The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  “Well, how are you feeling?”

  “Um, fine. Why?”

  “Good enough to have a day out of the house?”

  “A day of what?”

  “Oh, drop it,” my grandmother said. “I already told the girl you wanted to force her to buy a new prom dress instead of wearing your old one.”

  “You what?”

  “That I spent twelve hours sewing I might add. All because you wanted to look like that hussy Paula Abdul. I should have told you not even the grace of God could—”

  “It was supposed to be a surprise,” my mom said. She turned to me, eyes pleading. “We could grab lunch downtown. Maybe walk the shops. Find you a prom dress there?”

  “I’m not going.”

  She sighed. “I heard.”

  “From who?”

  “Your aunt. She said Dani’s going with Felix.”

  “I don’t want to waste money on a dress I probably won’t wear. It’s been four weeks and my internal KLS clock is ticking.”

  “See?” my grandmother cut in. “At least she’s got a good head on her shoulders. Girl’s practical.”

  “We’ll just go look,” my mom said, ignoring her.

  “You never just look,” I said.

  “It’ll be fun. Come on.”

  I watched her face, nose wrinkled in anticipation.

  “Okay,” I said. “Just to look.”

  We didn’t just look. I was immediately hurled into the dressing room, hangers flung over the door, my mom trying to zip me into sample sizes that were all that was left. I held my breath.

  “Just a…little…more…” she said, face turning red.

  “I can’t,” I choked, and then I let out a deep breath, something tearing. “Oh sh…crap.” I lowered my voice. “Did it just rip?”

  My mom shushed me. “Hurry. Get it off.” She pulled it up over my head, burying it under the pile of discarded dresses on the floor.

  There was a knock. “You doing alright in there?”

  “Uh, just fine,” I said, pulling on my clothes in a rush.

  The woman’s footsteps receded and then we ran for the door.

  “We’ll find something else,” my mom said.

  “We were in there for two hours. Please don’t make me do it again,” I groaned.

  “It’s your senior prom, Bryn. I put up with your anti-social, smart-ass attitude 365 days out of the year. I think you can give me this one. At least pretend for me.”

  “Fine.” I smiled wide, deranged. “How’s this?”

  “Creepy,” she said. “But it’ll do.”

  We found another store, a small boutique tucked behind a pair of tall trees. We thumbed through the racks, a large stack flung over my mom’s forearm, one black dress tucked under mine.

  “So has anyone asked you? To prom?”

  “I’d rather go alone. Or with Dani and Felix.” I instantly thought about how awkward and uncomfortable that would be and said, “Scratch that. Alone is good.”

  My mom stopped, looking at me. “You know sometimes I worry—”

  “Sometimes?”

  “Very funny. I just think sometimes you’re a little too comfortable with being alone. I know you like your privacy and everything and that’s fine but being alone isn’t all that great, not all the time.”

  I thought of my mom sitting on the couch, her silence after I’d asked if she was happy. I felt a lump in my throat and tried to swallow it back down.

  “It’s just easier,” I said. The truth.

  “For who?”

  “Me.” I paused. “Everyone.”

  Her face darkened and I scrambled for a lighter explanation.

  “It’s not just that. Time…” I looked away, thinking of Eve, and trying to bite back the fear in my voice. “I don’t have that much of it. I’d rather not waste it on people I don’t particularly like or doing things I don’t really like to do.”

  “Isn’t that a little isolating?”

  “I hang out with Dani. And you. My family. Maybe I have a smaller social circle than most people but—”

  “It’s more like a triangle. I just don’t want you to miss out on anything,” she said.

  “Like you?”

  She looked at me. “Like me.”

  “You know you don’t have to be alone either,” I said.

  She leaned against the door to the dressing room. “I’ll try if you will.”

  I stared at the floor. “Okay,” I lied. “Me too.”

  She didn’t need to know that it might not matter.

  “Deal?”

  I looked at my mom, at the parts of her that didn’t want to be sad anymore. I didn’t want her to be sad anymore.

  “Deal,” I said.

  She ushered me inside and handed me a slinky red halter dress. “Then start with this.”

  Back home I stood in front of the mirror, that red dress clinging to my hips, to the dimples and curves—to the body that finally looked normal. I wasn’t just bones anymore, my collarbone finally hidden, my cheeks full, my chest spilling over my bra.

  I’d gained ten pounds in the four weeks I’d been awake. Late night ice cream runs with my uncle Brian and afternoons binging on leftovers with my grandmother while my mom worked late carving me into someone I didn’t quite recognize.

  I stood there, eyes scanning every inch of myself, and I tried to imagine what some other girl might have thought if she’d been standing in that body. What Dani might have thought. That my thighs were too big, dimples trailing into my lower back. That my stomach wasn’t flat, my underwear cutting into my hips.

  But for some reason I couldn’t absorb any of it. My lip trembled, my throat raw, and I started to cry. But not because I didn’t look perfect. But because I looked healthy and because I wasn’t sure how long I’d stay that way.

  I heard the sharp squeal of brakes, someone pulling to a stop in front of the house. I wiped my eyes and then I watched through my window as my dad sat in his truck.

  He was glancing at the front door in the corner of his eye but he didn’t get out. I knew my mom was in the kitchen making dinner and I waited for her to spot him through the window and run him off again. But I could hear her singing to some commercial jingle on the TV, the volume on full blast.

  So I just stood there watching him.

  I didn’t want to watch him. I wanted my uncle to get back with the can of chicken stock my mom forgot and I wanted my grandmother to step outside to check on the flowers she’d just planted and I wanted my mom to pull back the curtains and see him there. I wanted him to leave. Because I didn’t like looking at him, his face already flushed beneath his thin beard, his eyes closed for a long time while he gripped the steering wheel.

  His shoulders slumped and then he opened the door and stepped onto the street. It was empty but he kept looking from one end to the other, waiting for a car or something else to force him back into the truck. Or maybe he was waiting for someone to run him over. By the look on his face, it looked like someone already had.

  I thought about the last time I’d seen him, the things I’d said. I’d wanted to say my piece but maybe that wasn’t all I’d done. What if I’d hurt him? What if I’d wanted to?

  He made it to our front yard and then he stopped again. He was clutching something, his fingers gripping the binding. I waited for him to lift his hand, to hold it up so I could read the spine but he was stuck there, one foot in the grass, the other still on the sidewalk. He turned back toward the truck, took a step, and then he stopped. He gripped his scalp and when he turned back toward the front door, I was pulling it closed behind me.

  He froze there and that’s when I remembered the dress I was wearing. I crossed my arms, making my way toward him.

  “What do you want?” I said.

  He looked down, still gripping the book. Then he handed it to me—the vintage copy of Through The Looking-Glass my grandfather had given me. The one I’d lost.

  “Where did you get this?” I asked.r />
  “It’s still empty,” he said and I knew he meant the trailer. “It was on the floor of the closet in your old room.”

  I imagined it there, exposed, and wondered how I hadn’t found it. I’d gone back to the trailer more than once looking for it. But for years it was never there.

  I imagined my dad standing in that empty tin shell, the wind cutting right through the walls. The last time we’d driven by the windows were all busted out, the frame warped from the heat and years of stagnant rainwater.

  I wondered how he’d managed to stand it long enough to find the book—the smell and the dust and the emptiness. But then I remembered that he’d hardly been there. For my mom and I, that trailer was the place we’d lived. But for my dad it was just a place he drove by sometimes, coming inside on those rare occasions when he’d needed somewhere to sleep.

  I clutched the book, pressing my fingers between the pages until they were numb.

  “I’m sorry, Bryn.”

  I tasted those tears I’d stifled earlier because I didn’t know if he meant that he was sorry for leaving us or if he was sorry because he was about to do it again.

  He stared at the ground.

  “Are you leaving?” I asked.

  “If you want me to.”

  “And if not?”

  My uncle turned down the street and I watched my dad tense. The truck pulled into the driveway and then they were squared off again.

  “Bryn, go inside,” my uncle said.

  And even though the way he said it made me feel like a child, that’s exactly what I did. Because my dad actually looked sad. Because he finally looked sorry. And I couldn’t stand it.

  I went back inside, passing my mom who’d finally looked out the window. I slipped out of the dress, hanging it on my closet door and then I sat on my bed, the base of the laptop hot against my bare skin.

  I waited for the voices outside my window to grow faint, for my dad’s truck to churn to life, and for the quiet commotion of my mom cooking to continue on the other side of the wall.

  I didn’t want to think about my dad. I wanted to think about Roman instead. So I curled up in the blankets, thinking about his hands on my hips, gripping me in handfuls, making this new body feel real.

  Then I scrolled through the rest of the photos on Mismatched Machine’s website, resolved to finding him before another sleep, before I remembered that I was sick and that red dress didn’t hang on me quite the same way.

  He was hanging over the security gate in the front row, one fist in the air; sweat pouring into his eyes. He was smiling. Breathless. Wild. Roman.

  I found him. After two more days of scrolling through photos on the band’s website, of searching the archives on their social media page, their fan’s pages, the label’s page, blogs and newspaper articles covering the shows, I found him. But he was still lost.

  He wasn’t tagged in any of the photos and they didn’t list the venue. The crowd was tight, shadows concealing most of them. The photographer hadn’t meant to capture them anyway. He’d been aiming for the lead singer who was hunched over the microphone. But still, there Roman was. Another dark face, another opened mouth. That’s what I’d seen first. His lips, his teeth bared in a growl as he sang with the music. Just the way I’d remembered them. Four weeks. It felt longer now. It felt like forever. I had to get back and then I had to make him remember.

  I ventured back downtown telling my mom I was going to look for some prom jewelry with Dani. But Dani was with Felix helping him pick out his tux and I took the bus.

  I was wandering around a music store, the humid cedar smell of instruments leading me toward a wall of bass guitars. I stared up at them—glossed faces and shiny tuning pegs—trying to find the one he’d like. The one he’d pick himself. Nothing too polished. No. He’d probably go with a matte finish. No crazy colors. He’d stick with black. But something unique, vintage, romantic. My eyes settled on a bass near the top row. I squinted, reading the tag. A Schecter Nikki Sixx.

  That’s it.

  “Excuse me.” I found an employee at the register, pointed out the bass. “Can I see that one?”

  He brought one out from the back and I pretended to fiddle around with it, running my hands over the strings, twisting the pegs. I plucked a few strings, a low thrum vibrating against my palms.

  “How’s it feel?” he asked.

  “Perfect. I’ll take it.”

  He gave a wary smile. “Okay, I’ll ring you up.”

  He relayed the total and I swallowed, reaching into my purse. I’d been saving my birthday and Christmas money since I was thirteen, first for a pony and then for Emory, but in that moment I was so tired of waiting. To get better. To go to school. To live my fucking life exactly the way I wanted to.

  So I rode that city bus twenty blocks and there I was, about to fork over a significant chunk of my life’s savings and all for a boy who could end up being as temporary as everything else. But what if this would help Roman remember? What if I could find him in the real world?

  The clerk eyed me and I felt the cash growing moist in my hand. But I wasn’t going to be afraid. Not anymore. So I handed it over, leading the strap of the case over my shoulder before letting the receipt flutter into the trash on my way out.

  29

  Roman

  I sat in the grass, not wanting to move. I’d seen me as a child—all chubby cheeks and gap-toothed smile. I’d seen my dad. Tall. Strong. Same eyes as mine. Same tight jaw. And my mom. Tight lipped. Biting back a smile every chance she got.

  I knew it was them. I knew it. And now I couldn’t move because I wasn’t just starting to remember. I was starting to feel. And not just Bryn but everything.

  Bryn wasn’t at the farmhouse when I got back. She wasn’t down on the beach. She wasn’t in her childhood pirate ship or at the edge of the dock or on that snow covered hill. I was alone again. Except that I wasn’t. Not with all of those thoughts pinging around my brain. Not with the revelation that I had a family, a real one, swelling in that tight space between my lungs.

  I wasn’t alone.

  I pushed the door open to the farmhouse, heading for the couch, for Bryn’s diary still resting on the arm. But the sunlight was tangled in something, so bright in the corner of my eye. I turned and I saw the bass guitar, pegs glinting, sunlight bleeding red over the strings. In that pool of light and shadow there was an entire sunset and when I picked it up, plucking at the strings, I could taste every color.

  Bryn. Had she sent this to me? What if she’d found me? If we’d met? Then why was I still in her grandparent’s farmhouse? I cradled the bass, letting it sink against my chest. I ran my hand along the frets, waiting for an itch, an inkling. She thought it had been a clue but I wasn’t so sure.

  I tried to lure out a note, a melody, but even the bass itself felt heavy and foreign. I sat there picking at the strings, thumb resting on the tuning pegs, waiting for some kind of ephemeral nudge. But in that silence, in my head and all around me, my hands began to tremble. All of that wanting was concentrated in my fingertips and still I couldn’t remember a thing. I sat there trying not to cry even though I could already feel the tears like thorns in the back of my throat.

  But just before I gave in I spotted the record player, another Rush album waiting for the needle. I dropped it, the first track sifting out, my fingers idling over the strings in hesitation until I found the bass. And then, as soon as the solo kicked in, the strings bit into my skin and my fingers went flying across the frets. I rode under the notes. On beat. In sync. I felt another flash flit across my vision until I couldn’t even see the strings anymore. My hands slipped but I didn’t let go. It burned there with my pulse. In and out. In and out. And I just kept playing. Through the burning, through everything. I kept playing, following the song and she was right.

  She was right.

  Bryn was right.

  When the last song faded out, the needle spinning off the record, I kept playing. I kept plucking the strings un
til my fingers were red and raw and sore. I kept playing—songs by Mismatched Machine, songs I couldn’t remember the name of, songs I hadn’t even remembered learning. I played chaotic riffs and complicated melodies before sinking into a slow rhythm, hands tired but fingers still just wanting to move, to coddle out another sound. Just one more sound.

  Then I couldn’t help it. Tears slipped onto my hands, carving down my cheeks but I still didn’t let go. Until the door creaked open and I saw Bryn. She was standing there, twilight ignited behind her as she stared at the bass, at my hands curled around it.

  “You—”

  I looked down, hiding my face.

  “Roman?”

  “I’m starting to remember,” I said.

  She sunk down next to me but I still couldn’t look at her.

  “Was it long?” I asked.

  She looked at me, cheeks flushed. “The longest.”

  “Did you find this?” I asked her, one hand still gripping the bass’ neck.

  “I bought it.”

  “What?” My eyes flashed to her face. “This is a Schecter. Those cost like—”

  She shook her head. “It was nothing.” She looked right at me, right through me this time. “What’s wrong?”

  I bit my lip and then her hand was against my neck, gripping me.

  “Roman.”

  “I remember them,” I finally said.

  “Who?”

  “My parents. I think I’m starting to remember them. And this.” I nodded to the bass. “I remember it too.” I looked right at her. “I’m starting to remember.”

  “I found your picture,” she said, voice catching.

  “Where?”

  “Online. I found tour photos from a Mismatched Machine concert last summer.”

  “Did you find out where?”

  “Not yet.”

  “But you found me.” My pulse rioted in my veins. I was real. I existed. Somewhere. Not just there in that farmhouse. Not just there with Bryn.

  “I’m close,” she said.

  She leaned in, her lips drawing my eyes closed. But then I opened them again and she was gone.