The Perilous In-Between

by Cortney Pearson

As if only just realizing she’d taken his hand, her stomach burned, and she released her hold. She guided him down the path circling the lake’s edge to her favorite cherry blossom tree. Its branches were just the right height, giving her the perfect spot to lean her back against the base of its trunk and be shielded from onlookers.

  “You sure you don’t need to get back?” Graham asked.

  She attempted to right her breathing and slow her pulse. “Mama is used to me being gone, and she is probably caught up with whatever the papers’ gossip of the day is. I just hope my uncle didn’t notice my craft not in its hangar at the same time the others returned.”

  “Yeah, he seems like he gets upset easily.”

  “That he does.”

  “What happens if you get in trouble?”

  “I get pulled off patrol. And I love to fly.” She checked herself, embarrassed to hear the moan in her voice at the admission. It elicited a grin from Graham that made Victoria smile as well and look down at her skirt.

  “What do you think happened to Wolverton?” Graham asked, resting his arm on a branch. Pink petals fluttered to their feet along the dirt pathway.

  Victoria stared at the moonlight gleaming over the open lake.

  “If you must know the truth, Mr. Birkley, I don’t rightly know. But my mind is not what it should be.” She couldn’t believe she was admitting this. But if there was anyone she could speak of it with, it was Graham. He hadn’t known her for her entire life. He didn’t pass judgment on what she did or did not do.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, looking directly at her, concern in his features.

  Victoria began walking, scattering pink petals under her feet. “Things happen lately that I cannot recall, though I suspect I should. Cordelia and Jane Baldwin appeared out of nowhere. They claimed to be from Wolverton, but you and I both know that the town does not exist. And I have no recollection of ever having cousins before their arrival.”

  “You’d never heard of them before?”

  “Well, no. But shortly after they arrived . . .” Victoria paused, not quite sure how to continue. Graham was from a strange place. He wouldn’t be startled by strange things. “Just yesterday I pictured something I’d never seen before. I was in another place, conversing with a man I didn’t know, yet I did know him. It was absurd—I would never bare my legs the way they were in that moment. But I knew it was true, like part of a past I didn’t know I had. Like déjà vu.”

  The same fear from the moment swept over her in cold rush. She shuddered, forcing the thought and the overwhelming sadness away.

  “Weird,” Graham said.

  Victoria waited for him to continue, to give some kind of deduction about it. Disappointment settled in when he didn’t elaborate. “Quite,” she said.

  “So, you’re kind of amazing up there,” he said, gesturing to the sky.

  The change in conversation took her by surprise. Heat flooded her cheeks. “Oh. I—thank you.”

  “How come I didn’t see you at the Aviatory today? I mean, what do you do all day?”

  The question stung. Hadn’t she wondered the same thing about those mothers earlier?

  “To my uncle, the idea of being in the shop area of the Aviatory is, well, shocking,” she said with a laugh. “Me, a woman, in a greasy place like that?” she added with scorn.

  “But you fly the planes. It shouldn’t be that shocking.”

  “I am a lady. And according to my uncle, a lady doesn’t dally in grease and mechanics.” Though she would never admit her love for the smell of it all.

  “Oh, but she dallies in flying planes? You act like it’s beneath you to get your hands dirty.”

  “I assure you, Mr. Birkley, I have no objections to getting my hands dirty.” She pulled the wrench from her skirt’s hidden pocket. When Charles had seen it, it was accidental and almost shameful. Sharing it now with Graham would be proof. It would be a step in owning who she really was. It would be baring her soul in a way she could do with no other.

  “See what I keep with me?” she said.

  Graham took the tool from her, displaying it from every angle. “Why do you fly, then?”

  “I love to fly. But Mama does not understand. When she discovered me in the gardener’s shed with Mr. Tolbert as a child, covered in dirt and paint while I helped him build my dollhouse, she couldn’t understand my behavior. Or when Nurse Elinor found my pile of metal from the new fuel shaft I was trying to build. It’s the mess, you see. Mama has never approved of messes, which is why she’s trying to marry me off.”

  “Marry you off?”

  Victoria inhaled. “It’s her way of grounding me to reality, I suppose. I’m eighteen, you know. It’s time to get me out of the literal clouds and start settling down.”

  “Like somehow marriage will change you into who they want you to be,” he said under his breath. “But you’re young. Does she know how you feel?”

  Victoria swallowed in spite of the cotton building in her throat. “We all have our secrets. And even when I bare mine to her, she prefers the atrocity that I don’t want a family of my own be kept to myself. Things like that are unnatural, you know. A girl, not wanting children. That’s all I see when I look at Charles Merek, that I’ll be forced to have a family with him when I’m neither ready to nor in love with him. He doesn’t know me at all. He wants the same thing Mother does—why else should he want to marry me?”

  After their last conversation, and his admission of her uncle’s bribery, she supposed she could answer her own question. She decided not to share that with Graham.

  Her father would have understood. He had always been kinder than Mama, softer spoken and more eager to hear about Victoria’s dreams for her life. He would never have chastised her for wanting something outside the norm. Victoria was certain her mother was the only person in town who disapproved of young ladies as Nauts. To nearly everyone else Victoria encountered, they were heroes.

  Graham leaned against a tree trunk. “What is it about kids you don’t like?”

  Her brows lifted. “You mean, you wish to have children?”

  “Someday, I do, yeah. I have a two-year-old niece who is the cutest thing there is, and someday, if I meet the right girl, I want all of that. Not yet. But someday.”

  Victoria stared across the gleaming lake. “I suppose it wouldn’t be all bad. But it shouldn’t be one or the other. It isn’t fair that, as a woman, I can’t have both.”

  “If you lived in my world, you could.”

  “Then I should like to go to your world, Graham.”

  He shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong. It isn’t all cupcakes and Ding Dongs. But women have rights. Women have families and live their dreams.”

  “All at once?”

  “Have you ever thought that maybe it’s just Charles you don’t want all of that with?”

  Victoria considered this. She’d seen a side of Charles she’d liked, something more to him than extravagant gifts and insubstantial compliments. She’d seen a realness in him he hadn’t displayed before. Not only was he kind and handsome, but he’d been genuine and forthright, and that meant something to her.

  A pain she couldn’t understand wedged beneath her sternum. She supposed there could be something between herself and Charles, if she’d allow it. If he hadn’t admitted how selfish his interest in her was. But even if that weren’t the case, she couldn’t see how. Would she love having a child—a husband—as much as she loved flying?

  It was selfish, she knew. But she wasn’t ready to let go.

  “I don’t know,” she finally said. One thing she did know, however, was that she wasn’t drawn to Charles the way she was to Graham. The tense lure to be near him, to have him look at her, to be swept up in conversation with him and perhaps have him touch her hand was vexing, to be sure. But it was an ailment she wanted more of.

 
The corner of his mouth lifted. “Nothing wrong with not knowing, Tori.”

  “Victoria,” she corrected almost instantly.

  “Well, Victoria. What do you say you join me at work tomorrow? We can ask your uncle exactly what is going on.”

  She stared up at the stars, the consequences rolling through her mind. But after what happened that evening, how could she not agree?

  “Very well,” she said.

  Graham waited for Victoria to disappear inside before arching his back into a long stretch. He could go back to her manor house, he supposed, but he hadn’t slept since he arrived and wasn’t looking forward to spending the night cramped up in that room they’d given him.

  The room was nice enough, with its fancy, carved furniture and floral bedding. And who could complain about a servant lighting a fire in his own personal fireplace? But everyone in that house was so content to just sit and be . . . still.

  Graham couldn’t be still. Not with this confusion about this crazy town he’d ended up in and how its neighboring town didn’t seem to exist, with his frustration at not finding Starkey, and just this general feeling of being trapped. He needed to run.

  He slipped out of the suitcoat and strung it on a convenient branch. He slipped off the neck scarf-cravat thing, and stripped out of the fancy vest until he was only in the long-sleeved shirt and pants they’d given him to wear. The shoes weren’t ideal, but they’d work.

  Graham started at a slow pace, taking in the countryside around him. Air came steadily, through his nose, out his mouth, and he headed toward the fields Victoria had flown him over.

  He passed the countryside, making for the dirt road he’d noticed from the air. Disbelief pounded with every drum of his footfalls. He’d been going for miles. More miles than he usually went. Running, swimming, or skateboarding, he couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t get winded, or when his muscles didn’t eventually begin to burn.

  Nothing burned now. Instead, a vigorous energy flowed through his limbs, propelling him.

  “Something is up,” he muttered as he ran. “No one can maintain this pace and not eventually get tired.”

  Beside the dirt road, the stalks of wheat and their thin-tasseled heads danced in the moonlight. He glanced behind, seeing nothing but fields now.

  The thought hadn’t occurred to him to recap the route he and Victoria had taken. He would never have guessed he could have run that distance—he just wanted the motion. But now that he was this close, why not? Running was helping ease some of his frustration and confusion.

  Graham pushed forward, eyes set on the road, on the bridge curving over the fields in the distance. There were no signs of life out here. No sign indicating that Wolverton was some miles out. A few homes were stationed in the corners of the fields, simple homes with barns out back for their animals and equipment, but that was it.

  “Do these people never notice anything?” Graham asked aloud, feet still pounding the dirt, arms pumping at his sides. “We can’t be the only ones who’ve tried to find Wolverton.”

  A heaving sensation gripped his insides, sending him flat on his back. The sky spun, flashing white and explosive. The ground fell out from beneath him, and he was immersed, surrounded by water.

  The wetness pressed on him from all sides. Graham pumped his arms, pushing upward toward the surface. He emerged, surprised to not need to gasp for breath as he normally would.

  He blinked, attempting to reorient himself. Where seconds ago fields fenced him in, now the ocean engulfed him, small waves bobbing him up and down.

  Graham quickly swam to shore and stood, the tide sweeping over his legs. Dripping wet, he stared out across the sea, mind exploding with questions. Were they in some kind of bubble here, stuck somewhere in the universe? What was going on?

  And how did any of them get out of it?

  Twenty-two

  Victoria stood before the mirror inside her open wardrobe at the dormitory. The fires blazing in the fireplaces at either end of the large room did nothing about the slight draft breezing through. Several of the girls sat at their beds, some purely lounging, others reading books with ankles crossed atop the white bedding.

  Aline, Emma, and Orpha huddled at Orpha’s bed and created a chain with their legs while they braided one another’s hair. Aline and Orpha had been elevated from Exodus squad to Dauntless when Victoria and Maizey were removed, and apparently they hadn’t been demoted.

  Victoria stared at her clothing, not really seeing it. Not really seeing her reflection either, for that matter.

  Dahlia limped over and perched delicately on Victoria’s bed, resting her cane against the tall posts. “You know, I don’t think your reflection is doing you any favors,” Dahlia said in a loving way. “Do your hair, at least. What would Lord Merek have to say?”

  “I ended things with him, Dahlia,” Victoria said, testing pieces of hair and pulling them away from her face.

  Dahlia’s mouth dropped in delight. “Did you now? Good. He was too handsome for you anyway. Now I at least have a chance at him.”

  Victoria sat beside her friend. “How are you, Dahlia? Really.”

  Dahlia shrugged and scratched her prominent nose. Tresses of blonde hair collected past her shoulders, and her hand traveled to nurse her left ankle.

  “It aches. I can walk and fly, but I’m not sure it will ever stop aching.”

  “And you went to a hospital in Wolverton?”

  Dahlia’s eyes darted around. “Everyone knows I did.”

  Victoria pursed her lips, refusing to say what was on her mind. This made absolutely no sense. That town did not exist.

  Something had changed in her last night. She could no longer go on patrols and pretend things were satisfactory the way they were. She could not hide her feelings from Dahlia, and she suddenly wanted nothing more than to be away from these girls. Even if she shared what had happened, she wasn’t sure anyone would believe her. She could scarcely believe it herself.

  She rose, settling on a decision. He had invited her to come to the Aviatory. Fear had been holding her back—fear of her uncle, fear of the truth. She didn’t have to speak with her uncle. But she could talk to Graham.

  Hand passing by her skirted daywear, she opted for the trousers she’d worn while training. Unlike her tight battle leathers, these were loose fitting, allowing her skin to breathe.

  “What are you doing?” Dahlia asked.

  “I mean to speak to someone at the Aviatory.”

  “Someone as in Graham Birkley?” Dahlia’s smile was far too smug.

  One foot in and one out, Victoria rounded on her friend, her cheeks flaming. She nearly fell over while managing to slip the other foot in and pull the trousers over her pantalets.

  Bronwyn sniggered at this, delighted at even Victoria’s smallest mishaps. She was clearly none too happy Victoria had returned to her position as squadron leader.

  Aline, Emma, and Orpha all tittered. “We saw him fly with you again,” Emma said as she and the other girls congregated to Victoria’s bed as though preparing for story time. They all stared at Victoria expectantly with big, mischievous grins. It was obvious the two newcomers were a few years younger than Victoria’s eighteen.

  “Preposterous, the lot of you,” Victoria said. The others had never acted this way about Lord Merek.

  Then again, Victoria hadn’t cared about Lord Merek.

  “So,” Dahlia prodded. She propped herself back on Victoria’s pillows and rested her hands behind her head. “How is he?”

  “How is he?” Victoria repeated. Her glance darted around at the girls as she buttoned her blouse. “He’s fine, I suppose.” Treacherously charming and far too invasive of her thoughts lately. The way he’d looked at her near the lake last night was enough to set tinder to her blood. He’d been so calm and accepting. And he was so handsome . . .

 
“No—as a kisser,” said Orpha, draping herself from one of the bedposts so that her brown hair hung freely down.

  “What?” Victoria backed into the wardrobe. Several items clinked inside, and more than one girl giggled.

  Dahlia’s eyes slid to the others before returning to Victoria’s burning face. “Why else would the two of you disappear for so long after patrol?”

  “That boy has a devious look about him,” Orpha added.

  “Really,” Victoria said, her cheeks on fire. Of course they’d seen him with her. She never thought they would leap to this conclusion, but in all reality, she should have. “We did nothing of the sort. I merely took him for a ride.”

  “I bet he’s a good kisser,” Dahlia said.

  “How would you know?” Bronwyn asked, finally joining the conversation.

  “Experience,” Dahlia said, smirking.

  Emma’s eyes took on a wistful haze. “How many boys have you kissed?” she asked in her soft, sweet voice.

  “Do you think I keep count?” Dahlia said. “A man with that much pizzazz—”

  “And those looks,” Bronwyn added, interrupting Dahlia.

  Dahlia nodded and went on. “—wouldn’t be able to help it.”

  “And those hands, did you see his hands? Those aren’t gentleman’s hands,” Aline piped in.

  Victoria could hardly bear it. “Has anyone been to Wolverton lately?” she asked over the torrent of giggles and speculation over all the other things Graham Birkley was probably good at.

  Their laughter slowly died off. They glanced around at one another with their faces pinched in thought.

  “I have,” said Orpha.

  “I think so,” added Emma.

  “I went a long time ago,” Aline said, chewing her lip. “My sister went to University there before she left town to marry whatshisname.”

  “Think about it,” Victoria said, tucking her trousers over her boots. “Do any of you remember going? The ride there, or passing the farmland, or crossing the Tinswool Bridge, perhaps?”