Between

by Jessica Warman

  “Because he didn’t have anywhere else to go. No car, and no adults he can trust. Aside from that cop, Mr. Riley is the first grown-up I’ve seen Richie have a serious conversation with in ages. He doesn’t like adults.”

  “But they barely know each other. And Mr. Riley doesn’t like him.”

  “They both knew me,” I tell Alex. “And Richie knew I trusted Mr. Riley.”

  I sit on the other side of Richie. Alex, I realize, was right about animals and babies: Hope can obviously see us.

  “Why do you think she sees?” I ask Alex.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I’ve thought about it a lot, and my best guess is that babies just don’t know any better.”

  Hope is so much bigger than I remember; she must be almost two years old by now. She giggles, pointing at me, and says, “Lady!” I smile. I hold a finger to my lips.

  In the kitchen, Mr. Riley and his wife, whose name is Karen, are arguing, their voices hushed, the disagreement punctuated by Karen’s downright aggressive preparation of macaroni and cheese.

  “I want him out of this house, Tim. You’ll get fired. It’s—what do you call it?—harboring a fugitive. He brought a gun into this house. A gun. How do you know he didn’t kill Elizabeth Valchar? Isn’t that what everyone thinks?”

  “Karen, he gave the gun to me. It wasn’t loaded. He’s not going to hurt us. I’ll talk to him. I’ll convince him to let me drive him to the police station.” Mr. Riley flinches as Karen whips a wooden spoon into the sink. “He’s in trouble. It’s my job to help.”

  “Your job to help?” She crosses her arms and presses her lips together, cheeks flushed with anger. Karen is short and slim and could be pretty if she weren’t so ordinary. She doesn’t wear makeup or do anything in particular with her hair. She’s always pale, even in the summer. She wears clothes that look like they came from a thrift store. For the life of me, I could never understand why a woman would treat herself with such indifference. To me, it always seemed there was nothing worse in the whole world than being ordinary.

  “He was Elizabeth’s boyfriend, wasn’t he?”

  Mr. Riley nods.

  “Does he know about your little early-morning meetings with her? Your quiet talks in our kitchen while I was asleep?”

  “Karen, get a grip. You knew about that. She was in trouble. It was my job to look out for her.”

  Karen is positively glowering. “Your job. Where in your job description does it require you to invite a teenage bombshell into your home? To comfort her. To hold her.”

  Mr. Riley glances toward the living room, where Richie and Hope are still rolling the ball back and forth. Richie seems calm, which doesn’t surprise me. By now, I’m sure he realizes he’ll have to face the police sooner rather than later. Knowing him, he’s probably relieved that things will be over soon. For now, though, he’s got a break. Playing a sweet game of catch with a toddler: what could be more comforting?

  “I don’t want him alone in there with Hope.” Karen runs a hand through her dull brown hair. Her fingernails, I notice, are unpolished, her cuticles ragged, knuckles dry and cracked. For a moment, I find myself wondering why she doesn’t get a manicure.

  “Okay. I’ll go tell him he has to leave. Will that make you happy?”

  “Yes. That will make me happy.” She takes a long, deep breath. “This is crazy.”

  Mr. Riley steps close to his wife, presses his cheek against hers. “I never did anything with Liz that I wouldn’t have done right in front of you.”

  He’s telling the truth. He was the only comfort I had. He didn’t feel like there was any choice but to hug me, to try and make me feel better.

  “She was a very pretty girl. Girls like that … the girls in this town, at that school … you know I’m not like that. I never was.”

  “She was a very sick girl. That’s all. Sickness and sadness dressed up in expensive clothes and covered with makeup. It doesn’t change who she was.” He swallows. “It probably got her killed, Karen.”

  Her eyes flash with accusation. “What do you know that you’re not telling me?”

  “Nothing.” His tone is firm. “She begged me to let her tell me what was the matter. I wouldn’t let her. I didn’t want to invite it into our lives.”

  The pot on the stove begins to smoke. The heat is turned up too high. Dinner is going to burn.

  Karen turns down the electric stove. She stares at the gooey mess inside the pot. “It’s in our lives now.”

  “Then let me help Richie,” Mr. Riley says. “Please. You know, I can’t stop thinking that if I’d done more for Liz … if I’d talked to her parents or gotten her an appointment or let her tell me what was the matter … maybe she’d still be alive. Do you know how that feels, Karen?”

  She shakes her head. “No. I can’t imagine.”

  “I can’t do nothing. Not now.” He swallows. “I have to help Richie. I owe it to Liz.”

  Standing in the living room above Richie and Hope, Mr. Riley claps his hands together. “Okay, bud. Time to go.”

  Richie looks up with an expression of bewildered innocence. “Where are we going?”

  “The police station. You have to turn yourself in. Every cop in town is looking for you. You know they almost canceled school?”

  Karen makes a final appearance to scoop Hope into her arms before retreating to the kitchen again. She doesn’t say good-bye to Richie or her husband.

  Once they’re in the car together, Richie says, “I’ve been running every morning.”

  “Well, that’s great. If you don’t end up in jail, you might consider going out for track this spring.”

  “I keep running to the same place. It’s like a compulsion … like some kind of force is urging me to go. It’s the weirdest thing, Mr. Riley. I can’t go any other direction. It’s this dumpy house at the edge of town, but I’d never been there before. None of my friends live around there. They all live in nice places, you know?” He pauses. “I come from a good family, Mr. Riley. I’m a good kid.”

  “You’re a drug dealer, Richie.”

  “Okay, aside from that. You’re not listening, though. Every time I run, I end up at this house. For a while, the first few times, I just stared at it. I didn’t know why I was there. But a couple of weeks ago, I started looking around. I did some investigating.”

  They’re almost to the police station.

  “Oh, yeah?” Mr. Riley seems like he couldn’t care less. “What did you do? Break into the place?”

  “No. I looked in the windows. I looked in the mailbox. You know whose house it is?” He doesn’t wait for a response. “It’s that kid’s house—the one who died last year. Alex Berg. All this time I’ve been running, like someone was leading me right to the place, and it turns out to be another dead kid’s house. What do you think that means? It doesn’t make any sense, does it?” He hesitates. Then he says, “Mr. Riley, I know it sounds crazy, but … do you think it could be Liz? Maybe she’s still here. Maybe she wants me to go there for some reason, to show me something.”

  “It’s me,” I whisper. I’m shivering, staring at Richie with nothing but love and a pure yearning to be closer to him. “I was thinking about Alex, and you felt it. You still feel it.”

  Mr. Riley pulls into the gravel parking lot outside the police station. “I’ll tell you what I think, Richie. I think you kids need to focus on living. What does it matter if it was Alex’s house? He’s gone.”

  “He was killed,” Richie says. “They never arrested anyone. There’s still a reward.”

  Mr. Riley shifts the car into park. “Time to get out. I’ll walk you in, if that will make you feel better.”

  “Mr. Riley?”

  My coach stares at the roof of his car. “What, Richie?”

  “You didn’t really answer my question. About Liz.”

  “You think Liz is somehow compelling you to run to Alex’s house? You think there’s a grand conspiracy taking place in Noank?” Mr. Riley shakes his hea
d. “No. I don’t believe that. Neither should you. It’s a coincidence, that’s all. I don’t believe in conspiracies, and I don’t believe in ghosts, either.”

  From the backseat, I lean forward and press my hands against Mr. Riley’s shoulders. I hold on tight. I concentrate. The effort doesn’t work nearly as well as it does with Richie. I can almost sense the blood running through the veins beneath his skin—but not quite. He doesn’t even flinch.

  “Wait a minute. Before I go in, can I ask you something else?”

  “Sure.”

  “I was going to ask … do you think that, if I get back to school, they’ll still let me go to homecoming? It’s just that I already promised Josie we’d go together. She bought a dress and everything.”

  Mr. Riley stares at him. “You’re about to get arrested, and you’re worried about homecoming?” He shakes his head with wonder. “You’re one hell of a lousy criminal, you know that?”

  “I know.” Richie nods. “You’re right.”

  “Then why don’t you give it up? Stop selling. You have more to offer the world. You’re an honor student.” Mr. Riley pauses, studying my boyfriend. My coach’s eyes twinkle with a combination of amusement, pity, and—what else? It almost seems like fascination. There’s so much more to Richie than he’s thought for all these years. He seems like he’s realizing that now.

  Richie smiles. “It’s what I do. Too late to change.”

  “No, it isn’t. It’s never too late.”

  My boyfriend doesn’t say anything. He’s clearly not up for an argument about his future at the moment.

  Mr. Riley clears his throat. “So you’re telling me you’re worried about Josie’s feelings? About whether or not she’ll have to return her homecoming dress?”

  “Not return it. She’d find someone else to go with, I’m sure.” Richie reaches for the door handle. “I feel so bad for Josie. I feel bad for the whole family. But I guess you don’t care, right? I mean, why would you?”

  Before Mr. Riley has a chance to answer, Richie steps out of the car. “Thanks for giving me a place to hide out today. Wish me luck.”

  Eighteen

  After Richie turns himself in, he’s subjected to an hours-long interrogation that seems to lead nowhere. It’s true: rich people are treated differently, especially in our town. Richie’s father brings their attorney to the police station, and after a meeting with the magistrate, Richie gets off with two years’ probation. Luckily for him, Mr. Wilson made a sizable donation to the community a few years ago, and his generosity allowed the town to build a new police barracks. As a result, he has quite a bit of pull with the local law enforcement. Since this is Richie’s first offense—and since the gun wasn’t loaded, and he handed it over to Mr. Riley willingly, who then turned it over to the cops—everybody agrees that it’s best not to blow the situation too far out of proportion. The drugs are kept in evidence, the gun is returned to Richie’s father (who is its rightful owner), and the memory card remains in Joe Wright’s possession.

  Shut in a room at the station after his interview with Richie, venetian blinds on the windows closed tightly, Joe looks over those photos with obvious reluctance at seeing me in such compromised positions. They’re the same pictures from my computer: Vince and me. Staring at them, I realize with disgust that Josie must have given the memory card to Richie in order to secure him for herself.

  “Please,” I beg Alex as we stand behind Joe, “please don’t look.”

  He doesn’t say anything; he just nods and turns around.

  My heart breaks at the thought of Richie seeing me this way. How long has he had the pictures? For weeks before I died? Months? How did he ever look me in the eye, knowing what I’d been up to? How could he possibly still have loved me? The only answer I can come up with is that he’s Richie. He’s known me forever. Just like I can’t stop loving him because he might have been fooling around with Josie behind my back, I don’t expect he could simply turn off his feelings for me either.

  Days turn into weeks without much excitement after Richie’s arrest. September rolls into October; the leaves change, the weather grows even cooler, and life goes on—sort of—for my friends and family. Richie still runs every morning. He still goes to Alex’s house, stares at it for long stretches of time without any hint of understanding.

  He visits my grave. He doesn’t say much, but sometimes he’ll sit down on the earth, bringing himself up against my tombstone—which was finally put into place a good six weeks after my death—and hold on to it like he’s folding me into an embrace. He thinks I’m in the ground, beneath him, when I’m right there beside him.

  I get lots of visitors; my father comes now and then, when he isn’t spending long stretches of time at the boat. My grave is beside my mother’s. Her stone is large, with elaborate carving around the edges, and reads:

  Analisa Ann Valchar

  Beloved Mother and Wife

  1968–2001

  My father stopped putting flowers on her grave years ago. After he married Nicole, it seemed to me like he wanted to move on in every way; the only remnants of her that he kept were the house and the boat.

  My tombstone, now that it has been put up, is covered with sentimental offerings. The stone itself is huge, bigger than my mom’s, and carved with an ornate ivy border, my name etched in delicate cursive writing. The grave site is still a mess of flowers, even so many weeks after my funeral. It would almost be embarrassing, if I weren’t so shockingly pleased with the display. Even in death, it seems, I’m incredibly popular.

  With the amount of time we spend hanging out in the cemetery—it seems a fitting enough place for us—Alex and I see plenty of mourners come and go. His parents visit his grave once a week, every Sunday after church. And I get an almost steady stream of visitors: kids from school I was barely even friends with show up to lay flowers at my grave. Some of them bring stupid things like teddy bears or balloons. On the day of the season’s first cross-country meet, my teammates (who didn’t like me in life, but seem more than happy to flex their grief muscles now that I’m gone) leave a pair of shoelaces tied in a bow. Mr. Riley comes by every couple of weeks and says a prayer. Mera and Topher always come together, and Mera always leaves a blubbering mess.

  Just once, in mid-October, Karen Riley visits. She brings Hope. It seems so morbid to me—who brings a toddler to a cemetery? But the little girl occupies herself by running around the graves while her mother stands at my plot and stares wordlessly at the ground. She doesn’t bring flowers. She doesn’t stay long. As usual, she isn’t wearing makeup; her hair is pulled into a loose ponytail. Her jeans are stone-washed, a few inches too short, revealing plain white socks peeking out from her flat sneakers. She kneels for a moment at my tombstone, touching it, running her fingers across the letters, almost like she wants to make sure it’s really me down there.

  Then, still kneeling, she presses her palms flat against the earth. “I should have been kinder to you,” she whispers. She glances at her daughter, who is chasing a moth in circles around a fresh grave site. Hope is long and lanky, just like her father. She already has silken blond hair and perfect blue eyes. She’ll be a knockout someday. I’m guessing Karen Riley already knows that.

  Karen is crying a little bit. “You were just a little girl,” she says. “I’m sorry for hating you.”

  After she leaves, Alex and I are quiet for a long time. This used to be my favorite time of the year. It was always perfect running weather: just cold enough, the air thin and brisk, and I used to love the way my feet crunched against the leaves as I ran along the road. But now I am constantly chilled, more so than ever. At least I can still lie on the grass, staring up at the stars. I can still keep watch over my own grave.

  There is always a small part of me that hopes I will catch a glimpse of my mother: her apparition, her ghost, whatever. But she’s nowhere. We were so similar in life; in death, we are in entirely different places. The fact that, even now, she is not here to offer me any
comfort makes me feel incredibly alone. The more time passes, the more I feel that I might never see her again. I am so afraid that I’ll be stuck here on Earth forever, with Alex, the two of us left to haunt Noank while everyone else moves on and forgets that we ever existed.

  On a particularly cold evening in mid-October, after we’ve passed the whole day in the cemetery watching a funeral for an old woman who died peacefully (her relatives barely cry, and comment more than once that it was her time), Caroline arrives at dusk and comes quietly to my grave.

  She’s wearing her cheerleading uniform; there must have been an evening football game, and she probably walked here straight from school. She looks ridiculously out of place in the otherwise somber graveyard: her hair is pulled into two high ponytails, cheeks painted with NH for “Noank High.” Her pom-poms dangle at her sides. She puts them on the ground at my grave site and gives them a wary look, like she expects me to reach out from the earth and grab them.

  Like so many other people who come to see me at the cemetery, she kneels at my tombstone and takes a moment to trace the letters on my stone.

  Alex watches Caroline. “It seems like she really misses you. You said she was one of your best friends?”

  “Yeah, she was.” I stare at Caroline and wish that I could hug her. She is obviously still upset about my death. “She was more than just a good friend,” I tell Alex. “She’s a good person, too, whether you want to believe me or not.”

  I expect him to reply with some kind of witty comeback, but he doesn’t say anything.

  Caroline stands up, smoothes the nonexistent wrinkles from her perfectly pressed skirt, and pulls her letterman jacket tightly around her body. “Hi, Liz,” she says. She kicks at the earth with her toe. “I’m sorry I haven’t come to see you yet. I don’t really like graveyards.” She looks around. “When I was a little girl, my dad would tell my sisters and me that we had to hold our breath whenever we passed a cemetery, or else we might inhale the souls of dead people and get possessed. I know it’s stupid, but it always kind of scared me.” She pauses. “You’d think it’s dumb, I know. But I figure you wouldn’t want to possess me, even if you’re around here somewhere.” And she looks down at her legs. “You’d never be caught dead in a body with such thick ankles.