The In-Between

by Rebecca K. S. Ansari

  “You don’t have to fake it. Just hide candy in your room and do all the food cheating you’ve ever wanted.”

  “Cooper! I don’t actually enjoy going to the hospital. I’d rather not die while trying to save our lives.”

  “Guys,” Gus cut in. “Your mom’s not going to believe you’re sick for a month, and if you skip school, she’s going to find out. But it’s not like my grandma really cares if the school tries to call home. I can fake sick for a week, and then just skip, at least for a while.”

  As Gus spoke, this brilliant plan didn’t seem so smart to Cooper anymore. In fact, it sounded awful. He hadn’t intended to cut his new friend out of his life. A flurry of new questions popped into his mind, fueling his urge to backpedal on his own proposal. How long would they have to stay apart? How would they even know when the danger had passed? Did they have the power to change the future, or was that entirely Elena’s job? Maybe changing their behavior would inadvertently make things harder for her.

  “So that’s the plan, I guess,” Jess said. “Stay apart to stay alive.”

  “Actually, let’s keep thinking,” Cooper said. “Maybe we can come up with something else.”

  “Maybe,” Gus said, “but until we do, I should probably go.” He stood and took a few steps away from the table. “I’ll even leave the neighborhood when the bus comes near the house, in case it’s, like, a bus explosion or something.”

  The dreadful possibilities seemed endless.

  “Hey, Cooper,” Gus said. “Do you want to give me your number? It’s safe to text, right?”

  “I’d think so,” he said quietly. It felt like very small comfort. Cooper handed Gus his phone to type in his contact information, and Gus sent himself a text so he’d have Cooper’s number. As he did, Cooper stared at his own hands, trying to push away the sting behind his eyes.

  Gus gently put Cooper’s phone on the tabletop and, with a nod, went to the door. He stopped with his hand on the knob. “I’d say see you later, but I guess that’s not really true.” He gave them a weak smile and a wave before he opened the door and walked out.

  24

  True to his word, Gus was absent from school for the next two weeks. He texted with Cooper all the time—the latest hilarious horror stories about his grandma, his creative mock-illness symptoms, funny video clips and memes—and the two of them met up a few times at a local park without Jess. Still, there was a cloud of paranoia over everything.

  Cooper hated it.

  He racked his brain to find a new, better plan, but he came up empty.

  Trying to be as careful as possible, Jess and Cooper stayed as isolated from each other as two people could while living in the same house. They were, after all, only guessing that Gus’s absence was enough to keep them all safe. Accordingly, Cooper stayed home while Jess went trick-or-treating with friends (giving them and Cooper most of her candy), and Jess stayed in her room when their mother was gone, a feat Cooper knew took every ounce of his sister’s restraint. It was the scariest Halloween of their lives.

  Any thoughts Cooper had of questioning Elena further were squashed by the fact that the swing sat empty, day after day. He contemplated going back into the In-Between to find her, to let her know what they were doing, but without a guaranteed escape route, the risk was too great. Instead Cooper sat in his room after school, day after day, looking across the alley, wondering if they were helping her at all, or if all of this precaution was for nothing.

  Each morning, he rose early and walked to school alone. He ate lunch in his empty science classroom. He walked home solo. Stay apart to stay alive. But for the first time in two years, he found he didn’t want to be alone. He missed Gus. He missed sharing his weird comic books, his journaling, his Snickers bars. And he missed Jess.

  Who knew that was possible?

  “When did you start taking an interest in the news?” their mother asked at the breakfast table one morning, as he reached for the front page.

  “It’s research for school,” Cooper lied, scanning every headline, looking for anything that might be a hint at the impending danger. The university had hired a new basketball coach, there was a new tax coming for much-needed roadwork in the city, some CEO was going to jail. Nothing stood out. No catastrophes either.

  So far, at least, their plan seemed to be working.

  Their mother was home every Tuesday after work, and her protective presence allowed Cooper and Jess to abandon their precautions. Jess had taken to doing her Tuesday homework on Cooper’s bedroom floor while he worked at his desk, an arrangement they found as comforting as their mother found baffling.

  On the third Tuesday after hatching their plan, Cooper finished his math and walked over to the window. He looked out at Elena’s house and asked hopefully, “Do you think maybe it’s over?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Whatever it was Elena was here for. Maybe our plan has already worked, and Elena succeeded. The danger has passed. I haven’t seen her over there once since I went into the In-Between.”

  Jess shook her head. “What color is the house?”

  “Yellow,” Cooper answered flatly, seeing her point.

  “Yeah, it’s not over.” As if to prove Jess’s point, a small sliver of smoke rose from the chimney as she spoke. “Until that house is in shambles again, we’re still in danger.”

  They had to stay the course.

  Cooper’s phone vibrated in his back pocket. It was a text from Gus.

  My grandma fell asleep in her chair and her snoring is

  so loud that the neighbor’s dogs started barking.

  Cooper snorted and read the text to Jess. His phone vibrated again.

  OMG. SO. LOUD.

  So that’s what that noise is! Cooper replied, followed by a cry laugh emoji.

  Seriously. It’s like she’s choking on a rhino

  Maybe u should wake her up

  That’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said, Gus sent.

  We’re trying to stay alive, remember???

  Cooper laughed out loud.

  Riiiiiiight

  Gus stopped typing after that. Cooper tried to come up with something else to text about but couldn’t think of anything. All he really wanted to do was go hang out with Gus—play a game, read some comics, mindlessly watch some YouTube, whatever.

  “Jess, would you be okay if I go over to Gus’s for a bit?”

  Jess looked back at her worksheet, the shared amusement of Gus’s texts sliding off her face. “I . . . I guess.”

  “Mom’s here, so you won’t be alone.” When she still frowned, he added, “I’d take you if I could,” and he was no longer surprised to realize this was completely true. “I just want to hang with him for a bit. I think he’s lonelier than we are.”

  Jess still didn’t look up.

  “And you can hang out in here while I’m gone.” Cooper never allowed her in his room without him. He nudged her in the ribs with the side of his foot. “You know, if you promise not to touch anything.”

  Jess smiled begrudgingly. “Why would I want to touch your gross stuff anyway?”

  “I’ll be back in an hour.” He looked at his phone and showed it to her. “By five thirty. Promise.”

  Jess agreed with a nod. “Fine. Say hi to Gus for me. Now get out of here so I can start touching everything.”

  Cooper laughed and rumpled her hair, which she pretended to be irritated by.

  He took the front steps two by two and arrived on Ms. Dreffel’s block a few minutes later. Gus was sitting on the front steps, scribbling in his journal, next to a pile of worn-looking comic books.

  “Hey!” Cooper called out.

  “Coop?” When Gus saw Jess wasn’t with him, he relaxed and smiled at Cooper, but it didn’t brighten his face the way it usually did.

  “Is everything all right?” Cooper asked.

  “Yeah. I just had to get out of there for a bit.” Gus closed his notebook and offered Cooper a newish-looking Hulk. “Want
to read?”

  Cooper took it and sat beside Gus. “Your grandma’s not going to scream at me, is she?”

  Gus took a comic for himself. “No, she’s still konked out in there.” He said it with a laugh, but something was wrong. He didn’t open his Squirrel Girl but instead stared out at the street, a sick look on his face.

  “Seriously, man, what’s up?”

  Gus rolled up his comic like a newspaper, wringing it in his hands. “I don’t know. It’s my parents, that’s all.”

  Cooper took a breath. “Did something happen?” He braced himself to hear Gus tell him they were getting divorced. Cooper would’ve done anything to spare Gus from speaking those words, but he also knew he was as powerless to control what two strangers in Oklahoma did as he’d been with the two adults who had slept in the room next to his.

  “Nah,” Gus said, “nothing’s happened, not that I know of, at least. It’s just . . . I’ve been thinking about them a lot. About how they were always gone, always busy with something else, even when things started to fall apart. I wish that they . . . I don’t know, maybe they just don’t care about me that much. I haven’t heard from them.” His voice cracked on the word “them,” as if it had shattered in his mouth. “It’s like I don’t even exist. Like I’m . . . invisible.” He gave Cooper a small, sad smile. “Just like Elena, I guess.”

  Cooper stared at his hands. As Gus spoke, he realized that, whether Gus’s parents got divorced or not, the damage had been done. Cooper thought back to that night at the movie theater, that feeling of being completely forgotten by his dad. That was before his parents had split up. The pain started so much earlier.

  “I am so, so sorry,” Cooper said. He wanted to say something that would erase the feelings he knew his friend was experiencing. He wanted to let him know that one person knew what he was going through and did care. But how do you say the right thing when you have no idea what that is? If he’d known the words that healed this pain, he would have tried them on himself long ago.

  “It’s fine,” Gus said. The ink on the comic book cover was now marred with smudged fingerprints. “It’s just hard, you know?”

  “Yeah. I do know. I know really, really well.” Cooper put his arm around Gus’s shoulder, and Gus slumped against his side. He didn’t cry, but Cooper almost wished he would. He knew what to do with tears. He was used to Jess’s. What he wasn’t used to was the sense of utter defeat he felt in his friend.

  “I will say, though,” Cooper added, “when family stuff gets messy, sometimes being together is harder than staying apart. Maybe sending you here was your parents’ way of sparing you some of the ugly stuff.”

  Gus shrugged.

  “After our dad moved out, but before the divorce was final, Jess and I would have these . . . dates? . . . with my dad. They were so awkward. I remember this one time, after my dad hadn’t seen us for, like, a month and a half, we met up with him at the park a few blocks over. He showed up with this cheap gas-station Frisbee, but he was still in a suit. He threw it around, and Jess, of course, ran after it like a puppy, while he stayed on this tiny patch of asphalt under the basketball hoop so his fancy leather shoes wouldn’t get wet or muddy. I just sat on the swings, staring. I mean, seriously? You can’t bother to change? He didn’t even look at me, and then, after maybe forty minutes, tops, he checked his watch and informed us he had to go. Like the whole thing had been a real chore.”

  Gus stopped strangling his comic, took a deep breath, and sat up a little straighter. They watched cars go by, listening to the sounds of the city. Then, in a very quiet voice, Gus asked, “Do you ever feel like it’s all your fault?”

  “Only every day.”

  Gus half smiled and said, “But see, I don’t get that for you. It seems super obvious that there’s nothing that you did, or even could do, that would make a grown-up do the things your dad did. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “You know I could say the exact same thing to you about your parents, right?”

  “But I don’t believe you,” Gus said, now with a full grin.

  “And I don’t believe you!”

  “Why are we like this?” Gus yelled good-humoredly to the sky, shaking both fists for emphasis, before looking nervously behind him toward Ms. Dreffel’s window.

  “I don’t know,” Cooper whispered yelled with the same fist gesture. “But, for the love of all that’s holy, do not wake that old lady up!”

  They both stiffled their laughs while anxiously watching the door. It stayed closed.

  “You know,” Gus said, “when I was packing to come here, I finally had to tell one of my friends what was going on with my family. I thought I was going to die of embarrassment, but then he ended up telling me his mom doesn’t leave the house because she gets really freaked out around other people, and he somehow thinks it’s because she’s ashamed of him. And he said his uncle’s this great guy in public, but he screams at his cousin if he leaves even a sock on the floor, so the kid blames himself for every one of his dad’s explosions. And I know his cousin, he’s this soccer star, super nice. But he still feels like a total failure because his dad’s an ass.”

  “That’s messed up.”

  “I know. But that’s the thing. I could see their situations so clearly, and it made me wonder what my world looks like to them. From the outside. I’ve been trying to see my family through someone else’s eyes. Anyone else’s.” Gus paused and crossed his arms tightly around himself.

  “How’s that going?” Cooper asked.

  “Not great!” Gus laughed, but Cooper could tell he didn’t think it was funny. “I mean, I keep telling myself that when my parents seem to have forgotten about me, maybe it isn’t because I’m forgettable. I try to tell myself that maybe I’m not the problem, they are.”

  “They. Are.” Cooper said. “None of this is your fault.”

  “Yeah, my brain gets it, but my heart doesn’t. Right?”

  Right. Cooper stared out at the street and was surprised to feel a clutch in his throat. Could he ever see his own family from the outside? To truly believe that it wasn’t all his fault? When his father had left, Cooper kept telling himself that his dad needed to live some wildly different sort of life. Make a huge change. But then, his dad’s life was pretty much the same as it had always been—the only difference being an entirely new cast of characters. It was impossible for Cooper to not to feel like he was the problem. He wiped his cheek with the back of his hand.

  “Maybe, for now,” Gus said, “it’s enough that we believe it for each other?”

  Cooper nodded slightly, trying the idea on for size.

  “I’ll go first. Cooper, it’s not your fault.”

  Two more tears tracked down Cooper’s face as he said, “It’s not your fault, either.”

  25

  “Hey,” Cooper said to his mom as he entered the kitchen on the stroke of 5:30, just as he had promised Jess. The scent of garlic and onions made his stomach growl. “What’s for dinner? It smells great in here.”

  “Shakshouka!” his mother said with a playful flourish.

  Her lighthearted mood was a welcome shift after his conversation with Gus. “Shak-what-a?”

  “Shakshouka! It’s Israeli.”

  “Oh man,” he said with a wry smile, “and I’d really been looking forward to eggs tonight.”

  His mother snapped the kitchen towel in his direction. “Yolk’s on you, buddy! It does have eggs, baked right on top.”

  “Noooooo,” he moaned jokingly.

  “Well, my little food critic, I guess you’ll just have to start cooking dinner around here yourself if you want something different.”

  “Not gonna happen.”

  “Yes, I know.” She laughed. “Hey, how’s your homework coming along?”

  “All done.” Cooper got a glass of water and leaned against the sink. He hadn’t seen his mom good-humored like this in a long time. “Do you want any help with dinner?”

  His mother drew back in feig
ned shock. “Who are you, and what have you done with Cooper?” Cooper stuck his tongue out, which she returned before smiling again. “I do appreciate the offer, but this is basically done. All that’s left is cracking the eggs and sticking it in the oven to bake.”

  “Where’s Jess?” he asked.

  “She’s been upstairs for a while. She must have a lot of homework.”

  Cooper knew she had been almost finished when he left an hour ago. He downed his water and headed upstairs.

  “Vigilantes Unum!” Jess hissed at Cooper as he walked into his room. She was exactly where he had left her on his bedroom floor an hour ago, scribbling notes and practically pounding on the iPad.

  “Hmm, I know I’ve heard that phrase somewhere before,” he joked, scratching his chin, before realizing that Jess was intensely serious.

  “Cooper, close the door. I think we got it wrong. So, so wrong.”

  He did as he was told. “Got what wrong?”

  “Elena! Her role in all of this. I got to thinking about Vigilantes Unum, and how ‘vigilantes’ must mean something different than what we thought, right? It can’t mean to punish, not if Elena is a victim too. So, I tried searching for different meanings for the whole phrase. Both words are Latin, not just the unum part.”

  “Okay . . .” Cooper looked down at the notepad but couldn’t make sense of all that she had scribbled there. “What does it mean, then?”

  “Well, one translation is ‘one watching.’”

  “One watching?” Cooper repeated.

  “Like, one who is watching over. One who protects. And I also researched more about ravens. In some cultures, yes, they’re omens of danger, but in others, they’re believed to warn against danger. They’re even considered guardians of the Tower of London.”

  Cooper was trying to make sense of his sister’s anxious energy. Nothing she had said so far contradicted what they already believed, yet worry was radiating from her. “So, that actually fits better with our theory, right? It only proves we’re on the right track.”

  Jess shook her head vehemently, like she was frustrated with her own inability to get Cooper to see. She opened the iPad and turned it to him. “Park Cho.”