Read Thin Space for Free Online

make fun of me.” She twirls a droopy fry in her fingers. “You have an accent too, you know.”
    “I—right, I guess it would sound like—so you’re not used to the way—” I close my mouth. What the hell am I even trying to say? I puncture my orange with my thumb, gouge a line through the skin. Why did I think this was going to be easy again? I clear my throat. “I’m not making fun of you.”
    She looks down at her tray. “You’re a junior,” she says.
    “Uh. Yeah.”
    “Like my brother.” She twists her head, angles her chin in the direction of the sports tables. “Sometimes Sam’s kind ofobnoxious. He gets like that around me . . . and my friends.” She picks up another fry and taps it in a plop of ketchup. She’s not looking at me, and I’m wondering where this conversation is going. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” she says.
    Okay, that’s not where I thought this was going. The orange wedge in my mouth is a wet lump. I force myself to swallow it. “I had a brother. Twin brother, actually. He died. August. A few weeks before school started.” I realize that I have not said these words to anyone before this moment.
    Before I can stop myself, I’m flashing back. My white knuckles on the wheel. His skull thunking against the windshield. The glass shattering. How one side of his face blackened with blood and one eye—
    “I’m sorry,” Maddie is saying.
    I must have closed my eyes. I blink them open. An orange slice is pulp in my fist. Focus, I tell myself. Focus! “Yeah, so I don’t want to get into it.”
    “No. Right,” she drawls.
    I roll my organic cookie on the table. I can’t eat it. It tastes like cardboard. Say something! “Sam, your brother. He’s obnoxious you said?”
    She rolls her eyes. “I’m his baby sister, you know? He doesn’t like to see me as a girl.”
    “What’s he like to see you as?”
    She laughs, and I can’t help cracking a smile.
    “I mean he’s weird about me being around boys, like I’m ten instead of fifteen. You know what I mean?”
    “Yeah,” I say, like I do.
    “Anyway, I’m glad we moved. Stuff was cruddy back in Nashville.” She twists her head again, frowns. “My mom’s job got transferred, and she was like, ‘Good.’ She wanted a change. I don’t know. Fresh start after the divorce.”
    “Sorry,” I say.
    “No big deal. It was a stepfather. She’s been married three times. Long story.”
    “Okay.” Her cheeks are killing me, how red they are. I yank a hand through my hair. It’s getting long, keeps hanging over my ears, pressing on my neck. God, it’s like how my brother used to keep his.
    “—did some research online, looking for a nice suburb. And she found Andover close to the city and the schools are supposed to be so great.”
    “Yeah, great.” I’m having a hard time following this conversation. Divorces? Suburbs? What are we talking about? And she’s still going on.
    “Sam was bummed about moving. But I was thinking, hey, maybe a fresh start for me too. Anyway, he’s okay about it now and he’s got a bunch of friends already. Like these guys from the lacrosse team were Facebooking him even before we moved, and he’s got this carpool with them, and he said I could be in it too, but I want to do this for myself, you know. Make my own way.”
    “Right. Make your own way.” I’m hardly listening anymore. I’ve been tapping my cookie against the table. There’s only a chunk left. The rest is crumbs. “Your house,” I say. I’m not sure this is the best tactic, but I don’t care. “You settling in? Unpacking?”
    She shrugs. “My room’s mostly unpacked.”
    I remember last night, looking at the shadow in the window. “Which room is yours?”
    “The one in the back corner with the two windows.”
    “That was Mrs. Hansel’s room.” So it was Maddie I saw last night. Not that it matters. Who the hell cares if I can see her room from my house?
    “I don’t really like it. It’s