The Space Between Us

by Jessica Martinez

  “Excuse me, are you Charly?”

  I turned around to see a guy about my age with a crooked nose, a cherry-red ski jacket, and a brutal case of bed head. Dark sweaty hair was plastered to one side of his head and winged out on the other.

  “No. Who are you?”

  “Oh, sorry,” he said, stepping away. “I’m picking up some girls for a friend.”

  “Wait a second,” I said. “Who’s your friend?”

  He frowned. His eyes were dark, almost black. “So you are Charly?”

  “No. But who are you?”

  “Ezra.”

  “Amelia,” Charly called groggily from over my shoulder. “I need to go to the bathroom.”

  “Amelia.” Ezra snapped his fingers. “How did I forget that one?”

  The irony.

  “Washrooms are over there,” he said to Charly, nodding to the right, and she went off to find them.

  “So that’s your stuff?” He moved toward our baggage mountain, hand outstretched. “How’d you push all that?”

  “I’m stronger than I look.” I put my hand on the cart first. “No offense, but I don’t know who you are. Nobody said anything about you picking us up.”

  He looked confused. But it looked natural on his face, like maybe it was a permanent state for him.

  Or maybe he was a human trafficker. Had either of us said Bree’s name? No. He hadn’t even known my name, and if he was just standing around, he may have heard me say Charly’s. There was no reason to assume he wasn’t a sex predator wandering the airport looking for vulnerable girls, like on that Dateline I’d seen.

  “Oh, sorry. Richard asked me to come get you.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “I don’t know a Richard.”

  “Bree’s boyfriend?”

  I sniffed, the air so dry the insides of my nostrils felt raw. So he knew Bree. “You’re Bree’s boyfriend’s chauffeur?”

  Ezra ran a hand through the hair, which made it worse. “No. Richard’s a friend of the family. I do odd jobs for him sometimes.”

  “Odd jobs. Good to know we’re top priority.”

  He ignored that. “Bree works nights and Richard had something come up. He didn’t have the time to drive you all the way out to Banff tonight.”

  “Maybe I should call her. Can I borrow your phone?”

  Grandma had investigated international cell phone plans and determined one of us would have to sell a kidney to pay for it. I’d suggested we put Charly’s uterus up for sale, but Grandma didn’t think that was funny. She didn’t seem to understand how tragic life without a cell was going to be.

  “You can borrow it, but I know Bree turns her phone off while she’s working. The bar is really loud.”

  “The bar?” Bree had told Grandma she worked at a restaurant. Grandma had seemed to think she was a manager or something.

  “Yeah, or I guess technically McSorley’s is a pub. She bartends there.”

  Bree the bartender. Grandma was going to freak. I tried to recalculate my mental picture of Bree with this new tidbit factored in, but couldn’t. The problem was three different Brees: the towheaded ten-year-old, the Bree I’d talked to on the phone, with a Canadian accent so thick I could hear the plaid flannel shirt and overalls, and now Bree the bartender.

  Charly reappeared, looking closer to awake. “Hey,” she said to Ezra.

  “Hey. So you’re Charly?”

  “Yeah. And you’re . . . ”

  “Ezra.”

  She nodded like that made sense to her. “You have crazy hair, Ezra.”

  “It’s been in a toque all day. Do you want me to take your backpack?” he asked her.

  “I have no clue what a toque is, but you can definitely take my backpack.”

  She handed it over and he fished a knit ski cap out of his pocket. “Behold a toque.”

  “Got it,” she said.

  I fiddled with the zipper of my hoodie and stared at the big weird cowboy statue in front of me. Ezra hadn’t offered to take my bag. What was it about Charly that made everybody want to jump in and help?

  Then a thought hit me like a shove from behind: Bree had told him that Charly was pregnant. I felt sick. The idea that he could know, that anybody could know, just because Bree had decided to blab, made my heart race. The last three months had been torture, gripping that secret, using every particle of energy my body had to hold Charly upright and myself together, faking and smiling and outright lying to Dad and Savannah and the whole world. It wasn’t Bree’s secret to tell.

  “So are we ready to go?” Ezra asked.

  I hesitated, but it was just for show. He knew Bree’s name, and Charly’s too, and there was something innocent about his features. Like you could insult him and he might not get it. “I guess so,” I said, and took my hand off the cart so he could push it.

  “I think I missed something,” Charly said. “Are you a friend of Bree’s?”

  “Sort of. Banff is small and mostly tourists, but the locals all know each other.”

  “Small,” I said. “Super.”

  “Calgary’s big, though, right?” Charly asked.

  “About a million,” Ezra said. “But more than an hour away from Banff.”

  “Good thing small towns are our specialty, right, Amelia?”

  “I think you mean our fate,” I answered.

  We walked in silence for a few seconds before Ezra stopped the cart, a good thirty feet before the automatic doors. He pulled a pair of gloves out of his pocket and started putting them on, then he gestured at my shirt. “Coats?”

  “Um, yeah. I just have to remember which suitcase they’re in.” I unzipped the bag on the top of the heap. Grandma had taken us to Tallahassee last week for a winter-wear shopping spree, but we hadn’t really known what we would need. We’d bought a few basics from Old Navy—coats, a few pairs of socks, sweaters—and then decided to get the rest in Canada.

  I found Charly’s first. It was lime green and potentially cute, but two sizes too big. Grandma had refused to take her to a maternity store, telling her to “Size up and wipe that scowl off your face.”

  I tossed Charly her huge coat, and then found mine, a navy peacoat that Savannah insisted made me look like Kate Middleton.

  “You guys are going to freeze to death,” Ezra commented.

  “Wow. Blunt,” I muttered. I looked at the people coming through the doors. They were bundled up like astronauts. Gender was not discernible.

  “You bought those in Florida?”

  Yes, genius.

  Charly answered. “Yeah. Aren’t they going to be warm enough?”

  “We’re kind of having a cold snap here. It’s really bad out there.” He ran another hand through the crazy hair, then pulled on his ski cap. “Yeah, you guys are going to freeze to death in those.”

  I sighed. Loudly. I was way too tired for the tough guy warnings.

  “Do you have gloves and hats and stuff?” he asked.

  “We figured we’d buy them here,” I explained. “What do you mean by cold snap?”

  “It’s minus thirty out there. Without the windchill.”

  “I don’t speak Celsius,” I said.

  “Doesn’t matter. Fahrenheit and Celsius meet at minus forty, so minus thirty Fahrenheit is pretty close to the same thing. It doesn’t feel much different either. You just have less time—like thirty seconds—until skin freezes.” He pulled off his gloves and tried to hand them to me.

  “Give them to her,” I said, pointing to Charly. My brain was still trying to process thirty seconds until skin freezes.

  He held the gloves out for Charly, and she took them. “Here, take the toque too,” he said, handing her his ski cap.

  “I’ll go get the car,” he said. “When you see me pull up, just leave the bags and run out. I’ll come back in for them.”

  “I can push our bags. What do you drive?”

  “A red Pathfinder. Ski rack on top. Deer-sized dent in the side.” He zipped up his coat and pulled his bare h
ead down into his body like a turtle. Then he stuck his hands in his pockets and took off. I watched him go, bowlegs running before the door had even closed behind him.

  Charly and I waited in silence.

  Person after person came through the doors, hunched over, faces pinched, shaking out their arms and rubbing their cheeks, but we were too far from the entrance to feel more than a breath of cold air each time the doors opened and shut.

  “This is different,” Charly said finally, the exhaustion in her voice outweighing the attempt at optimism.

  “Only if by ‘different’ you mean ‘horrific.’ They look like they’re in pain.” A couple rushed through the doors pushing suitcases and dragging two bundled, crying children.

  “Maybe it’s not that bad,” she said.

  “Of course it is. Look at those poor people.”

  “It’s human nature to exaggerate pain.”

  “Really?” I asked. “Like with pregnancy?”

  “Very funny.”

  “Seriously, though.” I paused, not sure if I wanted to go the direction I was already going. “It’s not like you’re the only person in the world to ever go through this. There are worse things.”

  “I know. Like actually pushing the baby out.”

  “Gross,” I said.

  “You know I actually have to do that, right?”

  “I don’t want to talk about that. I just thought I should mention you might want to tone down the whining.”

  It really did make me sick to my stomach to think about. The birthing video was the one part of sex ed I hadn’t let Savannah describe to me. Every time I thought about it, I had a whole-body reaction: My throat tightened, my stomach fell, and I swear my uterus shuddered.

  Charly sniffled.

  “I know, I know, you feel like crap. Just don’t start bawling right now.”

  She sniffled again, then put her thumb and her index finger over her eyelids, like she could push the tears back.

  “Good,” I said. “You’ve got to hold it in, at least until we get to Bree’s. You’re going to totally freak this guy out if you start sobbing in his car.”

  She nodded. “I’m just tired.”

  “I know. I’m tired too.”

  “I can’t believe we left home thirteen hours ago,” she said. “Feels like thirteen days.”

  I took Ezra’s ski cap out of her hand and put it on her head. “Careful. The crazy hair might be contagious.”

  She laughed. Mission accomplished.

  A muddy SUV with skis strapped to the roof and a sizable dent in the passenger door rolled into view. From the driver’s seat, Ezra motioned for us to come.

  I pushed the cart through the first set of doors, and when the second set slid open, the cold rushed in at us.

  Pain. Not cold. Just pain, from that first second. My lungs stung with the first breath, the moment the cold reached down my throat and touched them. It was like acid burning my face and hands and wrists. My entire body tensed and shrank inward, but somehow I kept on moving, too shocked to think, or speak, or do anything but keep pushing the cart toward the car. Just a couple more feet.

  “Oowwwww,” Charly whined behind me.

  “Get in,” Ezra called, his voice angry.

  I pretended not to hear him over the sound of taxis and shuttles, instead trying to lift the top suitcase off the stack myself as he came around the back of the car. The suitcase wouldn’t budge. It was either heavier than when I’d hefted it up there, or my muscles had shrunk. I growled at it as Charly climbed into the backseat.

  “I said get in!” Ezra shouted, beside me now, and I let go of the handle just as my feet began sliding out from beneath me. My brain and stomach registered that I was falling for only a second before pain shot through my shoulder like a bolt of lightning. I felt Ezra’s grip on my arm, holding me, no, dangling me, my face scraping against a tag on the front of his coat.

  “You okay?” his voice thundered in my ear.

  My feet found solid ground and I stood, my shoulder screaming from being yanked, Ezra’s hand still squeezing my arm.

  “I . . . ” Why was the world still spinning? Why was my face on fire?

  “Get in.” This time Ezra dragged me to the passenger door, pushed me up into the front seat, and slammed the door.

  I was too cold to breathe. I brought my arms to my chest. Hot air roared from the vents into my face, but I couldn’t feel the heat. I couldn’t feel anything. The car bounced as Ezra tossed in the bags, and I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed: Shut the door, shut the door, shut the door.

  Finally, he slammed it, and I leaned forward, pushing my face right up to the vent.

  “Holy crap,” Charly muttered through chattering teeth. “Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap.”

  And then Ezra was there beside me in the driver’s seat, his face splotchy red, his eyelashes glittery with ice crystals. “You girls don’t pack light, do you?” He was shaking his hands like he was trying to knock the life back into them.

  “Two bags each is light,” I said. “We’re going to be here for six months.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Tell me it isn’t this cold all the time,” I said.

  “It isn’t.” He made his hands into fists and blew into the end of each. I tried it too, and it worked, at least for a second. The skin on my palms ached under my hot breath.

  “It only gets this cold a couple of times a year. Yesterday it was all the way up around zero.”

  Zero. It took a moment to register that he was talking in Celsius, and another moment to translate. Thirty-two Fahrenheit. “That’s warm?”

  “For January, yeah.”

  “So it got this cold just for us.”

  “Think of it as a welcome gift.”

  I shivered and tucked my chin to my chest. This was hell. Hell. Why hadn’t we brought scarves and hats, and how long until the car warmed up?

  I don’t belong here.

  The weight of the thought was crushing. It was too late. I was here. I was stuck. I felt hollow, like my insides had been scraped out, leaving just a shell of skin. An empty walnut husk. I unclenched my fists and stared at my white, bloodless fingers.

  “I wish it was snowing,” Charly said from the backseat.

  “Of course you do,” I mumbled.

  Ezra put the car into drive and pulled away from the curb. “It’s too cold to snow. But there’s plenty already on the ground.”

  Too cold to snow? What did that even mean? Up ahead, where the covered drop-off lane ended, I could see it, a thick grey crust edging the road, hip high and rising into dirty-white mounds easily taller than me. We were walled in by snowbanks.

  “Is it always grey like that?” Charly asked.

  “No, it’s just muddy from the road. Wait, you’ve never seen snow before?”

  “Only on TV,” I said.

  “And from a window at the Chicago airport,” Charly added.

  Ezra laughed, then realized we weren’t joking. “Seriously?”

  “You’d be surprised how infrequently it snows in Florida.”

  “Yeah, but . . . ” He rubbed his hands together, then blew into his fists again while he steered the car with his knees. I knew what he was thinking. We were a couple of hicks who’d never been more than ten miles from home. And if he knew about Charly’s condition, then he thought we were a couple of trashy hicks who’d never been more than ten miles from home. At least we weren’t the ones with homeless-man hair.

  “Do you need help steering?” I asked. Freezing to death while I waited for an ambulance seemed like a bad way to go.

  “No. The wheel feels like ice, but it’ll warm up in a few minutes.”

  “Charly, give the guy his gloves back.”

  She tossed them up and he put them on. “Thanks,” he said. “Hey, is it okay with you guys if we do a drive-thru for some food before we leave the city?”

  “Yes!” Charly called. “Yes, it is definitely okay with us!” Apparently the protein
bar had not been enough.

  I shrugged. Last year Coach Hershey had sat us down and forced us to watch a disturbing documentary on fast food to scare us away from it, but all that seemed pointless now. It wasn’t like I was in training for anything anymore.

  We pulled up to an A&W and ordered three burgers. I fumbled with the zipper on my backpack, but Ezra was faster. He found two purple bills that looked more like Monopoly money than legal tender, and paid before I could even find my wallet.

  “Thanks.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” Charly echoed.

  Charly scarfed hers, but the meat didn’t taste right to me. Too much like cow. I wrapped mine up and shoved it back in the bag. It was better as a lap warmer anyway.

  “So you guys are starting at BPH?” Ezra asked.

  It took a moment for the acronym to register. Banff Public High.

  “I am,” I said. “Charly’s doing classes by correspondence.”

  I stole a sideways glance, but Ezra’s face was expressionless.

  “I went to BPH,” he said.

  Went. So he wasn’t in high school anymore. Dropout or graduate?

  “Don’t miss it,” he added.

  “That bad?”

  “No. Just cramped my style, you know?”

  “I guess.”

  Ezra looked like the kind of guy whose style was sleeping till noon and playing Xbox for the rest of the day.

  “It’s my last semester,” I said, “so it’s not like my classes matter. I’m just here to be crowned prom queen.”

  “Good luck with that. There’s no prom here.”

  “Oh.” So the prom queen sarcasm must’ve been lost in translation. Mars. I’d landed on Mars. “Do you even know what prom is?”

  “Yeah. American TV.”

  I took a deep breath and told myself it didn’t matter. If I was at home, Savannah would’ve had to drag me to PHS’s prom anyway. It’s not like I would’ve gone with Will. Probably not, anyway. It would have been extremely unlikely.

  Ezra’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “The Southern drawl should win you some points at school. Or at least some laughs.”