The Space Between Us (8 page)

“I bought it in Baldwin,” she said, “but I peed on it in Tremonton. Should I not have done that? Do you think maybe people could sense that a pregnancy stick was being
peed on somewhere in town and just assumed it was me?”

“This isn’t a joke,” Grandma said quietly, wiping down the table now, even though it was spotless.

Charly put the spoon down and looked up. The Grandma I knew would have chewed her out.

“Are you ready to be serious?” Grandma asked. She moved to wiping the fronts of the cupboards.

Charly nodded.

“You are not having this baby here. I won’t let you break your father’s heart, not to mention his credibility as the moral compass of this community. I won’t let you become the next Marnie Croll, or Serena Torello.” She paused, letting those names sink in.

Marnie was four years older than me, but I used to be friends with her little sister Paula. Once Marnie was pregnant though, Paula and her family stopped going to church regularly so we saw each other a lot less. Marnie had done the “right thing” and married the dad, or at least it was the right thing according to all the conversations I overheard. She didn’t graduate with her class, but she did get her GED, so when her eighteen-year-old husband ran off a year later she didn’t have to start at minimum wage. She went straight to night manager at the Texaco station, which was not a bad gig, she claimed, when you had a toddler and your mom worked full time and couldn’t babysit for you during the day. We talked sometimes when I filled
up the Jeep. Grandma didn’t like Charly and me hanging out at Paula’s anymore.

Serena didn’t have it nearly as good. She was my age, but she hadn’t seen the inside of PHS since she got pregnant when we were freshmen. Since then she’d had one of those on-again/off-again things with the baby’s father that provided the whole town with entertainment. Screaming fights in the Dairy Queen parking lot, the Dollar Store parking lot, the post office parking lot. Grandma’s bridge group loved talking about her with sad faces, shaking their heads, because she’d been such a sweet little girl and had done pageants and everything. Now Serena wore sunglasses that covered half her face to work at Winn-Dixie, and her boyfriend stayed home with the baby.

Marnie and Serena weren’t like the lepers cast out of cities in the Bible, though. People were subtle. It wasn’t as obvious as rooms going quiet when they entered, at least, not for more than a second or two. And people still did their Christian duty and smiled, but eye contact was optional and not sustained. Nobody wanted to be seen condoning teenage pregnancy, or aligning themselves with girls who were flaunting it. Or just being it.

It was just a feeling in the air. Disappointment. And pity.

I didn’t want Charly to be pitied.

“I don’t understand. I’ve got nowhere to go,” Charly said, tears glimmering in her eyes.

I didn’t understand either. Unless Grandma was sending her to a convent. Except we weren’t Catholic, and it didn’t seem like pregnant girls were still getting sent to convents.

“How late is your period?”

“I don’t know. Three weeks.”

“Good. You won’t show for a while. Four or five months with looser clothing. I expect you to hold it in until Christmas.”

Hold it in? Under other circumstances I would have laughed, but Grandma wasn’t kidding, and Charly was nodding like holding it in was something she thought she could manage with willpower, never mind that
it
was a rapidly expanding human being in her abdomen.

“After Christmas,” Grandma continued, “you’ll go to Canada.”

Canada. A stream of references came flying at me, none of them possibly relevant to this situation. Cold. Bacon. Maple syrup. Avril Lavigne. Justin Bieber. Bacon. Cold.

And of course, Mom.

“I don’t suppose you remember meeting your Aunt Bree at the funeral,” Grandma said.

The graveside photo appeared in my mind. It was in an album in Dad’s den, and I’d looked at it a million times to stare at the sixteen-years-younger versions of the people I
knew. In it, a rounder, brown-haired Grandma is holding a fat baby on her hip and a scowling toddler by the hand. Us. Grandpa stands on the far left and Dad is alone in the center, looking like he might float away if someone doesn’t step on his foot to anchor him.

On his other side are the rest: Mom’s family. Strangers. An over-glitzed woman I’d been told is my other grandmother, wearing a boxy fur coat and a theatrical sad face, clutching the arm of a tall man who’s been caught midblink. Her third husband, according to Grandma. Then come two tall, bored-looking teenage boys, obviously belonging to the man, and the nanny they forgot to push out of the shot before the picture was taken.

At the photo’s edge, a ten-year-old girl with shiny platinum hair and a pointy chin has the only smile. Bree. It’s her half sister’s funeral, but she obviously doesn’t know you’re not always supposed to smile for the camera. She’s wearing wire-rimmed glasses, which for years made me think she was a child genius. She would have to be twenty-six now.

Relief trickled down my spine.
Canada. Why didn’t I think of that? Charly can live with Aunt Bree and Dad will never find out.

“I spoke to Bree last night and she said you could stay with her in Banff until you have the baby. The adoption will take place up there.”

“But . . . ,” Charly stammered. “But she doesn’t even know me. I don’t even know her.”

It was as if she hadn’t spoken. Grandma was brokering a business transaction. Deals had been made. Goods would be exchanged.

“You already called her? What if I want to stay here? What if . . . ”

Grandma glared at Charly, and for a moment I thought the dam was going to burst. I could see Charly bracing for it too. There had to be a world of anger bubbling behind that somber front, but Grandma shook her head and spoke just as calmly as before.

“Charlotte, you’re confused. You use the words
I want
like they still mean something. You’re pregnant. You made that choice, thinking only about what you wanted at the moment. Now what
you want
is irrelevant.”

Charly shrank into her chair. The last few green Froot Loops bobbed around in the milk, looking spongy and anemic.

“You’re acting like I’m about to explode,” Grandma said evenly as Charly cowered. “Relax. I’m not going to yell at you. It’s too late. Discipline has failed.”

I poured the last of my orange juice down the sink. I didn’t want to be here for this anymore.

“Sending you to Canada is the only way we can survive this without your father finding out.”

“He’d never forgive me,” Charly said, still staring into her milk.

She was right, but I wasn’t so sure she deserved forgiveness.

“I’ll go,” she said.

“But what are you going to tell him?” I asked Grandma.

“That you girls are flying up north to get better acquainted with your aunt. That it’s important for teenage girls to connect with their mother, even if it can only be through her relatives. That you’ll attend an excellent school up there.”

I didn’t hear a word after
you girls
. “Charly, you mean.”

“No. I mean you girls. You’ll go with your sister.”

“What?”
Panic twisted every muscle in my body.
“Why?”

“Stop shouting.”

“I’m not shouting!”
I shouted.

“Calm down.” Grandma pointed to the chair next to Charly, but I shook my head.

“I’m not the pregnant one! I don’t need to sit!” I thought I’d been exhausted from practice, but I suddenly had an urgent desire to run.

“Fine, then. Stand there and listen. You need to go to Canada too or this story will have no credibility. A girl going to visit a relative for half a year means one thing and one thing only to some people.”

“Maybe in the 1960s,” I argued, realizing as I said it
that Tremonton was probably at least fifty years behind the rest of America.

“People will wonder, then gossip, then assume it as truth—all of it, if Charly goes alone. If you both go,
you
especially, if you go, nobody will think that.”

She meant it as a compliment, but it didn’t feel that way. Nobody in this town would imagine I could possibly get pregnant. Probably not even if I was still with Will. “And this is my reward for being good, then? Being sent away just in case people start to wonder about Charly?”

“Your dad would never let Charly go on her own.”

I exhaled, feeling every ounce of breath leave me. “But he . . . ”
But he
nothing. She was right. I met Grandma’s eyes and saw a faint softness behind them.

“Amelia. You have to take care of her.”

“But it’s my senior year,” I said, still not really believing this conversation was happening. She couldn’t be asking me to do this. I had Savannah, and field hockey, then soccer after that, and graduation.

And just maybe, I might have Will.

I looked to Charly, but she was staring out the window. Of course, anything to avoid being mentally present.

“When do I stop getting punished for her mistakes?” I asked, gripping the countertop behind me with both hands. “She is and will always be a complete disaster. Does that mean I have to be collateral damage for the rest of my life?”

“That sounds eerily similar to what Cain told God when He came looking for Abel,” Grandma said.

“Are you kidding me?” I yelled.

“Am I my brother’s keeper?”
she quoted calmly.

“I haven’t murdered my sibling yet!”

Grandma raised her eyebrows, as if
I
was the one committing blasphemy. Could she not hear herself?

“Do you have a better solution?” she asked.

“Yes! Send her by herself!”

Charly pulled her eyes from whatever it was outside that was so captivating and turned to me. “Please.”

“Has the whole world gone insane? You want to be exiled to Canada? Seriously?”

“It doesn’t matter what I want, right?” She glanced in Grandma’s direction, then back at me. “I need for Dad to not find out, which means I need to leave, which means I need you.”

There was too much pleading in her eyes. It made me want to drive my fist through the microwave.

I left the kitchen without saying another word.

I
n the weeks and months that followed, I went through the motions of my normal life, of school and of friends and of making everything fine. I played along. I hid Charly’s secret. I sold Grandma’s semester-in-Canada charade to Dad, ignoring the possibility of Will, ignoring everything that was supposed to be happening next semester, just holding on and waiting waiting waiting for one thing.

December 15. Acceptance day.

Also, ten days after Dad’s birthday and ten days before Jesus’s birthday. That had to mean something.

I’d never been idealistic enough to force symbolism onto real life before, but AP English had clearly warped
my brain because I’d started seeing metaphors in much less—Charly’s sudden aversion to eggs, the untimely death of Grandma’s magnolia bush (bacterial blight), Dad losing his bifocals again. Life just seemed so literary now.

I woke up early on December 15 floating. I’d decided in advance that for one whole day I wasn’t thinking about Charly or Canada or the wreckage of my immediate future. Today was mine.

Because even if Charly had destroyed her life, and even if I was being punished for it, there would be an after. Yes, the next six months would suck, but I would survive Canada, and then I’d have my new beginning in New York in the fall.

Maybe Charly would get another chance too. If Dad didn’t find out, if Tremonton didn’t find out, if she gave the baby away and started taking school and life seriously for once, maybe her after would be okay.

I found the email waiting for me when I got home from school.

Dear Ms. Mercer,

Your application to Columbia has been carefully considered by the Committee on Admissions, and we are sorry to advise you that we are unable to offer you a place in the class entering this fall.

The Committee regrets that the large number of highly qualified applicants makes it impossible for all of them to be
accepted. We appreciate your interest in Columbia and wish you the best in your pursuit of higher education.

Sincerely,

Donald P. Crowley

Dean of Admissions

Well.

That was it.

I felt nothing, so I read it again, slower this time. Still nothing. I wasn’t crazy or desperate enough to think something was hidden between the words, but the message was so wholly unbelievable—no acceptance, no waiting list, no suggestions—I had to read it one last time.

No. I understood. My after was not going to be any better than Charly’s.

I deleted it.

Barefoot and aching from the inside, I made my way downstairs, past Grandma at the sink, past Charly at the table, and out the back door.

“Did it come?” I heard Charly ask, just before the door clattered shut behind me.

Please don’t follow me.

I stared straight ahead. Winter had come, and everything had decided to die—the grass, the citrus, the hibiscus, the maple. The black walnut’s skeleton stood naked against the grey sky.

A thousand blades of dry grass stabbed the soles of my feet as I crossed the lawn, but there was no way in hell I was going back for shoes. I walked, passing Dad’s ailing lime trees, cringing with each step.

When I reached the black walnut, I let my fingers run along the rough bark for just a moment before I gripped the lowest branch and hoisted myself up. Behind me, the back door creaked and banged shut again, but I kept climbing.

“Hey,” Charly called from below.

I didn’t answer, didn’t look down, just climbed limb by limb until the branches were too thin to hold me and I had no choice but to sit.

“So, the email . . . ,” she started, then stopped. Hesitation was so rare for the queen of speaking without thinking. “It came?”

“Go away.”

“Not good news?”