Mind the Gap by Christopher Golden

thought. The boxes and bottle in her pockets felt heavier than ever, begging to attract attention even though they could not be seen. She was at least a mile from the chemist and there was no chance she’d be caught, but the sky was suddenly way too wide, the buildings too tall, and the people too likely to stop, turn to her, and say,
It’s her, there she is, take her!
    She did not want to think about who would respond to such a call.
    “Jazz?” Cadge said.
    She jumped a little, then sighed. Jazz grabbed his shoulder and pulled him close, enjoying the contact as they hugged.
    “Hey,” he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice.
    “Bit spooked,” she said.
    “You were late, so I started walking down this way.” He pulled away and looked into her eyes, but he did not spook her like Stevie. She could only find benevolence in Cadge. “I was getting worried.”
    I should mention Stevie,
Jazz thought.
There’s no reason not to, is there?
But she simply shrugged and looked around, glancing up at the clear blue sky.
    “Got you this.” He handed her a small box, blushing, turning away as she held out her hand and accepted whatever the gift might be.
    It was a pink box with gold lettering:
Beautiful.
    “Said you liked it,” he said.
    Jazz felt tears threatening, but she held them back. She nodded, unable to speak for a few seconds, and the sharp reality of the box’s weight and corners pinned her to the world. “Thanks,” she said at last, and it came out husky and gruff.
    Cadge nodded, but he could not keep the smile from his face.
    “Really,” Jazz said. She looked at the box again and remembered what these boxes had looked like on her mum’s dressing table, the way she’d always kept the perfume inside instead of disposing with the box and just keeping the bottle, the way she had liked the fact that however empty the bottle might be, the box always looked new. “Really, Cadge, thanks.”
    He nodded, face flushed. “Pleasure,” he said. “Now it’s time to go. We’re not far from Oxford Circus here. And Harry’ll be waiting for us when we go down.”
    “Harry?”
    “Told me he’d meet us. He does that sometimes, especially with someone new.”
    “Why?”
    Cadge shrugged but looked away. “Sometimes Harry likes to talk in private.”
    He would not be drawn out any more, so Jazz followed Cadge along the bustling streets and into Oxford Circus Tube station. As the shadows cooled around her, she felt a calm sense of relief closing in with them.

“Do you trust me?”
    “Of course I do.”
    “Good. That’s good. But why?”
    “Because you’re my mother, of course.” Jazz didn’t like the way her mum’s conversation was going this morning. They’d started out commenting on the architecture of Oxford Street, but now they sat in the back corner of a coffee shop and her mother had embarked on one of her lectures. At least Jazz thought it was likely to turn into a lecture. It had that feel: a difficult question, followed by a few moments of silence, and soon would come her mother’s sad expression and alert eyes as she started to speak of hidden dangers, covert groups, and the risks of trying to live a normal life.
Life for us can never be normal,
she’d said during one of these discussions a couple of years ago, and Jazz had never forgotten that. Out of all the advice her mother had given her, it was this statement that stuck most in her mind. Sometimes she hated her mum for telling her that. Surely such harsh truths were something a girl should find out on her own?
    “That’s not good enough reason to trust me,” her mother said. “Lots of kids trust their parents and are inevitably betrayed by them. It’s a word bandied around too readily nowadays, like
love,
and
fate,
and
hate
. But it’s a precious thing. Analyze your trust, Jazz. Study it. Does it have rough edges, or is it thoughtless and complete? Because nature abhors sharp edges, so something with them can’t be