Free White Space by Ilsa J. Bick Page A

one but a screwed-up parent could so completely mess with your head. So she took the poor kid.
    Swear to God, though, when she grew up and actually had some money? Rima was
so
never digging around a Goodwill ghost-bin. Like,
ever
.
2
    FATHER PRESTON, THE headmaster at All Souls, called it a gift. Her drug-fogged mother thought she was possessed. Rima just called them
whispers
, the bloodstains of the dead. Once Rima touched something for long enough—soothing, drawing—the whispers eventually dissipated, like morning mist under a hot sun. Whispers such as Taylor’s, whose death had been violent, took longest and were acid in her veins.
    Of course, Rima was to blame for her mother’s drug habit because, oh, the
strain
of living with a possessed kid. There had been spiritualists, psychics, and so much incense you needed a gas mask. A hatchet-faced voodoo priestess was the worst, graduating from a raw egg squirreled under Rima’s bed to catch the departing demon—Rima’s room stank like an old fart for a week—to a noxious stew of ammonia, vinegar, and olive oil Rima was supposed to toss back with a smile. Uh … 
wrong
. That voodoo chick was always trying to
spill
Rima’s blood, too. The crazy bitch never said
cut
; she always said
spill
, like Rima was this big glass and whoopsie-daisy, look at that mess. Not a lot of blood, Anita explained:
Just a half-cup to feed the spirits
.
    Oh, well, when you put it like
that
 … If Anita wasn’t so dead serious loopy, the whole thing might’ve been funny. Eventually, the voodoo also went bye-bye, either because Anita got tired of Rima being just so
ungrateful
, or the priestess thought she was a lost cause. Whatever.
    The damage was done, though. Last week, dead of night, her mother got her supplier to pick the lock of Rima’s bedroom. Before Rima knew what was happening, the supplierhad pinned her wrists while Anita pressed a very long, wickedly sharp boning knife to Rima’s throat. No spilling, not for Anita, nosirreebob: she was going all the way.
    The only reason Rima survived was the supplier got cold feet and booked. After another tense half hour, Anita drifted off from all that meth she’d smoked to work up the nerve and then all the downers she popped to take the edge off. It took Rima what felt like a century to ease out from under, and even then the knife won, the keen edge scoring her flesh with a hot spider’s bite.
    That was just too darned close. Stick around, and one morning she’d wake up shish kebab. Forget Child Protective Services; they’d only shuffle her from foster home to foster home for the next two years until she turned eighteen. Then it was a handshake and
YOYO, baby
.
    Why wait?
3
    CALIFORNIA OR CANADA , she figured. California had the movies; maybe she could learn makeup or something. Canada … well, everyone in Minnesota who wanted out went to Canada, but only because it was closer than Mexico.
    Her thumb got her to Grand Rapids. After a night shivering in the thin light of the visitor’s center doorway, she was contemplating the merits of a bus to Milwaukee when Tony’s vintage Camry, a drafty four-door hatchback from the early Pleistocene, rattled into the lot, trailing a single crow that bobbed along like a black balloon on an invisible string.
    Okay, crows were bad. But there was only the one. Somaybe this wouldn’t be so much of a problem. She decided to chance it.
    They got to talking. He was a preacher’s kid, not a born-again, and a nice guy. Same age, same grade, and from his stories, the public high school bullshit factor sounded about the same as Catholic school’s, minus the uniforms and grim-faced nuns, some of whom could definitely use a shave.
    When he offered a lift, she said yes, despite the crow. Settling into the front passenger seat, she cringed as the whisper sighed and cupped her body.
    “You okay?” Tony asked. “I know the seat’s a little shot, but I got the car for a song.”
    Yeah, no shit. No one