The Space Between Us (9 page)

“I said go away, Charly.” I plucked a rotting walnut husk from the branch and rubbed the oily black pod between my palms. Grandma had made us gather the walnuts over a month ago, but somehow this one clinging hull had escaped.

“I’m coming up,” she said.

I looked down, just in time to see her fingers reach up and curl around the lowest branch.

Did she actually think she could comfort me? I squeezed the walnut in one hand, rolled it between my palms, then squeezed it again. The impulse was too strong. I had to throw it.

It hit her forehead with a satisfying
clunk
and dropped to the ground.
“Ouch!”
she cried, more surprised than mad.

I gripped the branch and braced myself for her fury, ready to spew every nasty thing I could think of saying. But she dropped back down to the ground, and just stood there. Slowly, she leaned forward, pressing her forehead into the bark where our names were carved, almost as if she was praying to the tree.

I held my breath. Anger pumped blood through my veins, but I waited.

Wordless, she pulled back and walked away. I watched, heard the grass crunch beneath her feet, and felt relief pour through me as she made her way up the steps and into the house.

She’d left me alone. Now I could cry.

A
re you nervous?”

“Don’t talk to me.”

“In general, or just right now?”

I didn’t answer.

“Because I won’t talk to you at all if you don’t want me to, but we don’t actually know anybody in Canada, so it might not be the worst thing in the world if we were at least on speaking terms with each other. You know?”

“Stop talking.”

“Okay. But first can you pass me that magazine? Somebody already did the Sudoku in this one.”

I passed her the magazine.

“Umm, pencil?”

I slammed my pen down onto her tray, then reclined my seat and closed my eyes. Sleep was my only hope, the only escape from the suckage of reality. Charly, meanwhile, was acting like she had drunk a jug of coffee. Obviously this—leaving Tremonton—meant something entirely different to her, and I got that. For her it was deliverance. She’d been sullen—no, worse—downright hostile for the last eight weeks, and now here she was so giddy I wanted to slap her.

But her deliverance was my banishment. Staying up all night packing hadn’t helped me much either. I thought I’d had everything ready in advance, but then at midnight I’d looked in my closet and seen all the stuff I was leaving and freaked out. Repacking took forever, but I ended up stuffing another ten pounds worth of clothing into both my suitcases. Six months, two suitcases. Ridiculous.

“Amelia,” Charly whispered, close enough to my ear that I could feel her breath.

I pretended to be asleep.

“Amelia, I have to pee.”

“Are you five?” I snapped, louder than I’d meant to. The man in front of us turned around, frowned, then sank back into his seat.

“I’m
sorry
!” she muttered. “I would’ve climbed over you, but I thought you might wake up and punch me or something.”

“You just went twenty minutes ago,” I hissed.

“That’s what I just told my bladder. It said it doesn’t care.”

“Hold it.”

“So, if I pee my pants do you have an extra pair in your carry-on, or do we get to smell like urine for the next few hours?”

“Go.”

Charly climbed over me and I glared at the lady across the aisle and up a row who was watching us like we were a live episode of daytime trash. She looked away.

Pregnant Charly was a beast. Cranky, impatient, and practically incontinent. Basically, she’d turned into livestock. Livestock that wouldn’t shut up.

Once she was gone I switched our carry-ons and slid into her seat. She’d whine about it since I’d had the window for the first flight, but we had another three hours on this plane, which meant several more bathroom trips. I couldn’t promise I wasn’t going to lose it on her the next time she crawled over me.

At least she wasn’t puking anymore. She hadn’t thrown up since Christmas Eve (which I thought was a lovely way to celebrate the birth of baby Jesus), and that was over a week ago.

Out the window was nothing but blinding white, so I closed the shade and thought about Savannah’s New Year’s
Eve party. She’d made it a going away party for Charly and me. In typical Savannah style, it’d been fancy—twinkling lights and fresh flowers scattered all around her huge veranda and backyard, candles floating in glass dishes in the fountain. She’d sent out real invitations too. The party hadn’t been huge, maybe thirty people, but everyone had dressed up, and we’d eaten bite-sized cheesecakes and sausage balls and cream puffs. It’d been warm, and Savannah let me wear the green dress that never made it to homecoming.

I should’ve felt like the princess of the party. Charly had certainly looked like she was having fun, and she’d just found out she’d flunked algebra. I should’ve at least felt nostalgic, because it really was the last time we would all be together like this, and because it seemed like everybody else was.

But I’d spent the night looking around for the guest who wasn’t coming. Savannah had invited Will, only to find out that he was visiting cousins in Nashville for the holidays. I couldn’t stop thinking, though, if he hadn’t been, if he’d come to the party and seen me one last time, maybe we’d have had a moment. To talk. Or more.

Was that so bad, wanting just one last memory to savor? If he’d come, maybe I’d have more than a last memory. Maybe I’d have something to come back for.

It didn’t matter. He hadn’t.

I’d walked around my own party feeling buffered, like I was gliding through it all in the bubble of our secret. People couldn’t stop telling me how much they were going to miss me, how cool it was that we were getting to go meet our mom’s family, how fun it was going to be to play in the snow. I’d smiled and responded appropriately.
Yeah, I’ll miss you all too, and it will be cool to meet them, and I’m going to love being miserably cold.
Another thing to thank Charly for: turning me into a liar.

Not telling Savannah felt wrong in every way. I’d slid this glass wall between us, and now we only looked like we were side by side. If I’d reached out to touch my best friend I’d have found the cold pane.

I should’ve at least told her about not getting accepted to Columbia. I just couldn’t. And with Charly’s mess already separating us, it didn’t seem like the worst thing in the world to hold back. I’d tell her eventually. Besides, she hadn’t even remembered to ask me about it.

After the party, Savannah had cried and cried, to the point where I’d had to cry just so I didn’t look totally heartless. But truthfully, I wasn’t sad. Since finding out about Columbia, I’d felt nothing. Except when I thought about Charly. Then I felt rage.

“Nice,” Charly grumbled, sitting down in the aisle seat. “If I wasn’t worried about getting kicked off the plane, I’d totally fight you for that seat right now.”

“Bring it.”

“You think you’re so tough, but I don’t need biceps to scratch and pull hair,” she said, taking out her
Us Weekly
to read. “And by the way, every time the drink cart or a flight attendant bumps into me, I’m going to be accidentally elbowing you.”

I closed my eyes again. No matter what, I wasn’t opening them again until we got there.

The plane jerked downward and Charly gasped.

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s just turbulence.”

She looked around at the other passengers and tightened her seat belt. She’d only flown once before. When she was eight and I was nine, we’d all gone to Louisville to visit Dad’s crazy aunt Yvette. I’d flown twice since then, both times with Savannah’s family up to their cabin in New Hampshire during the summer.

“How do you know? It felt like an engine just blew up or something.”

“It happens all the time.” I’d never actually felt turbulence before. “Trust me.” The plane bounced again.

“I don’t want to die on this plane.”

“You’re not going to die on this plane,” I reassured her. “You may freeze to death in the Canadian wilderness, or die from the agony of pushing out a baby, but you aren’t going to die on this plane. You haven’t made me suffer enough yet.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Amelia?”

“Yeah.”

“When we get to Canada, are you still going to hate me?”

“I don’t hate you. I’m just . . . I just . . . ”

An announcement from the pilot about the turbulence, first in English then in French, bought me enough time to think of something better to say than
I just really strongly dislike you
, which was the direction I was heading.

“I’ve lost a lot, and I don’t feel like anybody cares. It’s hard not to be mad about it.”

“I know.” Her voice sounded thin.

I wanted to say something kinder, but I wasn’t going to lie. She’d wrecked everything.

We sat in blessed silence, except now I couldn’t sleep. I wasn’t thinking about all the things I was losing, but the one thing I’d already lost. Even if he wasn’t really mine to lose, the possibility of him was.

After Will and Luciana had broken up, he hadn’t gone out and gotten himself a new girlfriend like I’d thought he would, and on more than one occasion, Savannah had sworn she’d seen him looking at me. But Savannah would say anything.

My stomach grumbled. There was one protein bar left
in my backpack, but I had no idea when I’d see real food next. Better to save it.

“Mesdames et messieurs, s’il vous plait . . . ”
The pilot’s voice came over the intercom again, and I strained to decipher the rush of words. Jibberish. Three semesters of French, perfect grades in all of them, and all I had to show was
ladies and gentlemen, if you please blah blah blah . . .

“Why is he yammering in French?” Charly asked, the sad voice gone, the annoying one back. “I thought they only spoke French in Quebec.”

“Two national languages. Everything has to be repeated in both.”

“Everything? As in, hi my name is Charly,
bonjour je m’appelle Charly
?”

“I hate it when I can’t tell if you’re joking or not. Everything official.”

“Good. ’Cause
bonjour je m’appelle Charly
is all I know.” She paused. “I’m not feeling so great about leaving America, you know?”

“We’ll still be in North America. Canada isn’t the Congo.”

“Yeah, but . . . ”

I knew. It made me nervous too, and I couldn’t even really say why.

A mother across the aisle pulled out a portable DVD
player for her toddler to watch, and I cursed myself for not thinking of it earlier. Diversion. That would work.

“Do you want to watch a show on my iPod?” I asked.

“Do I ever.” Charly held out her hand and waited for it while I found it in my carry-on bag. She’d lost her own iPod two weeks after getting it, which is why I generally refused to let her touch mine. This, however, was a special occasion.

Charly spent the rest of the flight watching some Drew Barrymore movie, and I finally fell asleep.

I didn’t wake up until I was being told to please bring my seat to an upright position. I lifted the shade. The city of Calgary glowed below, a million lights glittering like pinned-down stars. The sky was hopelessly black. I checked my watch. Local time was 5:34, but it may as well have been midnight.

I pressed my forehead to the window and watched, waiting for the snow to appear as we descended. It didn’t. The ground was bone white, but not a flake was falling.

“It’s kind of beautiful,” Charly whispered.

“I guess.” It may as well have been the moon.

“It looks nothing like SeaWorld.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Antarctica thing, remember?”

I did. Last spring break we’d driven down to Orlando and done Disney World and SeaWorld. She was talking
about the Polar Expedition, a simulated trip to Antarctica, which was actually just an overly air-conditioned warehouse with polar bears and fake snow and eerie music.

“You do know Canada is
north
. So not the South Pole.”

“Whatever.”

We disembarked from the plane and dragged ourselves through customs, where we had our brand-new Canadian passports examined. We hadn’t even known we were Canadians until Grandma had done a little research and found that a Canadian parent was enough. It seemed sketchy. We’d never even set foot in the country, but maybe they were desperate. Maybe nobody actually wanted to be Canadian anymore.

“Welcome home,” the customs official said, as he stamped both our passports.

I mumbled something back, and motioned for Charly to follow along. I managed to heft all four of our fifty-pound bags off the conveyer belt while Charly sat on the baggage cart with her head between her knees.

“Move,” I ordered. “Please.”

She groaned.

“Are you going to pass out?” I asked.

“I need something to eat,” she whimpered.

I sighed, dropped the suitcases, and pulled the last protein bar out of my carry-on. “Enjoy,” I said.

“Crap. More healthy food?”

“Then don’t eat it,” I snapped. “I’m hungry too, by the way.”

Normal Charly would have split the bar with me, but the savage pregnant beast before me didn’t even look up. She ripped open the package and inhaled it.

Finally, we passed through the last customs checkpoint, me pushing the two-hundred-pound cart and Charly practically wilting under her six-pound backpack.

“You have no idea how much my feet hurt,” she moaned.

“Your fourteen-week-old fetus is how big—half a pound?”

“What’s your point?”

“Just checking.”

“It’s not about how big it is. It’s
everything
. My skin itches, my back hurts, my nose is plugged up, I feel like I’m going to puke, my joints kill, I have heartburn and the hiccups, and when I stand too long my vision starts to look carbonated around the edges. I think even my blood hurts. My body is being taken over by aliens.”

“Congratulations. You’ve convinced me to never have children.”

The last set of glass doors
whooshed
open, and Charly and I were met by a crowd of loved ones. Other people’s loved ones.