“It’s fine.”
“I swear I’m a sympathetic person,” Karen says. “I’m not trying to overwhelm you.”
“I’m okay,” Casey says, facing Karen long enough for her look to imbue some sort of false assurance into her aunt.
Satisfied, Karen smiles and Casey relaxes into the seat. Parental-figure crisis averted.
She’s not okay exactly; everyone within the town line can see that. But she doesn’t let Karen press her any further about it. She knows how much it means to her aunt that Casey’s seeking out normalcy. That she’s playing the part of the functioning teenager again. And after everything Casey put her through, she thinks Karen deserves that much. So she can play the part for a couple hours. Get in and get out, Casey mentally chants to herself. And don’t engage. How hard could it be?
She sees the line of cars waiting to turn into the school. The billboard at the school entrance is decorated with maroon and silver balloons, the school colors. In blocky black font, the billboard reads: WELCOME BACK, CASE Y.
She sinks down in the passenger seat, mortified.
Karen hums awkwardly but chooses not to comment, blowing by the sign as fast as she can with speed bumps every ten feet.
Once in the parking lot, Casey debates telling Karen that she’s not getting out of the car. Maybe ever again. But then she looks at Karen, with her eyes shadowed after her night shift, hair a bit frazzled, still wearing her white nursing shoes. She’s here for her. To support her. Casey can’t let her down.
They get out of the car and wait in line at the sign-in table. The secretary, Mrs. Boyce, hands her a name tag and an itinerary for the afternoon. She holds Casey’s hand for an extra moment, giving it a firm pat.
Casey walks away as soon as she lets go, then tosses her name tag into the first trash can they pass. They might as well write BACK FROM THE DEAD in flashing neon letters on it.
Footsteps hurry to meet her and Casey braces herself, but it’s only Evan.
He nods to Karen, who pulls ahead, and he slows by her side. “I take it you saw the sign?” he mumbles.
“We’re not talking about it,” she says, hurrying through the front doors of the school.
“Right. Good. I mean, welcome back? Welcome back where? To school. From the dead?”
“Evan!”
“Right, shutting up now.”
“Where’s Red?” she asks, looking around for him in the familiar but vaguely distant crowds of students that gather in the atrium. It’s like there’s a bubble around her that says DO NOT APPROACH. Maybe she’s put it there herself.
“Off somewhere pretending to be a student,” Evan tells her.
“You just let him wander away alone?”
“Have you ever tried making that guy do anything?”
“Are you two fighting?”
“No, he just kind of got swept away in a crowd following the smell of grilled hamburgers and cheap potato salad.”
Casey glares at him pointedly.
“I swear. We’re cool. Guys don’t brood in enclosed spaces,” he says, reading her mind and looking offended at the same time. “That’s a girl thing.”
“That’s not what I was thinking,” Casey replies defensively.
Karen waves at them, pointing to a bulletin board with a map of all the locations around the school that are hosting college info sessions. Casey shoots her a thumbs-up.
“We stopped for food and I gave him lessons in pop music,” Evan says. “Thanks to Radio 103’s nineties’ music hour, he now thinks the Backstreet Boys and the Spice Girls are competing for musical world domination.”
“So you did get him breakfast.”
Evan lays his hand against his chest. “I’m not a monster. But raising an angel in the city is expensive.”
“This isn’t the city.”
“He eats a lot is all I’m saying.”
“Oooh,” Karen says, running over and rubbing her hands together as she shoulders her way between them with a smaller, laminated version of the map on the wall. “Where to first?”
Casey is less than thrilled by the choices. “I should probably go get my schedule since we’re here.”
“Maybe I’ll pop into a few of the college booths,” Karen muses. “We can divide and conquer. I’ll bring you key chains and brochures.”
“Sounds fun,” Casey says lamely. Karen pats her cheek and walks away.
“And the barbecue started”—Evan pretends to look at his watch—“fifteen minutes ago on the football field, so that’s where I’ll be if you need me.”
Before he can walk away, Casey snags him. “You just ate.”
“I’m a growing child. My cells are still dividing. I have to fuel them.” He rocks back on his heels.
“Can you please find Red?”
“But free food,” he whispers.
“Evan, please.”
“He’s an angel with superpowers, how much trouble can he get in?” The look she gives him must change his mind because he touches her shoulder, letting his hand linger. “All right. And I’m sorry about earlier. I wasn’t really mad at you. I mean, not really mad, you know. Just worried.”
“I worry about you, too,” she says softly.
“It’s just the two of us now. We’ve gotta look out for each other and that’s kind of hard to do when you’re in another dimension.”
It’s the closest anyone’s come to putting into words just how she feels about the dwindling pool of people around her. First her parents. Then Liddy. Even the universe must agree that she’s not allowed to lose any more. Now she’s not just a statistic. By these odds, she’s just incredibly unlucky.
“Divide and conquer,” Evan decides, echoing her aunt as he backs away. “I’ll find angel-boy. You get your schedule. Meet you back here in twenty.”
“Shh…” she hushes him.
“No one’s listening.” He laughs. “Didn’t you hear me? There’s free food.”
Alone now, Casey makes a straight path for the front office. If there was one thing that singles you out in high school, it’s standing alone in the middle of a crowded room. For some reason, it puts a homing beacon on your head.
“Casey, wait up!” Erica Mendara, the dance team captain for the past two years, jogs across the atrium to catch her. Her hair is tied into a bun at the top of her head, her Westwood track shirt stained with sweat. Casey wonders if they’ve already started tryouts for the new year or if they’ve just been performing last year’s routines for the parents.
Casey had been on the team for about two and a half seconds back in freshman year. It’ll be fun, Liddy had said. It’ll be something we can do together!
Lies.
Casey shakes her head at the memory. Ask her to serve a volleyball? Sure. But ask her to point her toes and twirl in circles to a strong R & B beat? Nope. The coordination just isn’t the same.
“Hey, girl. How’s it going?” Erica says when she reaches her.
“Fine,” Casey says. “You?”
“Awesome. I was just popping over for some advice. We were thinking of doing something at homecoming. Nothing too crazy. Just a little tribute to Liddy.”
“Oh,” she says.
“A few streamers. Some confetti. You know how Liddy liked to end routines with a bang.”
“Uh—”
“What color?”
“Huh?”
“For the confetti cannon? We’re going shopping this weekend.”
“Purple,” Casey says automatically. “Definitely purple.”
“Thought so. Just figured I’d check with the expert. Thanks again, girl.” She squeezes Casey around the middle and then skips off.
Erica’s nonchalance about the whole thing makes Casey feel like she’s just participated in some sort of shady deal. It also feels so permanent. Like they’ve already closed the door and said goodbye. Like Liddy isn’t just across the room, still in Casey’s head. She’s not gone, she wants to scream. She’s still here.
Lost in Lim
bo.
Casey walks toward the front office where a line is queued up for schedules and parking passes. While in the haze of missing Liddy, she wonders if Evan already got a parking pass for next year, because if he has, then she won’t bother.
The line moves quickly, everyone eager to be out on the football field with friends or toting their parents around to make nice with the teachers they’re going to schmooze for better grades this year or, in the case of the more academic few, actually engage with the college presenters.
As Casey steps up to the counter, her balding, mustache-wearing, motorcycle-riding guidance counselor, Mr. Depuis, grins at her before realizing it’s actually her, and then his smile seems to short circuit.
Finally he settles on: “How’s summer been treating you, Casey?”
Does he want her actual answer? Or does he expect her to give him the same Fine, yeah, good she’s given everyone else? It’s such a stupid question to ask someone after a tragedy. The answer is never going to be good. She just thinks people should stop asking unless they’re prepared to hear that her summer thus far has been crap.
Her next thought is completely derailed into next year. On the paper in Mr. Depuis’s hand she sees two words that make her insides shrivel into nothingness.
Lidia Courtland.
Plain as day. Written on the top of Liddy’s schedule as Mr. Depuis licks his thumb and flips through the others in search of Casey’s. It hasn’t even been long enough for the school to take her out of the system yet. There’s proof of it all over. And yet everyone is running around, planning little somethings, and asking her how her summer’s been, like her best friend isn’t buried in a cemetery two states away.
Mr. Depuis seems to catch the mistake on his second time through the pile and he delicately pulls Liddy’s schedule from the others, holding it like an infected Band-Aid, and slides it facedown onto the table.
“Here you are, Ms. Everett. Glad to see you reconsidered taking physics.”
Casey holds her hands out. Both of them. Cradling her senior schedule like a child as she walks away from the counter half numb, half filled with red-hot rage.
She keeps walking, ignoring the other students who wave her over or the sympathetic parents who try to offer some wise words that she’s probably heard before. She wanders down the hall, intent on the solace that comes between the English and foreign language departments, the windowless stretch of lockers that don’t stare or wince or wave when they see her.
Casey closes her fists, crumpling the schedule, before she jams it into her pocket. As she turns the corner at the end of the hall, the lockers disappear.
Grim evening rises up around her, crooked wheat fields climbing from the earth.
She stumbles against a bank of lockers. The doors pop open and bang against each other, crashing in response. Casey holds her temple, trying to memorize the vision.
A gate swings open in the distance, wood crashing against a metal frame.
“Casey?” Evan shouts and she looks up to see him and Red racing toward her. “What are you doing down here?”
Red reaches her first, but Evan loops his arm beneath hers, helping to keep her steady.
“Is it Liddy?” Red asks.
A packed-dirt trail weaves through the fields, hiding naked birch trees and robust evergreens among old rusted tractor parts.
“Not again,” Evan hisses. “You just got back.”
“It doesn’t exactly have a schedule,” Casey says. “Go keep Karen distracted.”
“And what do you want me to do, huh?” He follows her down the hall as she traces the signs on the doors for one labeled CUSTODIAL.
Red throws the door open and steps inside.
“I don’t know, Evan. Talk to her about college. Talk to her about anything. Just don’t stop talking. You’re good at that. It’s why you’re the distraction guy.”
“I’m going to choose to accept all that projected frustration as a compliment and also let you know that this job sucks. FYI. Next time, I don’t want to be the babysitter.”
“Look, if you don’t want to help, then just tell her it was too much and that I had to go.” She steps into the closet. The entire room smells like old mopheads, stagnant water, and drain cleaner.
Evan throws his hand against the door, holding it open as she tries to yank it closed. “I’ll do it,” he insists, looking guilty and properly ashamed, “just hurry up and find her already. And when you do, tell her she’s still a pain in the ass.”
Casey pulls the door closed.
“And be careful!” Evan yells in the crack between the door and the frame.
ELEVEN
“ARE YOU SURE you’re up for this right now?” Red asks.
Casey gathers herself, her arms trembling as she closes the door in Evan’s face. She turns around and falls against it, leveling Red with her best glare. “Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?” he says. “It’s dark. You can’t even see me.”
“Like you expect me to combust or erupt or ignite or whatever other explosive metaphor you can come up with. I’m not going to crumble under the pressure.”
“That’s not what I meant. It’s been a long couple of days, that’s all.”
“And Liddy’s lived those same long nights and long days, alone in a place she doesn’t belong. So yeah, I’m up for it.”
“Just checking,” Red says. He kicks a mop bucket out of the way, judging by the sound of wheels rolling across the floor.
A wooden porch, faded and chipped, comes into view. Footsteps echo. One. Two. Three. Slow and carefully measured. A pale hand lifts to knock on the paint-peeled door, then it coils back in … fear?
“Wait,” Casey whispers.
“What?”
“Nothing. Let’s just go. Now!”
She imagines the determined and steely look on his face, the quick, darting movements of his arm as he loosens a feather, dagger appearing moments later. There’s a flash of heat as he drops to his knee on the cold linoleum floor and drives the dagger into the tile. It splits without effort or mess and Casey closes her eyes before the pressure swallows her whole.
Like a dip on a roller coaster after a climb, Casey’s insides jolt. Before she even opens her eyes, she feels nauseous and jumpy. She glances around, eyes darting, taking stock of their situation. Limbo unfolds before them as an old farmstead. She doesn’t recognize it, but somehow she senses the darkness that lives here. A darkness she has no intention of chasing.
Behind her, Red seals their entrance and for once she considers simply turning around and walking straight back through it.
The barn is washed with fading copper paint. Shingles and pieces of siding hang loose in places; in others, they’re missing altogether. The barn door is jammed shut. One of the hinges is gone, so the door fits crooked. She turns away from the sight, but not before a scream rips from behind the door. Her heart jumps and she looks at Red, but he doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t even look at the barn.
Instead, his gaze falls to a series of animal pens; each of them abandoned and locked with wire.
Casey takes a few steps away from the barn and turns to study the farmhouse. It’s in a similar state of wear, gutters bent and dripping onto the peeling white porch. A swing rests at one end of the wraparound deck, chains in a pile instead of hanging.
“This isn’t right,” she says, searching the grounds for any sign of Liddy. This feels too … dangerous. Liddy wouldn’t come here, would she?
She sets off at a hurried pace.
Red jogs after her. “What do you mean this isn’t right?”
On the house, the screen door bounces in threes each time a breeze whips by: a beat Casey can’t shake from her mind. It makes her skin crawl, and she takes a deliberate step back, colliding with Red. To his credit, he barely flinches.
“I don’t want to be here,” she whispers. It’s the same peeling door she saw in her vision and the same porch steps. Is this where Liddy had stood?
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“I don’t think anything wants to be here,” he says. She tips her head up to see him. His eyes are wide, flickering constantly. Assessing. Calculating.
“This isn’t like the other ones, Red.” A hard breath escapes between her lips, vibrating them together. “It doesn’t feel the same.”
“Do you think Liddy is here?”
“She was,” Casey says, sure of that much. “Maybe she still is.” And if she is, Casey owes it to Liddy to find her. “How do you feel about a tour of the house?” She takes a bold step around him.
“I’m right behind you,” he says.
It’s three steps up the porch. She jumps up them, hand ghosting over the chipped railing. A cold slither begins at her feet and slips up her back, using her spine like a ladder. It makes her want to crawl out of her skin. “I’m going to be sick.”
His hand on her shoulder grounds her, calms her, like he’s sent a bolt of his own assurance into her body. “We can stay or we can go. Either way I’d feel better if we weren’t lingering out here,” Red says. “Too many shadows.”
Casey tries the door handle, finding it unlocked. Breaking the quiet feels like a bad idea, so they enter silently.
Inside the house, much of the furniture is covered in white sheets. In the kitchen, dust floats in pockets of gray light like tiny, hanging chandeliers. The rooms look unused for the most part, and she’s beginning to think the house is, in fact, empty, until the floorboards creak across the ceiling and her eyes are drawn to a stairwell.
“Liddy?” she whispers, too afraid to call any louder.
Red steps ahead of her, dagger poised as they ascend the stairs.
She looks down more than anywhere else, determined not to make extra noise. Red seems to move with a seamless silence, as if he never quite touches the ground, but she can’t hide the tread of her sneakers. She steps in the faded spots along the stairs, each move tentative. Her ears perk at every creak and groan the old house makes.
The upstairs narrows to a single, long hallway with a series of closed doors. There’s nothing remarkable about it. Nothing particularly homey. Not a picture. Not even a shade drawn over the windows.
The Dark In-Between Page 13
