The In-Between

by Rebecca K. S. Ansari

  Cooper elbowed her. “Jess!”

  “What? It’s true!” she said.

  Gus laughed. “Yeah. She doesn’t like people coming to the house.”

  “We noticed,” Jess said. “She sounds hideous.”

  “JESS!” Cooper said.

  “Yup! That’s my grandma!” Gus said, still smiling. He bounced a little on his toes as he said, “So, you wanna hang out?”

  “Yeah, we do,” Cooper said. “Come on.”

  18

  Though Cooper had never hung out with a friend and his little sister at the same time, Gus didn’t seem to mind if Jess was around, and Cooper found his attitude contagious. Despite the weight of the conversation Cooper knew they needed to have, they made easy chitchat in the kitchen before Cooper cocked his head for the two of them to follow him upstairs.

  On the way to his room, they passed a recent family portrait of Cooper, Jess, and their mom on the table at the top of the stairs.

  “Oh! Is this your mom?” Gus said, picking up the frame. “I’ve seen her biking in the neighborhood.”

  “Yup.”

  “Jess, you look exactly like her!”

  Jess beamed. There was no bigger compliment for her than being compared to Mom.

  “Do you guys want to play Low Budget?” Gus asked. “We have three players again.”

  Again.

  Cooper had been pondering how to talk about Elena after their shaky start that morning, and this seemed as good an opportunity as any. “Gus, can you come over here a sec?” He walked into his room, to his window, and peeked through the curtain.

  Elena was there, as she always was, swinging and staring up at him.

  “What do you see down there, across the alley?”

  Gus joined him. “You mean Elena?”

  Cooper took a deep breath, then began. “Okay. So, I wasn’t kidding this morning when I said that my mom doesn’t see Elena. She’s apparently never seen her, even though she sits out there all the time. Staring at us.”

  Gus smiled and said, “Yeah, I had a friend back home who my mom used to call Snuffleupagus because she didn’t meet him for two years. Like, he could never come over to play, so she joked around that he was like my imaginary friend.”

  “You’re not hearing me.”

  “He finally came to my birthday party and my mom said—”

  “Gus! My mom literally can’t see her.” He jabbed his finger toward the window. “Or her house. Neither can Zack, or his brother. Like, not at all. As far as we can tell, the three of us are the only ones who know Elena exists.”

  Gus turned to Jess as if to check if she was hearing this. She stared blankly back at him from her seat on Cooper’s bed and nodded. His expression faltered. “I don’t . . . really know what to do with that.”

  Cooper laughed darkly. “Yeah, neither do we.”

  “And we found a letter,” Jess added. “Elena wrote it, and we think that maybe she’s a ghost.”

  Cooper had thought it better to tell the story gradually, leave the letter for last, but clearly Jess had different ideas.

  Gus started to speak multiple times before managing, “What are you even talking about?”

  “In the letter,” Jess said, “she talks about all these ways she’s died.”

  Gus went still and then spoke in a very slow manner, like he was trying to explain a concept to someone who wasn’t very bright. “That’s . . . weird. And not actually possible.”

  “Agreed,” Cooper said, nodding vigorously. “But that’s what the letter said. And yesterday, my mom described that house as a place that needed to be boarded up, and today Zack told me his brother snuck into the house recently, like it was still abandoned. Which it was, until a few months ago.”

  Gus’s gaze darted between Cooper and Jess. He looked like one of those cartoon haunted-house paintings where only the eyes move.

  Cooper gestured for Gus to take a seat on his bed. “And there’s more.”

  “More?” Gus said, slowly lowering himself to the mattress. “Oh, good.”

  Cooper recounted the entire story of how Elena’s house had changed, and he showed Gus the cut he had received from not-broken glass. Jess crossed her arms and hugged herself as he spoke. When Cooper finished, he sized up his friend, trying to figure out what Gus was thinking, if he was believing anything Cooper was saying. Cooper hadn’t even started to talk about the raven crest and its trail of fatal catastrophes yet.

  Gus laughed again, nervously, then swallowed it down when he saw the serious looks on their faces. “None of that makes any sense. You guys know that, right?”

  “Yup,” Jess said. “Still true, though.”

  “Why would we be able to see her, and no one else?”

  Cooper pointed for Jess to get the iPad from his bedside table. “That’s the crazy part—”

  “Oh?” Gus said. “That’s the crazy part?”

  “Do you remember that symbol Elena has on her jacket? The raven?”

  Jess stepped forward, tapping. “Which one do you want first?” she asked her brother.

  “The train.”

  One by one, they walked Gus through the three articles, starting in England. With each photograph of the crest on the victims’ belongings, a groove between Gus’s eyebrows grew deeper and deeper. After the final series of photos from the Sampoong Mall, Gus finally spoke. “How did you guys even find these?”

  “The magic of Google,” Cooper said.

  “So,” Gus said, closing his eyes and putting his hand to his forehead, “you’re telling me there’s an invisible dead girl who lives in a shape-shifting house across your alley, and you think she’s connected to three deadly accidents that happened decades ago, all over the world?”

  Cooper, expressionless, said, “Yes. That’s basically right.”

  Jess added, “We couldn’t find that raven symbol anywhere online other than in these catastrophes.”

  “Okay, well,” Gus started, a humorous lilt to his voice, “it’s not like you’re going to find news articles in the paper like ‘Local Girl with Raven Symbol on Sweater Buys Groceries,’ or ‘School with Raven Crest Happy to Report No Catastrophes Today.’ Just because there are no articles doesn’t mean it’s not out there.”

  Jess crossed her arms and set her jaw.

  “I know this is a lot to take in,” Cooper said, “but you have to believe us. None of that explains why my mom and Zack can’t even see Elena.”

  “You must have misunderstood them,” Gus said.

  “What about what I saw inside that house last night? I didn’t misunderstand that.”

  “Maybe it was a dream or something.”

  “I didn’t dream this cut on my hand!” Cooper thrust his finger in front of Gus’s face.

  Gus flinched away and chewed his inner cheek.

  “Look,” Cooper said slowly. “You see her too. You’re like us. I don’t know how or why, but we’re all part of a weird puzzle, whether we want to be or not. Jess and I think something terrible is coming, some catastrophe, exactly like all of these.” He shook the iPad like a lawyer presenting evidence to a jury. “We have to work together to figure it out.”

  Gus closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and stood up slowly. “You know, I should probably get home.”

  The letter. Cooper had to show Gus something more concrete. He wasn’t proud of stealing it, but he had to convince Gus somehow. It was the only solid evidence he had short of dragging Gus over to the house and throwing him through the doorway, and Cooper wasn’t quite ready to do that yet. He went to his dresser to unearth the pages from the bottom of his sock drawer.

  “You have to believe us,” Jess pleaded softly. “This isn’t a game. If you can see Elena, you also might be in danger.”

  Cooper slumped a bit hearing Jess had reached the same conclusion he had: to see Elena, her house, and her crest was to be in peril.

  “You have to help us stop it,” she added.

  “Stop it?” Gus said. “Stop wh
at, exactly?”

  “Whatever’s coming,” Jess said.

  Gus grunted in frustration. “How?”

  “Whatever’s coming,” Jess repeated.

  “And that is?” Gus said.

  “Whaderz com . . .”

  “Jess?” Cooper said. The sound of Jess’s voice repeating the phrase snapped him to attention. He spun around, a pair of socks in each hand, and immediately recognized his sister’s glassy-eyed stare. She was pale, and a fine film of sweat glinted on her forehead. “Oh no,” he said, rushing to his sister’s side.

  They had gone straight to Gus’s house after school—and had skipped snacks.

  “Gus, get me some juice!”

  Gus blinked at Cooper, bewildered. “What?”

  “Some juice! Downstairs, in the fridge.” Cooper knelt down in front of Jess and wiped a bit of spittle that was gathering at the corner of her mouth.

  “Wherscum . . . ,” Jess slurred with grave seriousness, her lips fumbling as she stared at Cooper and through him at the same time.

  Gus stood stuck to the carpet, baffled. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Forget the juice. Come on, you have to help me get her downstairs. She’s diabetic; her blood sugar’s too low.”

  Cooper scooped the crook of his elbow under Jess’s armpit and heaved her to her feet. Gus did the same on the other side. The two of them shuffle-stepped beside Jess, helping her to awkwardly cross the room. She mumbled, “Whatever’s coming,” three more times, each less intelligible than the last, as Cooper and Gus lift-dragged her down the stairs, through the hallway, and into the kitchen. Cooper’s heart was pounding. He knew exactly what he needed to do, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t afraid. Fear had moved in the day Jess was diagnosed and was always lurking around the edges of the house.

  “What should I do?” Gus asked, his gaze skittering around the kitchen.

  “Help me get her into this chair.” Cooper used his foot to drag a seat out from under the kitchen table, and as Jess hit the wood, he bolted to the refrigerator.

  “Damn!” He tilted the orange juice container in front of his face; there was maybe a tablespoon left pooling in the corner of the clear plastic. He poured it into a glass anyway, added a mounding scoop of sugar from the bowl next to the coffee maker, and filled the rest of the glass with water. He snatched a dish towel on his way back to the table.

  “Jess. Drink.” He held the glass to her lips with the towel beneath.

  At first it dribbled down her chin and onto the fabric. She spluttered, “Whas . . . ,” which opened her lips enough for Cooper to get some of the liquid into her mouth. The taste of it appeared to shock Jess at first, but then, with an eager awareness, she raised her hands, grabbed the glass, and gulped the remainder down.

  “What happens now?” Gus asked, watching Jess with wide eyes.

  “Give it a sec. I’m going to make her a sandwich.”

  Over the next few minutes, as Cooper hurriedly spread thick layers of peanut butter and jelly onto bread, Jess became Jess again. She blinked multiple times and looked around with a confused gaze. She soon realized what had happened. “I went low again, huh?”

  Cooper set the plate in front of her and filled her glass with milk. “Yup. Eat.”

  Jess nodded and dug in.

  The boys sat down at the table with her, Cooper patiently waiting, Gus looking at her warily, as if she were a bomb about to explode. Through a mouthful of peanut butter, she said, “I’m okay, Gus, chill. Where were we?”

  “We were telling Gus about the crest.”

  “Right.” Jess swallowed some milk and brought the glass back down firmly against the table. “You have to help us stop whatever’s coming!”

  Gus flopped back in his seat, stunned and a bit exhausted by Jess’s remarkable recovery from a medical emergency. “I don’t even . . . Jess, are you okay?”

  She waved his concern away like a fly. “I’m fine. Are you going to help us?”

  With a small laugh, Gus said, “Umm, okay, I guess we’re back to that. Look, if I believe you guys, and that’s a big if, answer me this: how are we supposed to stop some big catastrophe from happening if we don’t even know what it is?”

  “We have to go talk to Elena. Make her tell us everything she knows,” Cooper said.

  “And if she doesn’t want to tell us anything?”

  “Well, then at least we tell her what we know,” Cooper said. “And you can help us study those old events, or maybe find more.”

  “Yeah,” Jess added, “I think we should go to the library and search through old newspapers that might not be online. Three of us would get way more done than two.”

  “Exactly,” Cooper said. “Maybe . . . maybe there’s a pattern to these disasters. If we can figure it out, we might be able to stop the next one.”

  “Stop Elena,” Jess said ominously.

  Gus took a slow breath. While he considered what they were asking, Cooper and Jess went through the ritual of checking her blood sugar. “Five, four, three, two, one, ouch,” they both said, mechanically. Pop-click. For the first time, Jess didn’t flinch when Cooper poked her finger. A needle was the least of her worries.

  When all was done, Cooper took his sister’s hand, this time for solidarity. “Gus, we need as many brains on this as possible. If we’re wrong, we’re wrong, and all three of us can laugh later about how stupid and crazy we were. But if we’re right . . .”

  He fell silent as Gus stood. For a moment, he thought Gus was going to take their hands as well. But then Cooper’s heart sank as Gus walked to the back door and grabbed the knob. Jess started to speak, but Cooper squeezed her hand and gently shook his head. They had said all they could. They had tried.

  But then Gus turned back to them, fished his phone out of his pocket, and said with a small, sad smile, “Well, let me call my grandma. I need to let her know I’m going to be gone awhile.”

  19

  Ms. Dreffel apparently didn’t like the idea of Gus staying late, or so it seemed as Cooper and Jess watched Gus out by the garage on his phone. He paced the driveway, talking intently, while they stayed in the kitchen to give him some privacy. Elena had apparently decided to do the same, having gone inside when Gus walked out to place his call. It didn’t look like it was going well.

  “Grandmas, huh?” Cooper said to Jess.

  She just nodded, her eyes locked on Gus, her expression blank. “I guess they’re all nightmares.”

  Cooper knew he and Jess were thinking about the exact same thing. It was impossible for anyone to mention grandmothers without both of them being immediately transported back to that day, three summers ago, when they’d seen their own grandma for the last time. Their father had moved out six months earlier, and they were going to their grandmother’s house to see him; it was going to be only the second time Jess and Cooper had done so since he’d bailed on them.

  Their mother had driven them to the gated entrance to Grandma Stewart’s house, but Cooper hadn’t budged from his place in the front seat. “Go on,” his mother had said. “And be nice. Your dad and your grandmother are family forever, no matter what.”

  That wasn’t the attitude you had when you were yelling at Dad on the phone last night, Cooper thought.

  “Let’s go,” Jess said from the back seat of the car. She hopped out and stood waiting, bouncing slightly as she smiled up at Grandma Stewart’s home, beyond the ornate iron fence and the tall hedges.

  Jess was still naive enough to be excited about going over to Grandma Stewart’s house, with its massive rooms and huge swimming pool. Cooper, however, found this whole “play nice” charade with both his grandmother and his dad tiresome. “Mom, can I just stay with you?”

  “I’ll be back in two hours.”

  “Can you at least come in with us?”

  Their mother smirked. “Trust me, we are all better off if you guys head up that driveway alone.” She gave him a gentle nudge.

  She was right. It was no secret
that Grandma Stewart thought Cooper’s mom was the biggest mistake of his dad’s life. Years ago, his parents had happily recounted stories of rankling Grandma Stewart’s sensibilities: hanging spoons from their noses at her Thanksgiving table, standing barefoot on a beach to exchange vows, getting busted skinny-dipping in her pool at two a.m. (an act Cooper couldn’t imagine his dad doing now). Cooper’s grandmother openly bemoaned his mom’s lack of polish and refinement, but it was clear to Cooper that this was just code for what his mother really lacked: wealth. She had never been, nor ever could be, good enough for Grandma Stewart’s son.

  But it had never seemed to matter to Dad . . . until it apparently did. In a moment of quiet reflection after Dad had moved out, Cooper’s mom had told him, “Your father and I have a different idea of what it means to ‘grow up.’”

  Cooper peered at the long driveway leading to his grandmother’s grand estate. Though he was nervous about seeing Grandma Stewart—the term “cold fish” would actually be a generous description—he was far more concerned with how to talk to Dad.

  “Buddy. You gotta go.” His mom prodded Cooper again with an elbow. “Your dad loves you and wants to see you.”

  He dragged himself from the car and didn’t turn when his mother gave three friendly honks as she drove away. He did smile, however, because he knew the sound irked his grandmother.

  One of his grandmother’s numerous housekeepers answered the door and led Cooper and Jess to the back of the house, where Grandma Stewart met them poolside, her huge, floppy sun hat shading her tan, leathery face. “Hello, children.” Her eyes scanned their clothing and forced a smile. “Do you have your swimsuits?”

  “Yup!” Jess said.

  Cooper held out his bag as evidence.

  “Good. Why don’t you go change, and I will have Mary make us some lunch. You’re hungry, yes?”

  They both nodded.

  Cooper never knew quite how to act at his grandmother’s home. After all, who wouldn’t love a giant pool, endless snacks, and an in-home theater with seats like the ones at the movies? Jess sure did. It was a kid’s wonderland. Except that actual kids didn’t seem particularly welcome. There were endless shushings and demands to slow down if they moved any faster than a walk. And when Cooper and Jess swam, they had to be careful not to splash too loudly, or Grandma Stewart would yell at them to stop behaving like wild animals.