The Dark In-Between

by Elizabeth Hrib

  Evan puts his back to the window, blocking her view of the front door. “Are you okay?”

  “No…” she begins, hugging the steering wheel tightly. “I … don’t know.”

  “Talk to me.”

  She drops her hands and wrings them in her lap. “People finally stopped staring at me. Now it’ll start all over again.” She lowers her voice, imitating. “‘Oh, look, there’s the one that survived! From the accident at the harbor, did you see? How tragic. How sad.’” Her hands go still in her lap, defeated. “I’m tired of being the local celebrity—especially for this.”

  “Someone will catch a giant fish soon, break some world records, and then you’ll be old news. I promise.” Evan places his hand on top of hers and squeezes. Once. Twice. “It’ll get easier.”

  “Is that what your mom says?”

  “And my stepdad and my therapist and … Ray Larkin from fifth period English class.” Evan looks confused about that last one. “I bumped into him the other day at the grocery store. He was surprisingly insightful for a guy who only attends two classes a week.”

  “Yeah,” Casey says. “Karen told me the same thing. It gets easier. Wait it out.” But things only seemed to be getting harder the longer they went on.

  “All these people can’t be wrong,” Evan says, taking a long look up the landscaped path to the house. “Based on probability, I mean. Reality is a different story.”

  “Then let’s hope probability wins out,” she says, finally getting out of the car. The stifling summer air squeezes her lungs as she inhales. “Maybe I should have stayed home.”

  “Is that what you want?” he asks. “If it is, we’ll go back right now. We don’t have to talk about it.”

  “Think I’ll regret it?”

  Evan closes his door. “I think you’ll wonder about it until you do.”

  She wraps her hands around her elbows, coming to stand by him. “Is this how you felt at the funeral? All panicky and sick-like?”

  “Pretty much. Rotated between nausea and crying and bouts of unexplained laughter.” She glances up when he shrugs. “Liddy probably would have thought it was hilarious.”

  Casey averts her eyes as an older couple passes them on their way to the house, ogling and whispering. “At least at home, I wouldn’t have to deal with things like that.”

  Evan stuffs his hands in his pockets as they wander up the pressed-stone walkway. It’s cooler in the shadow of the house and Casey shivers, tucking her arms closer to her chest.

  “Doesn’t it seem a little early for a memorial service anyway?” Evan says as they draw toward the stairs. “I mean, she’s barely been in the ground a month.”

  “Evan!” Casey hisses, looking over her shoulder for anyone who might have overheard. Thankfully for the moment, they’re alone. “Seriously?”

  “Oh, you know what I mean. Liddy does, too.” He kisses his hand and points up to the sky. “And let’s be real, she’d be mortified knowing that her parents were doing this all over again.”

  If they weren’t, Casey thinks, she might never have another chance to say goodbye. After the funeral service, Liddy’s body had been driven across state lines to the town where her father had grown up, to be buried with all the other Courtlands in the family cemetery. So there isn’t even a grave to visit here.

  They stop at the front door, greeted by a brushed-gold knocker shaped like a lion’s head. The house towers above them, taller than it is wide, with steepled windows and latticework balconies.

  “There’s still time to bail,” Evan whispers. “Liddy won’t mind. And no one will even notice if we’re here anyway.”

  Casey eyes a few of their classmates coming down the sidewalk. “They might not notice if we’re here,” she says, “but they’ll sure notice if we’re not.”

  Evan sighs but reaches out and pushes the door open.

  * * *

  INSIDE THE MAIN foyer, people chat softly in clusters. Some of the kids from school look their way, giving polite waves or nods or tight smiles. A few of the guys from Evan’s volleyball team come up and clap him on the back. Benny Fergus, the team’s setter, whispers something that makes Evan smile, and then pats Casey’s head like she’s a small child.

  Man, death makes people weird.

  Other kids avoid them entirely. But mostly, they just avoid looking at her or making eye contact. Probably afraid that she’ll lash out or contaminate them with her death cooties.

  The murmurs pick up as Casey cuts through the parlor, and she pretends they’re not about her. The one who lived. When she reaches the main sitting room, those worries dissolve instantly as she works to catch her breath, clutching at the tight stitch in her chest.

  A photo of Liddy is staged there, blown up to staggering proportions, its bright smile shocking in its likeness. It’s only a photo, of course. But it’s candid, catching Liddy in a moment of unfettered joy. That’s the real Liddy—a measure of happiness that could never be contained.

  Lidia Elisabeth Alexandra Courtland is written in black calligraphy along the bottom of the portrait. Beside it sits a round table, upon which guests are signing a memory book dedicated to Liddy. Casey thinks of the stories she could fill that book with. She doesn’t even think there are enough pages to capture what she’d say if she started writing.

  “She hated when people used her full name.” Evan wanders toward the table with an ease Casey can’t seem to master. She feels nothing but out of sorts here. He picks up one of the printed memorial cards, waiting in line to sign the book. From his spot, he flashes the card toward her. A short prayer and another picture of Liddy covers the front. He snorts. “Remember this photo?”

  “She hated it. I can hear her little squeak of disgust in my head.” Despite her best efforts, Casey grins. “She’d totally do that frustrated hair-flip thing.”

  Evan laughs, the sound warm, but it lasts only a moment before he clears his throat and averts his eyes, running his hand over the back of his neck.

  In response, goose bumps spread down the length of Casey’s arms, and she turns to look over her shoulder, peering through her hair.

  Mr. and Mrs. Courtland—Liddy’s parents—stand across the room, noses turned up in that snobby, standoffish way of theirs. Not for the first time Casey wonders how the two of them ended up with Liddy as a daughter. They turn away quickly, pretending they haven’t seen her, sipping expensive bubbly and making pointless chitchat with friends and relatives. There’s a lot of emotion there, lingering between them: hurt, confusion, blame. It’s exactly what Casey’s feared every time she meets eyes with a stranger on the street. And again, it’s like every eye in the room is suddenly trained on her, wondering how she’ll cope with the pressure.

  “Hey,” Evan whispers, stepping closer to her. “Ignore them.”

  “I can’t,” she says under her breath. “Help me find a piece of furniture to hide behind.”

  He takes her arm and leads her toward the refreshment table, which is piled with silver trays, expensive lace doilies, and multicolored pastries; it looks like an experiment in pastels. “You know how Liddy felt about all this fanfare.”

  “That’s not why they’re looking at me like that,” Casey mumbles. Liddy’s parents had always been somewhat distant with her friends. But now, it isn’t aloof disinterest Casey feels when she’s near them; it’s a sharp stab of blame, and it’s worked its way somewhere between her ribs, nudging at her heart.

  She winces, hand held against her chest like she might be able to patch the wound that’s been festering since the morning she awoke in the hospital, very much alive, without Liddy.

  “Don’t do this, Casey.” Evan’s thumb brushes her elbow, trying to pull her back from the swell of darkness in her mind, but his fingers are a warmth she can’t appreciate right now.

  “It makes sense,” she says, pulling away from him. “I’m a walking reminder that the paramedics only saved one of us that night.”

  Just knowing that Liddy’s body had l
ain in the hospital at the same time as hers, pasty and stiff on the frigid morgue table, lungs filled with fluid, still drowning even in death … it makes her sick. Casey brings the back of her hand to her mouth, resisting the urge to retch.

  Evan picks a lemon square off one of the tallest platters and takes a neat little bite. After rolling the taste around on his tongue, he discreetly spits the crumbs into the overgrown spider plant that hangs by his head.

  “None of this is your fault.” He wipes his mouth with his shirt-sleeve. “That tasted like soap.”

  Casey keeps her eyes firmly on Evan. Behind his head, the shapes of Liddy’s parents take form again and she feels that invisible wound in her chest split a little wider. “Try telling them that.”

  Evan sighs. “Look, today it’s you. Tomorrow it’ll be the woman at the boat rental shack. Next week it’ll be the paramedics that couldn’t restart her heart in time. Then it’ll be me for bailing on you guys to go to that stupid family luncheon with my parents. That’s what people do when they’re grieving, they find other things to blame. Other people.”

  Casey swallows hard, forcing down the sick feeling. Maybe they’re right, though, to blame her.

  I never should have let go.

  In her head, that day is still a blur of shrieking metal and blinding ocean spray. One moment she’d been searching the coming twilight for the first wink of stars and the next …

  She didn’t remember in pictures exactly, because the images were blue and purple and black, like the bottom of the harbor. But she could remember the jump of her heart as the boat capsized against the rocks and the crush of surf that had rolled her over and over.

  The tide had caught her limbs, surging up and down as it pushed the breath from her lungs. And against her hands, she could remember the rough scratch of underwater rock and the slick feel of algae as she tried to protect her head. There was something else, too. The silk of skin against hers. Liddy’s fingers tangled with her own, and then nothing but the frantic thought that raged against her temple. Get to the surface.

  Had Liddy had that same terrifying thought? Had she had the same realization that she couldn’t tell up from down in the dark?

  “It was an accident,” Evan says simply. “Nothing you did or didn’t do would change that outcome.”

  “You weren’t there,” she says. “You don’t know that.”

  “You guys wore life jackets. Liddy was just dragged under when the boat tipped. You know this.”

  But did she? Casey can’t remember breaking the surface. She can’t remember the first rush of oxygen into her lungs. So, at what point had she been saved and Liddy lost?

  Other flashes of that day rush back—Liddy’s easy grin, the excitement that bled into her laugh, the rev of the boat’s engine—and with it a wave of nausea.

  “I have to use the bathroom,” Casey says, turning on her heel and rushing toward the back of the house. She takes the main set of stairs. They curve sharply, and she races onto the landing, past the photos of Liddy at equestrian training, vocal recitals, and family vacations. The entire house is a testament to the wonderful person Liddy had been and now serves as a stark reminder of everything her parents had lost—everything Casey had lost in a best friend.

  Hands grappling for the right door, she takes refuge in the bathroom, only to find a framed photo of Liddy staring back at her from the shelf mounted beside the sink. It seems that with her passing, more and more pictures had appeared in the house.

  And she was always wearing that impossibly bright smile.

  Casey tips the photo facedown and barricades herself behind the bathroom door, pressing the lock with her thumb and running her hand up the wall for the light switch. There’s a fuzzy edge to the silence in the dark. Almost like watching a snowy television screen. The sound of nothingness, of that blurry noiseless whisper, grows into a pulse she can feel beat beneath her skin as she slides down against the door.

  If she squeezes her eyes tight enough, all she can see is black.

  Shapes grow out of the darkness in her mind. Tall reaching tree limbs. A black wood, shrouded in shadow and stone, covered in mounds of turned earth.

  Casey tries to blink the images away. It’s not the first time this has happened, these grief-induced daymares.

  … Casey?

  She freezes. The voice is new.

  “Liddy?” she whispers, lifting her head in answer like she’s just been called from the other room. It’s so real that a desperately foolish thread of hope blooms in her chest before reality crushes it.

  She closes her eyes again, hands shaking against her knees.

  The trees whip by her, snaggled branches pawing like hooked claws. Someone gasps.

  The hair on her arms stands tall and Casey scrambles to her feet, stumbling toward the sink. In the mirror, her face is the same pale shade as the porcelain, and there’s something terrifying about the wide set of her eyes. She groans and splashes water on her face, rubbing her cheeks to get the color back.

  Casey!

  She turns, grabbing the sink for support, and glances around the bathroom—from the marble-tiled shower to the claw-foot tub to the pressed beige towels stacked neatly in the linen basket by the door. She’s alone. Alone with an overactive, grief-stricken imagination.

  That’s what her aunt would tell her. This is to be expected after a traumatic event. Grief does funny things to a person. This is normal.

  After all, she’s been through this process before. When her parents died, she stood in front of their matching coffins, memorizing their faces—the funny curve of her dad’s nose and the long lashes that framed her mother’s pretty brown eyes—holding those images for all the years that she would have to spend without them.

  People had thought she was strange then. A little girl, standing and staring.

  So this is okay. Grief is normal. Grief is … strange visions and Liddy’s voice inside her head?

  A hard knock raps against the door.

  She jumps, almost whacking her head on the edge of the framed mirror.

  “Casey? You okay in there?”

  Casey flings herself across the room and opens the door with shaking fingers to find Evan standing there with a sheepish grin on his face.

  One shoulder turns up in a shrug. “Wanted to make sure you hadn’t flushed yourself down the toilet. Trust me, I want to make an escape as bad as you do, but there are probably better ways.”

  “Yeah, sorry,” she gasps, fleeing the bathroom. “I’m fine.”

  “Good.” Then, looking out over the gathering from the top of the stairs, he says, “What do you say we get out of here soon? Maybe grab that burger. I think there’s a marathon at the drive-in tonight.”

  “I don’t know,” she says. She’s not sure dinner and a movie is exactly an appropriate post-memorial activity.

  He nudges her with the back of his hand. “I know I’m bad at this death stuff. Insensitive or whatever. And I make things awkward.” He tugs on the collar of his shirt. “But that’s because all this is for show. None of it’s really Liddy.”

  “Not really,” she agrees.

  “Exactly. So let’s go to that movie. We can have our own little send-off for her.”

  “Our own little memorial,” Casey says, reconsidering the idea. Truthfully, Liddy would have loved it. She had lived for long summer nights spent under the stars, for bonfires, midnight swims, and movie marathons with endless tubs of popcorn. “All right.”

  “You’re in? For real?”

  “Yeah, let’s do it.” Who says she needed a formal invitation to say goodbye to Liddy? This place was making her paranoid anyway.

  “Great!” Evan exclaims.

  “Let’s go downstairs and sign that book first.” She wants it known that she was here, to leave a record of the fact that she showed up. For someday when she’s no longer on display, and just a girl allowed to miss her best friend.

  TWO

  EVAN CATCHES HER arm as they head for the sta
irs. He slides his hand from her elbow to her wrist and squeezes. Once. Twice. For a few moments, she forgets about everything else.

  The crowd at the bottom of the stairs has dispersed; more people have moved to the little balcony area to enjoy the late afternoon and reminisce.

  “Evan!” someone calls and he lifts his hand in greeting.

  “I’m just gonna—” he begins.

  “Go,” Casey insists. “I’ll be over there.” She nods to the table with the memory book.

  “I’ll catch up in a minute,” he promises.

  She watches him slide easily through the crowd. No one stares. No one gawks.

  Ignoring the jealousy stirring in her stomach, Casey makes her way over to the memorial table. A couple of girls stand there. Casey recognizes them as members of the school dance team Liddy was on. Amanda Norberry, a statuesque girl with a passion for hip-hop, reads through pages of the memory book oohing and ahhing at the stories. The girl beside her is Sophie Cavanaugh. She’s petite with wavy blond ringlets, and is snapping photos like she’s entered a contest for most consecutive selfies taken.

  “It’s just so sad,” Amanda says to Sophie, waving her hand in front of her face to preserve her mascara. “And right before senior year, too. Like, what a time to go.”

  “I know, right? I can’t believe this kind of thing actually happens.” They snap a picture together in front of the memorial photo. “It really makes you think.” Sophie fiddles with her phone. “So, hashtag ‘RIP’ or, like, ‘Miss you, babe,’ plus ten thousand heart emojis … What do you think?”

  “There’s the face with that little halo,” Amanda points out. “Aw, it’s an angel. Too cute.”

  Casey’s heart lobs painfully against her chest. “Are you kidding me?”

  The words come out as a hiss, something dark and jagged.

  “Oh, hey, Casey!” Amanda says, a shy smile curving her lips. “It’s really good to see you out.”

  Sophie hastily stuffs her phone in her pocket, then tips her head and bats her eyelashes in a bad porcelain doll impression. Casey figures she’s trying to evoke innocence. An oops, my bad kind of situation. It doesn’t work.