Read White Space for Free Online

that. Where did you get this? Did you download it from a pirate site?”
    She’s getting a very bad feeling about this.
Oh boy, is thatpossible? No, don’t be silly. The guy’s dead
. “I-I don’t know what you’re t-talking about, sir.”
    “You want to play it that way? Fine.” Kramer tweezes out a single sheet. “Take a good, hard look at
this
and then convince me why you shouldn’t be expelled.”
    This is not happening; this is a nightmare
. Tears threaten.
Shit, don’t cry
. She does what Kramer wants—and as her burning eyes trip over the watery letters and spaces of one word, then jump over white space to the next word and the next and the next, it’s as if an invisible fist has wrapped around her throat and begun to squeeze.
    So how long would it take? There had to be a way to figure it. Maybe he should’ve stripped the clothes, but then what? Couldn’t bury them. The ground was frozen solid, and some things wouldn’t burn: snaps, buttons, zippers. And didn’t nylon melt? He thought it did, and there’d be the stink
.
    And didn’t how long really depend on how bad you wanted something? How much you were willing to risk? Sure. So, clothes or no clothes, if you were a wolf or coyote and starving because Wyoming winters were hard and game, scarce … and there was dinner lying right there? All that easy meat?
    A wolf would strip that body to bones in no time
.
    A wave of unreality washes over Emma. A sudden headache spikes right where it always does, under that lacy cranial plate the doctors screwed into place between her eyes so her brain wouldn’t bubble out. (When the doctors had first shown her theplate, she’d thought,
Great, the perfect accessory for every occasion
.) The pain is blinding, and she shuts her eyes against the sudden tilt as the world seems to slump and run like superheated glass.
    “Right. Wasn’t that interesting, Emma? I thought it was. And now let’s listen to
yours
, shall we? You’ve no objection if I read while you follow along?” Kramer asks, but it’s one of those rhetorical questions a person knows better than to answer. As Kramer drones, she stares at words and sentences that, up to five seconds ago, she thought were hers alone.
    There had to be a way of calculating how long it would take. There must be rules, like physics or math; there were variables to take into account. Temperature, of course, but also the clothes. Maybe he should’ve stripped the clothes, but then what? He couldn’t bury them. The ground was frozen solid, and burning wouldn’t work because zippers, snaps, buttons didn’t burn and Gore-Tex melted
.
    Didn’t how long depend on how hungry you were? How badly you wanted something, and how much you were willing to risk? So if you were a coyote and starving to death because the snow was deep and the Wisconsin winter, hard—and then you stumbled on something that couldn’t fight back? Meat that was free and for the taking?
    God help him, but he knew: a coyote would strip that body in no time
.
    “Other than your substitution of Wisconsin for Wyoming?” Kramer drills her with a look. “You see my problem.”
    Emma just shakes her head. She is so mortified she wants to melt into the linoleum. God, maybe she really should be better about taking those damn pills. Better to be a zombie than feel this.
    “I said,
write
in the style of Frank McDermott,” Kramer seethes. “I didn’t say
steal
.”
4
    THE SEMINAR WAS a mistake.
    She’d had an open slot for a junior-year elective. Any class coy enough to be called “Out of Their Minds: Madness and the Creative Process” made her nervous. Her adviser was more direct:
Are you sure about this?
The admin people at Holten Prep knew her … ah … shall we say,
unusual
circumstances. But since the only other alternative was animal husbandry, which was a Wisconsin thing and included a unit on neutering piglets, it was kind of a no-brainer.
    What she hadn’t realized was that Kramer meant for