The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  But I didn’t.

  I didn’t know me. I didn’t know where I was or what I’d done but I knew it was terrible. I could tell by the way my blood stalled in my veins and the way my chest cracked open with every breath. I’d done something terrible and something terrible had been done to me.

  2

  Roman

  I waited for seven days. That’s how long it had been since I’d found Bryn in that observation room. Since we’d found Sam’s small twisted body lying next to her. Since Dr. Banz had been dragged out in handcuffs. Since Bryn had spoken those four words that unraveled everything.

  It’s not a dream.

  And then she’d disappeared into herself again while all I could do was watch. That’s all I’d been doing since we got back to the States. For the past week she didn’t answer, she didn’t ask, she only trembled. I saw the terror every time she opened her eyes, the endless vacancy like a black hole. Because despite my stares, despite my searching, Bryn just wasn’t in there.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Felix and I had been winding through the hospital parking garage for half an hour, stalling, pretending we were looking for a better spot.

  He’d say, “Oh, I think I see someone backing out over there.”

  Then I’d nod. “Yeah, maybe we can catch it before it fills up.”

  But en route someone would steal the space and we’d start the entire exchange from the beginning. But when we were faced with an empty spot too close to ignore we couldn’t pretend that I was in some kind of hurry. We couldn’t pretend that Bryn was okay.

  So I didn’t pretend. I looked at Felix and said, “No.”

  And maybe because he couldn’t pretend either, he didn’t say anything at all.

  When I stepped into the elevator and pushed the button for the third floor, I didn’t hold the doors. This time I didn’t punch the emergency stop button halfway up. This time I didn’t sink to the floor of the stalled elevator until security rang the speaker box.

  I reached Bryn’s room on the first try and the space manifested in pieces—pink plastic drapes, untouched food tray, socks abandoned on the floor, twisted sheets, Bryn’s mother. She was looking right at me for the first time in days and I couldn’t help but look back. But then her eyes drifted to the corner of the room I was dreading; to the body on the bed I didn’t have time to brace myself for.

  Bryn was curled into a ball, frantic as she peered out at Dr. Sabine from between her hands. Dr. Sabine scribbled something onto a clipboard and I wondered how many times she’d written the words, “No change.” I wondered how many more times she would.

  The morning after Bryn had miraculously woken out of her vegetative state we were all on a plane back to the U.S. and after fifteen hours of her clutching her knees and trying to bury herself under the plane seat in front of her, she finally slept. For two days. But even when she’d finally opened her eyes again it was like she was still sleeping. Even now, her eyes grazing over my face, reeling from it but never settling on it completely, I knew she was somewhere deeper than sleep. Somewhere I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to reach.

  There’d been no official diagnosis yet. Dr. Sabine was waiting for Vogle to find a vial of the serum Dr. Banz had been using on Bryn and Sam so she could analyze it. Until then everyone just referred to Bryn’s semi-awareness as minimal consciousness, which, according to Felix’s Wikipedia inquiries meant absolutely nothing. Bryn could open her eyes, breathe, and eat on her own but she couldn’t speak and even worse she couldn’t hear me.

  The first few times I’d been alone with her, I’d tried to make her remember my voice. But it was like the sound was made of sharp points, every word sparking physical pain. So I stopped speaking to her. I stopped pretending. I stopped thinking that Bryn’s body was anything more than that and instead, replayed over and over the day I’d found her. From Dani’s grip on her, the shadow trying to destroy them both, to Bryn lying limp in my arms, fresh tears glistening against her cheeks. Then they’d stopped running. Maybe that was when I knew Bryn was gone. Or maybe I knew the moment I’d touched her skin, my own just as silent. No spark. No nothing. Now when I looked at Bryn that’s exactly what I saw.

  Her mother looked like she was on her way there too. She’d placed this cold space between her and everyone else since the moment we’d landed and I knew exactly how she felt. Angry. Helpless. But Bryn’s mother wasn’t just angry with Dr. Banz or Dr. Sabine for what had happened. She blamed herself too, for taking Bryn to Germany, for losing her there.

  I swallowed, forcing my eyes away from Bryn. “How—?”

  “The same,” Ms. Reyes said.

  “I was going to say how are you?”

  Her fingers grazed her neck, cheeks red. “Oh.” She waved a hand, dismissive, or maybe she just didn’t have the energy. “I’m okay. How are you doing, Roman? Have you talked to your father since we got back?”

  “He knows I’m staying.”

  “With Felix?”

  I nodded.

  She inhaled and I wondered if she was about to ask me for how long or how I would manage that or the million other things my dad had already asked. But she just pinched her lips until they disappeared, crushing the words we both didn’t want to hear, the questions we didn’t want to ask.

  My answers wouldn’t have been the ones she wanted to hear anyway. Bryn’s mother was the only person who didn’t know the truth—about Bryn, about me—and as hard as it was to watch her pace the foot of Bryn’s bed, waiting for her daughter to wake into the world like she’d done so many times before, I just couldn’t bring myself to tell her. I wasn’t sure it would do any good.

  Felix’s new apartment was hidden in the seam between two buildings, the narrow stairs covered in cat hair and wet newspaper. When he pushed the door open it smelled like Mushu Pork—the special of the day in the Chinese restaurant just below us. They left coupons in the doorframe and Felix and I had been eating there for every meal for the past week.

  “How was she?” Felix asked as he locked the deadbolt behind us.

  The answer had been on my face the second I’d gotten in the car but he looked curious, anxious. Or maybe he’d looked that way since the night we’d found Dani carving into her flesh with a clothes hanger. Maybe I just hadn’t noticed.

  “Same,” I said before remembering her untouched food tray. “She’s...not eating.”

  “Yeah, well, hospital food’s a drag…” His voice trailed off. “You know, she likes tacos. We should try bringing her some.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Did you see Dani?” He stared at the television screen as he flipped through the channels.

  Dani hadn’t come by Felix’s apartment and she hadn’t visited the hospital since we’d gotten back to the States. For me it was a relief. As long as Dani stayed away I wouldn’t be forced to make her, something I wouldn’t hesitate to do if I spotted her anywhere near Bryn. Even though I’d ripped the shadow out of her myself and even though she may have been just as much a victim as Bryn, I couldn’t pretend that I wasn’t angry. Whether it was logical or not, whether it was selfish or not, Dani and I had both put Bryn in danger and I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to forgive either of us.

  But while I was still angry, Felix was still clinging to the hope that things between them could go back to the way they were before Germany, before he’d asked her to move in with him. Every night I heard him shutting himself in the bathroom, leaving her voicemails, but she never called him back. I knew he’d disappeared to her house a few times, hoping her mother would be the one to cave and let him inside, but I could tell by the look on his face each time he came home that he hadn’t seen her.

  “No.” I looked down. “She wasn’t there.”

  I sunk against the couch, exhausted. We needed to get up early to meet Vogle at the airport but after the past week staying with Felix I knew that twitch of his fingers meant he’d be up for hours. If I went to sleep now, Felix would feel forced to go t
o his room and do the same and then he’d be up at three AM eating cereal out of an old Chinese take-out box.

  Felix flipped through a few more channels, the screen stuck on the news as the remote fell to his lap. “Do you think they found him?”

  I knew he was talking about Michael. Before we’d left Germany, Andre, Charles, and the other Rogues had been divvying up old stomping grounds and Shay’s tracking devices while Domingo took Stassi into hiding. I’d been the last to have my hands on Michael in Rheinpark the day he tried to take her but before I could strip the darkness from him he’d disappeared and now they had no idea where he was or who he might try to take next.

  “Domingo and Shay will find him,” I said. “That’s what they do.”

  Felix’s shoulders twitched, a shiver. “I hope so, man.” His voice dropped. “Do you think they’ll try to kill just the shadow like you did with Dani? Or do you think they’ll just kill them both?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, honest.

  It was so hard to separate the shadow’s actions from Michael’s because they’d both wanted the same thing—the Dreamers. Michael wanted his Dreamer, Darina, back and the shadow wanted everyone else. Despite the fact that the shadow could have been controlling everything he did, it was just as easy to believe that it was love. That he was mad with loss and grief and love and that’s what really made him try to take Stassi.

  “Maybe they’ll try. Maybe they can save him.” Felix chewed on the inside of his cheek but he looked more than worried. Maybe because deep down that was what he still hoped for Dani.

  I’d killed the shadow, I’d saved her, but that still hadn’t made things right between her and Felix. I knew he wondered if the real reason Dani was ignoring him wasn’t because she wasn’t ready to live together but because whatever had happened to her in Germany was still happening. That whatever darkness I’d exorcised, we’d brought it with us.

  Sometimes I wondered too. All this time Dani had stayed away, not letting us see the changes up close, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t changed. That didn’t mean she wasn’t stained. That was what darkness did. It burrowed inside, so deep that whether you rid yourself of it or not, you would never be clean again.

  It was why the moment I woke out of that coma I’d remembered every horrible thing I’d ever done. My body had been destroyed and so had my memories, one kiss from Bryn making me new. But even though I was alive, even though I was different, I wasn’t healed. The truth was I never would be. And even though I’d destroyed the darkness in Dani, maybe she never would be either.

  3

  Bryn

  I wasn’t sure when Sam’s body had stopped being her body but just another blade of grass, a tuft of dirt, but suddenly she was gone and I was afraid. I could still feel the shape of her beneath my hands, her shadow crawling across my skin until it was tangled with the stars over my head. Stars that sank down and burned my eyes and made me hurt.

  I hurt.

  That’s all I knew.

  I hurt.

  4

  Roman

  After we hauled Vogle’s luggage into the back of the car, there were no hellos, no awkward questions about his flight. We weren’t out of the woods yet, not even close, and part of me expected to see the Rogues emerge from those sliding glass doors, here to save the day again.

  There had always been something threatening about the way Michael talked about us all being a family, as if inspiring fear somehow inspired loyalty, but I had to admit he was right about our connection. After finding out that I wasn’t alone in this, that I wasn’t some kind of freak, I hadn’t just felt relieved, I’d felt like I belonged. Like I was someone. Someone who could do good, who could be good. They’d made me believe it was the reason I existed at all. Not to destroy things but to save them. Bryn. Myself. The Rogues had saved me just as much as she had and the truth was I missed them.

  Before I could ask Vogle if he had any news from the others he said Bryn’s name and I was made of bricks again.

  “How is she?” he asked.

  I let out a deep breath, slow so no one could hear me shudder. “Not good.”

  I hated saying the words out loud but I needed Vogle to hear the fear in them and to realize that I needed his help. What Bryn was suffering from wasn’t Klein-Levin Syndrome like everyone had always thought, it wasn’t a disease at all, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t behave like one. It didn’t mean that we couldn’t bring her back. That we couldn’t find a cure and bring her back.

  “I’m sorry, Roman.”

  It was the first time Vogle had said it, an apology for more than what had happened to Bryn but for what had happened to Dr. Banz. How he’d fallen apart, dismantling Bryn and Sam in the process. And Vogle hadn’t been there to put him back together, to stop him, to protect them. He was sorry for being the very thing he’d always known he was—a failure. But mostly he was sorry for always being sorry.

  “We’ll get her back,” he said. “We’ll fix this.”

  “Yes.” My voice was hard and full of the one promise I wouldn’t let him break. “Yes, we will.”

  I didn’t look up as I led them through the hospital, my body on autopilot. Bryn was sleeping when we reached her room. Most days that was all she did except when she was picking at something on her food tray, refusing to eat, or staring out the window at the cars moving down on the street, or wandering into the hall until her mother took her wrist and led her back to her bed. Or trembling in my presence as if even the air around me was made of flames.

  It was easier to just watch her sleep and even though Vogle had come to diagnose her, I could tell he was relieved too. I knew he’d been dreading that first look, her frailness too familiar, every bruise and bone reminding him of the girl he loved.

  I thought of all those hours Bryn had spent at my bedside, watching me sleep, waiting for me to say her name, to say that I’d remembered. I wondered if every time I didn’t she’d felt this pain. I felt like I had watched Bryn die and every time her corpse sat up in bed, breathing with her lungs, thrumming with her pulse, I felt like I was dead too.

  “How often does she sleep?” Vogle asked.

  “Most days,” I said.

  “Probably a good thing too.” Felix hung back in the doorway. “She’s not big on company.”

  “You mean my company.”

  “She exhibits strange behavior when you’re around?” Vogle asked.

  “I think it’s just all the noise and attention. Makes her nervous,” Felix added in an attempt to make me feel less like shit.

  “No,” I cut in. “She seems pretty out of it most of the time but when I’m around she’s…”

  “Aggressive?” Vogle asked.

  I shook my head. “Alert. Watching me like…I don’t know, like I’m some kind of threat.”

  Bryn rolled and we all held our breath.

  “It’s possible that since you were the first person she saw when she came out of her vegetative state that she somehow connects you with whatever trauma or pain she’s experienced.” His words were less of a blow and more of a gunshot. Because I knew he was right. “The fact that you’re able to elicit this kind of reaction from her might actually be a good sign, Roman. Something about your presence seems to heighten her awareness. It could be the very thing that finally woke her and it could be the very thing that breaks her out of this stupor now.”

  These words were less true. Even though Bryn’s body was more aware when I was around, it didn’t change the fact that she wasn’t in there.

  Vogle pointed at Bryn’s arm. “There.” A small bruise flowered out from the vein on the inside of her elbow. “The injection site. I’ve brought samples of every vial that was locked in Dr. Banz’s safe. I’m sure one of them will be a match.”

  “And then what?” Felix asked. “You’ll be able to come up with some kind of antidote?”

  “Not exactly,” Vogle said. “For now we just need a starting point.”

  “Oh, Vogle, you made
it.” Dr. Sabine appeared behind Felix.

  “Yes, just landed. Good to see you, Doctor.”

  “Actually, I’m glad you managed to come by today.” She motioned to the hallway. “Would you mind?”

  He followed her out, Felix and I left staring at the floor until all we could hear was Bryn’s breathing.

  “Well,” Felix said, backpedaling, “I think I’ll just, you know, wait out here.”

  Before I could follow, Bryn’s grandmother took his place in the doorway. Every time we crossed paths at the hospital the sight of her was always startling. Not just because she was crass and scared the shit out of me but because Bryn had made her disappear.

  Bryn had dreamt of the very night her great-grandmother had gone missing. She’d watched her coaxed out of bed by a dark stranger who broke her with just one look. And then Bryn couldn’t just watch. She’d stepped out from behind the trees and the moment Anso saw her, the look in his eyes broke more than just her great-grandmother’s will. He broke their entire family, her mother’s childhood, her grandfather’s heart. Bryn had re-written history, replacing it with one where her grandmother had disappeared just like her own mother, taken, probably tortured, her family assuming she’d abandoned them all.

  Returning her grandmother safe and sound to this plane of existence was the last thing Bryn had done before…before she disappeared herself.

  “They can’t help her here,” Bryn’s grandmother said.

  “They’re trying,” I offered, instinctually. “They’re—”

  She gripped my hand. “We both know they can’t do anything for her.”

  “Vogle and I are trying too.”

  She let go of me. “Bryn told you about my sister, Celia?”

  I nodded. “She had the dreams too.”