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

does. I’ve just never seen it from this side of the glass.
    “Have you learned anything yet?” she says, staring out at me with ringing gray eyes. “Do you know what happened to your brother?”
    I shake my head, forcing myself to hold her gaze. “Not yet—I only just got here, but I’m about to go talk to someone who knew him. Have you seen anything in the sundial?”
    “Nothing but a silly girl ruining her hair. You need to hurry.”
    “I will, but I have to eat first,” I whisper, feeling guilty for the way my breath comes faster when I remember the scrap of salami still waiting for me out in the shop, held in the boy’s plastic-covered hand. “I’m on my way, I just have to get a sandwich.”
    Lilith smiles, but it’s chilly and tightlipped. “You can feed yourself on salt and bread and meat. It still won’t be enough. You’d be better served looking for a fix.”
    And then, without any warning, she’s gone. I’m alone in a bathroom, standing in front of a smudged mirror. The sink is full of my hair.
    I brush the loose cuttings off the razor and drop it back in the bag, staring past myself to the place where Lilith appeared, then vanished. It’s strange to hear her talk about the fix the way my sisters do, like it’s necessary. I don’t quite believe it.
    Out on the street, I was nearly desperate, but now the ache has settled down to more of a dull throb and I feel almost calm. Simply breathing the air inside the shop made the hunger recede—at least a little—so there have to be other ways to cure it. If I go back out into the restaurant and buy myself a sandwich, maybe that will be enough to fill the hollow in my chest.
    When I leave the bathroom, the boy is waiting at the counter, still holding my scrap of salami. “What’d you do to your hair?” he asks, eyeing me doubtfully. “You had a whole lot more a minute ago.”
    “Yes, but now my hands are clean.” I reach for the salami and he lets me have it.
    The meat feels greasy, flecked with white, and when I put it in my mouth, it’s full of flavors—sharp, oily, tingling.
    I buy a sandwich with extra salt and some of everything. As he makes it, the boy tells me about meats, the difference between dry-cured and hickory-smoked. Sausages and ham, and how cheese gets made by squeezing water out of milk in a cloth. When I ask him about the gloves, he just laughs and says they’re for hygiene.
    “To keep you clean?”
    “No, to keep all this clean from me.” He wraps my sandwich in white paper and passes it across the counter to me.
    “You’re very kind,” I tell him. “How did you become so kind?”
    He smiles an honest smile for the first time, and the difference is hard to describe but easy to recognize. “It’s my job, you know. Just a job.”
    The way he says it makes me think of Obie, always so preoccupied with his job, but talking about it never made him smile. I can’t say for certain, but I don’t think I’d mind a position in the Department of Good Works. At least it would mean knowing that I wasn’t going to turn out like my sisters.
    Now, I take my sandwich, counting out dollars for the boy behind the counter. “You do your job well,” I tell him because it seems like something people ought to hear, and I don’t remember anyone ever telling Obie that, even though it’s true.
    “Nah,” the boy says, shaking his head, grinning like I’m the strangest thing he’s ever seen. “You ain’t from here.” It’s not a question.
    “No,” I tell him, handing him my money. “I’m not.”

SEBASTIAN STREET
    CHAPTER EIGHT
    I n my bag, I have a folder containing the address of Truman Connor Flynn. I have a memory of him—his fierce, anguished eyes, his hand fumbling for mine. How wholly shocking it was when he touched me, and how real. The memory is bright, but strangely transparent, like it’s already starting to fade. I wonder if I’ll even know him when I see him again.
    I go four more blocks before I come to a