The In-Between

by Rebecca K. S. Ansari

  “Park what?”

  “Not what. Who! Park Cho,” she repeated. “From the Sampoong Mall?”

  “What about him?”

  “Look.” She pointed to the screen. “This article talks about him.” She read aloud: “Park Cho told KBS-TV he was on the ground floor Thursday before the collapse. ‘I felt a terrible quake, and then people began racing down from the upper floors.’ I found a video clip of him being interviewed at the scene, and he was a kid! He was your age in 1995.”

  Jess navigated back to another article. “And at the Triangle fire, it talks about Beatrice Moretti, who was ‘the last person known to leave work before the inferno began.’”

  “And?” Cooper said.

  “She had lied about her age to get the job. She was really twelve. In both of these articles, a kid left right before disaster struck.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “These are people who were seconds away from death, but somehow, right before everything happened, they were spared. Like someone had warned them.”

  Cooper began to see what his sister was trying to say. “Watching over them, even though so many others died.”

  “Watching over them and only them. And I found one more article about the Charfield crash we hadn’t read before.” Jess handed him the iPad.

  Cooper skimmed the article while Jess read over his shoulder. He traced the text with a finger, mumbling words as he searched for anything that fit, and near the bottom, he read aloud:

  On a day filled with seemingly endless sorrow, there was one small miracle that came to light late in the day’s recovery efforts. Mr. and Mrs. Edward Hughes had arrived in the early morning hours at Charfield Station to receive their child, Geoffrey, who was returning from a visit with his aunt in Bristol. An anguished Mrs. Hughes had to be assisted back to her coach when it became inescapably clear that their son was not among the survivors. Hours later, however, a telegram arrived informing the Hughes family that their child had missed the train that morning and was, in fact, alive and well in Bristol.

  “We were almost right,” Jess said with fear in her eyes. “We did have things upside down and backward. But the accidents that we’ve found? They aren’t the times Elena failed. They’re the times that she’s succeeded. Elena’s never been able to save everyone. Just one.”

  “Unum,” Cooper whispered.

  “It doesn’t mean ‘one watching over.’ It means ‘watching over ONE.’ That’s the power she has,” Jess said. “She can’t stop the disasters. She dies in someone’s place.”

  Cooper heard his pulse throbbing in his ears. Could Jess be right? Was this the truth they had been missing? The piece of the puzzle that Elena hadn’t been able to tell him? He suddenly felt immensely foolish for believing that he, Jess, and Gus had any power over what the future brought. If Elena couldn’t stop it, they certainly held no power to do so.

  “She has died over and over again,” said Jess. “She dies so one kid doesn’t have to. That is her quest.”

  “And that’s why she couldn’t risk telling me what she does. If she’d told me that she only dies in the place of one . . .” He trailed off, sitting down hard onto his bed.

  Jess sat next to him. “. . . that leaves two of us in serious trouble.”

  26

  If the shakshouka was any good, Cooper wouldn’t have been able to say. It tasted like paste as the reality of their situation crashed over Cooper again and again.

  One of them was safe.

  Two of them were not.

  No wonder Elena wouldn’t tell him anything more. How could she have looked him in the eye and told him two of their three were doomed? Them and so many more.

  Cooper texted Gus Jess’s Vigilantes Unum findings before going to bed, and Gus’s only reply was:

  That’s not good.

  What else was there to say?

  Cooper walked through school the next day in a state of high alert, wondering if it was possible to feel any more paranoid. Zack dropped a folder in class, and the bang of it hitting the floor almost flattened Cooper. While everyone had laughed at his overreaction, Zack had asked, “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m good.” Nope. Not at all.

  That afternoon, when Cooper and Jess came home, they were surprised to find their mom home early.

  “Hey, Mom!” Jess said.

  “What are you doing home?” Cooper said, spooked by any breach in the regular routine. He also didn’t like the we-need-to-talk look in his mother’s eye or the fact that she’d already changed out of her usual work clothes.

  As Cooper lowered himself into a chair, he heard Jess’s voice on the other side of the kitchen.

  “Five, four, three, two, one, ouch!” Pop-click.

  The noise was a familiar one—the click of a finger lancet. Cooper watched as Jess stood at the kitchen counter, squeezing a drop of blood onto the test strip of her glucometer. “One forty-five, Mom,” she turned and announced a few seconds later. She giggled at the look on Cooper’s face and shrugged.

  Cooper blinked. He hadn’t even thought of Jess’s diabetes in the past three weeks. In all those days of living on the other side of the house, she had had to figure it out on her own. And she had. He gave her a little thumbs-up that she returned.

  “Jess, come have a seat,” their mother said.

  Jess’s expression changed at these words. The last time Mom had asked them to have a seat, it was because Dad was having yet another kid. She crept to a chair and perched halfway on its edge, poised to bolt.

  “I wanted to ask you guys a question,” Mom continued.

  “Okay,” Cooper said, though it didn’t feel okay at all.

  Their mother shifted in her seat and sat up a little straighter. “You know it’s been a few years since your father and I split up.”

  Not a question, Cooper thought. He didn’t like how this was starting, and there wasn’t much more he could take at the moment.

  “Yeah . . . ?” said Jess.

  Mom folded her hands in front of her. They were like a mashup from two completely different people: their backs had skin like parched desert sand, with fissures and cracking lines, and her fingernails were rough, dry, and almost always stained from pottery clay. But her palms were soft and smooth from hours immersed in massage oil, giving comfort and calm to others.

  “Guys,” she said. “I miss having an adult I can share things with. A partner. I’ve met a very nice person at the arts center who has asked me out to dinner.”

  Jess’s mouth dropped open.

  “I would like to go, but I knew we had to talk about it before I could say yes.”

  The chair beneath Jess shot back as she stood and spat, “But what about Dad?”

  Their mother’s shoulders sagged slightly, but before she could speak, Cooper stepped in.

  “Jess—” he started.

  She shot him a disgusted glare and yelled, “What? You’re okay with this?”

  “Dad’s married, Jess. There is no Dad in this equation.”

  “He needs more time!” Jess yelled at her mother, as if Dad, too, were trapped in some chrysalis, trying to get out. “He’ll never come back if you do this!”

  “Oh, honey,” their mother sighed. “He’s never coming back either way.”

  “You don’t know that!”

  “Yes, Jess. I do. I think we all do.”

  With that, Jess ran upstairs and slammed her bedroom door. Cooper and his mom sat staring at each other, their heavy breaths rising and falling in sync.

  “I knew she’d be upset,” she finally said. “But I didn’t think . . .”

  “Yeah,” Cooper said. “Jess still has hopes.”

  After a quiet moment, Mom said, “What about you?”

  Cooper looked at his mother in shock. “Mom, I gave up hoping on Dad a long time ago.”

  “No,” she said with a small laugh. “I mean, what do you think about me going out to dinner?”

  “Oh.”

 
; He didn’t know what he thought. He knew his mom used to have an energy that fueled their family with excitement and wonder at the world around them, but he hadn’t seen that side of her in a long time. He knew there were nights when she cried quietly in her room, and she seemed so tired all the time, even when she had a break from work. It was almost like she’d forgotten how to wake up all the way. He’d always assumed she was exhausted by anger and disappointment, the same way he was. But sitting, looking at her now, he realized maybe part of it was loneliness.

  “Coop, I don’t need to do this. I love you and your sister. You’re my everything. But . . . I want to go to dinner with Eric. I want to have someone to share happiness with, someone my own age. I’m ready for that again.”

  “Is he more like you?” Cooper asked.

  His mom tipped her head. “What do you mean? More like me than your dad was?”

  Cooper nodded slightly. “You and Dad are so . . . different from each other. Like, opposite.”

  “Believe it or not, those differences were a big part of why we fell in love in the first place. We complemented each other. I made him more carefree, he made me more grounded. And the parts that didn’t fit? Well, they didn’t seem to matter so much back then.” She stared at the floor with a melancholy smile. Then, with a sigh, she looked Cooper squarely in the eye and said, “Or maybe we were better at pretending they weren’t there.”

  “So. Is this new guy more like you?”

  “Yeah, sweetie. He is.”

  Cooper slowly pushed his chair out and stood. His mom stayed still, her hands clasped tightly in front of her, waiting. He leaned a millimeter forward, then a few more. Then he took a step toward his mother and held his arms out.

  His mom’s eyes crinkled as she stood and wrapped her arms around him. They hugged for what felt like hours, as if Cooper was back on In-Between time. His mother’s soft hands rubbed his back, over and over, as if she were making up for all the times in the last year that it hadn’t happened. That he hadn’t let it happen. Something in Cooper’s chest unclenched.

  He finally murmured into her shoulder, “Mom, I just want you to be happy.”

  She pulled back and took him gently by the shoulders. Her eyes were shiny. “I want you to be happy too, Coop.”

  He looked her right in the eye. Maybe he was much, much more like his mom than he’d ever realized. Maybe she wasn’t the only one struggling to remember what it was like to wake up.

  Cooper’s mother made them both warm cups of tea, and they sat in the kitchen, blowing and sipping in a comfortable quiet. When the last drop was gone, Cooper’s mom turned to him. “Do you mind if I go for a ride? I’m going to need some time to figure out how to talk to Jess about all this.”

  “Yeah, go. We’ll be fine.”

  “Thanks, bud.” His mother gave him another quick hug and went to her room to change into her biking gear.

  Cooper grabbed his backpack and went up to his room, figuring he’d do his homework and give his sister a little space. He was working his first math problem when Jess walked into his room, crossed to his bed, and sat on its edge, her face shrouded by her long hair.

  Cooper waited for her to say something but ultimately put his pencil down and turned in his chair. He rested his folded arms on the chair’s back, his chin atop his hand. “You okay?”

  “He’s never coming back, is he?” she whispered.

  Cooper had told her his thoughts on this more times than he could count, imploring Jess to see the truth. But something about this moment—her posture, her voice—told Cooper she was ready to truly hear it for the first time.

  “No,” he said.

  He watched as the word struck her across the face, hurting them both.

  “No,” she repeated softly. She uttered it a few more times, as if testing its weight. Then she lifted her chin toward the ceiling. She looked like she was trying not to cry, then her face screwed up in anger. “But we were here first!” she said.

  “I know.” Cooper agreed that he and Jess should have some sort of cosmic priority as Dr. Stewart’s first-born children, not these latecomers. “We were, but it doesn’t matter.”

  “You mean we don’t matter.”

  He had no response to that. He’d been feeling the searing heat of this same conclusion for years now, but after his conversation with Gus, he wondered if they were both wrong. They all mattered, all three of them, at least to one another.

  “Jess, what Dad’s done . . . I don’t think I’ll ever understand it or get over it. But we have to keep living our lives, and we can’t take it out on Mom. She’s the one who’s always been here. Who always will be.”

  “But a date?”

  “Yes, a date.”

  “You’re seriously cool with that?”

  Cooper waited until Jess looked at him before saying, “What I’m cool with is Mom being happy. If going out to dinner with this Eric guy makes her happy, then isn’t that worth it?”

  “I do not want a new dad!”

  Cooper walked to the bed and sat down with his arm around his sister’s shoulder. “Jess, it’s a date, not a wedding.”

  “But what if she ends up liking him? Like really liking him? What do we do then?”

  This possibility sounded awful to Cooper as well, but he said, “If she likes him that much, maybe it’s because he’s really likable. Maybe we’d like him too.”

  “Nope.” Jess shook her head.

  “Okay, fine. You don’t have to like him. To be honest, I’m not even asking myself to like him, or the next him or even the next after that.”

  Jess shot him an angry side-eye. “Enough already!”

  Cooper laughed and pulled her tighter. “What I am trying to say is that what we think isn’t what really matters. What matters is if Mom likes him. She’s lonely, Jess. Lonely in a way I don’t think you and I can fix.” When Jess said nothing, he added, “You know that we are always Mom’s first priority, right? No date will ever change that.”

  Jess tucked her hair behind her ears and slowly lifted her gaze to look straight at Cooper. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m positive, and you can be too. She’s not Dad.”

  Jess exhaled. It was a long, slow release. She then chewed on her bottom lip and began to pick at the cuticle on her thumb. “Okay. But I’m still gonna have to think about it . . . about this Eric.”

  That was fair. It was a lot to take in.

  This time—unlike the time with Gus weeks ago—the moment the idea popped into Cooper’s head, he knew it felt right. “There’s something I want to show you. Something cool.”

  “Oh yeah?” She didn’t smile, but Cooper could tell he’d caught her interest.

  “Yeah. Come on. We’re going out.”

  “Where?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “Is it safe?”

  “Honestly, I have no idea anymore.”

  Jess looked at him for a second but then stood up. “Okay. Let me get my coat from my room.”

  Yes. Jess would make an excellent bridge screamer.

  27

  “I should do what?” Jess asked from her spot on the bridge. Cooper hadn’t told her anything until they were standing in yelling position, and she clearly now thought her brother had a screw loose.

  “Just let it out. Let all of it out.”

  Jess instead scanned all the people in the cars creeping slowly past in rush-hour traffic, one eyebrow creeping up her forehead.

  “No one cares, Jess. I don’t think anyone can even hear you.”

  “Okay, I’ll do it, but you first.”

  “Sure.” Cooper grabbed the railing and let out a scream. It was loud enough that, for the first time, he saw a passenger in the nearest car glance at him with concern. Cooper simply waved with a grin.

  “I thought you said they couldn’t hear.” Jess laughed nervously.

  “Maybe they can when traffic’s slow like this,” he said with a shrug. “Who cares?”

  Jess put on
e hand on the rail, and with her other hand she reached out to her brother. He took it and squeezed. Then she let loose perhaps the loudest scream he’d ever heard on the bridge.

  “Nice!” he said after she finished and turned to him with a look of great satisfaction. “You’re a natural.”

  They each took their turns, screaming until they were breathless. Cooper felt lighter with each yell, but he had also arrived with less weight than usual. Jess’s yells, in contrast, were raw. Angry. It wasn’t something Cooper was accustomed to in his little sister. There was a lot more power packed into her than he’d realized.

  When they were both screamed out, the comfortable calm that always followed settled over both of them.

  “How often do you come down here?” Jess said, overlooking the city.

  “Whenever I’m so angry I don’t know what to do with myself.”

  “So, all the time?” she said with a grin.

  “Basically.” But even as he said this, something within him shifted. For over three years, anger had been a daily companion, but standing here with Jess, he felt like maybe he had screamed all he needed to about his family. The well had run dry. He looked around at the old bridge, with its cracked cement and rusted-out railings, and wondered if this was, perhaps, the last time he would come here.

  “Hey, guys!”

  Cooper was the first to turn at the sound of the voice, faintly coming from their left. But it was Jess who said, “Is that Gus?”

  He was running toward them from the south side of the bridge, unmistakable in his same sweatshirt, one arm waving, one clutching his journal. There was an urgency on his face that only added to Cooper’s anxiety at the three of them being together, in one place, for the first time in weeks. It was against the plan.

  Jess must have felt the same. “Should I head home?” she asked.

  Before Cooper could answer, Gus reached them, winded, and put his hands on his knees. “Hey!” he said. “You weren’t home, so I thought I might find you here.”

  Cooper turned to his sister. “Wait for me at the light,” he said, pointing in the distance to the intersection behind Gus, the first turnoff toward home.