The Spaces Between Us by Stacia Tolman

Author:Stacia Tolman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

* * *

Our landline ringing about twenty times into an empty house wakes me up. It’s Angel.

“Oh my God,” she says when I pick up. “Serena. I’m with Claudette. You have to come immediately. No joke. Do you have the car?” I look out the window. About three inches of snow have accumulated on the ground. From the fresh tire tracks on the driveway, I know Scot’s gone. He must have gone to church.

“No.”

“Well, you have to run, then. Melody, too. We need both of you.”

“What ha—”

“Just RUN!” she says, and hangs up.

I look at the clock. It’s almost ten. I shake Grimshaw, but she doesn’t move. “Grimshaw—”

“Leave me alone.” She sounds awake and stone cold sober. I keep shaking her.

“Grimshaw—it’s—”

She sits up and looks around her in disgust. “How did I get here?” she asks, like she’s never seen my bedroom before in her life.

“It’s some emergency at Mizerak’s,” I tell her. “Angel called.”

“Were you the one who pushed him in the pool last night?”

“What? No! He tripped and fell in.” But my voice is very high, the way it gets when I’m guilty of something. Was I the one who pushed him in? What do I care, anyway—if she wants that clumsy idiot and his loser car, that’s not my problem.

“I’m going to Mizerak’s,” I hiss at her. “And you better come, too, or you are shit for a friend. Not to me. To her.” I grab my coat and run out into a gray morning. It’s not that cold, and I run with my jacket open. Crosslots, the Mizeraks’ barns are only two pastures and a cornfield away from Versailles, but they’re big fields. The snow is wet and slushy and splashes with every step. I run across corn stubble, climb a fence, dodge semifrozen cow flops, and climb another fence. When I can see the tops of the big blue Harvestore silos, I start to hear the Mizeraks’ cows. I stop and listen. I’m not a farmer, but even I can hear an urgency to their mooing, like they know something’s wrong.

“Serena!” Angel is waving to me from the barn doorway. “We have to milk the cows!” she shouts. “The bulk tank comes at two o’clock!”

The shrubbery in front of Rack’s house is completely wrecked. Beer bottles are everywhere. “This is a disaster.”

“No, it’s not,” she says. “It’s a mess, not a disaster. Not getting the cows milked, that’s a disaster.”

“Where’s—”

“She won’t get up. I don’t know what’s wrong with her. She can’t stop crying. She tries to walk and then she collapses, crying.”

“Junior.”

“Well, yeah. Obviously.”

“Was she drunk?”

“No. She went to bed last night.” I follow her into the barn. “What about Melody?” she asks over her shoulder. “I thought she went to your house. We need her.”

I look up at the hill. No Grimshaw. I follow Angel into the milking parlor, where she puts a rubber apron over my head and shows me what to do. We’re down in the pit, and the cows are on a concrete platform raised about three feet.

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