The Dark In-Between

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The Dark In-Between Page 1

by Elizabeth Hrib




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  To Ashley,

  the first to hear this story.

  And to Mikey,

  for talking plot points.

  #SiblingGoals

  PROLOGUE

  Twenty-eight … twenty-nine … thirty. Two breaths.

  THE BOAT IS beautiful, covered in a pearly blue sheen that sparkles with bits of glitter under the sun. It speeds through the harbor, sending waves flying as Liddy cuts hard to the side, spraying a group of seniors in a paddleboat.

  Casey topples back into her seat with a giddy grin and catches her ball cap as it tries to fly off her head. “I can’t believe that woman rented you a boat.”

  “The keys were sort of sitting on the counter when I went in to inquire. So … let’s call this more of a test drive.”

  “What?!”

  “It’s okay!” Liddy throws her head back and laughs at the look on Casey’s face. “Live a little.”

  “How about we just take it back to shore now?”

  “C’mon,” Liddy says. “Exams are finished. School’s out in a few days. This is a party! Have some fun, would you?” She puckers her lips, blowing Casey a kiss. “Call Evan and tell him what he’s missing. Maybe he can ditch his parents.”

  Casey rolls her eyes, tugging on the straps of her life jacket. It’s a little too big, coming loose in places. “He probably doesn’t want to add ‘boat thief’ to his résumé before senior year starts.”

  “We’re only borrowing it. We’ll put it back before anyone notices it’s gone. Besides, you know what I always say—”

  “‘If you’re not living, you’re dying.’ Yeah, I know. So where does prison fit into your grand scheme?”

  Liddy flattens her lips into something resembling a duck bill and Casey fights a smile. “Five more minutes,” she says with a wicked look in her eye. “Then we’ll take it back.”

  We are already on the water, Casey reasons, her resolve crumbling. She jumps from her seat to stand beside Liddy, whose life jacket flies open behind her like a pair of orange wings. “Does it go any faster?”

  Twenty-eight … twenty-nine … thirty. Two breaths.

  NIGHT DESCENDS AROUND them; bonfires on the beach turn the top of the water into glassy, liquid fire. Flickers of orange stain the surface, throwing up splashes that look like flame as Liddy cuts around the island in the middle of the harbor.

  Casey laughs, holding on tighter and urging Liddy to go even faster as they stretch that five minutes into something closer to an hour.

  They hit the waves they’ve created, the boat bouncing over them, each crash drowning out the sound of their giggles.

  Then Casey suddenly sees the rocks rise out of the water, drawing toward them like two fists poised for impact.

  A wave roars over the top of the rocks and both girls are launched from the boat, sinking beneath the strangling surf.

  Casey thrashes in the water, lost in the darkness as her life jacket comes loose again, ripped away by the current that lives below the algae-covered coast. She finds Liddy by feel, a mess of hair and floating fabric. Her hand is like silk in the water, smooth and slippery. Their fingers tangle and tug, the ocean trying to rip them apart.

  Another wave rolls into them, the current tugging until Casey thinks the pressure might tear her skin from her bones.

  Liddy holds on.

  But everything hurts in the dark and Casey can’t bear it.

  She lets go.

  Twenty-eight … twenty-nine … thirty. Two breaths.

  SHE HEARS HER ribs crack before she feels it. They creak inside her body, echoing all the way up to her ears and playing on repeat inside her head. Like the hinge of a door that’s come loose, rubbing where it shouldn’t. Rib against sternum.

  Creak. Scratch. Snap.

  A mask smothers her, pushing air in, forcing it to the very bottom of her lungs, fighting against the water already taking up space there. The pressure is unbearable and she thinks she might burst open.

  “Breathe!” someone says as sand molds against her shoulders and ankles, the depression sinking with every thump of hands against her chest. “Come on, kid! Stay with me.”

  Where’s Liddy? she wonders, reaching out into the black void. Pressure mounts behind her eyes. Squeezing.

  “I’ve got a pulse.”

  Red and blue lights peek in through the slits in her eyelids, blinding and blurring. The colors bleed together, separated only by spots of inky darkness and shifting shadow as sirens scream above her: a banshee song that drags her into a dream.

  And when she wakes to the din of machines, tied down by tubing to a hospital bed, the dream shatters.

  Liddy is dead.

  ONE

  IT TAKES ABOUT six weeks for her fractured ribs to heal. And all that time, it hurts to cry.

  Specifically, ugly crying hurts—the kind with gasping sobs and hiccups. The kind of crying that happens when someone dies.

  She can’t even mourn her best friend properly because the paramedics who saved her life had to break her bones to do it. They probably weren’t thinking about that while trying to restart her heart.

  Funnily enough, it’s all Casey can think about. Especially today.

  Smoothing wrinkles from her black dress, she hurries down the porch steps of the town house and jogs across the dandelion-spotted lawn to her car. Plucked from the very back of her closet, the dress smells like stale detergent, and there’s a tiny grease spot on the skirt that didn’t come out at the dry cleaners. Casey scrubs at it with her thumb.

  The last time she wore an outfit like this was when she buried her parents. She was nine, and the church smelled like barbecue coals.

  Casey gives up on the spot, figuring she’s already made the appropriate kind of effort for this afternoon: nylons without runs, black flats, and a hair clip to contain the flyaways. Her aunt Karen would be proud.

  She’s even put on mascara and a little bit of blush, so Liddy would be proud. A dull ache swells in her chest as she yanks on the car door; Casey takes a few gulping breaths to try to push it away. Her ribs still twinge a bit when the air fills the very bottom of her lungs. Karen says that ache will fade soon. And she’d probably say that it’s good for her to get out of the house, even if it’s just to attend Liddy’s memorial service. Truthfully, she’d be glad Casey was leaving her bedroom.

  On the driver’s seat sits a bunch of wispy white feathers, maybe blown in through an open window, though Casey can’t remember the last time she’s taken a drive. Definitely before the accident.

  She brushes the feathers off her seat, watching as they spiral toward the ground like autumn leaves. As if foretelling the end of one season and the beginning of another.

  Is this what an existential crisis feels like? she wonders. Or maybe this is just how death operates—leaving her looking for meaning in every little thing.

  Without another thought, Casey stomps on them and climbs into her car. A
fter leaving her neighborhood, she drives down a straight stretch of road overflowing with shops. She passes Lynn’s Bakery with homemade bagels on display first; then the post office, which doubles as the pharmacy, already flashing a CLOSED sign in the window; and finally the art gallery, which boasts its new metal ocean exhibit—ironwork sea creatures twirling from strings hung along the storefront.

  She turns after the hockey arena, which hosts more bingo nights than hockey games, onto the cul-de-sac where Evan lives. His truck is in the driveway when she pulls up, and the nerves in her gut calm to a gentle flutter. She does everything with Evan. She has since they were babies. Memorials for their best friend would be no different.

  Being stuck in the hospital after the accident meant that she couldn’t attend Liddy’s funeral. Despite his grief, Evan had done his best to give her a play-by-play of the ceremony when he came to visit her later that day, but it hadn’t been the same as saying goodbye herself. She couldn’t get closure by association.

  She beeps her horn twice, as is their tradition. Evan swings the front door open, standing there in khaki shorts and a snowy gray T-shirt. His hair is swept to the side, held expertly in place with a precise amount of gel that he’s perfected over the course of their high school careers.

  Seeing him eases something in her and Casey gets out of the car, crossing the lawn and climbing the porch steps to meet him.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “Hi.”

  Evan hangs by the door, arms propped against the frame, highlighting the fine definition of muscle he’s developed from landing all those jump serves for Westwood’s senior volleyball team. He’s already got a watch tan, and she taps his wrist teasingly when she gets close enough.

  “Been spending a lot of time outside. Gardening.” He sticks out his tongue. “My mom said being outdoors is good for me. I thought she meant like the beach, but she actually just meant chores. It’s a raw deal.”

  Casey holds up her phone, where the memorial is listed in the online version of the town paper, Coastal News. “You didn’t tell me this was today.”

  Evan blinks at the screen, then crosses his arms. “Well, you haven’t exactly been taking my calls most days.”

  “I answered your texts.”

  “With emojis,” he argues, like the little symbols have personally offended him. “What does a thumbs-up and a crescent moon even mean?”

  “That I was free to hang out tonight.” She wants to tell him to get with it, but maybe having entire conversations with just emojis and the excessive use of exclamation points was a skill shared only by her and Liddy. “Were you going to go?”

  “I hadn’t decided yet.” He looks her up and down as if noticing her outfit for the first time.

  She ignores the way his roaming eyes make her feel—he’s just taking in all the black, she tells herself—and nudges him inside. After all these years, his house feels nearly as familiar as her own.

  “Well, go get dressed,” she tells him. “I want to go, and you have to come with me.”

  “You said you wanted to go for burgers.”

  “And now I want to go to the memorial.”

  “So … burgers is a no-go, then?” he teases, probably trying to get her to smile. He throws his hands up as the look on her face only darkens. “All right, look, my idea of a fun time isn’t hanging out with a bunch of old people who think they knew Liddy better than us. But you’re right, we should probably both be there.” He hesitates at the bottom of the stairs. “But burgers after, right? And before you say anything, grief makes me hungry. It’s a perfectly normal reaction, look it up.”

  He climbs the stairs two at a time, and Casey follows him.

  It occurs to her that he looks different somehow. She hasn’t seen much of him since his hospital visits, which is practically a lifetime for them. It’s not for lack of Evan trying though, she’s just been busy with … well, grieving really ate into most of her free time. Now that she’s here, it’s less of a struggle and she finds herself drawn to his steady presence. That grounding force in the midst of the chaos.

  “Did you cut your hair?” she asks.

  “My mom wouldn’t let me leave the house looking like I ‘just crawled in off the street.’ Her words, minus a few more colorful descriptions that I’ll save your ears from.”

  She can tell he’s hoping for a laugh, so she gives him one. “It must be mom-approved if she let you out of the house again.”

  He stops at the top of the stairs and twists on his socked feet to see her. “She said it was tolerable. But I used a lot of product to tame it, so she thinks it’s shorter than it really is.”

  Casey reaches out to touch the gelled tousles of brown hair. They fold in easy waves, his natural curls held close to his head. “I think it suits you. You’ve outgrown the beach-town-local look. It was cute when you were fourteen. Now it would just impede your vision.”

  Evan makes a pfft sound. “What’s there to see here that we haven’t seen a thousand times before?” He makes a left into his room and Casey follows, slumping down on his bed. “Any suggestions on attire?”

  “Something simple. And preferably clean.”

  Evan picks up a pair of shorts.

  “Not those,” she says immediately.

  He chucks them back where they came from and dives into his closet, practically bodysurfing his way to the back, fighting to free a garment bag from the temperamental hangers.

  Casey gets up. “I’ll let you change.”

  He lets the garment bag flop onto his bed where she sat and kicks the door closed, muttering something about just wearing jeans under his breath.

  Casey paces the length of the hall, studying the pictures on the floating mantels on the wall. Most of them are of Evan. There’s some of her too, standing with a younger Evan, their faces wind-kissed, freckled, and crazy-eyed due to copious amounts of sun and sugar.

  Casey touches the photo. Her parents had still been alive then.

  She follows the tarnished silver frames through a scrapbook of her youth. There’s her and Evan as babies, sharing teething rings. As toddlers, sharing chicken pox. As cubby neighbors in elementary school when they swapped lunches almost every day. Liddy had moved to town in the third grade, got assigned the coat hook directly between her and Evan, and the three of them had been inseparable ever since.

  Until now.

  The door pops open and Evan kneels, lacing up a shiny black shoe. When he straightens up, she gets a proper look at him. He’s wearing a black dress shirt tucked into gray pants. There’s no tie but he looks … good. All sleek lines and sharp points and soft blue eyes.

  “You can say it,” Evan says.

  She snaps back to reality. “Say what?”

  “That I clean up nice.” He tugs on his pant leg. “Even my socks match.”

  Casey huffs and turns away as warmth floods her cheeks. She’s been flirting with this line for a while now. These feelings. That space between friendship and more than. It’s not the right time to cross it. She knows that. Not while they’re both missing Liddy. Honestly, she’s not really sure if there ever will be a right time. Maybe the history between them is better left this way.

  “You look nice, too,” he offers. “I meant to say it before.”

  Then he goes and says things like that, and Casey’s unsure of everything all over again.

  “These are my funeral clothes,” she says, trying to dismiss his comment. She picks at the hem of her dress, crumpling it in her fist and then pressing it back into smooth lines against her thighs.

  Evan sighs, hands in his pockets as he sways into the hall. “You can still look nice.”

  “Come on,” she says, turning down the stairs. “You’re making us late.”

  He follows her to the car and climbs into the passenger seat.

  Beside him, she fumbles with her buckle, the nerves starting to return. It feels weird being in the car without Liddy calling dibs on control over the radio.

  If I hav
e to hear any more of Evan’s easy country listening, she’d say. I’m gonna lose it. He’s like a little old man in the body of a teenager.

  The memory almost makes her laugh, but she catches herself. Casey stares at the radio, then looks away, struggling under the weight of such heavy silence.

  Evan reaches over, his hand nudging her shoulder. When he pulls away, he twirls a feather between his fingers and flicks it out the window.

  “You ready?” he asks, tapping his hands against his knees in a drumbeat. Maybe he’s as nervous as she is.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  Evan rests his polished shoe on the dash, and they drive just beyond the edge of town, closer to the harbor. Here the houses rise up between stately trees, each one a looming mountain built behind giant iron gates. The road curves gently and the houses grow taller and older, towering so high they cloak the entire manicured street in shadow.

  Casey pulls over against the curb where men and women clad in suits and frilly, buttoned blouses have congregated. She sucks in a breath.

  “It’s okay,” Evan says reassuringly. “You got this. We got this.”

  Casey nods repeatedly, like she might be able to convince herself that she really wants to be here. She needs to be here.

  “You know, maybe we should get away for a while after this. Take that road trip my parents keep promising for our senior year,” Evan says. “I’d like to drive down the coast and be real tourists for once. We could rent a nice car, swim at all the beaches along the way. I’ll probably get a bad sunburn, but you love when that happens. Don’t think I’ve gone a summer without being photographed looking like a lobster.”

  “Yeah, all right,” she mumbles.

  Evan pokes her in the arm and she touches the spot automatically, turning to glare at him. “What was that for?”

  “You’re not even listening.”

  “I was. You said road trip.”

  “But you weren’t really considering it.”

  Casey shakes her head, wondering if she’ll make it inside before the overwhelming urge to throw up consumes her. “Sorry. I can’t focus on anything else right now.”

 

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