The Space Between Us

by Jessica Martinez

  • • •

  “Amelia, may I speak to you for a moment?”

  I turned from my locker to see Ms. Lee. Charly’s Ms. Lee. I examined her: She was petite, with delicate eyes and hair so black it was almost blue. And she was young, probably still in her twenties, and dressed like a Club Monaco mannequin. Charly probably idolized her for the clothes alone—not that Charly had said a word about her to me. Two weeks since battle royale, and I could count the number of words we’d said to each other on one hand.

  Ms. Lee didn’t repeat her question, but watched my face patiently.

  “Sure.”

  “Come into my office,” she said. “You have a free period now, don’t you?”

  I glanced at the clock. I did, but I’d been planning on using it to email Savannah. I’d written her several emails since we’d talked on the phone, and deleted every single one of them before sending. The things I wanted to tell her—that I was lonely, that I didn’t want to be here, that I didn’t get into Columbia, that Charly had gestational psychosis that had turned her into the meanest person on the planet—could not be said. That meant I had to make stuff up, more lies and stories about my great Canadian adventure, and apparently the cold had sucked all the creativity out of my veins, because I just couldn’t do it.

  “Amelia?”

  I nodded and followed Ms. Lee into her office.

  I don’t know what I’d been expecting, maybe a couch and a Sigmund Freud bust, but there were only the same worn upholstered chairs as in Ashton’s office. It smelled nicer though. Lemons as opposed to eau de tar and coffee. Ms. Lee had curtains and a little row of cactuses in square white pots across the edge of her desk.

  “Do you want to sit down?”

  Not at all. I sat. So this was where Charly had been eating lunch. Much nicer than my tuna-reeking study carrel. “I’m assuming this is about Charly.”

  Ms. Lee tucked a wall of glossy black hair behind her ear. “No. I just wanted to see how things were going. Being the new kid in a small community like Banff can be difficult. Are you making friends?”

  I squinted at her. Girl talk? Was I really supposed to believe that was why she’d hauled me in here? Charly had spent hours in this room gabbing about her life, which meant gabbing about my life, which meant this woman probably knew more about me than my own father. “I’m fine,” I said, getting to my feet.

  “We’re not done yet. Sit, please.”

  I sat.

  “I see you’re doing well in all your classes so far, although you don’t exactly have a difficult load.”

  I snorted. “My classes are a formality.”

  “And friends?”

  “I’m sorry, but why are you asking me this? I’m sure Charly is an excellent source for info if you want to know about my life.”

  She refused to look annoyed or offended. “I don’t want Charly’s opinion on how you’re doing. This has nothing to do with Charly.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Everything has something to do with Charly. And I’m fine. I’m not going to lie and tell you I’ve made a ton of new friends, but I’ve got plenty back in Florida. So no, you don’t need to put me on suicide watch. And no, you really don’t need to assign someone to hang out with me.”

  “Don’t worry. I wasn’t planning on it. Do you talk to your dad and grandma much?”

  “My dad calls on Sundays to make sure we went to church, and my grandma sends me spam about once a day. Usually about protecting myself from rapists.”

  She didn’t skip a beat. “Do you miss them?”

  I held my breath. Neither of them deserved to be missed.

  When I didn’t answer, she went on to the next question. “So what are your plans for next year?”

  “Are we really going to do this?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked. The innocence in her eyes was maddening.

  “Are we really going to just pretend that Charly hasn’t told you everything about my life?”

  Ms. Lee put both hands on her desk and leaned forward. “I really don’t know what else I can do to make you believe me, Amelia, but Charly doesn’t come in here to talk about you.”

  An embarrassing silence followed, then I heard myself speaking. “I have no plans for next year. I only applied to Columbia, but I didn’t get in. I’m supposed to be applying to Florida schools right now, but I can’t seem to make myself do it because I don’t really want to go to any of them. That leaves moving back to Tremonton, and bagging groceries at Winn-Dixie for the rest of my life. So I guess that’s my plan.”

  “I’ve seen your transcripts,” she said, leaning back and folding her arms. “Obviously you don’t really mean that.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe I do.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Well, you’ve missed a lot of the deadlines for Canadian universities, but there’s still Mount Royal University in Calgary, or—”

  “I’m not staying here.” I stood up. We were done.

  “What about a smaller school back home?”

  “I’m not going to some community college so I can learn how to answer somebody’s phone or highlight hair.”

  “That would be vocational school, and that’s fine if you aren’t interested, but I was talking about—”

  “No, thank you.” I put my backpack on.

  She stood unnecessarily. I didn’t need to be shown the door.

  “You know, Amelia, the world isn’t quite as black and white as it might seem. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. People aren’t that way either, and if you try to hold them to some perfect standard, you’ll only alienate yourself.”

  I stared hard into her face. Neither of us blinked. “I’m sorry, I thought you said Charly had nothing to do with this.”

  Just a second of embarrassment crossed her features, then she reset them into their perfect calm. “She doesn’t.”

  Without a word, or a thought, or a moment’s hesitation, I reached for the cactus on the far left side of her desk and knocked it off. The sound of the explosion, the square white pot shattering on the tile, was by far the most satisfying moment of my day. No, my week. Possibly my life. “Oops. Sorry.”

  Ms. Lee didn’t flinch or speak. She just stood there while I walked out.

  • • •

  “So we’re both going to ace our tests today, right?”

  I squinted into Bree’s face. Her smile was all I know you can do it optimism and BFF solidarity. Her dimples were like craters. She had no clue about what I’d done in Ms. Lee’s office yesterday. Nobody did. I’d spent the rest of the day waiting to be summoned and reprimanded—assigned detention, paddled, publicly flogged, or whatever Canadians do to people who smash defenseless cactuses—but for reasons unknown, Ms. Lee had let it go.

  “It’s a quiz and I just have to label a diagram of a camera,” I said, regretting I’d even mentioned it.

  The smile didn’t fade, not even a little. “Great. It should be easy then, eh?”

  I stepped out of the car and gave Bree a nod good-bye. My skin was so tight I couldn’t have smiled if I wanted to. Charly and I had been slathering on the moisturizer morning and night, but we were still molting like reptiles in the dry mountain air.

  “Good luck with the anatomy test,” Charly said as she climbed out of the backseat. “Remember, the leg bone’s connected to the hip bone.”

  “What would I do without you, Charly?” she asked, then waved, honked the horn, and pulled away from the curb.

  “So is it hard to turn the ice off and on like that?” I asked Charly, watching Bree’s tires spit chunks of snow as the car pulled away.

  She didn’t answer. She still wasn’t answering.

  “Because it seems like it would be tricky. Remembering who got sugar and who got battery acid.”

  “Not tricky at all,” she muttered.

  Ha. I forged on. “School’s terrible enough without having to worry about whether my own sister
is plotting my death or not.”

  “It’s not terrible at all and you know it.”

  “Maybe not for you.”

  But she was right. School wasn’t terrible. It was too bland to be anything but boring and pointless.

  If people had snickered or stared at Charly I would’ve had somewhere to focus my anger, but Banff Public High’s student body had gossiped indifferently for one day about Charly and me—mostly just Charly—and now they’d moved on. They had their own permanent lives: best friends, ex-boyfriends, extracurriculars, weekend plans. Aside from Ezra, maybe, I hadn’t met a single person worth the effort, and it’d been a full week since I’d seen him.

  “So I’ll meet you out front after school?” I said as she turned left to go to her locker, still not sure if she’d answer me.

  She shook her head. “Doctor’s appointment.”

  Right.

  She walked off.

  My classes were agonizingly slow, except for CALM. CALM was the most fun Canada had yet to offer me, but only because it wasn’t supposed to be. We were taking yet another personality test and I spent the entire period trying to convince the computer that I was a sociopath. So un-Amelia. I’d never screwed around in class before and definitely never intentionally messed up an assignment.

  I am open about myself to others. On the five-bubble scale I chose the one on the far left. Very Inaccurate. A straight-up lie, but only because the last few months of my life didn’t count—forced secrecy didn’t make me a seclusion freak.

  I care more about the happiness of others than my own happiness. Ah, yes. The hallmark of sociopathic behavior. Very Inaccurate.

  I get upset easily. Easy. Very Accurate.

  I am highly theoretical. Um, Very Accurate?

  I seek out patterns in the universe. Sure. Why not? Very Accurate.

  I talk to many people at parties. Did it matter? It seemed like sociopaths could be either introverts or extroverts. Somewhat Accurate.

  It was empowering. It was the kind of thing the old Charly would’ve done.

  Then I ate lunch alone.

  • • •

  “Hey, Georgia. Wanna come skiing?”

  I heard his voice before I saw him, but I kept walking. His SUV rolled beside me, crunching over the strip of snow between the road and the sidewalk. His arm hung out the window and his fingers tapped against the red, salt-crusted paint.

  I forced myself not to smile. “I’m from Florida. And is skiing still an outdoor sport?”

  “Yeah.”

  I looked over at him, then couldn’t break away. His eyes were like magnets.

  “Come on, get in.”

  “I don’t think so. I’m almost home anyway.”

  “Nice try. I know where you live.”

  I shrugged and kept walking. I had a good ten minutes to go.

  “I’m surprised you don’t even want to try it. You look pretty athletic.”

  “I am athletic. That doesn’t make me want to strap planks to my feet and hurtle down a vertical sheet of ice.”

  “What sports do you play?”

  “Field hockey. Soccer. Cross-country.”

  “Cross-country, as in running?”

  “No, as in bowling.”

  He pulled right next to the curb and put it in park. I stopped too. “You want to try cross-country skiing? It’s flat—no vertical sheets of ice. And there are trails all over the place too, so we wouldn’t even have to drive out to Lake Louise. If you’re up for the workout, that is.”

  Truthfully, my body was dying for some solid cardio. I’d been doing the handful of Pilates moves I knew in Bree’s apartment every night, but that crap wasn’t cutting it anymore. But the cold. I shook my head. “I almost froze to death last week. Remember?”

  “So that’s a no.”

  “That’s a no.”

  “Where’s your sister?”

  My stomach muscles tensed, bracing for the punch after it’d already come. Why did that have to be the defining question in my life? I pulled my eyes away from his and looked up the street.

  “Somewhere else,” I answered.

  “Cryptic. So you’re coming?”

  I took one step toward the car. “I don’t want to ski.”

  He shrugged. “Okay.”

  “And I don’t want to talk about my sister.”

  “What sister?”

  I was close enough to hear the music in his car now: a moody, indie rock song I didn’t recognize. “And no snowshoeing, or snowboarding, or ski jumping, or anything even remotely related to any of them.” One more step. The wind moaned and I leaned into it, my bones aching.

  He nodded to the passenger side. “I’ll take you somewhere warm.”

  Magical words. I forced myself to walk, not run, around the front of his car. I’d spent the last week replaying our conversation at the library, wondering how much of an idiot I’d really been. But it couldn’t have been that bad. He was here. I climbed in and dumped my backpack over the seat.

  “How was school?” He pulled out into traffic.

  “Um, fine.” His car smelled like the wintergreen air freshener hanging from the mirror.

  “Really?”

  I hesitated. Fine was the leave me alone answer for Bree. I shrugged. “It’s just kind of nothing. Not terrible. Not good.”

  “I hated that place.”

  I played with the zipper on my jacket, waiting for him to elaborate. Different kinds of people hate school for different kinds of reasons. Dumb kids, social misfits, stoners. I didn’t want Ezra to be any of those. “Why’d you hate it?”

  “Boring,” he said. “And people were always trying to pressure me into things.”

  “Like drugs?”

  “No. University.”

  That was moronic. We drove on in silence, leaving town on a road climbing up, past cabins and more vacation properties, higher up the mountain.

  I stole a glance to the side. Ezra was wearing a sky-blue T-shirt over a navy long-sleeved shirt and jeans. “Where’s your coat?” I asked, not hiding my smirk. “Don’t tell me you wander around in the winter without a coat on.”

  “No coat is not above my skill level.”

  “Funny.”

  “I’m serious,” he said. “But my coat is in the backseat.”

  I looked over my shoulder. It was.

  “So what’s Florida like?”

  I sighed and wished I hadn’t. I hated sighing, hated sighers. “Warm.”

  “That’s it?”

  He tucked his hair behind his ear, and I noticed the cracked skin on his hands. Red and angry. More proof this place was uninhabitable for everyone. “No,” I said. “It’s just hard to describe. The people are different. Everything’s more . . . colorful.”

  He raised an eyebrow, but didn’t jump in to deny the bleakness all around us. “I’ve never been there. Never been south of Colorado, actually, but the people didn’t really seem that different there. Probably because I was in Vail. Skiers are skiers.”

  “I haven’t really traveled either, but I think it’s the South. People are really friendly in a loud way.”

  “You don’t seem that way.”

  I paused. Maybe it was an insult, but it wasn’t not true. “I guess I’m not. The town I’m from is small too, and it’s really insular, you know? Everyone knows each other’s business and goes to the same church and the same grocery store and the same doctor.”

  “Same gene pool?”

  “No, that’s Kentucky.”

  He almost smiled. It was just that way with him, I was starting to realize. The almost smile was as good as it got. I wanted to keep looking at his face, at the way his upper lip curved and dipped, and the tiny scar above his left eye. But he glanced at me, and I had to look away.

  “It’s insular here too,” he said. “Maybe small towns are just small towns.”

  “It feels different being on the outside, though. Tremonton is suffocating, but being away from it is . . . I don’t know.”
r />   “Lonely?”

  I wasn’t going to admit to that. “Disorienting.”

  Out my window, I recognized the bridge spanning the frozen river ahead. I took a deep breath and held it. Habit. In Grandma’s car, we held our breath for bridges and made a wish.

  “Are you holding your breath?” Ezra asked.

  I shook my head no, but kept my lips pursed, breath safely intact.

  “Should I speed up or are you going to make it?” He slowed slightly and watched me, waiting for a reaction.

  I puffed out my cheeks and waited. The bridge was short, so we were at the other side in just a few seconds.

  “Southern superstition?”

  I let the air rush out. “What, Canadians don’t make wishes?”

  “We don’t need to. We’re Canadian, what more could we want?”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Kidding. We throw pennies in fountains. What did you wish for?”

  “You can’t tell people what you wish for. And everyone throws pennies in fountains.”

  “I didn’t take you for the superstitious type.”

  I shrugged. I wasn’t. I hadn’t even made a wish. I had a million things to wish for, but I didn’t believe for a second that I could make any of them come true. Not by wishing. Probably not by trying either. “When we were little, Charly always commandeered my wishes.”

  “I don’t think wishes can be commandeered.”

  “Trust me, they can. Once she ordered me to wish that the girl who lived across the street would fall into a hole or get leprosy before the Wizard of Oz auditions.”

  “I’m guessing that didn’t work.”

  “No, but she did forget her lines.” Why was I talking about Charly?

  “So I should be putting wish requests in, then. Can you make it snow?”

  I narrowed my eyes and smiled. “I won’t use my wishing powers for evil.”

  “Of course not,” he said. “Wishing leprosy on a little girl—that’s not evil.”

  “She was kind of a brat. Where are we going?”

  “Surprise.”

  I hated surprises, but at the moment it didn’t seem to matter. The car was warm. I was warm. Talking to Ezra was easy enough that I could almost forget how mad I was at Bree and Charly.

  Ezra stopped at a stop sign, and without warning he reached out and touched my cheek with his finger. “Speaking of wishes . . . ”