The In-Between

by Rebecca K. S. Ansari

  The girl coughed in pain but didn’t open her eyes.

  “Jess! She’s alive.” He spoke gently to the girl. “Are you okay?”

  Jess went to the side of the other girl. “Elena?”

  “Cooper?” the girl next to Cooper moaned.

  In an instant, the sky darkened to a shade of sickly green. A sudden clap of thunder shook the air all around them, leaving Cooper’s ears ringing.

  “Yes, yes!” Cooper answered. “It’s me.”

  A bizarre echoing noise like a reverberating strum of the lowest string on a cello came from the house. Both Jess and Cooper turned to see that the chimney was now bent in half, seeming more like it was made of soft taffy than brick. The gutters were dripping as if clogged with rain, but instead of water, it was the metal itself plopping in huge molten drops to the ground.

  “Can you . . . lay me straight?” the girl near Cooper said. She was trying to move, but it was clearly excruciating.

  “Okay, okay,” he said frantically. “Jess, move her arms and legs.” Another painfully loud sound came from above them, but it would be hard to call it thunder this time. It sounded more like a head-on collision of two massive vehicles, echoing over and over.

  Cooper and Jess each tended to one of the sisters as quickly as they could, all the while stealing glimpses of the disintegrating house. Their only exit.

  When both girls were more comfortably situated, the first one finally opened her eyes. “What are you doing here?” she said, gripping at his shirt. “Cooper, you have to go home!” She turned and saw Jess. “Oh no!”

  “It’s okay. I think I know how to get you out of here.”

  The other girl was now able to painfully prop herself up on her elbows. She peered at the house and cried, “Dude! Are you nuts? Get out of here! Go!”

  Cooper couldn’t help it. He smiled. Gus.

  “We’ll go,” Cooper said. “I promise. But first, tell me your names.”

  “You know our names,” Gus said.

  “No. Your real names! The names you were born with; the names of those two girls who went down on the ship all those years ago. The ones who were never mourned, who were forgotten.”

  The sisters looked at each other, then closed their eyes, like they were both trying to recall a dream long put out of mind. The girl who had been Elena put her hand over Cooper’s.

  “I’m Elizabeth. And that’s Gwen.”

  A sudden blast of light and wind knocked Cooper and Jess over where they knelt, throwing them against the girls and bringing with it a smell of roses so strong, it made Cooper dizzy. He had to shield his eyes from a blazingly bright beam that came from beside them, like someone was aiming a spotlight directly at their heads.

  It was coming from the direction of the golden door.

  Another ominous and unearthly moan came from the house. Its entire left side was now gone, melted down and seeping into the earth like a Popsicle left out in the sun. A violent wind began to swirl around them, battering the four of them from all sides.

  The In-Between was enraged.

  Cooper scooped an arm under Elizabeth’s shoulders. She cried out in pain, but Cooper knew he couldn’t stop. “Jess, help Gus! I mean Gwen!” Neither of them could carry one of the girls on their own, but after a moment Elizabeth and Gwen slung their battered and bruised arms over Jess’s and Cooper’s shoulders and stood. They all shuffled forward slowly, painfully, urgently. As they approached the stunningly bright light, Cooper had to close his eyes and lean into the gale-force winds that were trying to push them away.

  When they were within feet of the door, Cooper heard the faint sounds of laughter beyond it.

  “Gwen!” Elizabeth yelled. She reached a hand out ahead of herself. “It’s open! It’s truly open! I hear them!”

  Cooper nudged her forward, hoping Elizabeth’s own legs would be able to support her for the final steps across the threshold. But she didn’t move.

  “Don’t be afraid!” Cooper said. “Just go!”

  But Cooper had misunderstood her hesitation. She hugged him tightly and spoke shaky words in his ear.

  “Thank you.”

  Then she pushed away and took a wobbly step forward.

  She was gone.

  Jess and Gwen came up behind him, and Cooper stepped aside. His clothes were beating against his body, whipped and twisted by the winds.

  “Goodbye, Gwen!” he shouted into the howl, hoping the girl with braids beside him could still hear him.

  “It’s Gus, you goofball!” came the reply. It was unmistakably the voice of his friend.

  The light was too bright for Cooper to steal a final look, but the two embraced and held on as long as they dared. Then Gus stepped back, and both Cooper and Gus said, “Thank you,” at the same time. Though the hurricane winds threatened to steal their words away, Cooper held them tightly in his mind and heart. Then, once again, the two spoke together:

  “Now GO.”

  Cooper felt Gus step through the door.

  Then, in an instant, all went silent and dark. The wind ceased completely.

  Cooper slowly opened his eyes. The door was gone. And while the storm had ceased, the scene around them was more terrifying than ever. The black sky was drooping down toward them like the top blanket of a pillow fort, threatening to collapse at any moment. He could barely make out the grass, if it could still be called that. Each blade was melting into an ever-growing straw-shaded puddle that stuck to his shoes. The distorted cry of a raven split the air, like it was coming from a toy bird whose batteries were dying.

  The only source of light was the little window in the front door of the house. The right side of the building was dissolving before their eyes. It tenuously anchored the only part of the home that seemed undamaged: the door. Then, as more of the last remaining wall melted away, the door and its frame began to lean ominously, no longer secured by anything.

  Cooper and Jess exchanged a terrified look before both streaking toward their only route home. When they were only a few feet away, the door and its frame started to fall toward them.

  Jess cried out and shot ahead of Cooper, crouching as she approached. She let out a grunt as the door crashed against her back, coming to rest at a forty-five-degree angle across her. Cooper did a baseball slide to arrive next to his sister, yellow grass goo spraying out around him as he skimmed the surface like a Slip ’N Slide. Cooper reached up for the knob; then, huddled beside Jess, eyes closed, he turned it. With a click of the latch, the doorframe released and landed on the earth around them, passing over their crouched bodies.

  The only noise in the eerie silence was their ragged breathing.

  Then came a voice. “Hey! You two! What do you think you’re doing over there?”

  Cooper cracked open one eye. Beneath him, he saw gray, mealy slats of wood. He lifted his head and saw that he and Jess were lying on the back porch of the abandoned brown house. Mr. Evans was standing in the alley at the edge of the property with his hands on his hips, Panther at his side peering inquisitively at them, his black head tilted sharply to one side. Though Cooper could have sworn he still felt the doorknob, his outstretched hand was empty.

  “Cooper, I know your mom has told you both to stay away from that house,” Mr. Evans went on. “Get out of there. It’s not safe.”

  You have no idea, Cooper thought. But what he yelled back was “You’re right! You’re totally right. It won’t happen again.”

  Jess was now sitting up beside Cooper. She took in their surroundings before breaking into a huge smile.

  Mr. Evans waited until they had stood up and begun moving toward the alley. Even once he started walking away, he glanced back a few times to make sure they were doing as they had said. Panther didn’t budge from where he sat, and Cooper could have sworn the cat winked at him.

  Once Mr. Evans was finally out of sight, Jess whispered, “We did it!” She wrapped Cooper in a hug.

  He leaned in and hugged his sister back. “We did.” The wor
ds from Gus’s letter echoed in Cooper’s mind: You are both unforgettable. Never doubt that. He had meant them for Cooper and Jess, but Cooper now knew the truth.

  Those words were the key to saving them all.

  32

  Cooper and Jess found their mom, red and sweaty, stretching on a yoga mat in the living room, earbuds in, nodding happily to music they couldn’t hear. She turned when she heard them come in, but her expression dimmed when she saw that Cooper and Jess were cut and bruised, their clothes ripped.

  She rose and rushed toward them. “Oh my g— What happened to you two?”

  Had it really only been a couple of hours ago that their mother had pedaled away on her bike? That Cooper and Jess had walked to the bridge? Their mom was clearly oblivious of all that had happened in that time.

  “Mom, you should probably turn on the news.”

  For the next few hours, the three of them sat frozen on the couch as coverage from the bridge collapse dominated every news channel. Helicopter footage from every angle documented people escaping from damaged cars and precariously positioned vans and trucks. Cooper’s mom wept as her children told her that they hadn’t been mere bystanders to this awful event; they were survivors.

  And she didn’t even know about the In-Between. There was no way for Cooper or Jess to tell her that they’d never truly been in jeopardy on the bridge. They had, in fact, been marked for safety for months. The real danger had come when they’d risked getting stuck forever in an alternate dimension.

  But that was more than Mom needed to know.

  Over the next few days, every newspaper and website was filled with photos of the accident, interviews with survivors, and stories of the lives that had been lost.

  It took three days for the most captivating news to emerge: the mystery of the two unidentified victims. A boy and a girl, wearing matching school uniforms that no one could identify. Day after day, the search for information continued, and Cooper wondered how it was possible that adults couldn’t discover what he and Jess had. It had been hard to find, but not impossible, after all. But slowly the truth dawned on Cooper: the world was as blind to information about Elena and Gus as it had been to Elena and Gus themselves.

  Soon interest waned. The headlines slowly gravitated back to disgraced politicians, sports scores, and celebrity news. Even two mysterious deaths couldn’t hold the attention of a city for long.

  They were sitting at breakfast a week later when their mother said, “I want to ask you guys about something. A reporter from the New York Times called me yesterday, wanting to interview you two.”

  “What?” Jess said.

  “I don’t know how she found out you were on the bridge, and I was about to tell her that you were not interested in speaking with her, but I wanted to at least ask you both before I did.”

  The New York Times. Their pictures and story would be seen all over the United States. The world, even. We’ll be famous the world over! Jess had said what seemed like years ago now.

  Cooper gave his sister an inquiring lift of the eyebrow. Neither of them needed to speak to know they agreed.

  “Nah,” Cooper said with a shake of the head. “We’re good.”

  Their mother turned to Jess.

  Jess smiled knowingly at Cooper. “Yeah. Everyone who needs to know our story already knows it.”

  During his downtime, Cooper went in search of delicious words for his journal. The front of it was now festooned with steadfast, camaraderie, fellowship. He drew pictures of himself and Jess that were vibrant and glowing. Visible.

  Their mother’s phone calls to the city were finally answered, and one day Cooper and Jess sat on the back stoop watching as a gigantic excavator demolished the brown house bit by bit, its rubble carted away one dumpster at a time. Every scrap of wood, shard of glass, and piece of foundation slowly vanished, ultimately leaving a bare, muddy lot. Only the swingless tree and one spindly little rosebush in the corner remained.

  It was over. The mission was complete, all signs of the past had been wiped clean, and Elena and Gus—Cooper still had trouble thinking of them as Elizabeth and Gwen—were at rest. But Cooper nevertheless felt a small tug of unfinished business. Something he couldn’t name was stuck in the back of his mind, like he and Jess were missing the closing act of the play.

  “Their mom would have liked that,” Cooper said a day later. He was standing at the kitchen sink, looking across the alley where Elena used to sit and stare at him.

  “Liked what?” Jess asked from the kitchen table, where she sat doing homework.

  “That rosebush,” he answered. The plant was overgrown and thorny, brown from below-freezing temperatures, but still standing, despite the bulldozers. “Their mom had a garden.”

  Wait. Was that what they were missing? He crossed quickly to the junk drawer and began riffling through stray Post-it notes, paper clips, and takeout menus.

  “What are you doing?” Jess asked.

  “I think there’s one more thing we should do.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  Cooper didn’t answer but motioned for her to follow him upstairs, where he turned in to Jess’s room. He started opening her dresser drawers but still couldn’t find what he was after.

  “If you tell me what you need,” Jess said, “I can help you find it.”

  “Aha!” Cooper walked to Mr. Miggins in the corner and tugged on the ends of the huge pink bow tied around the bear’s neck, undoing it.

  “Whoa! What are you doing?”

  “Maybe we could just cut a piece of it instead,” he muttered, not even hearing his sister.

  “Cooper! What are you talking about? You aren’t cutting any piece of Mr. Miggins.”

  “Well, of course I’m not going to cut Mr. Miggins. Just part of his bow.”

  Jess grabbed the ribbon out of his hand. “You aren’t cutting anything until you tell me why.”

  “We need ribbon.” Cooper couldn’t remember exactly what he’d told Jess about Elizabeth and Gwen’s last day alive. Elizabeth’s final act before leaving home hadn’t seemed that important a detail until now. “Just trust me.”

  Jess took a deep breath before slowly retrieving a pair of scissors from her desk. She hesitated for a moment, but when Cooper nodded reassuringly, she handed them over. “Just a little bit, though.”

  “Absolutely.” Cooper lifted a portion of the ribbon and snipped. He carefully adjusted the remaining band of pink, recentered it around Mr. Miggins’s neck, and tied a new, smaller bow. He proudly showed his handiwork to Jess. “How’s that?”

  She gave a thumbs-up in approval. “Now, tell me why.”

  As they walked downstairs, Cooper recounted the story, this time with every possible detail: the storm, the ribbon, the rosebush. “Elena, I mean Elizabeth, said, ‘We bowed our heads for the only funeral our parents would ever have by those who loved them.’”

  Jess smiled, nodded, and handed Cooper a pen from the kitchen counter as he flattened the piece of ribbon on its surface. In the best penmanship he could muster, he wrote:

  For Elizabeth and Gwen

  He handed the pen to Jess, and she added below Cooper’s words:

  You are remembered.

  A sudden crash of thunder shook the windows. Jess’s eyes went wide. “Where did that come from?”

  Cooper looked at the closest window, where rivers of water were now running down the glass. “I guess a storm is needed for this sort of ceremony.”

  “But it’s freezing out.” Jess shook her head before gaping back at her brother. “That should be snow.”

  Cooper shrugged impishly. “I guess not. Let’s go.”

  They went to the back door, and when Cooper opened it, a sheet of rain blew through the entry, soaking their clothes.

  “This is crazy!” Jess yelled into the wind as they stepped out and closed the door.

  Before they even reached the alley, they were both drenched to the skin, though Cooper somehow didn’t feel cold at a
ll. There was no longer a picket fence around Elena’s yard—there never had been—but they still entered the property where the gate had once appeared. Mud from the bulldozed earth oozed around their feet, clinging to their shoes in bigger and bigger clumps with each step.

  They crossed to the rosebush in the corner of the lot. Blinking against the wind and rain, Cooper handed the ribbon to Jess and inspected the branches to find the worthiest bough. Finally he offered one to his sister. “Here.”

  Jess tied the ribbon in a sturdy knot, pulling the edges tight. Then she held her hand out to Cooper, which he gladly took. They stood there, hand in hand, faces turned up into the storm. In the flash of one final lightinng strike, the yellow house with blue shutters appeared, and the smell of pumpkin pie wafted through the air. Then it was all gone.

  As quickly as it had come, the rain slowed, then stopped, and the calm that had eluded Cooper since they had left the In-Between finally settled.

  “Now it’s over.” He put an arm around Jess’s shoulders, and she put one around his waist. They watched the final rays of daylight disappear beneath the horizon. When darkness won out, Cooper said, “Jess, I think you need to talk to Mom about her date.”

  She slowly nodded and said, “And I think you need to talk to Zack about coming over to hang out.”

  “You are absolutely right.”

  Jess grinned and rested her head on his shoulder. They slowly turned and walked, still hitched together, back to their driveway, past the garage and the garbage cans. Jess suddenly stopped and pulled away. “Hey! What is this doing out here?”

  Beside the trash can sat Jess’s mesh Giant Butterfly Garden. Cooper had heard their mother mumble that morning that it was finally time to get rid of that dud cocoon, and he’d assumed Jess had heard too. Apparently not.

  Cooper walked toward the can and with a wink said, “Why don’t we hide her in my closet? She probably just needs more time.” As he reached for the green fabric handle, something else caught his eye. Glinting up at him from beneath the trash can, next to one of the big plastic rolling wheels, was something gold. He reached for it, and cold metal chilled his fingertips.