The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  “And you better be careful before I change my mind.”

  “Jesus, Felix,” I cut in. “You should have done that a long time ago.”

  Dani glanced over her shoulder. “What’s your problem?”

  I let out a groan, burying my face in my knees.

  “Hello?” Felix looked back, shook me. “Bryn? Oh shit, did she fall asleep?”

  “No,” I mumbled.

  “Oh good.”

  “Look, Bryn,” Dani said, “if this is too much, you know, stress, I can turn—”

  “It’s not this. It’s you. Both of you.”

  “Us?”

  “Yes. You two drive me crazy! This bickering and pretending to hate each other, it’s fucking annoying. And it’s getting old. You two just don’t get it. I have no idea what I’m going to find when we get to New Mexico. If he’ll wake up. If he’ll remember me. I know you probably think I’m crazy, that I’ve fucking lost it, but at least I’m trying. At least I try.” I buried my face again, speaking against my knees. “You guys don’t know how lucky you are.”

  They were quiet for the first time.

  “I don’t think you’re crazy,” Felix said. “Maybe a little strange, maybe even a little—”

  I kicked the back of his seat.

  “Unique. I was going to say unique.”

  “I didn’t mean to snap like that,” I said. “I was just, I don’t know, having a moment.”

  “No worries,” Felix said. “You’re right though. I know it doesn’t seem like I take things seriously but I do.” He looked at Dani. “I take things seriously.”

  “Just so you know…” I leaned into the empty space between them, “being overly-sentimental is equally as annoying.”

  “She’s right,” Dani said. “But it’s also incredibly sexy.”

  In the corner of my eye I saw Felix reach for her hand.

  I slumped back in the seat. “Okay, now you guys are grossing me out.”

  “You’ll make out with a guy in a coma but a little hand holding grosses you out?” Felix said.

  “And here we go again with the insensitivity,” Dani sighed.

  “He’s not…well, he is but it’s—”

  “Exactly.”

  Felix let go of Dani’s hand, switching out their iPods when she wasn’t looking.

  “So do you even know which part of the hospital he’s in?” Dani asked. “The room number maybe?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Not exactly?”

  “Okay, not at all but I know his full name. I’ll just ask a nurse or something.”

  “And if someone asks how you know him? What happens if you run into someone he knows?”

  “I’ll say we’re friends.”

  “You might want to come up with some kind of a backstory,” Felix said. “Just in case.”

  “Okay, we met at school?”

  “And if one of his classmates is there dropping off flowers and doesn’t recognize you?”

  “Okay, we met at a concert or something.”

  “Good,” Felix said. “But what if they ask to see an ID? They’ll see it’s a Texas license and—”

  “My ID? Why would they ask to see that?”

  “If it was my son in a coma,” Felix said, “I would make sure that everyone who came in to gawk at him was properly vetted.”

  “I’m not going to gawk.”

  “Oh really? So you’re going to go in there and do what exactly?”

  I hadn’t really thought about that. I’d been too busy avoiding the image of Roman in a hospital gown, tubes splicing into his arm, up through his nose. Of his skin, paled and sallow like the day he’d washed up on the beach.

  “I’ll talk to him. Maybe he can hear me. Maybe…”

  “Yeah,” Dani said. “Maybe.”

  Maybe.

  No. It would work. It had to. Because I promised him. Because it wasn’t a coincidence. It had to work.

  “Shit!” Felix leaned over the console, jerking the wheel.

  I slammed into the back of his seat, ears ringing. Felix flew back against the headrest and I tumbled into the floorboard, the car still bucking. We finally skirted to a stop and Dani’s face was pale.

  “What the fuck?” she huffed.

  “Shit just ran across the road out of nowhere,” Felix said.

  I sat up. “What was it?”

  I glanced back at the road, something moving through the settling dust. I leaned forward, my arms still shaking from the impact and in the dark I spotted the white tails of a small herd of deer. They skirted into the glow of the taillights. Three of them.

  When they cocked their heads I wondered if they saw me too, if they remembered. But then the small one twitched up his nose and I saw something else.

  I gripped the headrest until my knuckles burned. The fawn’s ears perked up, its muscles tensed, and then it slid to the ground in one silent beat.

  Lifeless.

  The shadow just hung there and in that moment I knew that it wasn’t an accident, the car swerving just in time for the deer to steal my fate. But it was a promise. And by the way my veins were already frozen, I knew it was a promise that it would keep.

  34

  Roman

  I opened my eyes and I was alone, curled up on the floor with Bryn’s blanket. I braced it over my shoulders, snow still rushing past the windows, but I couldn’t get warm. The windows were icing over from the inside, the grass cracking as the snow outside turned to something even harder.

  It sounded like bells, the storm raging like a train barreling down a track. The wind whistled, something massive heading straight toward me, and in all the chaos I almost didn’t hear her voice.

  My mom was kneeling across from me. Bleeding. Reaching. In that loud blankness of the snow, the world nothing but white, I thought I was dead, detached from my body, from Bryn’s dream-state, from my own consciousness. But the moment her skin brushed mine I knew that it was her who was dead and not me.

  “Roman.” Red tears carved down her face.

  “Mom?”

  She smiled, reeling me in. “You followed me all this way.”

  Her words carried me out of the farmhouse and even though I could still feel the floor beneath me, the blanket in my grip, I was standing somewhere else. I saw the water, muddy and dark, her silhouette barely visible. My hands broke the surface and I tried not to breathe as I searched for some piece of her, but the water was empty, endless. I scraped for the base of the tub but it wasn’t there. The water was cold and thick and it stuck to my forearms. I kept sinking farther and farther, grasping for a strand of my mother’s hair, for the scrape of her fingernail, the necklace she always wore.

  The vision let go of me and I saw my father on the floor. Crying. Screaming. Flashes of red stole my vision as I choked back gasoline. I gagged, but instead of coughing up chemicals I coughed up blood. Mine.

  My mother brushed it from my face as the storm tore at the walls of the farmhouse. She eyed me anxiously and I shook, fear reminding me to move. The floorboards rattled beneath me, revealing deep gaps with nothing but emptiness underneath. My mother’s blood trickled towards my hands, staining me all over again.

  “Stay,” she whispered.

  I almost did as I was told, something in me pleading for her to close the space between us. But her words were as kind as they were familiar, which meant that it wasn’t my mother speaking them at all. It was something else.

  I blinked and Bryn’s memories vanished again, replaced by my own. I was standing in the bathroom, watching as my mother tried to break open the medicine cabinet with a nail file. She shook it, cracking the glass, the reflection of her grey face cut into pieces at the bottom of the sink. For a second I was frozen, just staring at the strange color of her pupils and the shadows climbing her cheeks. They were sharp and hollow but when I tried to remember what she’d looked like before I couldn’t. She gripped the sink, breathing heavy as I reached for her.

  “Mom, don’t—�
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  “Mom,” she whined. “Mom. Mom. Mom. I get it,” she said. “I’m your fucking mom.”

  I tried to pull her back to the bedroom. I tried to be gentle. But then she tensed, her hand flew across my face, and she slipped free. I stood there, burning, and she just glared at me.

  “You’re useless.” She fell against the wall, slamming it with her fist. “You fucking ruined me. You did this. But he wanted you. He wanted you and then you did this.” She slumped down to the floor, gripping her scalp. “Leave.” She started mumbling to herself, the ping of her voice turning my stomach. “It’s not a dream. It’s not a dream. It’s not a dream. Please. Please.”

  Wind beat against the door, throwing it back, the current sending me tumbling into Bryn’s bookshelf. I lay there, panting, disoriented. I waited for the scene to change again, the landscape to hurl me somewhere even more terrible.

  The snow whipped into a vortex and then the first wall went, snapping off in pieces before disappearing into the storm. Slats tore from the roof, the white burning my eyes. The light that had been crippling me since the moment I turned up here returned, only this time it had fangs, sinking them deep inside me and not letting go.

  I rolled, my mother still begging me, commanding me to stay. But the storm was commanding something else—that I disappear. Glass shattered, the bookshelf coming apart piece by piece. I blinked back tears but the light was throbbing behind my skull, revealing the chaos around me in flashes that made me dizzy. The floorboard beneath me fell straight down and I scrambled on my hands and knees, clawing at anything that wasn’t moving.

  There was a loud crack, the ground beneath me giving way. My back scraped against the side of the hole, feet dangling over darkness. It reached for me, the blackness like a fog that crept up the back of my shirt, spilling onto what remained of the floor and filling everything. The snow turned to ash, then night. It was so dark that all I could hear was the howling wind.

  “Stay, Roman. You have to stay.”

  I dangled, the current tossing me, my mother’s nails biting into my knuckles until she drew blood. I prayed that Bryn would walk through that door, that she would put everything back together. But I knew where she was and I knew that the only way I would ever see her again was if she found the body I couldn’t even bare to think about.

  I pulled myself onto my stomach, fighting, reaching. But then the last slat crippled beneath my weight, my bloody hands too slick to grab hold, and I was falling too. Down. Down into nothing. When I reached the bottom there was no death or hell or waking up. Gravity mangled me like a doll and when I opened my eyes I was coughing up blood and laying in the glow of headlights.

  The car was purring just inches from the tree. It was still whole, the engine still on, the radio still buzzing. The song was ghostly and distorted, my ears ringing as I tried to hold my head up. I rolled, still coughing. Remembering. I lay there for a long time, feeling my broken body, remembering the crash and everything that came before.

  I’d spent three summers restoring that fucking car, a 1971 Dodge Challenger. Three whole summers laboring over it, doting on it, saving up for vintage parts, because during that last year the garage had been our refuge.

  When my mother refused to come downstairs, when she refused to do anything at all, my dad and I spent every free hour with our hands covered in dirt and oil, our shirts smeared black and filled with holes. We’d sweat it out under harsh spotlights that we’d strung up with fishing wire and we’d talk about school and work and girls; everything but the stranger living upstairs.

  It worked for a little while—pretending nothing was wrong. But then my dad started working late, avoiding me as much as we avoided my mother, and I started fucking around with Jimmy and Carlisle and spending my nights high on whatever shit Carlisle had lying around. And it was working. All three of us were starting to disappear and it felt good. Until the high wore off. Until the one night I needed him and he wasn’t there.

  I’d found her in the bathroom trying to reach the pain medication her doctors were trying to wean her off of. It was locked away, just like her ability to feel anything at all, and it wasn’t my mother who had told me to get out but the shell of her.

  As soon as I left I drove to my dad’s office. It was late, almost eleven, and the main doors were locked. I tried calling his cell but it went straight to his voicemail. I idled under a streetlight for a while, just watching the door, but then I noticed his car at the far end of the lot. It was dark, out of the way, but when I got closer I heard something. Rustling. Breathing. I wasn’t sure. So I pressed my face to the glass. I looked and I saw everything.

  My dad was pressed into some woman, her clothes abandoned to the floorboard. She was pale and small and when she saw my face she froze. I heard the door thrown open, fumbling, panting. My dad yelled my name but I just kept walking.

  When I got home I found her in the bathtub. I looked down and I saw pieces of me scattered along the base of the tub, my reflection caught in the pieces of the broken mirror. And I will never forget the way my face looked. Angry. Relieved. Useless. I felt it then. And laying there on the ground in the gleam of those headlights, remembering the way the exterior had curled and ripped apart, remembering what I’d done to it, to myself, I felt it then too.

  Because I didn’t just remember the crash. I remembered my mother’s words. I remembered seeing the headlights swell over that tree line and I remembered letting go of the wheel. My hands wavering in that split second between crashing and veering back onto the road and that one second was all it took for me to make up my mind.

  I could blame it on the drugs, on the grief. But the truth was, in that split second, there was no veil over anything. I could see me, my life, all of the things I’d done with aching clarity and I chose to let go of the wheel.

  That’s who Bryn would find when she finally got to Albuquerque. Not some Mismatched Machine t-shirt wearing dream guy who she’d spent the last six months falling in love with but a fucking comatose coward who would only break her heart. Had to. Because I didn’t want to be a coward. I didn’t want to hurt her the way I’d hurt my mother. But if I woke up, that’s exactly what I would do.

  I wondered if she was close, if she’d already found me, and if she had, why I hadn’t woken up. Why I hadn’t heard her voice and opened my eyes. Maybe I wouldn’t. Maybe I never would. Maybe that was best.

  When it peered at me from between the trees I didn’t even flinch. It stood there like a man but bristling like a beast, shadow creeping across the road to where I stood.

  The cold hit me but it wasn’t enough to stop the riot in my veins, to chill the rage that was pulling me to my feet. When the dark shadow reached the edge of the road, silhouette swimming with the night, my instincts weren’t telling me to run. They weren’t telling me to hide or to be afraid. No. Every cell in my body was telling me to burn.

  I took a step toward the shadow, its pull making my chest ache. I felt like I was at the bottom of the ocean, an infinity pressing on my lungs, trying to hold me down. But I didn’t let it. Because this thing was haunting Bryn. It wanted Bryn and whether she found me or not, I couldn’t stay here. I knew that. But I couldn’t leave her with this. I wouldn’t.

  I took another step into the vortex, and then another, letting my instincts maneuver every muscle in my body. And then I saw it. What was under the shadow.

  Me.

  I saw my face. Eyes bloodshot and seething. Lips curled into a smile that made my insides go cold.

  My mouth strained for words, and as the air cut between them, the shadow came with it. It filled me. It clawed its way into every empty space until I thought I was dead. Until I wished I was.

  But then I saw the light. I blinked and it was brighter than it had ever been. Warmer. Stronger. Pouring from every inch of me.

  I fell on the ground, blinded, the darkness thrashing inside me. It clawed at my insides, trying to rip free. But I felt the heat surge and suddenly I was the flame. I lay t
here, burning, forcing it deeper, deeper. It strained for other pieces of me—my thoughts, my memories. It tried to snake its way inside, destroying everything but I pushed back, pulling myself to the surface again.

  The fire in me reached its apex and I was nowhere and everywhere at the same time. I was human and something else. I was dying and then I wasn’t. I snuffed the shadow out, clawing my way back into my body until the weight lifted, until the quiet settled, until there was nothing inside me but ashes.

  35

  Bryn

  The hospital was six eight-story buildings connected by a series of glass walkways. We wound through four levels in the first parking garage before we found an empty spot. Felix cut the engine and then the three of us just sat there.

  I knew they were waiting for me to tell them what was next, to reveal some kind of master plan. But I didn’t have one. I didn’t have anything except a newspaper clipping, an iPod full of Roman’s favorite songs, and an insatiable swelling deep in my lungs that felt like hope. Because this is not a coincidence. We were not a coincidence.

  The security guard at the base of the parking garage gave us walking directions to the children’s ward. We passed bronze sculptures like the ones I’d seen on campus at Emory—static children that said more about the patients’ lives inside a hospital than out of it, frozen and yet transitory. A physical purgatory I’d spent too many nights in since that first episode when I was twelve.

  We took an elevator to the third floor and found the front desk. Women in scrubs were shuffling around, their voices low. One of them laughed, the lightness ringing in the hallway, out of place and strange. The murals along the walls were strange too. More scenes of children running, swinging, jumping. One dimensional and stationary just like all the others.

  I approached the desk, cleared my throat.

  “Yes? Can I help you?” the nurse said.

  “I’m sorry, I’m a little lost. I was looking for a friend. Davide Roman Santillo. He’s on this floor, right?”