The Space Between Us (23 page)

I shook my head. “Did you say girly and Canadian? Seriously?”

“Kidding, but how about
angry
and Canadian, like
The Handmaid’s Tale
?”

“Thanks, but I’m already angry and Canadian enough.”

Finally, he smiled and everything inside me sighed. “So what’s up?” he asked.

“Nothing. This place is dead,” I said, glancing around. The two kids had finished at the computers and were tugging on the woman. She was still trying to browse.

“It’s the chinook. Everyone’s outside.”

He was right. The sidewalks had been packed with people. Crazy people. People without hats. People in shorts.

“Coat?” Ezra held out his hand.

At least he’d assumed I was staying. I wiggled out of the parka and handed it to him.

“You must’ve been roasting out there,” he muttered. “Do we need to have another talk about dressing for the weather?”

“I didn’t
know
it was going to get this warm,” I said. “Yesterday it was minus twenty.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Look at you, speaking Celsius.”

“I’m practically fluent now,” I bragged.

“Really?”

“No. Not even close. I know water boils at a hundred and freezes at zero, and I know that for the purposes of chemistry experiments, room temperature is twenty-five.”

“Impressive.”

“Oh, wait,” I added, “I also know that I start getting really angry when it’s below minus ten.”

“And hypothermic at minus twenty.”

“Is that what it was that day I wandered in here?” I asked. That number actually meant something to me now. The memory was equal parts painful and embarrassing.

“Without a coat.” He shook his head, like it was still just as unbelievable. “And now you know the locals break out the beach wear when it’s five degrees.”

The romance novel woman had appeared at the desk and was piling her books in front of Ezra. Her children were poking each other with pushpins from the corkboard by the door. I watched Ezra as he checked her books out for her and asked nicely for the boys to put the tacks back. He was only a few inches taller than me, but he was thick, muscular. And there was a tightness to his arms, his neck, his shoulders, and a rigidness in his features. I wanted to ask him if his nose had been broken or if it was naturally crooked like that.

Ezra thanked the woman for coming and she left.

“You want to come sit down?” he asked me, already
walking toward the back room. “I usually hang out in the back when nobody’s here.”

I stepped around the edge of the desk, suddenly nervous. It felt nice to be talking to someone. I’d spent the last week wandering through the crowds at school encased in my foreigner bubble and frozen out by Charly. Lunches were silent. The apartment was silent, unless Bree was home, in which case the silence would have been preferable. And Savannah must’ve had a busy week, because she’d only emailed once.

Talking to Ezra was exactly what I wanted to do.

But there was something about the way he was looking at me that made my stomach churn. He looked hungry, and for the first time in forever I felt pretty. Was I imagining it? Maybe I was actually lonely enough to dream up someone wanting me.

I followed him in, glancing at the book he’d shoved beneath the circulation desk.
Amusements in Mathematics.

From there, my eye moved along the progression of framed photographs on the wall. I hadn’t thought I was learning much in my photography class, but I found myself seeing them differently this time. The detail was shocking, forcing me to step in closer to inspect the swirling grain on a cross section of wood, the glisten on the surface of dew.

“Who took these?” I asked, examining a black-and-white close-up. It took me a minute to see what it was:
a petal with a torn edge, wilting and shriveled along the fissure.

“My mom.” Ezra sat down at the swivel chair in front of the cluttered desk.

“She’s a real photographer.”

“Yes.”

“Hmm.” I sank into the love seat. “So what do you usually do when this place is empty?”

“Nothing. Listen to my iPod.”

Liar.
But I knew instinctively not to call him on
Amusements in Mathematics.
“Your mom doesn’t care? You aren’t supposed to be reshelving books or whatever?”

He shrugged. “I do that stuff too. She’s mostly just happy to have me manning the desk.”

“What kind of music do you listen to?” I asked, wishing immediately that I hadn’t. Music was the topic of at least half of Charly and Bree’s conversations. Bree’s band, Charly’s voice, Bree’s new guitar, Charly’s range, Bree’s favorite ballad, Charly’s love for Bree’s favorite ballad.

“Um. Audiobooks, actually.”

“Really? I love to read, but I can’t listen to books,” I said. “My mind wanders.”

“Maybe you’re just listening to the wrong books.” He stood and went over to the kitchenette.

Maybe they had been the wrong books. I’d only ever tried listening to novels assigned for school:
The Scarlet
Letter
and
Call of the Wild
. Both attempts had been complete failures, possibly because I’d been trying to work out at the same time. “What would the right books be?”

Ezra didn’t answer, just handed me a mug. I took a sip before I realized he hadn’t even asked me if I wanted coffee. It was just as disgusting as last time. I took another sip and tried not to make a face. “My sister likes her coffee strong like this,” I said.

He gave me a confused look. “So you have a sister again? I thought you two were dead to each other.”

I fiddled with my birthstone necklace. It was last year’s birthday present from Grandma and Dad, a tiny emerald on a white gold chain. Charly got the same necklace with a ruby for her birthday in July. She’d lost it by August. “Not dead to each other. Just not exactly talking.”

Ezra waited for me to go on, his face revealing nothing.

“This whole . . . pregnancy thing,” I stumbled on. “It’s been hard. She’s different. Everything’s different.” The words felt like betrayal. Talking about Charly’s pregnancy with anyone hadn’t been an option, and as much as I’d wanted to tell Savannah the truth, it was only for the immediate relief. Lying hurt. Telling would relieve some of the pressure.

But I hadn’t wanted anyone to actually know and judge.

“Sometimes different just takes a while to get used to.”

I shook my head. “But things will never be the same. And it seems like she should be able to ruin her own life, but not mine too.” I let go of the emerald. “I miss stuff.”

He stared into his mug. “Your old life.”

“Yeah. My friends and my family and school.” But as I said it, I realized that wasn’t it. I missed Charly. “I keep thinking that I could pick up the phone and end this whole stupid thing. Charly could stay and I could go home. Nobody is going to guess that adorable little Charly Mercer is knocked up, and she doesn’t need me here. She’s got Bree. She won’t even talk to me right now.”

“Seems like it should be the other way around,” he said.

I couldn’t tell him. I’d treated her like garbage. I’d called her a
slut
. She’d deserved it, but that didn’t make it any less ugly. “I don’t know. Collateral damage isn’t supposed to bite back. I bit back. Don’t you ever want to tell your brother to go to hell?”

His eyes filled with shock.

My words echoed around us before silence swallowed them. The seconds slowed. Stopped.

“Not really,” he said finally. “He’s already there.”

What he didn’t say filled the space between us:
You have no right to talk about him. You don’t even know him. You don’t even know me.

Blood rushed to my face. I shouldn’t have come. What was I thinking, baring my self-centered soul to Ezra? His
brother was an addict and a criminal, his mother was suicidal, and he was chained to both. By comparison, I was living a Disney Channel sitcom.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled. I rubbed the raw skin on my thumb where I’d picked at a hangnail. My fingers were covered in them, and half were bleeding. I looked around for an excuse to leave. Maybe I could pretend I’d left a book at school or something.

“It’s fine,” he said.

“I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“It’s fine.”

It wasn’t fine. It couldn’t be unsaid or prettified, so I sat and willed my cheeks to stop burning. “Have you been here all day?” I asked lamely.

“No, I spent the morning throwing boosters.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“We have packs of explosives called boosters that we use to clear the mountain for avalanches. Little bombs.”

“You’re screwing with me.”

He looked at me and grinned. “No.”

The fluttering in my stomach came back. “Seems like bombs would
start
avalanches.”

“That’s the point. We make little avalanches so people don’t start big ones.”

I thought about it for a minute. “But what stops the boosters from setting off big ones?”

He shrugged. “You get pretty good at predicting what the mountain is going to do. And at least when we’re clearing a run, there isn’t anybody on it. We do it before the slopes open and most of the time, like this morning, we’re just blasting away snow that’s built up and getting ready to slide. You look like you don’t believe me.”

“I’m still grappling with the information that you actually ski with explosives.”

“A backpack full. Jealous?”

I had to laugh. This felt good again. “No. But you’ve got a scary glint in your eye. I don’t know if I trust you to be throwing bombs.”

“Oh, we don’t always throw them. Sometimes we use a little cannon to shoot them.”

“But I thought ski patrol was mostly first aid. Pulling people on the stretcher-sled thing.”

“That’s just the part I have to put up with.”

“Isn’t playing Superman every little boy’s dream?”

“No,” he said. “Explosives are. Trust me. And I’d rather save people
before
they hurt themselves. People break their legs on the bunny hill all day long, but if ski patrol wasn’t out there blasting, avalanches would kill a lot more people than they already do.”

Avalanches. Killing people. A fragment of conversation struggled to the surface of my memory. Had we talked about avalanches last time I’d come here? We had.
When my brain was blurry from cold. I closed my eyes and tugged at the memory, and suddenly I saw the way he’d looked, his glassy stare and set jaw, when he’d said it:
I dug out a body.

“A few patrollers died last year in British Columbia,” he said, his voice softer now. “They were throwing boosters, taking a cornice off the back side of Fernie Mountain. They started a few small slides and they figured that was it, so they skied over the fresh powder and that triggered a big one. It took their ski patrol team two hours to dig out the bodies.”

Being swallowed and crushed by snow—when would blinding white turn to pitch-black? “How long does it take to freeze to death?”

“You don’t freeze to death in an avalanche. You suffocate. And that takes anywhere from fifteen to forty-five minutes, depending on injuries and if there’s much of an air pocket around your head.”

Subconsciously, I held my breath. Then stopped. “You can’t dig your way out?”

“No. You’re entombed in ice.”

I shivered and rubbed the raw hangnail again. “I can’t believe you go out there every day knowing all that. I can’t think of a worse way to die.”

“Sure you can,” Ezra said. “Fire would be worse.”

“No, I think I’d rather burn.”

“Spoken like a true preacher’s daughter.”

“He’s a pastor.”

“Sorry. Pastor. You know, they probably aren’t that different. Either way you’re asphyxiating, right? I mean, it isn’t the heat or the cold that kills you.”

“Nice conversation.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I’m not upset.”

For at least a minute, neither of us spoke. The heater whirred. The computer monitor made the softest buzzing sound. I stared into my empty mug, wishing I could be whatever it was Ezra needed.

He broke the silence with a command. “Come here.”

I looked up from my hands. Something about his voice made me feel weak.

He was leaning back in the swivel chair, shiny, dark hair covering one side of his face. He tucked it behind his ear. “I don’t bite.”

“I’m not scared of you,” I heard myself say. I stood up. I wasn’t, but I couldn’t tell what he was thinking either. I walked over to the desk and rested my fingers on its surface to steady myself. I was still a couple of feet from him, but I couldn’t close the distance. “What?”

He leaned forward and grabbed hold of my arm, his fingers sliding up under the sleeve of my sweater. I stared at his hand, feeling the heat from his skin radiate through me. “I’m glad you came today.”

I couldn’t trust my voice. The pressure of his thumb on the inside of my wrist made my whole body ache. Nobody touched me anymore. Not even casually. Not Charly, not Grandma, not Dad. Not Will. When exactly had I become untouchable?

Ezra stood and gently pulled me toward him. I let him. Our bodies met and every inch of mine sang. He felt warm and firm and I wanted to stay like that, not moving, just breathing. It felt like coming home. He paused, looking down at my lips, then leaned over and kissed me.

Everything bad melted away. It was only us, his lips on my lips, his hands on my back then down to my waist, like he could hold me together with just his touch. I was only vaguely aware of being moved backward, the room swirling around me, but then I felt him lower me onto the couch, but rising up too, like I was sinking and floating at the same time. His hands were in my hair and touching my neck and sliding—

Ding.

Ezra was off me before the sound could register in my brain as anything more than noise.

Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.

The service bell. I gasped, panic gripping every muscle in my body. What was I doing? I was practically in public, in a
library
, making out in a back room with the door wide open. I twisted my body around to the open door, but
thankfully, the love seat was too far over to be visible.