The Space Between Words
Clara woke four minutes before her alarm, which felt like a small betrayal of her own body. The ceiling above her bed held the same water stain it had held for three years, a pale brown continent shaped vaguely like a rabbit, or maybe a dog with no back legs. She'd spent enough mornings memorizing its borders that she could have drawn it blind.
Four minutes. She used them the way she used most of her mornings now: rehearsing.
*Route A*, she thought, *down the east hallway, past the trophy case, through the side door by the gym.* That way avoided Maya's locker completely. Route B cut through the main hall, faster, but risked eye contact, risked the particular way Maya's friends laughed when they saw her coming — not cruel, exactly, just a laugh that had learned to include her the way you'd include a smudge on a window. Something you noticed and then didn't.
She'd take Route A. She always took Route A.
The alarm went off, tinny and insistent, and Clara silenced it before the second note could finish. Her mother was already awake — she heard the particular creak of the kitchen floor, the third board from the fridge that always groaned no matter how carefully you stepped. Some…
