, her mangled body. Nothing else had mattered.

  Coach Hershey was going to kill me. If she didn’t, my teammates would. I felt a sob coming and swallowed it.

  “Now, I would hate to ruin your father’s trip with this.” Grandma raised her eyebrows and everything was understood.

  Her anger stung, but Dad’s disappointment would be so much worse. There were expectations. He loved Charly because she was sweet and me because I was good. He didn’t need to know that his adorable darling had been out all night boozing, and I, the one he could count on, had lied and lied and lied.

  Charly nodded. I nodded.

  “Don’t make me regret that decision,” she said.

  We listened to the click of her heels on hardwood, down the hall, down the stairs, and to her bedroom.

  Now I could cry, but the sob I’d swallowed was gone.

  No game. No homecoming.

  Charlie crawled onto her bed and collapsed, not even caring about her wet hair on the pillow, or that the towel had slipped and she was more than half-naked.

  “So tired,” she mumbled.

  “I can’t believe you did this to me,” I hissed. “I hate you.”

  She didn’t even open her eyes.

  Being ignored hurt even more. So I said it. “Mom would be so ashamed of you.”

  No response.

  Chapter 5

  We lost the game by one goal. One goal. That meant that for several weeks it was hard to find a single person in Tremonton who wasn’t pissed at me. Coach Hershey, the girls on the team, their families, friends, boyfriends, cousins, dog walkers—it was like I’d personally insulted all of them, which in Tremonton meant I was getting my change in pennies at the gas station and having my burgers spit into at DQ. At least I’m pretty sure they were being spit into.

  The real problem was that the guys lost the football game, so there was anger in the air. I was just a convenient target. Never mind that the average idiot thought field hockey was a nonevent, just a bunch of girls running around in short skirts, glorified cheerleaders with sticks and mouth guards. No, suddenly my “shocking lack of dedication to Primrose High” was to blame for the entire homecoming humiliation.

  Those were Coach Hershey’s words. Shocking lack of dedication.

  She had every right to be mad, and she was. First thing Friday morning she informed me that she’d deci
ded to reevaluate team leadership, and that Nadia Pinsky would be finishing out the season as captain. Nadia freaking Pinsky.

  Savannah and Sebastian were ticked too. Not about the game, but about the dance. When I’d called Nick and explained, he’d sounded relieved more than anything, but Savannah was annoyed I wasn’t going to the dance to see her crowned Homecoming Princess or whatever, and Sebastian was annoyed that I’d annoyed Savannah.

  Who else? Oh yeah, Grandma. She followed up my week of grounding with a double helping of passive aggression. The silent treatment.

  Dad was the exception. He wasn’t angry, but only because he didn’t know what I’d done, and he was too out of it to feel the tension in the air. He’d caught a cold on the airplane coming home, and colds always knock him flat for a few weeks. Something about his unusually small sinus cavity, he claimed.

  Three weeks after homecoming, Charly and I still weren’t talking. At first I’d been too angry to keep it civil, so when Dad was around it was smart just not to speak to each other. And at some point, the silence between us had hardened into something solid. The few words we did exchange were meaningless.

  “Pass the milk,” I mumbled one evening over reheated casserole. We were eating dinner alone. Grandma was at her Bible study group and Dad was at the Tremonton Horticulture Center for a citrus presentation (he was determined to force the lime tree to produce an actual lime this year).

  She didn’t even look up.

  “I said, pass me the freaking milk!”

  “Wow, freaking? Listen to you.” She nudged the jug about an inch toward me. “Amelia the rebel.”

  I stood up, walked to her end of the table, and jerked the jug fast enough to slosh milk onto her open People magazine.

  “Come on! Really?” She picked up the magazine, shook it, then put it back down. “Did you seriously just do that?”

  Pour it on her.

  My heart was racing. She deserved it. I was so sick of the sullen and wounded act, just because she didn’t get to try out for the play, like it wasn’t her own fault. She wiped the milk droplets from the page with her sleeve and scowled at me.

  Pour it on her.

  She more than deserved it—she needed it. Charly had spent the last three weeks shrinking into something that wasn’t Charly at all. She didn’t even look like herself. Her hair was beyond greasy and she was breaking out, like she was too busy moping to keep up with basic hygiene? Give me a break. And at school, when she should have been getting her social fill for the day, she’d been cranky with Dean and downright mean to Liam and Asha since play rehearsals had started. I don’t know why they were all still following her around. A good milk bath might shock her back into herself, or at least force her to take a shower and wash her face.

  Pour it on her.

  But even with my brain screaming at me, I couldn’t do it. Retaliation would be certain, and our method of hating was pretty stable. This was war, and there were rules. The first week had been crazy fighting—screaming till my throat burned, two actual shoving matches, no punches or hair pulling, though books and shoes were thrown—but that was over. We weren’t screaming at each other, we weren’t pulling each other’s hair, and we weren’t pouring milk on each other.

  I poured the milk into my glass instead and screwed the cap back on. Less temptation.

  If she would just snap out of it, we could go back to the way things were. Maybe not immediately, but eventually. I was still mad, but three weeks was a long time.

  • • •

  “So are you coming over tonight?” Savannah asked.

  I shifted the phone to my other ear so I could reach for the colander.

  “Can’t. The choir concert is tonight, remember?”

  “Oh yeah. Sorry. I probably should’ve known that. You want me to come?”

  I thought about it for a second. It would be nice if she came, but it didn’t really sound like she wanted to. Besides, Dad and Grandma would be there. “No. It’s not like I’m going to be singing a solo.”

  “Not intentionally, anyway.”

  “Ha.” She was right, though. Not being heard was my goal for the night. Dr. Kinzer’s constant advice was Blend, Amelia, blend! but what she meant was Lip-sync, Amelia, lip-sync! She’d probably breathe a sigh of relief if I didn’t show.

  “We’ll miss you,” she said. “No slasher movie marathon is complete without the Mercer sisters. Hey, does Charly still want to come or is she going to hear you sing?”

  I forced a laugh. Charly was not going to my concert. Her grounding had ended two weeks ago, but nothing had changed. We still weren’t talking, or at least not civilly.

  Six weeks. It wasn’t supposed to last this long.

  “You know how much Charly hates scary movies,” I said, and grabbed a wooden spoon to break up the browning chunks of hamburger. “If I’m not dragging her, she won’t go.”

  “But who’s going to scream their head off and eat all the brownies?”

  “I guess you.” Since successfully cramming herself into her homecoming dress, Savannah had replaced the carrots in her diet with chocolate. She looked the same size to me, but less orange. “I’d better get off the phone. I’m cooking dinner and my grandma’s going to be home any minute.”

  “Yikes.”

  Savannah had been afraid of Grandma since we were eleven and Grandma had yelled at us during a sleepover for playing teddy bear taster and destroying the kitchen. In Grandma’s defense, it was three a.m., but that had scarred their relationship for life. I’d spent six years trying to convince Savannah that Grandma wasn’t that scary, but she wasn’t buying it.

  “See ya,” I said.

  “Bye.”

  I put the phone down and pulled the marinara sauce out of the fridge.

  The doorbell rang. I glanced out the front window and saw the brown of the UPS truck.

  “Get the door,” I yelled.

  No answer, just the sound of TV laughter. America’s Funniest Home Videos again. She couldn’t get enough of it, even though every single episode was identical, not to mention geared toward pubescent boys. Really, how many times could she watch the same set of crotch shots and still find them hysterical?

  “Get the door!” I yelled louder. “It’s UPS. They might need a signature.”

  “Get it yourself,” she called back.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re closer.”

  I dropped the wooden spoon into the sink, splattering droplets of marinara all over, and stomped to the front door. I glared at the dorky guy in his dorky brown get-up, signed for the package, then marched over to where Charly was sprawled on the couch.

  “How about getting off your butt and helping for once? I’m making your dinner.”

  “Not my dinner,” she said, digging around in the bottom of a bag of barbecue chips. She pulled out a handful of orange crumbs. “Whatever you’re cooking smells like vomit.”

  “It does not. It’s hamburger.”

  “Hamburger you puked into? It’s making me want to throw up just smelling it,” she said, then licked the salty seasoning off her fingers. Her tongue was stained orange too.

  “So don’t eat it. Go up to your room like you do every night and leave me to eat alone with the old people.”

  “Thanks for the permission. You can go back to cooking your vomit-burger.” Her eyes were back on the screen.

  “No, I’ve had it with this. Snap out of it! You aren’t grounded anymore. Listen, I’m sorry I said Mom would be ashamed of you. It was six weeks ago. Get over it!”

  She rolled her eyes. The whites would’ve been visible from fifty feet.

  I took a deep breath through my nose and tried to calm myself down without looking like I was trying to calm myself down. It didn’t matter. She was still staring at the TV.

  “That’s right, Amelia. Take deep breaths. Maybe that’ll help you control the universe.”

  “Why are you acting like this?” I asked.

  “Because I don�
��t want to miss my show playing butler.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Her face was a wall. She grabbed the remote and made deliberate jabs at the TV as she turned up the volume three bars.

  Without thinking, I crossed the room, grabbed the remote, and chucked it. It bounced across the wooden floor and slid underneath Dad’s recliner just as the smoke alarm started to shriek. She yelled a string of words that definitely called for Grandma’s bar of soap, while I sprinted to the kitchen and yanked the pan off the stove.

  It didn’t matter. The hamburger was already burned.

  I didn’t have time to dump it before Grandma came home, so we had to eat it anyway. Scorched, rubbery meat in watery sauce over spaghetti clumps.

  Dad alone was spared the food and the bad dinner table vibe. He called to say someone came by the church and really needed to talk. That was the difficult part of pastoring, he always said, being willing to give himself to anyone’s life crisis.

  • • •

  The choir concert went well by Dr. Kinzer’s standards: We didn’t forget our words or mix up our entrances, and nobody (meaning me) made a fool of themselves singing loudly and out of tune.

  From the top left section of the riser where she’d placed me, I could see Will. He was in the second row, looking kind of dorky in a black shirt and blue tie combo, with a big grin. I’d always made sure he didn’t wear crap like that. Luciana had a solo in one of the songs, so he, no doubt, wanted to be able to see and hear her.

  I could see Grandma too, with an empty chair next to her for Dad. No Charly, of course. Grandma smiled. For a moment, I forgot how mad I was at her and smiled back. Charly could ruin dinner and keep on hating me, and Dad could get held up saving someone’s soul, but nothing changed Grandma.

  • • •

  That night I lay in bed and stared at my computer monitor, too tired to get up and turn it off. My screen saver was set to slideshow, so I watched the last two years (since I’d gotten my own camera) flicker by. There was one of Dad and Charly hunting for shells at Santa Rosa Beach. Then one of Grandma braiding Charly’s hair last Halloween. She’d gone as a Viking, complete with horn hat and sword.