The Space Between

by Brenna Yovanoff

  “What do they mean?” I ask. “Do they mean something?”

  “They’re scars,” he says softly, says it to the wall. “They don’t mean anything.”

  “Will you tell me about the hospital?”

  But Truman goes rigid and still, staring past me toward the window. “Leave.”

  “But—”

  “Get out of my room.” He says it in a flat, measured voice, without looking at me. Then he rolls over, turning so that his back is to me, and doesn’t say anything else.

  I want to protest, or at least ask him what it is I’ve done, but my tongue feels stuck. I want to make him take it back, but I don’t know how. Neither of us says anything and time stretches out.

  After much too long I stand up, shaking the creases from my skirt, and I start for the door.

  MARCH 8

  2 DAYS 22 HOURS 25 MINUTES

  Truman faced the wall, listening to her footsteps as they faded down the hall, away from his room. Then he rolled onto his back, one arm resting across his face. All the numbness and the sick, heavy stupor were gone and now he just felt cored-out. The daylight was bright and chilly, making his eyes hurt. He was so unbelievably tired.

  With his eyes closed, he had a brief flash of the girl—Daphne—standing in an empty L station, looking up at him. There was a clearer memory of her fingers sliding through his hair. Her fingers on the insides of his wrists, tracing the lines there, exploring. How she hadn’t looked at him with horror or pity, and she hadn’t recoiled. She’d simply traced the lines with her fingers. He closed his eyes, swallowing against the ache in his throat.

  How did you get your scars?

  Her voice was an urgent whisper, repeating in his head, and he thought of Obie because he couldn’t help it.

  The emergency room, the hospital—everything seemed rubbed-out around the edges. He knew there’d been Jell-O every day, but he couldn’t remember exactly how it had tasted. He knew the sheets had been blue, but he couldn’t say if they’d been blue like sky or like detergent.

  The first night in the ICU was barely a coherent memory, but now and then, parts of it came back in excruciating detail. That night, he had dreamed of dark hallways and a blue-lipped-cadaver version of his face. Himself smiling at himself. In the dream, he’d closed his eyes, cringing away. And that was when the shadow man had appeared for the first time, only Truman didn’t understand the consequences yet—didn’t understand that he would come back, dragging Truman out of bed or whispering from the closet. From now on, they would excavate the jumbled garbage dump of Truman’s deepest fears almost every night.

  “Look,” the man whispered gently, taking Truman’s chin is his hand, turning him back toward his own decomposing corpse. “Open your eyes and look at yourself. That’s you, undisguised. That’s your black, revolting heart.”

  Truman had woken up shaking, seasick with pain medication.

  Obie had come into the room then, rumpled and friendly looking in his chalk-green scrubs. When he’d seen Truman sitting up with the blankets pushed back and his hands held awkwardly in front of him, Obie’s eyes had turned worried. “Hey, what’s up? Is something wrong?”

  But Truman was much too shaken to answer, shivering so hard his teeth chattered, and every time he closed his eyes, he saw his own grinning body—rotten, covered with a thin slime of grave-moss. Maggots squirming where his eyes should be.

  Obie was patient. He sat on the bed while Truman shuddered and tried not to think about his dream. When twenty minutes went by and Truman couldn’t stop shaking, Obie prepped a syringe and fed it into the IV line.

  “What are you doing?” Truman whispered. It was the first thing he’d said since he’d woken from the dream, and his voice was dry and hoarse.

  Obie stood over him, ready to depress the plunger. “I’m just going to give you something to help you sleep. It’ll knock you right out. You won’t even feel it.”

  For a second, Truman could only shake his head, struggling to make his voice work. “Don’t,” he whispered. “Please don’t give me that. Don’t make me sleep.”

  Another attendant would have given him the sedative anyway—easier to drug him up, put him out—but Obie only nodded. He pulled the syringe from the IV without asking any questions.

  Then he sat back down on the edge of the bed and began to talk. He did it easily, leaning forward with his elbows propped on his knees, telling Truman strange, fantastical stories about astronomy and botany and God, until the sky lightened and Truman could finally close his eyes.

  The first time Truman almost died, he’d been Obie’s responsibility. Obie had overseen the tubes and monitors, doled out the medication, changed the bandages.

  Now, everything was different. Truman was in his own room. His sheets smelled stale and smoky, and it had been the black-haired girl kneeling over him on Dio’s floor, holding out her hands. When he closed his eyes, the pressure of her fingers was still there, exploring his skin, finding all the things that he needed to forget.

  Truman got up.

  His ears rang and he saw little starbursts at the corners of his vision. Twinkling bugs went squirming by every time he turned his head. The room glittered with fatigue.

  He pulled on one of his school sweaters and smoothed down his hair. There was a bottle of aspirin in the bathroom cabinet and he swallowed two, drinking straight from the faucet. After a few minutes, his head began to feel better.

  In the kitchen, Charlie was standing alone at the counter, eating scrambled eggs. He cleared his throat and took a swallow of the coffee at his elbow. “Sounds like you had yourself some kind of night. Not gonna take it easy for awhile, have some breakfast? Maybe try sleeping?”

  Truman shook his head and opened the refrigerator. “I’m not tired.”

  Charlie shrugged and hunched over his plate. “Whatever you say.”

  Truman nodded, staring at a plate of leftover pizza, a half-full carton of milk. Then he closed the refrigerator again. He waited for Charlie to explode, throw his coffee cup or his knock his breakfast on the floor, to do something. Even shouting would loosen up the knot in Truman’s chest, but Charlie just scraped the last of the eggs onto his fork and shoved it in his mouth.

  For a minute, neither of them said anything and then Charlie spoke again. “Hey, did that girl take off then?”

  “Daphne? Yeah.”

  “She was a weird one. What’d she want?”

  “This guy I used to know a while back, she’s his sister. She just wanted to know if I’d seen him.”

  He didn’t mention the hospital. He didn’t mention last winter, but the temperature in the kitchen seemed to change anyway. Truman stood at the end of the table and waited for Charlie to notice, but Charlie only put his plate in the sink and started out of the room without looking at him.

  “Unless you need something,” he said on his way out, “I’m taking a shower and going to bed.”

  Truman nodded, making fists so that his nails dug into his palms. He watched Charlie walk away down the hall to the bathroom, wishing that Charlie would punish him or hug him or slap him or do something to show that he’d noticed Truman was gone. Charlie shut the bathroom door and the apartment was suddenly so quiet that it seemed to hum. Then the shower came on and the pipes clanked and Truman breathed out.

  He opened the refrigerator again and took out a half-gallon of Gatorade. He drank from the bottle in long gulps, stopping when he started to feel sick. Then he sat down at the table and rested his head on his arms.

  Before Truman’s mother died, Charlie had been different. He’d laughed all the time, slinging an arm around Truman or tousling his hair. They’d gone places together sometimes, ballgames or movies. Charlie had been more like a father. But that wasn’t the whole truth. Before his mother died, they’d both been different. Even afterward, Charlie had done okay, for a little while at least. It was the other thing—the razor and the bathtub and the hospital. Then everything had changed.

  Truman remembe
red the months between his mother and the other thing like one long, unbroken dream. In bed at night, he would curl around himself and the missing was so desolate and raw it was like a physical pain. Sometimes it was three in the morning before he slept. Sometimes the sun was already a glowing slice of orange on the horizon. Alcohol helped. He mixed it with things, fruit punch or strawberry Crush or cherry Kool-Aid. They all tasted like cough medicine.

  Charlie kept a stash of decent bourbon in the cupboard over the refrigerator, but he hardly ever drank it. Truman helped himself, topping the bottles off with water until what was left was barely even the right color anymore. There were parties on the weekends, and if Truman was desperate, Dio could usually be counted on to scrounge something up. That was the thing about being bereaved. People were overcome with sympathy. They did things for you without even considering whether or not it was the right thing to do.

  At school, the teachers still called on him, but he’d stopped trying to answer the questions about colonialism or factors. Their voices came from far away and all the assignments seemed pointless and much too hard. The knot in his throat that kept him from talking didn’t feel like bitterness or defiance. It was just another part of the sensation that everything in the world was moving except him. Even breathing had begun to make him feel very tired.

  In January, he’d had the idea for the first time.

  By February, it had become a plan.

  The bathtub seemed the best way, but there was something awful about being found naked. He’d stripped to his undershirt, left his jeans on. He spread towels on the floor around the tub, in case they made a mess lifting his body. He didn’t want to make the whole thing any harder on Charlie than he had to.

  Blood loss was both terrifying and gentle. The overhead light began to shimmer and the lines of the room seemed to run together. Truman had lain back in the bright bathtub water and closed his eyes. And that was where Charlie found him, barely twenty minutes later, but already Truman’s heart was slowing down, a weak butterfly in his chest, fluttering, faltering, on its way to stopping.

  The bathroom door was flimsy and narrow. It closed with a sliding bolt and when it didn’t open, Charlie had kicked the panel below the knob until the bolt gave way and the screws peeled out of the drywall.

  Truman didn’t remember the noise the door made when it banged against the wall. He didn’t remember Charlie dragging him out of the bathtub, squeezing Truman’s wrists so hard that later, there were bruises. The bathroom was awash and they were both pink with bloody water.

  He remembered the ceiling light, and his dream of the black-haired girl. Everything else only fell into place later, when he lay in a dark hospital room, piecing together what had saved him.

  Alexa had been on her way out to buy cereal. She’d heard Charlie yelling, calling for someone to help and had gone right back into her apartment and dialed 9-1-1. Truman had always wondered about that. Wondered what made her go straight for the phone, how she’d known to make the call instead of waking up her mother or running downstairs to get the super, but he’d never asked her about it. It was just one more link in the dubious chain of events that had saved his life.

  All the tiny, lucky things.

  MORNING

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  When I come out of Truman’s apartment building, Moloch is standing on the steps. His back is to me and his hands are in his pockets. He’s looking out over the snowy neighborhood like it offends him.

  “Are you following me?” I say, adjusting my grip on my bag. “Because you’re wasting your time. I’m not giving Truman back.”

  Moloch combs his fingers through his hair and turns to face me. I’m expecting another one of his sly, aggravating smiles, but his expression is strained. In the daylight, he looks younger and more uncertain than he did last night. “Look, I just figured someone had better warn you. Things have gotten kind of ugly.”

  I survey the empty street, the parking lot of the Avalon apartment complex. Everything is exactly as it was yesterday, only whiter. “I think the snow looks nice.”

  That makes him laugh, but only in the harshest, shortest sense, and then he stops. “I’m not talking about the weather. You just—you can’t go wandering around like this.”

  “I’m not wandering,” I say. “I’m being thorough. Truman was the last-known person to see my brother.”

  Moloch takes a deep breath, blowing the air between his jagged teeth. “And how are you getting on with that?”

  “Not well. He told me to leave. To get out of his room, actually.”

  “Then thank the devil for small mercies. Honestly, that kid is a piece of work all on his own. He doesn’t need you hanging around.”

  I look away, glancing up at Truman’s bedroom window. It regards me blankly, curtainless and covered in smudges. “I think he’ll die if I leave him alone.”

  I expect Moloch to scoff at that, but he just shrugs. “More to the point then, you don’t need him.” Then he shoves his hands in his pockets and looks down at me. “I think you should get out of Chicago.”

  “What are you talking about? I can’t leave now—not until I find Obie.”

  “Daphne, you have to listen to me.” Moloch’s voice is low. Urgent. “A collection crew found one of you girls frozen and bloodless a block from the Garfield Street L this morning. It was a bad scene. I’m skipping town tonight, and so should you.”

  I stand numbly on the steps, shaking my head. “How could something like that happen? Lilith didn’t say anything about it last night. She showed me a door I have to find. Is there any way you can help me look for it?”

  Moloch’s eyes shift toward the street and then back to me. “If you think I’m hanging around here, you’re crazy. I’ve got one more local job tonight, and then I’m getting out of town. If you need sage advice or rapier wit before then, catch me over on the West Side.” He gestures in the direction of the train. “Otherwise, I’m good as gone and you should be, too.”

  “West side of what?”

  For a moment, he just stares at me. Then he produces a pad of yellow sticky notes and pen. He scribbles something on the top note, then peels it off and sticks it to my lapel. “There’s a decent club in North Lawndale after dark. If you need me, there’s the address. Now tell me you’re going to get out of here.”

  I pluck the paper off my coat and shake my head. “I can’t, not until I find Obie’s apartment and search it.”

  Moloch sighs. Then he takes the note back and scrawls another address. “Look, that’s for a hotel. This way, at least I know that you’ve got a place to stay.” He shoves the note into my hand, looking sober. “Just, please be careful.”

  And he turns without another word and walks away down Sebastian Street.

  The hotel on Moloch’s list is to the north, a tall, cadaverous building called the Arlington.

  The woman at the front desk gives me a key, which opens the door to a filthy little room on the sixth floor. There’s a narrow bed, a tiny bathroom, threadbare curtains squirming with a pattern of roses. The wallpaper is peeling down in strips.

  In the bathroom, there’s a cramped shower stall and a pair of scratchy towels. I’m forced to admit that in the wake of my first day on Earth, I don’t smell very good. I undo the top buttons of my dress with some difficulty and yank it over my head.

  When I step into the shower, the water is delightful and shocking, falling over me in a warm cascade. It soaks my hair and when the spray hits my scalp it feels like tiny, glorious points of light. I touch a little bar of soap sitting on the edge of the tub. Its wrapper is lying crumpled on the linoleum, and the soap slides under my fingers, coating them in a slippery film.

  I hold the soap and run it over my skin, touching it to my arms, my ribs, my collarbone, my face. It smells strongly like something I don’t recognize. When I hold it close to breathe the smell, there is a tingling feeling in my nose and the back of my throat. The soap makes bubbles on my skin, and the shower washes them aw
ay, the suds streaming down my legs and ankles until they gather at my feet and disappear. At home, everything was clean and I never had to think about it. Here, clean is something you have to work at.

  When I turn the knob, the spray above me shuts off.

  There’s a low, sucking gurgle as the last of the water runs down the drain. Then I’m just standing there, dripping wet and suddenly very cold.

  By the time I change into my dress, I’m shivering a little. I go out into the main room to find my sweater. A battered television sits forlornly on the dresser, bolted in place. The silhouette reflected in its dark surface is not my own.

  “What are you doing here?” my mother says, her voice brittle. There’s a glare on the screen and I can’t make out her features. “You need to come home.”

  I stand frozen in the middle of the room, hands half-raised to dry my hair with the towel. “But I’m still looking for Obie. Last night you said we had to find Estella and the door.”

  “That was last night. The city isn’t safe anymore.”

  “I know. Moloch told me. He said I shouldn’t go wandering around, and I’m not—I’m being careful, but I can’t leave yet.”

  “Of course you can.” Her tone is absolutely frigid. “This isn’t some kind of game.”

  “I can’t just forget about Obie,” I say to the dark television. “And you can’t just change your mind!”

  My voice sounds plaintive and much too loud, but I don’t care. Yesterday, she showed me the door, she gave me Estella. We were conspirators. We had a mission. Now, she’s telling me to walk away, to give up on my brother, and slink back to Pandemonium like nothing happened.

  “What was I thinking, sending a child?” she says. “This was a terrible idea.”

  I don’t tell her that I’m not a child. I don’t tell her that sometimes, things worth doing involve risk. “If you won’t help me, I’ll find the door without you. And if I can’t figure it out myself, maybe Truman knows what Estella is.”