Free White Space by Ilsa J. Bick

left the ground.
No, no, no!
For one dizzying, horrifying instant, Eric saw himself hurtling over the barrier, his arms and legs pin-wheeling through the dark all the way down. Then Eric’sknees banged into the ruined guardrail; a jagged edge ripped through his jeans to slice meat, and he grunted with sudden pain.
    “Emma, come on!” Stretching his left hand, Eric leaned so far forward that there was nothing but air beneath his chest, and
still
he couldn’t bridge the gap. Emma’s hand was maybe four inches away, but those inches might as well have been miles. “Give me your hand, Emma,” he pleaded, desperately. “Give me your
hand
!”
    She tried. He felt her fingers brush his, and he grabbed, fumbled to hang on—and for an instant, he had her,
he had her …
    Then the van tilted. The front fender chopped air … and Eric slipped. Blame the snow; blame that he was off-balance or the sudden list of the van. Whatever. He just couldn’t hold on. His hand slid away and he thudded to the snow in a heap.
    No, no, no, don’t you screw this up!
Rolling, he got his boots planted, swarmed back to his feet.
Save her, save her, save—
3
    THE VAN BELLOWED , loud and long, in a tired, grinding groan. Held up by nothing more than twisted metal hooked under the rear axle, the overbalanced undercarriage hitched, skipping out another sudden, violent half-foot before the rear axle finally snapped.
    The van slid away: there one moment and then not. It plunged into the dark, and Emma vanished.
    But he heard Lily—all the way down.

RIMA
So Never Digging Around a Goodwill Ghost-Bin
1
    IN THE HOUR before dark, the storm came on fast. They spotted just one other vehicle: a truck, judging by those taillights. The truck was perhaps an eighth of a mile ahead, visible only as an intermittent flicker of red, although every now and again, Rima spotted a faint drift of black. Truck was burning oil, probably.
    “Man,” Tony said, “I hope this guy knows where he’s going. Otherwise, we are completely screwed.”
    “Why?” Rima asked.
    “Well, we ought’ve gotten to Merit by now.” Tony said Merit was a dinky little town, which had to be right, because she couldn’t find it, not even in the road atlas. “But the valley’s wrong. This part of Wisconsin’s pretty flat. And those mountains we saw just before dark? They’re not right either.”
    Oh, perfect. Rima didn’t want to say,
You got us lost?
All the umpteen trillion counselors she and Anita had seen said that negative statements weren’t helpful. The problem was the only positive things Rima could think of were along the linesof,
Wow, Anita, you only sucked down three pipes instead of four? You go, girl!
So she said, “Have we passed any place you recognize?”
    “No,” Tony said, after a long moment. “Can’t say we have.”
    So they
were
lost. The thought made her hug herself tighter—and oh boy,
big
mistake. A jag of bright, splintery pain radiated to her right jaw, and then her cheek exploded:
ker-POW!
Grimacing, Rima trapped the moan behind her teeth, thought to the kid’s whisper:
Calm down, honey, it’ll be okay
. In a few seconds, the pain’s grip loosened and she could breathe again.
    Idiot. The parka was her fault, a Goodwill refugee with duct tape slapped here and there to mend the holes. The parka’s previous owner had been a little girl, barely twelve, named Taylor. You wouldn’t think that would be a problem, except Taylor’s final moments were a jumble of glassy pain and a single clear thought:
Daddy, don’t hurt me; I’ll be good, I promise!
The asshole killed her anyway, pitching the kid over a fourth-floor balcony to break on the sidewalk like a raw egg.
    To be honest, Rima had nearly tossed the parka back with the other whispers: drug addicts, an old lady murdered by her son, a guy with high blood pressure whose last, very bad decision was to mow the grass on a hundred-degree day. Leaving behind poor little Taylor felt wrong, though; no