The Space Between Us (4 page)

I tossed my English textbook on my bed and wandered downstairs to where Grandma was pinning pattern pieces to fabric, humming while she worked.

“Another apron?”

She took a pin out of her mouth and slid it through the tissue paper into the fabric. “For Myrna’s daughter.”

“Pretty,” I said, running my finger along the floral print. Shalya would hate it. She’s a hairstylist at Tremonton’s one and only salon, and wears animal print and feather boas daily—not as a costume or a joke. But Grandma has always been better at buying fabric she thinks people should like than buying fabric that they actually like.

Grandma smoothed the wrinkles out of the last pattern piece, her face unusually soft under the yellow kitchen light.
Her chin-length silver hair was tucked neatly behind each ear, and her lips were pursed in concentration.

She motioned for the pincushion just out of her reach, so I picked it up and held it out.

“When did your sister say she’d be back? She isn’t answering her phone.”

Cover for me.
Like it was that easy to fend off one of Grandma’s interrogations.

“Eleven. She said she was going to ask you if she could stay out late to rehearse for play tryouts. Did she forget?”

Grandma frowned and took a pin from the cushion. “Yes. Eleven is way too late for a school night. She knows that. She’s at one of those drama kids’ houses?”

I nodded and started rearranging pins according to the color of the ball on the end. Avoiding eye contact was essential. “I think they’re rehearsing lines.”

“I’m not sure those kids are a good influence on Charlotte,” she said. “If she spent half as much time doing her real homework as she does dreaming about
Hollywood
and
Broadway
, maybe her grades wouldn’t be so terrible.”

Grandma spat out Hollywood and Broadway like they were Sodom and Gomorrah, and I kept arranging pins. It was a stupid lie. Performing arts are not Grandma’s thing. I should’ve said Charly was getting biology help—Charly
should
be getting biology help.

“I worry about that girl,” Grandma mumbled, more to herself than me. Then her shears began slicing through the cotton.

It was my moment to say something.

I didn’t.

I finished color-coding Grandma’s pincushion and kept my mouth shut, because sisters cover for each other. Sisters lie.

I
t didn’t hit me till morning, till I banged on her door for the third time. Usually by the third attempt I got some sort of response, something along the lines of
go away
or
I hate you
, but not today.

I opened the door to find hurricane aftermath as usual: clothes strewn everywhere, the stench of Cooler Ranch Doritos emanating from an open bag on her dresser, and some kind of magazine collage project under way on her desk. But no Charly. The bed was unmade, but it’d been that way since the last time Grandma had forced her to wash her sheets. Her backpack sat unopened on her pillow, and my new Abercrombie sweater was nowhere to be seen.

She hadn’t come home.

Panic pulsed through me like a current of electricity. I rewound to last night. Grandma had gone to bed, then I’d come upstairs and fallen asleep reading that short story for English. I remembered waking up to pee in the middle of the night, but it hadn’t occurred to me to check on Charly. I’d just assumed she was back. Or maybe I’d forgotten she was even gone? Whichever. I was
asleep
. Was I supposed to be babysitting her in my sleep?

My hand trembled as I closed the door. Grandma was in Tallahassee. Dad was in Atlanta. And Charly was . . . somewhere.

I closed my eyes and there was the Jeep, crumpled and twisted and strewn across the highway, glass everywhere. And then I pictured blood. My mouth felt watery and the taste of vomit crawled its way up my throat. Why had I let her go? She was dangerous enough behind the wheel in broad daylight, driving through residential Tremonton. But freeway driving at night?

And I’d lied to Grandma.

I took a shaky breath. I had to slow down. This was Charly, which meant the list of possible explanations was long and crazy. No need to jump straight to dead in a ditch. She could easily have fallen asleep at the party, or gone home with a friend, or done any number of stupid but not life-threatening things that prevented her from
coming home. She knew about Grandma’s appointment, so maybe she’d even planned on staying out all night.

But she would have called.

If she showed up at school like nothing had happened, I was going to kill her.

I marched back to my room and looked out the window. No Jeep. Had Grandma’s car been in the driveway last night? I couldn’t remember. If so, Charly would’ve parked in the garage. I called Charly’s number, but it went straight to voicemail. Not surprising. Charging her phone would have required a single functioning brain cell. I chucked my phone onto my pillow and it bounced off, clattering onto the floor. I ran downstairs to check the garage and confirm what I already knew. The Jeep wasn’t there.

I got ready for school fast, forcing myself to think about my day. This was game day, not freaking out day. I had to focus. A bagel, orange juice, a hard-boiled egg, a cheese stick, pretzels, apple, nuts—I tossed the food in a bag, thinking carb, carb, protein, fat, carb, carb, protein. Fueling is a fine art, and I wasn’t going to let Charly and her constant screwing around and inability to think about anyone else distract me.

I called Savannah.

“Can you give me a ride to school?”

“Sure,” she said. “Jeep trouble?”

“No. Charly took it. She . . . long story.” It didn’t make sense, not wanting to tell Savannah. But she’d think I was a terrible person for not calling Grandma and Dad and the cops and the entire world. She didn’t know what being Charly’s sister is like. If I ratted Charly out now, then she just showed up at school, we’d both be in trouble for no reason.

I waited outside her first period algebra class, watching everyone go in until Ms. Barrett came over to close the door. “Amelia, don’t you have a class to get to?”

“Yes, ma’am.” I turned to leave.

I was halfway into the stairwell when Ms. Barrett called, “And where is your sister?”

I pretended not to hear.

I was five minutes late for Chem, but I may as well have not gone at all. I didn’t hear a thing. The image of twisted steel and blood-soaked asphalt kept flickering in my mind, and my chest felt like someone was squeezing it. There had to be an explanation. She was somewhere, safe and oblivious in her self-absorbed little way.

She wasn’t at her second period class either. Or third.

Tell.

But how much? And who? I was frozen, coasting toward a red light, and back when it was yellow I’d been too gutless to floor it or to slam on the brakes.

Savannah found me by my locker before English,
holding the lock but not turning the dial. One more class till lunch. Charly was not late. Charly was not coming.

“What’s the matter? You look terrible. Are you going to throw up?”

“No. Maybe.”

“Here, come with me.” She pulled me into the girls’ bathroom.

“I’m not going to throw up. I . . . I’m just sort of freaking out. I did something really stupid.”

“Take a sip,” she said, handing me one of the water bottles from her backpack. Hydration was key in her Operation Squeeze into Homecoming Dress. “You can tell me.”

A timid-looking sophomore appeared from one of the stalls. Savannah glared at her and she skulked out, too scared to wash her hands.

“Charly’s sort of missing.” Hearing the words come out of my mouth made my chest tighten and my stomach drop. “I thought she’d be at school, but I can’t find her anywhere.”

“Wait, missing? What do you mean?”

“She didn’t come home last night. And I didn’t tell anyone.”

The door to the bathroom opened and a couple of freshmen tried to come in.

“Out,” Savannah ordered, then turned back to me. “Okay, back up. How’d she get past the jailer?”

“Grandma left for Tallahassee really early this morning for a doctor’s appointment, so I didn’t even see her. And last night I kind of lied to her about why Charly was out late. I said she was practicing her audition stuff. You know, for the play.”

Savannah shook her head, eyes wide. I had to look away.

“So where’d she actually go?” Savannah asked.

I stared at the cracked white tile behind her. It looked like a spider web. Or a broken windshield. “To Baldwin. For a party. She took the Jeep and she’s such a crappy driver and I just have this terrible feeling she, I don’t know, crashed it, and she’s hurt or worse and—”

“Stop!” Savannah’s hands on my shoulders jolted me out of my babbling. Was she going to hug me? That would be weird. I’m not the hugging type. Then again, I’m not the on-the-verge-of-tears type either. “Take a deep breath.”

I swallowed and tried, but my chest was too tight.

She swung her backpack off her back and pulled her keys out of the pocket. “Take my car. Drive straight home. Call your grandma on the way and tell her everything. If Charly isn’t there when you get home, call the police. Got it?”

I nodded, gripping the keys so tight they dug into my palm. “But you aren’t allowed to lend out your car.”

“Amelia, your sister is missing. I’m pretty sure my dad would understand.”

Of course he would. This was an emergency. Anyone would have seen that when they woke up this morning, or anyone who wasn’t so self-absorbed as to think a field hockey game was more important than her sister’s life.

“Go,” she said.

I stumbled out of the bathroom, too dazed to say thank you.

• • •

I called Grandma from the road. She was driving too, and I could hear the murmur of Christian talk radio in the background as I stumbled through my confession.

I waited for her anger. That’s what I wanted, to be yelled at. I deserved it.

But she didn’t yell. Instead, she told me in a shaky voice to go home and wait for her, and that she’d call the police. From the woman who was scared of nothing, I got naked fear. Anger would have been so much better.

“What about Dad?” I whispered.

She exhaled into the phone, but it was more like a shudder. We both knew it. If something had happened to Charly, it would kill Dad. “I’ll call him after we talk to the police. Pray for your sister.”

I hung up.

When I broke my arm in eighth grade, I didn’t cry.
And when I broke my heart in eleventh, I didn’t cry then either. Charly thought there was something wrong with me, like my tear ducts didn’t function, or I was part robot, but I was proud of it. It was a choice.

But suddenly my shoulders were shaking, and terrible animal-moaning sounds were coming out of my mouth. I couldn’t even try to hold them in, and the tears burned lines down my cheeks while snot dripped onto my lip. I was barely aware enough to wipe it away with my sleeve.

What would my life be like without Charly? I couldn’t imagine. But then I forced myself. It would be colorless. Pointless. Empty. If only I’d refused to let her have the car like I knew I should have, she’d be safe at school right now, cheating on a math quiz or belting out some show tune in the cafeteria.

The helplessness made me want to scream, but convulsive sobs had already stolen my body and I couldn’t reclaim it. Grandma said pray. What kind of Christian was I? Why was that the last thing to come to mind?
Please, Jesus, save my sister. Let her not be dead. Let her not have killed herself in a car wreck, or have been abducted by a sicko, or hit by a drunk driver. Please don’t take her like you took my mother. Dad will never forgive me.

By the time I pulled onto our street, my jaw and neck ached from contorting my face, and I felt like I might throw up.

And then I saw the Jeep. Whole. Red paint shiny as ever, parked in the driveway beside the palmetto trees, exactly where it belonged.

For one second, all the terror burned away, leaving the sweetest, brightest feeling in the entire world radiating through my body. Charly was alive.

Two seconds, three seconds, four seconds.

By the time I threw Savannah’s car into park, five seconds had passed, and I was homicidal. I sprinted two steps at a time up the front porch, up the stairs to the second floor, down the hall toward the bathroom and the sound of the shower.

The bathroom door was locked. I banged with both fists. She
never
locked the door when she showered, and she was obviously the only one home anyway. She must have sensed I was coming to kill her. I kept pounding on the door, fists clenched so tight my nails dug into my flesh. She could hear me, I
knew
she could hear me, but the shower just kept on roaring.

I stopped, took a step backward, and sunk to the floor with my back against the wall. My heart pounded in my ears as I struggled to catch my breath. Charly was in there. She was enjoying a leisurely shower. I’d just been to hell and back, and she was exfoliating.

Eventually, the shower stopped. She could hear me now if I yelled, but I wasn’t going to. I’d wait. My fists were
still sore from the banging and my head throbbed from the crying—I wasn’t going to scream myself hoarse too.

When she finally opened the door, she was wrapped in her towel, hair a wet, tangled mess on her shoulders. She didn’t even look at me, just stepped over my feet and started down the hall.

“Are you kidding me?” I shouted. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“To my room.” She sounded tired or bored. I was
boring
her.

“No, you’re not. Where have you been?”

She turned around and stared at me. Her face was puffy, eyes bloodshot.

“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.”