The Space Between Us (25 page)

I looked up to the loft. The light was off, but that didn’t mean she was asleep.

Ultrasound. So what? And if Charly no longer wanted to feed me every grotesque detail of her visits to the obstetrician, I sure didn’t want to hear them from Bree. I came back down and stood beside the couch, arms folded.

“I don’t know if she’ll want to talk about it,” Bree continued, “but she was kind of upset. She cried afterward.”

“Why?” A chill ran through me, flushing the annoyance away. “Is there something wrong with the baby?”

“No. It’s a girl.”

A girl.

“It was kind of amazing, actually. They had one of those 3-D ultrasound machines and you could see her little knees and elbows and fingernails.”

A girl.

I could feel Bree staring at me, trying to coax a reaction
out of me, so I gave her nothing. I blinked a couple of times. “Okay. Good night.”

She didn’t answer.

I turned to leave and this time she didn’t stop me.

• • •

Sleep. Ha.

First I listened to Charly breathing. Then I listened to Bree dawdle through the mindlessness that was her evening: sweep the kitchen floor, hum show tunes, talk on the phone with Richard, make herbal tea, brush and floss with the bathroom door open.

When it was finally quiet, I wished it wasn’t.

A girl. She was here in this bed with us. Did she look like Charly? Like Mom? Or maybe she’d inherited Charly’s latent Mercer genes. Maybe she looked like me.

It didn’t matter though, because I would never know her. She wasn’t ours. She couldn’t be a Mercer, never had been, not from the insignificant moment she was conceived to the moment she would force her way out of my little sister. So why did I feel this aching hollowness like somebody was ripping something out of me? It wasn’t even my body she was sharing.

Charly rolled into the center of the bed and started snoring. Defeated, I took my pillow and the extra blanket Charly had already kicked to the floor and went downstairs to the couch.

I couldn’t force my mind from her. Not Charly.
Her
—the real, live, human girl with a beating heart and fingernails and earlobes and cheeks and eyelashes and
everything
, all inside of Charly.

What else was there to think about?

Ezra. I’d forced him out of my thoughts completely, but just for tonight, I needed him. I could let myself imagine that things had happened differently. I deserved the distraction, even if it was a lie. His voice, his eyes, his warm hands on my back—I closed my eyes and pretended that all that was actually mine to dream about.

For a while.

But I’ve always sucked at pretending. Reality can’t just be turned down like volume. When we were little it was Charly who created the make-believe worlds and forced me to play along. I did, but halfheartedly.

With Ezra the facts were screaming-loud and my volume knob was busted. Pretending meant forgetting the fact that Ezra hadn’t called or stopped by or anything since that night. It all just confirmed what Taylor said: He was a player, and I was a warm body. A warm, lonely, needy body. And what she hadn’t said, but implied—that I was a slut—made my whole body burn with shame and anger. I couldn’t even defend myself.

The couch wasn’t big enough to really roll over, so I
flopped onto my other side like a fish on a dock, praying for mercy, that someone would pity me and kick me back into the water. Or maybe just put me out of my misery.

• • •

When I finally did drift off, a nightmare seeped its way in.

I dreamt it was me who was pregnant, not with a girl, but with some grotesque monster. A doctor pulled it out of me, greenish-black and writhing snakelike. I tried to scream but I couldn’t push the air out. Then I saw it wasn’t a doctor but Charly, and she was holding the thing, rocking it like it was her baby. She wouldn’t even look at me. I was trying to tell her it was a monster, but she turned away like she couldn’t hear me. Like I didn’t exist.

I forced myself awake with a gasp.

3:49. The kitchen clock glowed green. I shivered, my heart racing, then pulled the blanket tight around me and waited for my mind to clear, to remember what was real and what wasn’t.

It took a minute or two, but eventually my heart slowed and the panic dissipated. And then all I could feel was emptiness.

• • •

“Where’s Charly?” Bree asked.

I pointed a finger loft-ward.

“You didn’t want to wake her up?”

I put my cereal bowl in the dishwasher. I wasn’t
gratifying that question with an answer. Waking Charly up was like poking a hibernating grizzly with a stick—nobody wanted to do it. And more to the point, it wasn’t my job.

She took her keys from the hook. “Ready to go?” Little lines creased the skin between her eyes. She was ticked, but I totally didn’t care.
She
could go and wake Charly up.
She
was the one who convinced her to go to school in the first place. I’d told them both this day would come and I’d been completely ignored.

I slung my backpack over my shoulder.

“Did she say anything about the ultrasound last night?” Bree asked.

“No.”

“Hmmm. I hope she doesn’t sleep all day. Yesterday she said something about a math test after lunch.”

“Charly doesn’t give a crap about a math test.” I followed Bree out the door and down the stairs.

“Well, she should.”

“Well, she doesn’t.”

We walked to the car in silence.

“I just don’t want her to start slipping. School is important.”

“Really?” Why was I resorting to sarcasm with Bree? “Listen, when things get rough, Charly holes up like a mole. You can’t lecture her out of it. It’s just what she
does. She gets bored of things or stressed out or upset and just shuts down. Honestly, I’m surprised she lasted a full month at school.” I climbed into the car while Bree went to town on the windows with her scraper. It was violent, but the windows were frost free in less than a minute.

Bree got in the car, giving the door a good slam. “I just think if you were to help her out a little, you know, try to keep her motivated, it would really go a long ways.”

I stared out the freshly scraped window and felt my heart thump. Backing down would be smart. Patience would be smart. At this point, even putting my fingers in my ears would be smarter than what I really wanted to do. And she was just so deserving of a push.

“Back when you were so eager to have Charly in school,” I started, “you both thought that I was the mean one. Never mind that I’m the girl with lifetime front-row tickets to the Charly show. I mean, it’s great how gung ho you are about education now, but maybe you should have channeled your own high school dropout days before convincing her she could handle high school pregnant.”

Bree flinched.

I sat, arms folded over my chest, trying to keep from shivering. Neither of us said a word the rest of the drive.

She pulled up to the school and I got out, but before I could shut the door she asked, “So what happened with
you and Ezra?” Her voice was peaches and cream as usual. She was too good to let even a hint of a smile bend her lips, but there was a glow.

I slammed the door shut.

• • •

I fully expected Charly to still be in bed wallowing when I got home from school, but she was sitting on the couch, dressed in one of the new maternity tops and stretch-band jeans, hair curled, makeup on.

“You’re up.”

“Yeah.”

“Bree had her panties in a bunch about you missing school.”

“I’ll talk to her.”

I went straight to the kitchen. My lunch had been rudely interrupted by an impromptu library walk-through by Dr. Ashton. Mr. Langer may not have cared that people ate in the carrels, but apparently she did. She’d disentangled the make-out couple two carrels down, then taken my lunch.

“What’s with the makeup?” I said, taking a block of cheese and some deli meat from the fridge. There was maybe a fifty-fifty chance she’d answer me, versus telling me to go to hell. I thought it best not to mention the fact that she’d broken and finally put on the maternity clothes.

“There’s a couple driving in from Calgary to meet me.”

I grabbed a loaf of bread and started making a sandwich. A couple. It took my starving brain a moment to realize she was talking about people wanting her baby. An adoption interview—that was why Bree had been so tense about Charly spending the day in bed. She’d been worried Charly wouldn’t get it together. And of course she couldn’t have just told me, seeing as I wasn’t a part of their little circle of trust.

“When?”

She glanced at the clock. “Hour and a half.”

“Here?” I asked, shocked that she hadn’t shut me down yet.

She shook her head. “I’m meeting them at a restaurant.”

I took a bite of my sandwich and chewed about thirty times.

A restaurant.
She wouldn’t even tell me the name of the place, like she honestly thought I was going to crash her little dinner. Was this a done deal or just an interview? I couldn’t ask. I couldn’t ask
anything
, but how on earth did Charly know what to ask them?

A thousand questions flooded my mind:
Do you just hand over the baby and never see them again? Are they smart? Do they go to church? Are they dog people or cat people? Do they vote? Do they recycle? Do they floss every night?

I swallowed and took another bite of my sandwich. I couldn’t ask a single one.

• • •

I was alone in the apartment when the phone rang. I hunted under throw pillows for it. Bree always called home at least once during her evening shift at McSorley’s, just to make sure we hadn’t burned down the apartment or been abducted. On the one night I’d dared to let it go to voice mail, she’d freaked out and come home early.

I found it after the sixth ring, and pressed talk before I noticed the caller ID display. Banff Public Library.
Crap.

“Hello.”

“Hi.”

It was him.

“Amelia?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s Ezra.”

“Yeah.”

One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. Then he said, “How are you?” at the exact same time I managed to spit out, “How’s it going?” We followed that up with a simultaneous, “Fine/Good,” and another few seconds of awkward silence.

“So, I haven’t seen you in a while,” he said.

No, you haven’t, not since your beautiful and psychotic ex verbally abused me. “I’ve been busy.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“I need to apologize,” he said. “For the other day.”

“Don’t.” The other day? As in three weeks ago. The statute of limitations on an apology was long gone.

“You didn’t deserve to be the target of Taylor’s wrath.”

“It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not. I shouldn’t have let it happen, and I definitely should’ve called you sooner. I’ve been feeling like an idiot for the last two weeks.”

“Three.”

“Right, three weeks.”

“That’s a long time to be feeling like an idiot for. Poor you.”

He ignored my sarcasm. “I thought you didn’t want anything to do with me. From the sounds of it, I wasn’t wrong.”

“No.”

He paused. “No, I was wrong, or no, I wasn’t wrong?”

“I was embarrassed. I’ve never been in that kind of situation before.”

“Yeah, Taylor really lost it.”

“No, I mean, I’m not the kind of girl who gets caught making out in a library. Or anywhere. Ever.” Great. Now he thought I was a prude.

“Too fast, then.”

“Yeah, and you disappearing didn’t help anything.”

“I’m sorry. It’s not like I planned to hook up like that.”

That sounded terrible. Like he’d kissed me and couldn’t for the life of him figure out why.

“And I definitely didn’t plan on Taylor dropping by.”

“Are you two even officially broken up?”

“Of course.” He sounded insulted. “We haven’t been together since before Christmas.”

My stomach churned, a mix of excitement and anger and shock swirling around. I’d spent the last three weeks convincing myself I’d never hear from him again. I couldn’t believe we were actually talking.

“I feel bad that
you
feel bad,” he continued. “You didn’t deserve that. And the things Taylor said to you, and about me—none of that was true.”

“But you still didn’t come find me.”

More silence. Every piece of me wanted to let him off the hook, to be one of those girls who giggles and ignores whatever needs to be ignored. But I was still me, and he’d still kissed me till I was dizzy and then let me think I was nothing to him for three whole weeks.

“You don’t let a guy off easy, do you?”

“Guess not.”

“Any suggestions for me?”

“I might be willing to negotiate some sort of penance.”

“I’m listening.”

My brain stalled. What did I need from Ezra? It wasn’t like he could undo what had happened. “I don’t know,” I
said. “Maybe you should just start trying to impress me and I’ll let you know if I decide to forgive you.”

“At least give me a hint of what would impress you.”

“I could really use some Florida sunshine right now.”

“Great. That should be easy to arrange. How about Florida orange juice instead?”

“No dice.”

He sighed. “Okay, I’ll work on it.”

“Good luck,” I said, wondering if he could hear the smile in my voice.

“So how’s life at Bree’s?”

Bree, my favorite subject. I opened my mouth ready to complain, but stopped myself. Ezra had it worse than I did. At least I didn’t walk around feeling responsible for anybody else’s mental health, and as much as my situation sucked, it wasn’t permanent. “Okay. Things are starting to feel normal. We’ve got our routines so we don’t get into each other’s hair too much. How are things with you?”

“Nothing new. I’m actually about to close the library up and hit the road. I’m going to Calgary for the weekend. What are your plans?”

I wasn’t about to admit my plans revolved around Charly, Bree, and Richard, or more specifically, avoiding Charly, Bree, and Richard. But they did. “Not solidified yet. What are you doing in Calgary?”