The Space Between by Brenna Yovanoff

her hair and reached for his arm. Her touch was electrifying.
    It had to be a dream, because the light coming from the florescent tube above the sink was too blue and he couldn’t feel his hands and girls this pretty and this pale might exist in some sort of altered reality but they did not appear in Dio’s bathroom in real life.
    Then she yanked hard on his wrist and he lurched forward and considered the possibility that she might exist after all.
    She led him out of the bathroom and toward the front of the house. In the living room, the crowd was thicker, swarming around him. The air felt sweaty and there was too much noise.
    Suddenly Claire was right next to him, clutching at his arm. “Truman!”
    Her voice sounded broken, full of fractures and echoes, and he turned clumsily. She was a pink blur, winking around the edges, and he was dizzy with the sound of his own pulse.
    Someone’s shoulder hit him in the chest, knocking the breath out of him. For one second, everything looked bright pink, and then nothing did.
    Claire pulled hard on his arm, yanking him away from the black-haired girl. “Where are you going?” she cried, sounding angry and far away.
    He tried to answer, but his throat was too dry and the words got lost in the noise of the crowd. He closed his eyes, and it felt good to just shut everything out. He wanted to stand like this, here in the dark—the house and the party and the whole world gone—but he was so dizzy. Everything seemed to tip and he staggered and opened his eyes again.
    He was in the front hall now. Claire was gone and the crowd seemed to press in on him. Then the black-haired girl had him by the arm again, dragging him toward the door.
    “Come on,” she said. “We’re going now.”
    On the front stoop, he tripped and almost fell. His blood felt slow and thick in his veins.
    “Careful.” The girl squeezed his hand, looking back over her shoulder at him. Her eyes were huge and dark and strange. “There’s a step.”
    The wind was freezing. It caught and tore at his clothes, whipping his hair. He made a low noise in his throat, but the girl was smiling. When her lips parted, something flashed silver, blinding under the streetlight. The cold made it hard to breathe and he reached for her arm to keep from falling. He was leaning forward, trying to catch his balance, and when his legs turned rubbery and buckled, he landed hard on the sidewalk.
    “Get up,” she said.
    Her voice was clear and insistent, not a request, not a suggestion. He felt his muscles tensing, his body straightening even when he was sure he would never be able to stand by himself. He was trembling, shivering, unsteady.
    He was on his feet again.

SNOW
    CHAPTER ELEVEN
    T he Red Line roars up to the platform, accompanied by a vast wind. Paper is blowing everywhere, grimy with the dirt of the city. When the train comes to a stop, the doors gasp open and people file out in twos and threes.
    Truman is sitting slumped against the wall of the L-train shelter with his head tipped back, mouth open a little. His eyes are closed, but I can see that he’s still breathing.
    “This is our train,” I tell him, looking down into his face. His eyes are half-closed and the lids are still a bad bruised color. “It’s here, so you have to stand up now.”
    When he doesn’t respond, I grab the front of his sweater and pull until he stands. He has to use the wall to do it, keeping his back against the shelter. Every part of him looks like it hurts.
    With my hand on his arm, he steps through the open doors and sinks into the nearest empty seat.
    I settle myself beside him and try to make sense of the nighttime train-riders. There are boys and girls with haircuts so jagged and bright that their heads look like the plumage of tropical birds. On the other side of Truman is a man with a dark, wrinkled complexion and a light blue coverall. His hands are cracked at the knuckles and there’s something black beneath his fingernails. Even