The Space Between Us (16 page)

“She
has
people to talk about things with,” I blurted out.

Dr. Ashton did the swivel-head-and-blink again. Bree gave me a subtle shake of her head.

“I realize that,” Dr. Ashton continued slowly, like I was mentally disabled or something. “And she’s lucky to have a support system.” Then back at Charly, “But you might need someone besides your sister and your aunt.”

Bree. She’d done this. I looked at her but she was gazing at Dr. Ashton, nodding like an audience member on those TV evangelist shows. Any moment now she’d shout
Amen!

Charly, meanwhile, looked like she was about to become roadkill, and it was hard to feel sorry for her. Why hadn’t she thought about what going to school here meant? Obviously, she had issues with thinking things through, but I’d
told
her she didn’t want to do this.

She’d been caught up imagining meeting cool people on her great Canadian adventure. Just a little push in the wrong direction from surrogate-mother-of-the-year Bree, and now here Charly was with her bugged-out eyes and sinking shoulders, realizing this wasn’t going to be summer camp or even winter camp. This was going to be hell.

Something glittered in the window and I looked up. Crystal daggers framed the top edge. Real icicles. They looked just like the plastic ones Grandma strung up every Christmas. The sky had lightened to an inky blue. At this rate we’d see daylight by noon.

“Okay,” Charly said.

“Okay, you’ll talk to the guidance counselor?” Bree asked.

“Okay, I’ll tell people.”

I kept my eyes on the icicles. No need to look at Dr. Ashton or Bree; the smugness rolling off them reeked almost as much as the nicotine seeping from Dr. Ashton’s
pores. But they
could
be smug. Neither of them would be cleaning up the devastation when Charly was completely humiliated and ostracized. For them this was just stadium seating at a really depressing movie.

• • •

Bree left after the meeting. Charly and I followed Dr. Ashton into the empty gymnasium.

“Brace yourselves for impact,” Dr. Ashton said, and motioned to a couple of chairs.

We sat and watched as the BPHS student body, all 163 of them, filed in.

They didn’t look like Primrose students, but I couldn’t say exactly why that was. I wanted there to be one salient reason, some kind of generalization to guide my future generalizations, but all my observations just contradicted each other.

At first the girls seemed more glam—jewelry, heeled boots, runway outfits—but then a big group of granolas settled in the left-middle section. They looked like they’d rather eat makeup than wear it.

Maybe it was their hair. It was just
less
in every way: shorter, less teased, less bleached, less curled. I was suddenly aware of how long mine was. I had to be the only person with hair that went past my shoulder blades, although a few of those granolas had messy buns hiding hair of indeterminable length.

Where were the cheerleader types? I thought of Savannah, with her perfectly hot-rollered ponytail and hair bows, and felt a pang of homesickness.

“Is it just me, or is everyone wearing black?” Charly whispered in my ear.

“It’s just you,” I whispered back. But maybe there was less color.

As for the guys, they weren’t so foreign. The universal high school guy prototype: all dorks, some just more so than others.

A handful of teachers clumped together in the back, where they could nurse their coffee mugs and glance warily at Dr. Ashton from a safe distance.

Nobody pretended to be friendly. Nobody smiled. Some of them stared at us with lukewarm curiosity as they walked in—
hmm, new people, I almost care, except I don’t
—then turned back to their friends.

It didn’t really matter, though. These people could’ve been exact copies of the students at Primrose, and it wouldn’t have made me more permanent or Charly’s pregnancy less defining.

Dr. Ashton stood up front and spoke into a completely unnecessary microphone for a crowd this small.

“Welcome back,” she said, panning the audience, waiting for the talking to die down. “I can’t tell you how much I missed you kids over the break. Longest two weeks
of my life, as usual. You all look thrilled to see me too.”

Somebody coughed. The apathy in the room was too thick for groans.

Dr. Ashton launched into a halfhearted motivational speech, covering a bunch of totally unrelated topics: New Year’s resolutions, how to access results of something called diploma exams online, less skipping school to go skiing, carbon footprint awareness. And then at the end she threw Charly and me into the mix.

“As you all probably noticed walking in, we have two new students.” She gave us a wave and the sea of heads turned our direction. I kept my eyes on Dr. Ashton. “They’re from the States, so keep the anti-American tirades to a minimum when they’re around. Amelia is in grade twelve—Amelia, stand up—”

I stood, silently cursing her.

“—and Charly is in grade eleven.”

Charly stood too.

“They’ll be here for the rest of the year, so please try to make them feel welcome. Or at least resist the urge to make fun of their adorable little accents. Girls, sit.”

We sat. Up until that point I had respected the sarcasm, the deadpan humor, the unwillingness to pretend the students liked her and vice versa, but that was over. Now I had to hate her.

The rest of our day unfolded with a predictable degree
of doom. I found my classes, none of which had assigned seats, which meant I was surrounded by people who actually liked each other and wished they’d arrived sooner so they didn’t have to pretend I wasn’t right there in their midst.

Everyone was polite, and a couple of people were even friendly, but in a brittle way. Like their Canadian consciences were forcing them to be welcoming, but they were secretly wishing I’d never been born.

“This is purgatory,” Charly said over lunch. We were sitting just the two of us at one end of the table closest to the exit, eating the roast beef sandwiches Bree had surprised us with this morning. I’d have to find a way to tell her how much I hated mayo.

“Purgatory? I wish.”

“Well, it isn’t hell.”

“What makes this better than hell?” I asked, scraping the mayo off my bread with a plastic fork. Charly hadn’t thrown this many words in my direction in days.

“Me. Hell would be you sitting alone at this table. You’d be the sad, lonely mayo girl.”

“Wow. Thanks for making my life worth living, Charly. Where would I be without you?”

“You’re welcome.”

We sat in our own thick silence, conversations and laughter pushing in on us from all directions.

“So I told a few people.”

I put the sandwich down and wiped my fingers on a napkin. My mouth felt sticky from the mayo I’d missed. “Wow. I . . . ” I needed a minute before I opened my mouth and said something too mean to take back. “You didn’t waste any time.”

She shrugged. “It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. This guy in my English class asked me why I was here and I just said because I’m pregnant and I wanted to stay with my aunt until I had the baby.”

I glanced around me. The bubble around us seemed suddenly larger, more impenetrable, and the people on the outside were staring. Even the ones not looking at us. How long did it take for a tidbit of gossip to become common knowledge?

“And then this girl in Chem asked me the same thing, and I gave her the same answer.”

The stares intensified. All morning, I’d been floating from class to class feeling invisible, but now I realized that was all wrong. Charly and I weren’t invisible. We were the focal point. They all knew.

“You couldn’t have given me,” I sputtered, “I don’t know, a week, to meet a few people before turning us into sideshow freaks?”

She crumpled her brown bag and tossed it into the garbage can beside the table. “It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

“Like hell it doesn’t.”

“Are you going to finish that?” she asked, pointing to my half-eaten sandwich.

“No.” Before she could take it, I picked it up and threw it in the garbage.

• • •

As arranged, we met after school at the front doors.

We walked home in silence, daylight fading around us. It had finally stopped snowing and the air felt eerily still.

I didn’t want to find out how her appointment with the guidance counselor was. And I didn’t need to tell her how the rest of my day went, how there had been polite smiles, pitying glances, and a couple of timid hi’s from people already far enough on the fringe to not have to worry about their social status getting any worse—freaks and geeks.

It was cold, but I was bundled up enough, and mad enough, that I didn’t notice until my thighs were on fire. Silk long johns. Mine were still at home in the package. How was I supposed to know that frozen denim scraping skin felt like sandpaper?

By the time we reached Bree’s apartment it was nearly dark and my hands were shaking from the cold. It took me a good minute to get the key in the keyhole, and I suddenly remembered that Jack London short story we’d read
last year in English where the guy freezes to death because his hands are too cold to light a match.

Bree was still at school, but she’d left a note on the table.

Hey Girlies,

I’ll be back at 4:30, but I have to leave again for McSorley’s at 6:00. Help yourselves to the leftovers in the fridge (shepherd’s pie.)

Bree

Almost forgot—Charly, I called and made your appointment with Dr. Young for next Tuesday at noon.

“Girlies,” I muttered. “Super awesome.”

Charly was already dishing the leftover pub food into a bowl.

“So your doctor’s appointment,” I said. “Am I supposed to cut class for that?”

“No.”

“Since when do you go to the doctor’s by yourself? I have to hold your hand for the flu shot.” I took a bite of the cold shepherd’s pie. Too salty.

“Bree will take me.”

Of course. I chucked the container back in the fridge. From the corner of my eye I could see Charly watching me, chewing like a cow.

“You aren’t going to heat that up?” I asked.

“What do you care?”

“Good point.” I left her, lugging my backpack up to our room. I had a surprising amount of homework, considering the pointlessness of my classes.

The wobbly card table in the corner was littered with Charly’s makeup and candy wrappers and
People
magazines, so I sat cross-legged on the bed and took out my CALM textbook. We were starting with personality testing and then moving on to career testing. Apparently I needed a textbook to tell me I didn’t want to work at McDonald’s.

Downstairs, the TV went on.

She’d chosen Bree.

The textbook sat on my lap, open to the wrong page, its corners digging into my thighs. I didn’t even try to find the personality test. I was pretty sure it couldn’t tell me why my own sister hated me, or motivate me to apply for a college I didn’t want to go to. The weight of the day pushed down on me. I leaned back into the pillows and closed my eyes. This was a different kind of exhaustion. Every inch of my body felt weary from cold and frustration, but I was too agitated to sleep.

I needed the old Charly. Or maybe Savannah.

I closed my textbook and went back downstairs to the computer, ignoring Charly and the booing fans on
Montel
in the background. And there it was, a single miraculous email from Savannah. It was like she’d known. Despite the entire continent and the curtain of lies that separated us, she could tell I needed her. I opened it.

Call me

I wasn’t supposed to do that. Grandma had assured Bree that we wouldn’t be racking up international call charges unless it was an emergency. I’d told Savannah that. My stomach churned.
Call me.
Something was wrong.

I dialed her cell, then tapped jittery fingers on the desk and imagined catastrophes. Maybe her parents were finally getting a divorce. Maybe she and Sebastian broke up. Maybe she’d broken her neck at cheerleading practice and was lying in a hospital bed hooked up to a ventilator. She picked up after the second ring.

“Amelia.”

The sound of her voice made me so happy I wanted to cry. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” She didn’t sound fine. She sounded nervous.

“Fine.”

“Yeah. I mean, I miss you. Calculus sucks and I wish you were here to do my homework for me. I don’t know why I didn’t take it with you last semester. And Sebastian works 24/7, which means I’m spending way too much time
with the squad girls. They’re driving me a little nuts.”

I exhaled warily. This was not emergency material, but her voice was guarded.

“So how is Canada?” she asked. “Are you loving it?”

I’d almost forgotten. Talking to Savannah meant suffocating in lies. “Yeah, it’s great.”

“Real convincing.”

“No, it is,” I said. “I’m just tired.”

“And is your aunt cool?”

“So, when you said
call me
. . . ”

She sighed. “Still just as anal as usual, I see.”

“I’m not anal. This isn’t my phone and you know I’m not supposed to call the States just to chat. I assumed
call me
meant there was some kind of emergency.”

“Fine, it’s not an emergency. I just needed to talk to you about something.” Her voice broke over
something
and all her oddness, the banal chatter, the twinge of hurt in her voice over my questioning her became clear.

She knew.

I felt cold, momentarily drained of blood and thoughts. Words wouldn’t come. I sank into a seat at the island, put my forehead on the marble, and waited.

She couldn’t know. There was no way.

“I heard something today at school,” she said. “At first I couldn’t even believe it was true, it was just so . . . ”

School. If someone at school knew, the whole town
knew, which meant Dad was about to know. I felt sick to my stomach. Maybe he already knew. Or maybe he was finding out right now.

“ . . . I don’t know. I tried to write you an email, but it just felt wrong. Are you still there?”