In the Middle

by S. J. Henderson

  Oliver props himself up on an elbow and leans in so he obscures my view of all else. In that moment, he’s my entire world—every sight my eyes can take in, each breath in my lungs, every drop of blood within my veins—everything. I won’t fight myself and the differences between us. We aren’t so different, after all. He passed from life into death, and I’ve been brought from death into life. Destined for each other, we’ve met in the middle.

  The breath catches in my throat as his fingers caress the line of my jaw and down the pulse of life along my throat, igniting heat beneath his touch. He slides his hand upwards, nudging away my lavender scarf until he exposes each and every visible scar. I swallow, holding his gaze as he runs his fingertips across the pink suture first, then presses his lips against my forehead. A jolt of electricity shoots through my scar, and I stiffen, waiting for pain. Instead, my head rushes with warmth.

  “I love you, Lucy,” he confesses, pulling back to focus those dark eyes on my reaction.

  My face flares and my heart thunders in my chest. He loves me. Do I love him? I want to love him, but I’m so broken. He deserves a girl all in one piece.

  Oliver doesn’t wait for me to reply, closing the space between us. Though I’m undecided on my level of romantic feeling for the man in front of me, I know without a doubt I want to kiss him. My lips part slightly and I slide my eyelids closed in anticipation of his mouth on mine.

  Across the garden, someone clears their throat. The spell fractures into a million pieces, Oliver lurches away from me, and I snap up to sitting. An overreaction, maybe, but we are the ones trying to avoid The Conductors.

  “Sorry to, uh, interrupt,” Aunt Perdita says. She’s frozen in place like a deer in headlights, a pink bloom shivering in the breeze between her fingers.

  The puzzle pieces clickclickclick together as my eyes travel a path from her shocked expression to the garden shears—the rose!—and back again. “What are you doing with that?” I scramble to my feet as I nod at the pink rose clutched in her hand.

  Aunt Perdita blinks rapidly, glancing between me and Oliver. It’s almost as if she’s receiving some sort of ghostly telegram containing a better answer than the truth. “With what?” she finally says, in what can only be described as the weakest ghost telegram response ever.

  She paints on a smile and turns, letting the pale bloom slip from her fingers to the earth. For as light and delicate as the flower is, it may as well have been a grand piano crashing from the tallest floor of the Empire State Building.

  “No. No, no, no.” I shake my head and cover my eyes with my hands. “The roses didn’t come from you!’’

  Aunt Perdita doesn’t move for what feels like an eternity, then dips her chin.

  “How could you?” Blood fills my face and shoves out my words. “That wasn’t yours! That wasn’t your memory!”

  My aunt, the traitor, avoids the fire in my glare by focusing on a tuft of clover directly in front of her designer sandals. “I’m so—”

  “Stop!” I erupt like a volcano, rocketing to my feet like a plume of lava. I don’t want to hear the rest. I don’t want her to put into words my deepest fear: that my dad isn’t here and it’s been her all this time.

  Oliver reaches up and wraps a hand around my elbow to keep me from launching myself at my aunt. “Miss Perdita, I reckon it’d be good for you to go.”

  For once, she does something right. She barely nods and turns to leave, crushing the lonely rose beneath her feet. Without a word, she glides off into the shadows.

  With my mouth hanging open, I watch her disappear. I want to ask Oliver what just happened, but the words lodge somewhere between my racing brain and breaking heart. I’ve lost my last shred of hope, the hope that Dad would come out of hiding and we could be together again. We could never be the same, of course, but we would at least be together. But now I know that will never happen. I’ve held myself together for too long, but this last blow shatters me. I collapse against Oliver, who wraps his arms around me.

  As I sob into his shoulder, my tears soaking through his linen shirt, something else rises in me. Not hope. Not love. Not even anger.

  Determination.

  I’ve got to end this. I’ve got to get out of here.

  Chapter 22

  The next morning, once I’m sure Aunt Perdita is done being sliced and diced by good ol’ Doc Blevins, I storm into the kitchen. My aunt sits there in her usual spot, slumped over a mug of steaming coffee. When I glance over at the pot I notice that, of course, it’s completely dry. Figures.

  “Why would you do that to me? Do you hate me that much?”

  She takes a long drink and rolls her eyes. “Someone’s being dramatic this morning. There’s a can of coffee in the pantry. Must I do everything for you?”

  “You? Do everything for me?” I stalk up to the opposite side of the bar. She doesn’t react, other than pause with the coffee cup near her parted lips. “Oh, like pretend to be my dad by doing his special thing? Whatever.”

  She resumes her sip of coffee.

  “How messed up is that?” I continue. “You don’t think I’ve suffered enough, so now you’ve decided to really dig your claws into that wound? ‘Watch this, guys! I’m going to pretend to be Lucy’s dead father. It’ll be hilarious.’ Oh yeah, Perdita. That was a total laugh riot.” The words flow from me like floodwater overwhelming a dam. I can’t stop them, and I don’t want to.

  “You shouldn’t speak of the dead like that, like he’s worthless,” Aunt Perdita says quietly. “Your dad loves—loved—”

  I wince, her correction cutting straight to my heart.

  “—you more than life. He deserves more respect than that.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” I spit back. “Besides, you’re dead, too, and I don’t have anything nice to say about you. And you’re definitely not the best one to go to for advice on making someone feel valuable. You’ve done such a stellar job.”

  Although Aunt Perdita meets my glare and doesn’t back down, she doesn’t try to defend herself. When I’ve told her exactly where I think she can go—ironic since, technically, we’re not far away from that place—and how I think she should get there, I turn to stalk away with a flaming face and heaving shoulders.

  Then I notice her fixing her coffee.

  Half a teaspoon of sugar and too much half-and-half. Two spins clockwise with her spoon. Swish. Then four counterclockwise circles.

  Just like my mom.

  I close my eyes, pushing away the scene before me, holding onto the memory of my mom. It’s almost impossible to believe they ever shared the same blood, no less the same tiny habits. My mom was nothing like Aunt Perdita. I grit my teeth and slam my mug onto the countertop. I won’t accept any other possibility.

  If I startle my aunt, she doesn’t let on. It probably takes a whole heck of a lot to frighten the undead, so that’s not too surprising, I guess.

  “Are you mad at me, Lucy? It seems like you’re upset,” she says finally. She cradles her coffee in her porcelain hands and takes a sip. Her eyes never leave me. I want to look away, I’m so disgusted with her—no, I hate her—but I can’t. I’m tired of tiptoeing around this huge house and shrinking into a corner every time something doesn’t go her way. She sucks at taking care of everyone, including herself; I can’t help that. I can’t change these things about her, her character flaws and shortcomings, but I don’t have to roll over and play dead anymore, either. I’m not dead . . . yet. Instead I’m stuck somewhere in the middle.

  “Fine,” Aunt Perdita says. “You don’t have to answer me. But I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

  Anger rises in my throat, bitter and hot as bile. “You’re sorry?” A tight laugh escapes my lips, but doesn’t make the trip to my eyes. I am breaking into pieces at the very same time my bones are knitting together again. “You’re sorry for what? Treating me like a burden? An inconvenience? Take your pick.”

  She sighs, rubbing the rim of her mug in a slow half-circle befor
e she speaks. “I deserved that. I’m sorry.”

  “You keep saying that. But an apology doesn’t really count if it doesn’t change anything.”

  Her gaze drops to the countertop and she nods. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right.”

  I’m not prepared for this, and I lose steam. “I—I am?” I narrow my eyes. Mitte is a funny place, and I can’t take anything at face value here because nothing is what it seems. It’s hard to know what to expect in a town of restless souls.

  Aunt Perdita leans forward, closing the space between us. This is the closest we’ve been to each other since our first and only hug, back when I first rolled up in this hell-hole. My brain screams that she’s too close, much too close, but something inside me pulls toward her. Even the blood pumping in my veins feels like it’s flowing in her direction.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be like this, you’ve got to believe me,” she says. She sets her mug down and reaches out to me. Before I can react, her hand rests on mine. I half-expect my skin to sizzle and boil as if her touch was acid, but her hand feels real. A little on the cool side, sure, but normal. If I closed my eyes and let my mind drift away, her touch could almost feel like someone else’s: Mom.

  I shudder and try to pull away from her, but I can’t. Even though it’s Aunt Perdita and I should consider all the possibilities here, like this is a trap, I turn my hand over and grasp hers. Her touch isn’t like Oliver’s pure energy. Her touch is human, as real as I thought I was. I didn’t realize how much I was missing that connection until now.

  Aunt Perdita blinks as she considers my hand in hers. She clears her throat, a small sound, like she’s afraid to ripple the calm surface of the moment.

  “I always wanted a baby, you know?” she says after a quiet moment. “I tried everything. If the doctors had told me to stand on my head or eat bushels of jalapenos harvested by one of those clicking tribes in the rainforest, then I would’ve done it. Ray, your uncle—did you ever meet your Uncle Ray?”

  I barely shake my head.

  “Good for you. He was a moron. Anyway, Ray thought I’d gone crazy . . . and maybe I had. But, tell you the truth, I bet he was the problem. As soon as he left me—BAM! Knocked up.”

  I don’t speak, watching as her delicate thumb slides over mine. She probably doesn’t even know she’s doing it. Do I stay still like this? Or do I bolt like a startled deer? With a deep inhale, I calm my heart, which thumps like a kick-drum in this still space.

  “Things didn’t go well. It wasn’t easy being pregnant without Ray, moron or not. Your Gran, bless her, didn’t get the in vitro fertilization stuff. She actually told me that I’d be condemned for making a test tube baby. I tried so hard to reason with her—to educate her, but all we ended up doing is fighting like two cats and dogs. She was so . . . ignorant—that’s the only way to put it. But I guess she was right, after all.” She chokes out a laugh. “Because I’m here and she’s not.”

  Her eyelashes flutter and I think I spot a tear trickling down the slope of one of her perfect cheekbones. “I died anyway, without ever getting to hold my baby. All of that was for nothing.”

  “Not all for nothing, Perdita,” Doc Blevins says as he steps through the kitchen door. “We’ve got each other, haven’t we?” He wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her to his side, breaking our connection. My hand feels so empty. I stare at it before looking up at them again.

  “Oh,” I say, taking in the way his hand grasps her hip.

  “Of course I have you.” Aunt Perdita smiles up at him. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. You’ve been such a good friend . . . if you can ever really have a friend in a place like this.”

  The corners of Doc’s mouth fall slightly when she says the word “friend.”

  I wonder if she knows? Seems impossible to miss Doc’s clear signals, but Aunt Perdita doesn’t react to his subtle meandering beyond the friend zone. A girl who got it would do one of two things: flinch if she wasn’t into it, or lean into his embrace if she was. Aunt Perdita, mystery that she is, doesn’t even blink. Interesting.

  I watch them over the brim of my coffee mug.

  He clears his throat, brushing away his obvious disappointment.

  “Listen,” Doc says, “I wanted to stop by and see if you wanted to come with me to visit the kids at the orphanage. I’ve got to pay them a visit and you’ll be a great distraction.”

  I hadn’t seen much of the kids lately, but I missed all of them—Mags and Duke, especially.

  “Why don’t you come with us, Perdita?” Doc says.

  “To the orphanage?” She furrows her eyebrows. “I don’t know if that’s such a—”

  “Don’t worry about Letty. She won’t mind a bit.”

  Knowing Letty as well as I do, I know this is definitely a fib. Letty cares for my aunt about as much as she trusts her, which isn’t much—but I don’t dare say that out loud.

  “Wouldn’t it be great to get out of this house?” Doc continues. “I can’t remember the last time you left.”

  I choke on my sip of coffee. Oh, so he doesn’t know everything, then.

  Aunt Perdita looks up at Doc Blevins with an unanswered question in her eyes, and he nods encouragement.

  A short while later, we file from the house. Aunt Perdita’s skin glows nearly fluorescent as we step out from the shadows of the porch and into the sun’s rays. She slides a pair of oversized sunglasses from their perch on top of her head down to her nose. “Better.”

  I spy Norman watering the side lawn with a garden hose. He blinks at us a couple of times, his mouth slack. I grin and flutter my fingers at him in greeting, and he responds by slowly raising his free hand.

  “Miss Perdita, that really you?” he calls out with a quiver in his voice. By now he’s practically peeking out from behind the hedges.

  “Nothing to see here, Norman,” Aunt Perdita says. “Don’t you have some flowers to look after?”

  My blood stirs, threatening to simmer at the way she speaks to the groundskeeper, until I catch them flashing smiles at each other.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ll get to those right quick!” Fear temporarily gone, Norman returns to his work.

  Aunt Perdita nods and flounces down the remainder of the porch steps. If I didn’t know better, I’d guess she’s . . . happy.

  Chapter 23

  Maggie nearly knocks me over when I step inside the orphanage. She wraps her chubby arms around my leg. “Lucy! I haven’t seen you in forever and ever and ever and ever and . . .”

  I laugh, reaching down to tousle her golden curls. “I get it, Mags. Good to see you, too.”

  “We thought maybe you were a-scared, ’cause of Duke’s boo-boo.”

  A lump forms in my throat as Duke steps from the living room. Not one hair is out of place—or not more out of place than normal. For a dead kid, he looks pretty, well, alive.

  “Duke. Thank God,” I say.

  He smirks. “I do have that effect on the ladies.”

  “I bet you do,” I say as I work at prying free from Maggie’s grasp, finger-by-finger. She whimpers in protest then runs away from us and into the living room. “About that, back there with Angus and all of that . . . You’re okay, right?”

  “Angus?” Duke scratches his head. I can almost see him scanning his memory bank for just right one. “Oh, right. That. Don’t worry about it. I’m totally fine.”

  “Swear?”

  “Swear. I couldn’t let them get you, Luce. You might be a gigantic pain in the butt, but I couldn’t let you get transported.”

  “And they said chivalry’s dead.”

  Duke just shrugs and grins, and I laugh when I realize what I’ve said.

  I follow Duke into the living room, where Letty sits on the couch holding little JoJo, who is wrapped tightly in a pink flannel blanket. She gently bounces the bundle up and down, up and down.

  “Hi Letty,” I say. I keep my distance. She and I haven’t spoken since she asked me to put on my Superwoman
costume and save all of the kids.

  “Lucy.” She trains her grey eyes on me.

  Are we still friends? Or has she turned on me, like the rest of the town?

  “I’m really sorry about what happened with Duke. I shouldn’t have left them alone. It—”

  “Nonsense. Of course you should have left them alone,” she chides. “They were going to hand-deliver you to the Devil himself. The kids aren’t going anywhere unless you—”

  I put a hand up. “I’m not ready to talk about it.”

  “While I realize the moral dilemma you’re facing, I’d like to point out that the longer we wait, the harder this is going to be.” She nods at the bundle in her arms. “I can’t take it anymore.” Letty’s eyes gloss over, her words thick and liquid in her throat. “I can’t watch them die anymore, Lucy.”

  I start to answer her, but her posture changes. She stiffens like someone shoved a steel rod straight up her spine. She glares past me and directly at my aunt, standing in the hall.

  “Well, I’ll be,” Letty says. “I don’t recall inviting you, Perdita,” The volume of her voice never changes, but there’s no missing the poisonous barbs punctuating each syllable.

  Aunt Perdita opens her mouth, but before she can reply, Doc Blevins brushes past the both of us. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Letty. She’s with me. Thought it would do her some good to pay a visit to the neighbors. Don’t you agree?”

  Letty doesn’t answer, momentarily diffused. Doc sets his black bag on the floor with a thunk and fishes out his stethoscope. “Now, who wants to go first?”

  Each child, starting with Maggie, receives a thorough exam from Doc. It’s pretty strange since they’re more likely to die—and die often—than catch the sniffles, but whatever.

  Doc notices me watching him work and smiles. “Keeps the ol’ skills sharp,” he explains as he peers into Maggie’s ear with his otoscope. “Never know when someone special will roll into town.” He winks at me.

  I smile. “Someone’s gotta keep you on your toes, I guess.”