Read Online The Space Between by Brenna Yovanoff - Free Book Online Page A

there’s the ghost of something else, something like emptiness. I find myself clenching my teeth and wonder if this is what people mean when they talk about feeling hungry.
    I walk faster, searching the storefronts for a place that serves food. Halfway down the block I find a small shop with a neon sign in the shape of a sandwich. When I pull the door open, a bell rings, far off and tinkling. Inside, the shop is warm. It smells sublime and after a few deep breaths, the ache isn’t as bad anymore.
    The boy behind the counter has dark, golden-hued skin and is wearing transparent plastic gloves on both hands. I think they must be to keep him clean from the world.
    I approach and he smiles. His teeth are very white.
    “I’d like the best thing you have to eat, please,” I say.
    He smiles wider, and the wideness makes dimples at the corner of his mouth. “Best? Isn’t that different for everybody?”
    I shrug. “I don’t know. What do you like best?”
    “On a sandwich? I like something with capicola and salami, peppers, mozzarella, maybe vinegar, salt and pepper. Some flavor, you know.”
    His accent is different from mine, dusky and lilting, and at first I think he’s saying Salome, who once asked her father for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. I repeat the word, trying to pronounce like he does. “Salami, what’s it like?”
    He passes a small piece of marbled-looking meat over the glass countertop, holding it between his plastic-gloved fingers. “Try it and see.”
    When I reach to take it though, he stops and pulls his hand back. “ Whoa —you need to go wash your hands.” He grins wide, shaking his head. “They’re filthy !”
    I study my palms, which are black, greasy from touching the pavement.
    “Go,” he says again, waving me past the counter and down a short hall to the bathroom.
    Inside, the floor is tile, smeared with footprints. There are a pair of cubicles with toilets against one wall and two chipped porcelain sinks with a long mirror above them along the other.
    I regard my reflection with interest, trying to see the girl I am on Earth. The girl someone thought it would be a good idea to rob. Of course he did—of course he thought it would be so easy to take something from me. I still look like the silly princess at her vanity, hair long, face pristine. Hands, dirty.
    I run them under the faucet, soaping and scrubbing until the grime sloughs off down the drain. Then I open my bag.
    The razor is on top, nestled in with the maps and the clothes. I pick it up and unfold the blade. I don’t cut myself, even though I keep thinking about it, how it might be good to know what my blood will do. How maybe I should have let the man under the bridge try it, because then at least I’d know what my protection is. I examine the edge of the blade and consider finding out.
    But I’m here in the bathroom of a restaurant and some of the protections are dramatic enough to damage the floor, or possibly destroy whole buildings. The boy outside seems friendly and I don’t want to do anything that might vandalize his shop.
    Instead, I adjust my grip and grab a handful of my hair. Standing on top of my bag, I lean over the sink until my nose almost touches the glass. My reflection saws at her hair, and in my hands, I feel it drop away. The cut ends tickle and scratch against my neck and already I feel wild and a little frightening, the kind of girl no one would ever think to steal from.
    When my mother speaks, it’s in a fierce whisper and directly into my ear. “Daphne.”
    Her reflection stares out at me from just over my shoulder and the sight of her startles me so badly that I almost lose my footing on the bag.
    The razor slips from my hand, landing in the sink, but when I whirl around to face her, no one’s behind me. I turn back to her reflection, feeling breathless. “What are you doing here?”
    It’s a stupid question, though. I should have been expecting her to find me—it’s what she