Between

by Jessica Warman

  As innocent as my younger self appears, it’s clear that I was having some kind of a nightmare; my forehead is wrinkled in agitation, and for a minute or two I just look around the room, staring at all of my things, as though I don’t know what to do with myself.

  Then, walking on tiptoes so as not to make too much noise, my younger self steals out of the bedroom. I follow through the door, down the hallway to the right, where my younger self has come to a stop outside Josie’s room.

  I don’t knock. I simply open the door and go in, pattering softly now to the edge of her bed, where I put a small hand—my fingernails painted the same shade of pink as my toes—on her sleeping form, curled into a ball on her side.

  “Josie,” I whisper, shaking her a little bit. “Hey, Josie.”

  “Mmm.” She rolls onto her back. She blinks up at me. Her own bedside light is on; Josie has never liked the dark. Even now, at seventeen, she sleeps with a night-light. “Hey, Liz,” she smiles, yawning to reveal two rows of metal braces. “What’s wrong?”

  “I had a bad dream.”

  She reaches toward me, takes my hand, and squeezes it.

  As I watch the two of us together, I feel such a yearning for those days, for the blissful ignorance of youth. At ten or eleven, we knew we’d be best friends forever. In the light of Josie’s room, I see that we’re both wearing our half-heart bracelets—this was a few years before we decided they were uncool and needed to be hidden.

  “Here,” Josie whispers, pulling back her covers, “get in.”

  My younger self climbs into bed with my stepsister. I put my arms around her waist. I rest my head beside hers, on the same pillow.

  For a while we don’t say anything—we just lie there together, with our eyes closed—and I’m almost ready to blink myself back to reality, when Josie whispers, “Love you, Liz.”

  “I love you, too,” my young self whispers.

  “Sisters,” Josie murmurs. “Forever.”

  “Forever,” I echo as we hold each other.

  I could watch us together like this all night, but after a few moments, it becomes clear that all we’re doing is sleeping. It’s time to go back to reality. My heart, which does not beat beneath my chest, aches so badly for those days. At that age, I’d already lost my mother, so my innocence was gone—but life was still full of hope, full of new beginnings. I had a new family. I still had my father. The future was ripe with possibility.

  I close my eyes, squeezing them shut as hard as I can, trying to erase the longing that accompanies what I’ve just witnessed. When I open them, Alex is standing beside me, staring at me with a combination of curiosity and boredom.

  “There you are,” he says. “Where were you?”

  I ignore the question. “I want to get out of here,” I tell him. I suddenly can’t stand being in my room anymore.

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “I don’t care. Anywhere. Out.”

  Ten

  When I was alive, it was easy to escape reality: I just put on my shoes and went running. But now, it seems, there is nowhere to go that isn’t gut wrenching. I am freezing, almost shivering from the feeling of dampness that clings to my bones. My feet ache. I’m tired. Despite Alex’s constant company, death is incredibly, immeasurably lonely.

  On our way out of my house, we pass my father sitting in the living room alone. He’s dressed in his work clothes, but he doesn’t look like he’s in a hurry to go anywhere. He sits on the sofa, staring at the television mounted on the wall. It’s off, the screen black, but my dad doesn’t seem to realize that. He’s holding a tumbler of what looks like scotch, gripping it so tightly that his knuckles are white.

  I remember my dad as such a happy guy. Now he seems hollowed. Despite his dress clothes, there are small clues in his appearance that make it obvious things aren’t quite right. Looking him over, I see that he hasn’t shaved in at least a few days. His watch—which I don’t recall ever seeing him without—is missing from his wrist. And he isn’t wearing socks—just a pair of shiny black loafers over his chubby bare feet. It’s like he’s gone through the motions of getting ready for work, for life, without any real intention of following through.

  He looks from the television to his glass. He shakes it a little bit, watching as the ice cubes rearrange themselves with gentle clinking sounds. Then he cocks his head, listening.

  Alex and I are quiet as we watch him. I hear sounds of upbeat chatter coming from above, my stepsister’s voice lilting down the hallway as she talks to someone on her phone. I hear her laughter.

  My dad hears it, too. He closes his eyes and slumps a bit on the sofa.

  He takes a sip of his drink. He chews on an ice cube. Then, slowly, he stands up and walks toward the kitchen. Alex and I follow him. My dad puts his glass in the sink. He goes to the cupboard and removes an entire bottle of scotch. He tucks it beneath his arm and heads toward the back door that leads into our yard.

  “Where do you think he’s going?” Alex whispers.

  “I don’t know.”

  “We could follow him.”

  I watch from the kitchen window as he makes his way through the backyard, heading toward the docks. If any of our neighbors see him this way, they’ll think he’s come completely undone. Maybe he has.

  “I don’t want to,” I tell Alex.

  “Why not?”

  I look at him. The question seems ridiculous. “Because it hurts too much. That’s why not.”

  Instead of following my dad, we head in the opposite direction, out the front door. As we’re standing on the street in front of my house, I stare down the road, imagining how it would feel if I could go for a run right now. To get away from Alex, from the painful scene of Josie and my friends going through my old stuff, from the sight of my father barely functioning, from death. Even though I know I can probably never go running again, I can’t help but imagine how good it would make me feel, how free. As I’m thinking about it, I wander toward the end of the block just in time to see my boyfriend stepping out onto his front porch. Immediately, I hurry toward him. I feel like I need to be with him, to be close to him.

  Richie looks startling. In all the time I’ve known him, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in workout gear outside of school. But here he is now: standing in a T-shirt—it’s actually a white undershirt—and running shorts, tying the laces on his sneakers. Even though they’re technically old—I gave them to him over a year ago—they haven’t seen much use yet: they’re still white, relatively clean, and stiff looking. Richie appears unsteady on his feet. His legs are pale and not toned. It’s obvious he hasn’t been running for more than a couple of weeks, if that.

  As he’s getting ready to step off the porch, Josie opens the front door to my house. She waves at Richie.

  “Damn it,” he murmurs, even as he smiles at her.

  “Come here,” Josie calls, waving him over.

  I follow him as he walks down the street. He looks around self-consciously as though he’s afraid someone will see the two of them together.

  My stepsister frowns at him. “What the hell are you wearing?” she asks, with a half giggle.

  “I’m wearing clothes. I’m going running.”

  “You? Running?”

  “Yes.” He pauses. “It helps me think.”

  It occurs to me that it could be more than a coincidence that Richie is setting out on a run just as I was thinking so hard about it myself. But the thought almost makes me feel too hopeful; as quickly as it surfaces, I dismiss it.

  Josie twirls a piece of hair around her finger. Compared to Richie, she’s meticulously put together: her hair is curled and fluffed into perfect disarray, framing her small face that has been so carefully made up. I’ve seen her go through the process more times than I can possibly count. She is the kind of girl—I understand now that I was, too—who sets her alarm for the very early morning and gets out of bed to begin the painstaking process of self-care: Velcro hair rollers for volume. Tweezer
s for stray eyebrow hairs. Foundation. Bronzer. Blush. Eyeliner. Eye shadow. Eyelash curler. Mascara, mascara, mascara. Lip plumper. Lipliner. Lipstick. Lip gloss. Blotting papers to absorb any excess oil. Hairspray. Body lotion. It is amazing how much effort it takes to look just like everyone else—only better.

  It’s chilly outside by mid-September, the sky blue with a few scattered, perfect clouds. There’s a breeze, which is accompanied by the near-constant sound of the brass wind chimes hanging from Richie’s front porch colliding in light, pleasant tones.

  Josie hugs herself, rubbing her bare, goose-bumped arms. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m okay. School’s hell, though. Everywhere I look, I’m thinking about her.” He stares at the sky. “It feels like she isn’t gone, you know? Every morning when I wake up, there’s always a moment when I think I’m going to see her again. I’ll think something like, ‘Well, I’d better hurry up, Liz hates to be late.’ And then I remember. It’s like she dies all over again, every day.”

  “I know,” Josie says. “I was just saying the same thing to Caroline and Mera.” Tentatively, Josie reaches toward Richie. Her fingernails, I notice, are no longer purple, but instead a glossy shade of red. She’s had a manicure recently.

  “Richie, I’ve been meaning to tell you something. I shouldn’t have told you about her and Vince,” she says. “You would have been better off not knowing.”

  He stares at my house, at my car—a red Mustang, which I got for my seventeenth birthday last year—parked in the driveway. “Maybe. Maybe not.” Then he shakes his head, a lock of curly hair falling into his eyes. I want so badly to reach out and brush it away.

  “No,” he says. “It’s better that I knew the truth.” He takes her hand, swings her arm back and forth. “We can take care of each other.”

  Suddenly Josie looks past him. She raises her free arm and waves. “Hey, Mrs. Wilson.”

  Richie glances over his shoulder. His mother stands on his front porch, watching them.

  “Christ,” he says, keeping his voice low. “What does she want?”

  “Oh, be nice.” Josie smiles at him. “She’s your mother.”

  “Barely,” he mutters. Like I said before, Mr. and Mrs. Wilson are both successful artists. They are creative, thoughtful people, but somehow they’re painfully awful at raising a child. I heard someone say once that there are two kinds of parents: the kind who will do anything for their kid and the kind who will pay someone to do anything for their kid. Richie’s parents are the latter. It isn’t that they don’t care; it’s just that they’re really quite busy, dear.

  “Richard? Can you come here for a minute?” Mrs. Wilson doesn’t return Josie’s wave. She doesn’t even smile.

  “What’s the matter with her?” Alex asks. “She doesn’t like Josie or something?”

  I nod. “She doesn’t like any of us. Not Josie, not my parents—”

  “What about you?”

  I flinch. When I look at my house again, Richie and Josie are gone, replaced by another memory. A moving van is parked in the driveway. The front door of the house is propped open with a brick. From inside, two young voices are shrieking at each other, footsteps pounding down the stairs.

  “Girls! Calm down!” My father appears in the back of the truck, carrying a pile of boxes.

  Nicole steps out the front door. She’s wearing a very tight T-shirt and jeans, her long hair tied back with a pink bandanna. She’s young, in her thirties, her cheeks flushed with hard work and excitement and dewey, newly wedded bliss. And man, is she pretty.

  “Let them play, Marshall,” she says to my dad. She kisses him on the cheek. “They’re excited.” She tucks a strand of loose hair behind her ear, revealing a tiny dream catcher for an earring, impossibly small feathers dangling from the circular web.

  Josie and I come rushing out behind her, our faces sweaty, both of us giggling. I almost bump into my father as he’s carrying the boxes up the walk.

  “Watch it!” He jumps out of the way. Sighing, he puts the boxes on the ground and presses a hand to his back. He’s only in his midthirties, but my dad is already overweight and out of shape. Beads of sweat shine on his creased forehead. He’s out of breath. In four years, he’ll have a mild heart attack, over lunch and drinks with a client. His doctor will advise him to lose twenty pounds and stop eating red meat; he’ll promptly gain ten pounds and refuse to abandon his love for steak.

  He gives the boxes a dirty look. “We should have hired movers.”

  “Oh, would you relax? You’re a big boy. It’s not that much stuff,” Nicole says, waving a hand carelessly through the air. A big diamond on the ring finger of her left hand gleams in the sunlight. The accessory seems out of place among her other jewelry: the earrings, along with a chunky turquoise necklace and ring, and a wrist of bangle bracelets.

  She stares past my father. “Oh—look, Marshall. The Wilsons are home.”

  Richie and his parents are getting out of the car in front of their house. When Mr. and Mrs. Wilson see my dad and Nicole, they exchange a wary look.

  “Hey, Richie!” I call, waving.

  He waves back. He has dimples when he smiles. His T-shirt has a Batman cartoon on the front. There is no hint whatsoever of the reluctant delinquent he’ll become in a few years. Here, at age ten, he is all curls and sweetness and innocent energy. I adored him then. How could I not? Even as children, whether or not we realized it, we loved each other.

  “Richard, get in the house. Now.”

  “But Mom—”

  Mrs. Wilson, smiling, her teeth gritted, says, “Now, Richard.”

  He gives me a disappointed shrug, and I watch as he shuffles toward his house, looking back at me over his shoulder. He points at his mother and draws a circle around his ear with a finger as if to say, crazy.

  I beam at him. But then I watch as Nicole stands with Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, talking to them as they nod with forced smiles. At such a young age, I didn’t understand what was going on, but now, watching the scene play out again, I understand. They don’t like her. Not at all.

  “After my mother died,” I explain to Alex, the memory dissolving, “Nicole and my dad started dating right away. Nicole and her first husband were barely separated.” I don’t know why I’m telling him this. I don’t particularly want to talk about it, and like I’ve said so many times before, I’ve never believed any of the rumors. Suddenly, though, there is a flicker of doubt, from somewhere deep within my mind. It’s just a flicker. But it’s enough.

  “Her first husband?” he asks. “You mean Josie’s dad?”

  “Yeah,” I say, nodding. “But look at Josie, Alex. She looks a little bit like my father, don’t you think?” I try to remind myself that Josie looked like her real dad, too—they both had the same hair and eye color—but still. There’s this nagging doubt. People have been talking about this for so long. Could it possibly be true?

  Josie is thin enough, and fairly petite, but there’s a shadow of thickness to her build. Unlike me—I had my mother’s genes, and even before I became rail thin, I was always lanky and slender—Josie struggles to maintain her figure. She doesn’t have much of a waistline. There’s a fleshiness to her that no high-protein diet or aerobics regime is ever going to change. Her physique fits into my father’s side of the family tree like a missing branch.

  My dad and Nicole were high school sweethearts. They broke up and went their separate ways after graduation, but both of them eventually settled back in Noank with their respective spouses. It’s a small town; they were friends. My mother was sick long before she ever became pregnant with me. Who knows what my parents’ marriage was like?

  “People think my dad and Nicole had an affair, and Josie was the result,” I tell Alex. “Before my mom died. Before Nicole got divorced.”

  “Uh-huh. And what do you think?” Alex asks.

  With Richie distracted by his mom, Josie is staring at her phone, busily texting, a half smile playing on her pretty red lips.

/>   “I don’t know. Until a few minutes ago, I would have told you there was no way they ever had an affair. But”—my voice falters for a moment—“they got married so fast after my mom died. They barely even dated. I can’t imagine that my dad would have cheated on my mother, Alex. I’ve never thought it was possible, not for a second. It’s just that …”

  “What?” Alex prompts. “It’s just that what?”

  “She does look an awful lot like my dad. I never really noticed until right now.”

  Alex stares at Josie. “Maybe you didn’t want to notice.”

  Richie follows his mom into their house, leaving Josie alone outside, and I follow Richie, walking effortlessly through the front door after he closes it in my face.

  The place has a deceptive sense of warmth. Everywhere you look, there’s art: paintings hung on the walls (no prints for the Wilsons—these are all original pastels, protected by museum-quality glass, a collection that could probably pay for Richie’s college tuition three times over); sculptures on the floor and on the bookshelves; stained-glass windows; handwoven rugs; plants in every corner of the seemingly casual, loving disarray in what looks to be a real home.

  Except I know that it’s not. It’s just an accumulation of stuff. The paintings are meant to be appreciated, but not necessarily studied. Once, when I was looking at one of them, Richie’s dad actually told me to be careful not to breathe too close to the glass. The books are all for show, purchased in bulk from an antique auction years earlier. The rugs were imported in bulk from Morocco. They have a maid to water all the plants.