The Spaces Between Us Read online

  “Some guy in a gold Corvette’s about to go down your driveway.”

  “So?”

  “I saw it down in town across from the school before we got on the bus.”

  “A ’Vette?” Prof asks. “I used to have one of those. Went like the devil, used to get me in trouble.” He laughs.

  “Do you know him, then,” I demand, “that guy?”

  Grimshaw looks at me and smiles. “Why, do you like him?”

  “No, I’m just wondering who it is.”

  “He’s too old for you. Leave him alone.”

  “That’s not why I was asking.”

  “We’ll find somebody for you,” she says. “Don’t worry.”

  “That’s not why I was asking,” I repeat. I go back behind my book.

  “You listen to your friend, now,” Prof says to me. “She’s trying to take care of you. She’s looking out for you.”

  “Who do you think would be good for Serena?” Grimshaw asks.

  “When the heart is ready, the love will come,” he says.

  “Is that really how it works?” she asks. “I guess my heart’s never been ready.”

  “There’s no rush,” says Prof. “No rush at all. That’s what the rest of your life is for.”

  * * *

  The story of Grimshaw and me started in sixth grade. I had skipped a grade, so everybody hated me, this little kid coming into their class who knew all the answers. At the same time, Grimshaw failed sixth grade, so nobody had any use for her, either, and we found each other at the bottom of the social food chain. In sixth grade, Grimshaw looked kind of like a dirty shoelace. She was skinny and grimy and had big mats in the back of her hair. One distinguishing characteristic of the Grimshaws is they all have olive skin and dark hair, but their eyelashes are white—long, stiff, and white. It’s a genetic thing, she told me, from her father, who died. So at school, they started calling Grimshaw Pig-Eye, and made a game of it, like cooties. During lunch they would have to touch somebody else to get rid of it, and it would go all the way through the cafeteria—Pig-Eye, Pig-Eye, pass it on. It would go up one table and down the next, only it always skipped me, because I didn’t exist. One day, while Grimshaw sat across from me, calmly chewing on her welfare lunch, and the day’s game of Pig-Eye raged around us, I felt her eyes on me. I concentrated on my sandwich, but every time I looked up, there was her gaze—not friendly, not unfriendly, just steady and curious. Even though I was lonely, I didn’t want any attention from her. It’s a good thing I wasn’t included in the Pig-Eye game, because I probably would have played along. If I had, we never would have been friends. People don’t know this, but the Grimshaws have a lot of pride.

  Even then, when she was little and dirty, boys were attracted to her. In seventh grade, my mother bought her some mascara, and that took care of the white eyelashes. Since then, she’s always had a boyfriend, usually somebody else’s, hence the hostility we have always enjoyed from every female in Colchis. Her relationships never last long: either they get serious and she gets bored with them, or they don’t get serious and she gets bored with them, and then she throws them back like a used fish. By the time we started high school, she had this special Melody Grimshaw allure, this way of moving and looking at guys and smiling at them in a way that makes them think she is promising something, which might be why she thinks she could be a good stripper. This is a girl in search of an audience.

  As for me, Serena Velasco, aside from being taller than average and hated for my brilliance by students and teachers alike, there’s nothing all that special about me. I’m your basic middle-class American teenager, bored and disgusted by my surroundings. I’m a classic left-brained, linear learner, which means I can memorize long lists of unrelated and irrelevant facts and regurgitate them with ease but am challenged by tying my shoes, dancing, reading maps, telling time, and being nice to people. Since high school started, I have kept my hair dyed some patchy, hybrid-industrial color. I wear combat boots, and have a bad attitude but very good posture. Although some people say I would be pretty if I ever smiled, Grimshaw is my idea of beauty, and I don’t look one little thing like Grimshaw. I never wear makeup. Most adults think I do drugs. If they’d rather think that than consider that my critique of the moronic society they’ve created might be based on hard evidence, that’s fine with me.

  I find that adults are very jaded these days. No combination of hair color, clothes, body piercing, or tattoos can shock them. About the only thing that can still guarantee a reaction in this factory town is communism. So I wear a Red Army cap every day, with the red star. I think it belonged to my father, who has been dead now a long time, at least I found it at his house in Maine, where I have to go every summer for an obligatory visit with my grandmother. I probably overdo it with the communist thing, but otherwise I’m not sure anyone would know I exist.

  * * *

  The development where my house is is at the very end of the bus route. As we turn onto our road, the bus shudders and clanks climbing the last hill. We’re way up in the country now, and the air has cooled down and feels fresh, coming in through the open windows of the bus. As we approach the gates of the development where I live, what should be coming down the road but the same gold Corvette. The bus flashes its lights, and the Corvette slows down and stops, and waits.

  “Look, there it is again.”

  “Like a bad penny,” comments Prof. And it does look like a penny, a bright shiny new penny, even though it’s an older model car, with curving lines. When the school bus stops to let us off, we walk in front of the Corvette. I have the impression of a really big guy squeezed into a space that’s too small for him. Grimshaw walks in front of the car without looking at him. Something about the way she lifts her chin and ignores him makes me feel that she knows exactly who he is and why he’s here. But I follow along behind her with her suitcase and we nod at each other briefly, this big guy in his low car. Out the window Prof wishes us a great summer and tells us it’ll be September before we know it. I walk backward and wave at him, but Grimshaw just smiles to herself, like she knows the answer to questions the rest of us are too dumb to ask.

  two

  “WE’LL NEVER KNOW IF COMMUNISM is a good idea until we try it,” the principal of Colchis High intones. Two days into my summer vacation, and I’m back at the high school listening to her read from my final exam essay. “The totalitarian state of the USSR was just a form of capitalism,” she continues, “and government functionaries acted as owners.” After that, she reads silently for a minute and then skips to my analysis of the failure of twentieth century communism, which is, objectively speaking, brilliant. “If you went to bake a chocolate cake,” she reads, “and then you used no chocolate, no sugar, no butter, no flour, and no eggs, but cooked it and forced everyone to eat it anyway, and the sicker they got, the better they were supposed to say they felt, and you still insisted it was chocolate cake, you should not be surprised if your enemies outlaw chocolate cake and decree that from now on, anyone who tries to make or eat or know anything about chocolate cake will be summarily bombed.” At that point, the principal sighs, shakes her head, and scans the next two pages. On the last page, next to a giant red F, I can see that Mr. C. made a little drawing of a pile of steaming manure with a pitchfork stuck in it.

  She turns the booklet over and sees the note I wrote. “Dear Mr. C.,” she reads out loud. “You’ll notice I only wrote on one essay question instead of three. However, the total number of word-inches far exceeds the requirement, and it should be obvious that when it comes to Western Civilization, I do know what I’m talking about, especially by the standards of Foundations. Have a good summer. Sincerely, Serena Velasco.”

  Then she sees Irony Man. On the back of the last page of the exam, before I knew I would need the extra space for my essay, I drew a panel of him rescuing my Western Civ grade. I meant to erase him, but I ran out of time. He came out looking a little too much like Mr. C. in a cape and tights.

  The
principal looks up at me. She is deathly pale and gazing at me through slitted eyes, as if already planning the humiliation and dismemberment she will put me through as soon as it’s legal, which will be soon.

  The principal is my mother.

  Nobody knows that yet, because she hasn’t even been principal for two months. She was hired from a different district. We have different last names. She’s Mrs. Pentz. Today, Mrs. Pentz is wearing a red linen pantsuit, which my sister Allegra picked out for her. Everyone who failed the Western Civ final is crammed in Mrs. Pentz’s office—me, Grimshaw, and those two vicious cheerleaders, Angel Ciaramitaro and Claudette Mizerak, co-captains of next year’s varsity squad. Angel and Claudette basically run the school. Of course, Mr. C. is there, too.

  “So…” Mrs. Pentz begins. She turns to Mr. C. “Are you saying this essay was—”

  “Plagiarized!” Mr. C. shouts. “That is not original thinking!”

  “Okay,” my mom says, tiptoeing through the minefield. “Can you … prove it?”

  Boom. She hits the landmine.

  Mr. C. stands up. “I have been teaching in this school for over three decades!” he yells. “I have read the essays of literally thousands of sixteen-year-olds. I know how they think!” He glares at me. “Even the so-called smart ones!”

  My mom’s face has gone very white, except for two red spots about the size of a quarter on each cheek. Her five children know those spots. They are warning signs. She’s still breathing carefully. I’m not sure if she’s angrier at me or Mr. C.

  She opens her mouth to say something. But Mr. C. isn’t done. “Why doesn’t somebody call this girl’s bluff?” he shouts. “She coasts along, acting like she’s so much smarter than everybody else, no-o-o, she doesn’t have to answer the essay question, she’s too smart. She can write about whatever she wants! And I’m supposed to feel honored that she took the time to lecture me on everything I don’t understand about history?” Mr. C.’s rant ends with a little shriek of indignation. His face has gotten bright red. He has to pause and gather himself so he doesn’t have a stroke. “Why don’t they put her in real classes? Let her take physics and calculus. Let her take AP, let’s see if she’s as smart as the kids who actually study.”

  “With Ds in Foundations,” my mother points out, “we can’t very well put her in Honors.”

  “She’s playing a game, is all I’m saying,” says Mr. C. “And she better make sure she doesn’t lose.”

  “I think you make a good point,” my mother says quietly. “How about the others?”

  “Equally insulting!” Mr. C. snatches up Grimshaw’s exam and skims it across my mother’s desk. She picks it up and holds it at the end of her arm.

  “The multiple choice looks okay,” she says. Mr. C. snorts. The cheerleaders snicker together. My mother looks at them severely over the top of her glasses. She flips to the essays. She looks at them quickly, then looks at Grimshaw and takes off her glasses until the snickers subside. Grimshaw twists her fingers together in her lap and starts scratching the nail polish off one thumbnail. Grimshaw adores my mother.

  “Oh, Melody,” my mother says.

  “Melody” looks mortified. “I never do good on essays,” she mumbles. “I don’t know how to begin.”

  “But to not even try…” my mother pleads. “To answer an essay question with—what are these, lyrics from rock and roll?”

  “I’m sorry,” Grimshaw whispers.

  “This is just mockery,” she continues. “This is the kind of thing Serena would do.”

  Grimshaw looks at me sideways. “I know,” she whispers. “I just couldn’t focus.”

  “They’re willing to give you the benefit of the doubt here,” Mrs. Pentz lectures her. “But you have to write something, anything at all, to prove … that you can do it! That you want to do it!” Grimshaw stops scratching at her nail polish and stares at the floor.

  The principal sighs and shakes her head. “Okay. Next.” She picks up the cheerleaders’ exams.

  Claudette Mizerak is really rich. She lives pretty close to Grimshaw and me, but she’s never ridden the school bus in her life. Her father has the biggest dairy farm in the Valley, with a ten-thousand-dollar-a-month interest payment on his debt. Angel Ciaramitaro lives in a trailer park across the road from Claudette. Angel’s dad was Mizerak’s farm manager until he was automated out of a job. I know these details because my stepfather bought one of his cornfields to build the development we live in.

  My mom looks down at their tests. “It looks like the two of you just plain failed.”

  “I’m ADD,” says Claudette.

  “Did you study?” my mom asks.

  “Yes,” Claudette says.

  “No,” Angel says.

  “Did you study together?” she asks.

  “No,” Claudette says.

  “Yes,” Angel says.

  “It looks,” my mother says, tracing down each of their tests with a finger on each one, “as though your answers are both wrong and identical. That makes me wonder if—”

  “Redundant!” interrupts Mr. C., holding up his hand. “They would have failed anyway. So spare us the paperwork.”

  “There is just so much else going on,” Claudette explodes.

  “We’re very busy,” says Angel.

  “I can understand that,” says my mother. “But—”

  “We have so many responsibilities,” Claudette continues. “We’re co-captains for football and basketball spirit squads. And we’re on student council and we single-handedly put the prom on this year because the junior class has negative school spirit.” Here she stops to glare at me and Grimshaw. “Because some people never show up for anything.”

  “So?” I rise to the bait. “What’s to show up for?”

  “There is such a thing called pride,” Angel says, studying her nails without looking at me.

  “What’s to be proud of?” I ask. “I don’t see it.”

  “That reflects on you,” says Claudette.

  “Even so—” Mom interjects.

  Claudette turns her attention back to my mother. “And we teach Sunday school,” she finishes triumphantly.

  “Except I don’t teach Sunday school,” Angel says, holding up her hand. “Just saying.”

  “Where’s Junior Davis?” Mr. C. interrupts. “Wasn’t he supposed to be here, too?”

  “Well, he did fail the exam,” says my mother. “But clearly other things are taking precedence for him today.”

  “He has a training schedule,” Claudette says, using her indignant little head-wag. “He’s going to a scouting camp, which is a pretty big deal, like, for his future?”

  “He’s the only chance Colchis has at winning any football games next year,” Angel points out. “Like, at all.”

  “He can’t play next year if he fails a class,” I tell her. “It’s policy. Read the handbook.” The handbook is on my mother’s desk, covered in gold and purple paper. “Here.”

  My mother stands up and takes the handbook away from me. “I will decide about Junior,” she says. “The four of you can wait outside while Mr. C. and I talk this over.”

  We file out past Mrs. Kmiec, the principal’s secretary. Mrs. Kmiec has been at Colchis High so long that nobody even sees her anymore. She just sits there at that big steel desk of hers, like lichen on a rock. Angel and Claudette repair immediately to the girls’ room, while Grimshaw and I sit like bookends on the losers’ bench outside the principal’s office.

  “Do you think we’ll fail?” Grimshaw whispers.

  “Not a chance,” I tell her. “It’s a pain in the ass for them to fail anyone. That’s what Mr. C. meant when he talked about not wanting to do the paperwork. It’s way easier to pass us. Also, they’re worried about our self-esteem.” I’m hoping Mr. C. hates me enough that he’ll free me from Western Civ with a D. I’m a straight-D student, which keeps me in Foundations-level classes with Grimshaw. I used to take pride in that, like I was beating the system, like there wa
s an art to achieving a D. I thought getting a D required the precision of a Swiss watchmaker—after all, there’s only a five-point spread to aim for, as it hangs over the abyss, but then I look around at the other people who get Ds, and it seems that I got the metaphor wrong, that a D is actually a huge sack that has room for every loser in the school.

  My mother is just the interim principal of Colchis High School. In April, Mr. Van Horton, the real principal, dropped dead of a brain aneurysm while repotting some African violets in this very office. Mr. Van was tall and bald, pink-cheeked and fairly fat, and wore gray suits and walked the halls all day, whistling tunelessly and jingling the change in his pockets. In the back hall of Colchis, there is a big picture window overlooking the football field, and you could find him there sometimes, not whistling, not jingling, just standing tipped back on the worn half-moons of his heels and gazing out at the white lines on the green. If he heard you coming, he’d frown and clear his throat and bark, “Where are you supposed to be?”

  And then, bang, he died, which is how my mom got to be the principal for almost two months. She taught here once before, about seven years ago, but I was still in elementary school. Now that she’s here again, she’s trying to keep me a secret, too. I haven’t exactly made her proud. In addition to the name difference, we don’t look anything alike. Our voices are identical, though, when we answer the phone, a fact I took full advantage of until I got caught skipping school and grounded. She’s going for the permanent job in the fall, but the school board is toying with her, pretending they have long lists of people clamoring to lead Colchis High School into the future. She’s trying to prove her fitness for the job by instituting a regime of high academic standards.

  From inside her office, we can hear Mr. C. yelling about how awful kids are today. There’s no respect for rules, he says, no self-discipline, no manners. “She was right!” we can hear him yell. “There’s no pride in this place anymore. None!”